Unlike the lights on all of our other picks, however, the ones on this tree are traditional incandescents, not LEDs, and they come only in clear. But if you prefer the warmer glow of incandescents, that’s a feature, not a bug. And even if one bulb burns out, the costway patio umbrellas rest of the bulbs keep working (unlike with some incandescent Christmas lights). The King of Christmas 7-foