There's a reason for the flappy thing at the top. The chain tensioner is too weak to allow cutting with top chain of these saws and gets too loose very quickly. It's just there to remind you to only use bottom side (flip the saw if you need too, it's light enough). Very good review!
You are " A Natural " with dry humored delivery on topic. Well done, I actually learned a lot of useful and safety information. Thank you. Always, Syn Silver !!!
Maybe 25 years ago we had a tree die in the front yard. I got the tree out fine, but tried to hire out the stump removal. Quotes were outrageous, like $1000, so I said screw it and got an AC electric chainsaw for about $50. I used it to dig the stump out, cutting dirt and roots and anything else that got in the way. The saw was completely trash when I was done (drawbar all worn, chain stretched waay beyond spec, motor full of dirt and bearings rattling like a paint can), but for how much I saved, I gladly tossed it.
I have an 18” ryobi battery saw. Compared to a ms180, it’s even faster and has much more torque. The downside is it runs out of battery long before filling up even more than a 1/4 cord. However, as a limbing saw, it works awesome. When we cut wood, one person cuts sections with the gas saw, and another one cleans up limbs with the battery saw. Works great!
Good one. Should have seen it before buying one. Only thing I'd like to add. The safe distance mentioned at 22:27 is longer than you expect it to be. Guess how I know.
Yes, things can go wrong very quickly with chainsaws. I didn't even have the battery attached when recording this part. Of course with a proper 2-handed saw you couldn't (or SHOULDN'T) do this, but sometimes people will use their foot instead to steady what they are cutting. (I won't claim I've never done it!)
@@AndysMachines A constant refrain of mine on so many products these days. Even if a washer is fitted it'd be a little on the thin side, but its how they achieve the price points I suppose. If you can save 1,000,000, 1/10ths of a penny on a production run and times that by 3 washers, it soon adds up.
For what you put it through and the low price, I'd say you got a great deal. I don't know what the manufacturer was expecting people to use it for, but 12-inch logs were probably not included 😊
I use a Milwaukee hand recip saw for limbing since my other tools are the same brand using same battery(s). No wrist lanyard either😂 Get a proper blade. Works well for any electric brand. Safer than a chain. Easy swap out etc. Awesome fun review of this option👍🏻
I purchased a smaller version of this saw last fall. I used it to cut down Lilac trees. It worked pretty good, but the battery life was very short. But I wanted the quiet and I don't own a gas saw. I was also able to cut down 6" black walnut trees. These were remote to where my plugin corded saw would have needed 300 feet of extension cord. I did purchase an 18" Oregon electric saw. This requires 12AWG cord. I was cutting down large oaks and then breaking them down to human carry-able pieces. The problem with that saw, the universal brushed motor failed from the vibration shock of cutting hard oak. But they have a 2 year warrantee.
I believe the smaller version has a brushless motor which is more powerful and also a smaller battery, so battery life must be quite short. Unfortunately high speed brushed motors in tools like this always wear out eventually.
Very informative & helpful video. I bought one few days ago from eBay with £19.99 for my Greenhouse & vegetable planter making DIY. It arrived today. It comes with 4 inch and 6 inch chains and 2 batteries and design looks better than this one. Assembled it and used it, works really well and build quality is good.
Looks ideal for a January Sunday afternoon apple tree pruning job, and that’s about it. Always being skeptical about battery chainsaws until I got a dewalt long reach battery saw, it’s damn good, but you find it’s limits when working with trees with very large branches, it will do them but you’ll have regretted trying before it does
Your comments about value for money seem very reasonable. What does bother me is can the world afford to use its resources making something with such a poor life expectancy, especially as just a bit more effort would make a much more durable product?
I bought one of these and it did eventually burn out as I have Makita batteries and using it for far too long with multiple batteries in one go. All in all though it done exactly why I bought it and that was to see if it was useful. I did then buy a 36 makita saw which is great apart from the bar quality which seemed to wear on one side because the bar walls were of a different thickness, a replacement bar seems a lot better. After watching TOT I tried a powered pruner for £30 and that is brilliant for cutting smaller branches and twigs with a far greater battery life , would highly recommend for the garden.
Agreed. It seems common for a low the product to be decent, but the accessories not so much. Every cheap security style camera I've ever bought has been great, however 8 times out of 10 the app that runs it is garbage.
I have multiple high end 2t saws. I'm at the point where they rarely get used. Have a 65cc equivalent battery saw for the big stuff, and multiple others down to a 10" top handle. Love gas motors, but I just don't reach for them much any longer.
Fantastic video. Thank you. I learned a lot. Perhaps you should have kept the slightly stubby screwdriver. It would have likely lasted you longer than that mini chainsaw.
ive had a simalar saw 4 years now ? i have just about worn it out [ but its cut 5 ton of branches into fire wood lol ] its great for the 60 bucks i paied for it . the chain / bar and batterys will out live the saw .ok i oil the bar every few cuts dip it in sump used oil ........... quick easy better than sex ,i since did my brush cutter 24v ebike motor and 2 makita batterys the thing is physco plug and play ........... job done before i could mix the 2 stroke oil and petrol
I agree it is a little ripper and suitable for small occasional jobs. It is pretty low power, so it should be reasonably safe to use. So it does seem value for money. The problem with ultra cheap electric tools is they come and go over-night, so in the unlikely case that it is still functional in 2 years time, you might have a piece of junk because you can't source a new battery for it. Early cordless drills, etc, were notorious for that. Not sure about "reverse engineering" some extra safety either. That might create a false sense of security. I suppose a cut-out or dead-man's switch would be OK. Professional level tools are value for money too, because you use them, day-in, day-out, and parts are usually available for a long time. The thing is flimsy and not over-engineered. If you put an aluminum guard on it, it would just fail at the screw housing for the plastic attachment. Love the beaver. A funny, yet professional review.
Yes, I have seen that, though it's a different design to regular saw chains and is actually much smaller than you'd think based on the pitch of the chain (which I think is 4mm). I don't think it can be sharpened, or even removed from the bar, you just replace the whole thing in one go. It does look fun though and the cut is only about 1mm wide.
The wrist strap isn't to carry it, it's to use when you're running it so if/when you accidentally let go of it it doesn't drop on your foot/the ground. Or carrying it up a ladder, same reason.
VERY entertaining video; as well as being informative. To see a real screamer of a mini chainsaw; check out the Kebtek 8" model. Unbelievable speed and smoothness.
Some battery powered chainsaws in the 12-14 inch range are actually faster than most of their internal combustion counterpart. Like .. Milwaukee and.. Makita if you want comfort. Pound per pound gasoline still gives you longer runtime than batteries. If you are sometimes away from electricity on bigger jobs, batteries are just simply not worth it. And let's face it, as much as I am a battery guy, nothing quite beats that erotic smell of a cold start Stihl.
I got my charger for the chainsaw battery accidentally mixed in with the big pile of chargers in my workshop and I don't know which one is the right one now. Can anyone give me the input/output specs of the charger? It should be under the prongs that you plug into the wall. Thanks a million in advance.
@@AndysMachines Thanks a bunch! Like most Chinese products, they tend to stretch the truth on things a bit and that makes things like this confusing. In fact the bling sticker on the side of the battery says 21v Lithium Max, but the legally mandated spec sticker on the bottom of the battery say 20v max. Unless I've misplaced my charger somewhere else, the only two chargers I have in my happy pile that fit the battery charge port have an 18v output one one and 24v on the other. I'm not familiar enough with Lithium charging to know if they have to have a greater voltage in the charger, such as one like needing a 13v chargers to charge a 12v wet cell car battery of if they have a DC-to-DC volt conversion in the battery to change the charging voltage accordingly.
You can't see the saw, so I guess it could be upside down. But in a lot of Amazon/ebay listings for these saws they really do have the chains on backwards!
I have had a Stihl GTA26 for 2 years. No oiler on that either. However, use any spray can oil before use and it has cut masses of smaller branches rendering the trusty loppers to almost zero use. Quite unbelievable how the mini chainsaw has left loppers 'out on a limb'!
I'll be happy to if Stihl want to send me one! The price of these seems to have fallen, but it's still a lot to spend on a saw with only a 10cm bar (they do describe it as a 'pruner' rather than a saw). I'm pretty sure I could cut stuff that size with a bowsaw just as fast, and keep it up for longer than the battery would last.
I was using the Stihl equivalent of this a few weeks ago by chance. Just seeing the first cut of this I must say whatever the Stihl thing costs - it seems to be worth it :D
Anything made my Stihl is in a totally different category to this. I haven't used a Stihl battery saw myself, but I know a lot of tree surgeons prefer them now especially when working at height.
i've used a fair amount of big brand electric chainsaws and personally this one is fairly crappy just for it's quality and lack of safety features. lack of hand guard no electric auto braking (basically as soon as you let go of the trigger it stops) no dogs no rubber isolators.
I have to agree. Some of the safety issues with this saw would have been so simple and cheap to fix at the design stage, you really have to wonder if they knew what they were doing.
@@AndysMachines probably due to cost, even though it's cheap to get it to the £50 mark corners had to be cut, would be a fun video of you modifying one of these into a log eating machine that has safety.
£50 is a lot these days on ebay. I've seen them go as low as £10!! I wouldn't trust that to last a single use without breaking. The market is so saturated. And many have claims like 750watt, but in another part it says 700w. And the battery says 42V (but it turns out that's the brand name, lol) and some say 21V max (what does max mean? when it's got a surface charge?) Very dodgy. A LI Battery costs £50 on it's own when you buy from people like Bosch, Makita etc.
Most saw bars have a hole here, I think the intended use is for hanging up the bar on a nail to store it. You can store it this way with the chain still attached and it doesn't get tangled. (I actually hang this whole tiny saw on a nail this way). On bigger bars you can also use this hole to attach things such as sawmill/planking attachments. In the past I've also drilled extra holes at the other end of the bar as well to fit a sawmill attachment. The bar is hardened steel and you can't drill it with a regular drill bit, you have to use carbide.
I have the Milwaukee version of this saw. I am actually pretty scared to use it. I put the chance at about 85% that I will lose a finger someday with this thing.
That file test was hilarious. Absolutely obliterated that "file" with an actual file.
This was the most thorough review I’ve seen in a long time. Well done sir!
Thanks! I do try to be diligent!
Worth my time for the animated beaver alone!
There's a reason for the flappy thing at the top. The chain tensioner is too weak to allow cutting with top chain of these saws and gets too loose very quickly. It's just there to remind you to only use bottom side (flip the saw if you need too, it's light enough). Very good review!
The beaver was enough to make the watch worthwhile, but it would have been equally worth it without the beaver.
UA-cam analytics tell me that 65% of people didn't spot the bonus beaver at the end! 🦫
@@AndysMachines If I hadn't read this I would have missed it too by 15 seconds margin.
I am a layperson, who not only enjoyed watching this review but also understood every syllable. Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
You are " A Natural " with dry humored delivery on topic. Well done, I actually learned a lot of useful and safety information. Thank you. Always, Syn Silver !!!
Great product review. Your videos never disappoint.
Maybe 25 years ago we had a tree die in the front yard. I got the tree out fine, but tried to hire out the stump removal. Quotes were outrageous, like $1000, so I said screw it and got an AC electric chainsaw for about $50. I used it to dig the stump out, cutting dirt and roots and anything else that got in the way. The saw was completely trash when I was done (drawbar all worn, chain stretched waay beyond spec, motor full of dirt and bearings rattling like a paint can), but for how much I saved, I gladly tossed it.
Wow, you know your stuff! Nice review. Incredibly thorough!
You sound very serious, but you're funny, and I liked it. Great video.
I have an 18” ryobi battery saw. Compared to a ms180, it’s even faster and has much more torque. The downside is it runs out of battery long before filling up even more than a 1/4 cord. However, as a limbing saw, it works awesome. When we cut wood, one person cuts sections with the gas saw, and another one cleans up limbs with the battery saw. Works great!
Good one. Should have seen it before buying one. Only thing I'd like to add. The safe distance mentioned at 22:27 is longer than you expect it to be.
Guess how I know.
Yes, things can go wrong very quickly with chainsaws. I didn't even have the battery attached when recording this part. Of course with a proper 2-handed saw you couldn't (or SHOULDN'T) do this, but sometimes people will use their foot instead to steady what they are cutting. (I won't claim I've never done it!)
Brilliant Andy!
Excellent Well Balanced review ... covered all aspects ... loved the animation and like you said "cheap cheerful"
Thanks
Excellent review, thorough and detailed. Loved the dry humour! Subbed!
Thanks Andy! I wondered about these things. I'm going to spring for one now.
Good video! The beaver saw was funny!
Really like your review style and attention to detail, subbed and liked.
This was a very good review and you obvioulsy know your stuff. Well done!
I'd put a washer under the chain adjusting screw to prevent it digging into the plastic.
Yes, some of the shortcuts they've taken in the design are pretty bad, how much more would one washer have cost?
@@AndysMachines A constant refrain of mine on so many products these days. Even if a washer is fitted it'd be a little on the thin side, but its how they achieve the price points I suppose. If you can save 1,000,000, 1/10ths of a penny on a production run and times that by 3 washers, it soon adds up.
For what you put it through and the low price, I'd say you got a great deal. I don't know what the manufacturer was expecting people to use it for, but 12-inch logs were probably not included 😊
I was thinking of getting one of these. Thanks for saving me the $
I use a Milwaukee hand recip saw for limbing since my other tools are the same brand using same battery(s).
No wrist lanyard either😂
Get a proper blade. Works well for any electric brand.
Safer than a chain. Easy swap out etc.
Awesome fun review of this option👍🏻
A really good and honest review, Thanks. Will consider it ...... maybe!
I purchased a smaller version of this saw last fall. I used it to cut down Lilac trees. It worked pretty good, but the battery life was very short. But I wanted the quiet and I don't own a gas saw. I was also able to cut down 6" black walnut trees. These were remote to where my plugin corded saw would have needed 300 feet of extension cord.
I did purchase an 18" Oregon electric saw. This requires 12AWG cord. I was cutting down large oaks and then breaking them down to human carry-able pieces. The problem with that saw, the universal brushed motor failed from the vibration shock of cutting hard oak. But they have a 2 year warrantee.
I believe the smaller version has a brushless motor which is more powerful and also a smaller battery, so battery life must be quite short. Unfortunately high speed brushed motors in tools like this always wear out eventually.
handy video. thanks
Very informative & helpful video. I bought one few days ago from eBay with £19.99 for my Greenhouse & vegetable planter making DIY. It arrived today. It comes with 4 inch and 6 inch chains and 2 batteries and design looks better than this one. Assembled it and used it, works really well and build quality is good.
Looks ideal for a January Sunday afternoon apple tree pruning job, and that’s about it. Always being skeptical about battery chainsaws until I got a dewalt long reach battery saw, it’s damn good, but you find it’s limits when working with trees with very large branches, it will do them but you’ll have regretted trying before it does
Yes, it's very handy for small jobs like that. But the time taken to cut through larger logs or branches increases exponentially.
Your comments about value for money seem very reasonable. What does bother me is can the world afford to use its resources making something with such a poor life expectancy, especially as just a bit more effort would make a much more durable product?
I bought one of these and it did eventually burn out as I have Makita batteries and using it for far too long with multiple batteries in one go. All in all though it done exactly why I bought it and that was to see if it was useful. I did then buy a 36 makita saw which is great apart from the bar quality which seemed to wear on one side because the bar walls were of a different thickness, a replacement bar seems a lot better. After watching TOT I tried a powered pruner for £30 and that is brilliant for cutting smaller branches and twigs with a far greater battery life , would highly recommend for the garden.
I always find the battery expires from lack of use before the saw does.
Agreed. It seems common for a low the product to be decent, but the accessories not so much. Every cheap security style camera I've ever bought has been great, however 8 times out of 10 the app that runs it is garbage.
I have multiple high end 2t saws. I'm at the point where they rarely get used. Have a 65cc equivalent battery saw for the big stuff, and multiple others down to a 10" top handle. Love gas motors, but I just don't reach for them much any longer.
Yer I did like the bever too
Thanks for the specification details very throughly .
Fantastic video. Thank you. I learned a lot. Perhaps you should have kept the slightly stubby screwdriver. It would have likely lasted you longer than that mini chainsaw.
You're quite right! It would have outlasted the saw, but it wouldn't have had as much use.
ive had a simalar saw 4 years now ? i have just about worn it out [ but its cut 5 ton of branches into fire wood lol ] its great for the 60 bucks i paied for it . the chain / bar and batterys will out live the saw .ok i oil the bar every few cuts dip it in sump used oil ........... quick easy better than sex ,i since did my brush cutter 24v ebike motor and 2 makita batterys the thing is physco plug and play ........... job done before i could mix the 2 stroke oil and petrol
I have one and I love it!
I agree it is a little ripper and suitable for small occasional jobs. It is pretty low power, so it should be reasonably safe to use. So it does seem value for money. The problem with ultra cheap electric tools is they come and go over-night, so in the unlikely case that it is still functional in 2 years time, you might have a piece of junk because you can't source a new battery for it. Early cordless drills, etc, were notorious for that.
Not sure about "reverse engineering" some extra safety either. That might create a false sense of security. I suppose a cut-out or dead-man's switch would be OK.
Professional level tools are value for money too, because you use them, day-in, day-out, and parts are usually available for a long time.
The thing is flimsy and not over-engineered. If you put an aluminum guard on it, it would just fail at the screw housing for the plastic attachment.
Love the beaver. A funny, yet professional review.
I'm surprised they spent money to lube those bevel gears. It looks like vaseline?
1/4" isn't _quite_ the smallest chainsaw chain. Have you seen the Bosch NanoBlade ? I want one, for no good reason at all.
Yes, I have seen that, though it's a different design to regular saw chains and is actually much smaller than you'd think based on the pitch of the chain (which I think is 4mm). I don't think it can be sharpened, or even removed from the bar, you just replace the whole thing in one go. It does look fun though and the cut is only about 1mm wide.
I'm surprised, was expecting much worse.
That was a very interesting test, just what i was looking for so i learnt a lot going forward. Thanks 👍🏼
One danger with them is when using one hand to hold a branch and it slipping towards the hand .
Well put together review
THANK YOU.
The wrist strap isn't to carry it, it's to use when you're running it so if/when you accidentally let go of it it doesn't drop on your foot/the ground. Or carrying it up a ladder, same reason.
VERY entertaining video; as well as being informative. To see a real screamer of a mini chainsaw; check out the Kebtek 8" model. Unbelievable speed and smoothness.
Well defined Thanks
Some battery powered chainsaws in the 12-14 inch range are actually faster than most of their internal combustion counterpart. Like .. Milwaukee and.. Makita if you want comfort. Pound per pound gasoline still gives you longer runtime than batteries. If you are sometimes away from electricity on bigger jobs, batteries are just simply not worth it. And let's face it, as much as I am a battery guy, nothing quite beats that erotic smell of a cold start Stihl.
Those things fit between full sized chainsaws and reciprocating saws which to me honestly is a niche that doesn't exist
How else are we supposed to open cardboard boxes though, if not for miniature electric chainsaws?..
With a 30" petrol saw?
Au E/bay -6" Chainsaw Cordless Cutting Tool Rechargeable Wood Cutter Electric Chainsaws with 2 batteries au $48.95 + tips :)
"SawCam"! Instant LIKE for this video!
Great video
I got my charger for the chainsaw battery accidentally mixed in with the big pile of chargers in my workshop and I don't know which one is the right one now. Can anyone give me the input/output specs of the charger? It should be under the prongs that you plug into the wall. Thanks a million in advance.
Mine is a bit vague, just says, 'output 18-21V' Not even any mention of polarity of the plug.
@@AndysMachines Thanks a bunch! Like most Chinese products, they tend to stretch the truth on things a bit and that makes things like this confusing. In fact the bling sticker on the side of the battery says 21v Lithium Max, but the legally mandated spec sticker on the bottom of the battery say 20v max. Unless I've misplaced my charger somewhere else, the only two chargers I have in my happy pile that fit the battery charge port have an 18v output one one and 24v on the other. I'm not familiar enough with Lithium charging to know if they have to have a greater voltage in the charger, such as one like needing a 13v chargers to charge a 12v wet cell car battery of if they have a DC-to-DC volt conversion in the battery to change the charging voltage accordingly.
Anyone else notice the chains backwards? 5:03
You can't see the saw, so I guess it could be upside down. But in a lot of Amazon/ebay listings for these saws they really do have the chains on backwards!
I have had a Stihl GTA26 for 2 years. No oiler on that either. However, use any spray can oil before use and it has cut masses of smaller branches rendering the trusty loppers to almost zero use. Quite unbelievable how the mini chainsaw has left loppers 'out on a limb'!
Anything made by Stihl will be in a different class to this.
Why don't you review the Stihl GTA?
I'll be happy to if Stihl want to send me one!
The price of these seems to have fallen, but it's still a lot to spend on a saw with only a 10cm bar (they do describe it as a 'pruner' rather than a saw). I'm pretty sure I could cut stuff that size with a bowsaw just as fast, and keep it up for longer than the battery would last.
I was using the Stihl equivalent of this a few weeks ago by chance. Just seeing the first cut of this I must say whatever the Stihl thing costs - it seems to be worth it :D
Anything made my Stihl is in a totally different category to this. I haven't used a Stihl battery saw myself, but I know a lot of tree surgeons prefer them now especially when working at height.
Looks about spot on for coppicing hazel. Shame about no safety though.
i've used a fair amount of big brand electric chainsaws and personally this one is fairly crappy just for it's quality and lack of safety features.
lack of hand guard
no electric auto braking (basically as soon as you let go of the trigger it stops)
no dogs
no rubber isolators.
I have to agree. Some of the safety issues with this saw would have been so simple and cheap to fix at the design stage, you really have to wonder if they knew what they were doing.
@@AndysMachines probably due to cost, even though it's cheap to get it to the £50 mark corners had to be cut, would be a fun video of you modifying one of these into a log eating machine that has safety.
£50 is a lot these days on ebay. I've seen them go as low as £10!! I wouldn't trust that to last a single use without breaking. The market is so saturated. And many have claims like 750watt, but in another part it says 700w. And the battery says 42V (but it turns out that's the brand name, lol) and some say 21V max (what does max mean? when it's got a surface charge?) Very dodgy. A LI Battery costs £50 on it's own when you buy from people like Bosch, Makita etc.
What's that front hole in the bar is for?
Most saw bars have a hole here, I think the intended use is for hanging up the bar on a nail to store it. You can store it this way with the chain still attached and it doesn't get tangled. (I actually hang this whole tiny saw on a nail this way).
On bigger bars you can also use this hole to attach things such as sawmill/planking attachments. In the past I've also drilled extra holes at the other end of the bar as well to fit a sawmill attachment. The bar is hardened steel and you can't drill it with a regular drill bit, you have to use carbide.
Looks like it would be decent for pruning, especially with the nonlubricated chain, so you don't introduce oil in your fruit tree
I have the Milwaukee version of this saw. I am actually pretty scared to use it. I put the chance at about 85% that I will lose a finger someday with this thing.
I noticed that always you talk in metric , and as metric guy I like that and in my opinion it's easier 😅
Just a warning if you have adventurous children keep it stored away from the battery. Like yours my saw has no safety interlock
Yes, this is possibly the worst design flaw of this saw.
My hometown is 2 miles from the Stihl factory!
helpfull. thanks.
A lecturer at my collage years ago was teaching a class of students and had a kickback . He was killed out right in front of his class ! ...Terrible
60€ buys a used CSP2540, still chinesium but much better cash to quality ratio.
Looks like a nice little tree surgeons saw, though it is petrol and I was looking for a small electric one.
well, stand on the upper step of the ladder and prune apple tree one-handed with petrol saw ..
I'm not going to say I've ever done anything like that. Ever. 😉
Product safety report deems this chainsaw as hazardous ⚠️ due to kickback issues. Might be worth avoiding it
Awesome 👍🦫
Nice video,with a little humor thrown in! Next fo a porn analysis!
i think you are just expecting too much for a simple pruning saw
funny video!
Нічого не поняв но дуже цікаво)
10:22 😂
😂😂😂Cheap tool never equals to high quality tools ! ! !potato is potato ! ! !
You can't stop CHINA 🇨🇳
Made in China
"UK Seller!!!!111oneoneone" :D
Try the Makita,thanks.
If Makita want to send me one, I'll be happy to review it!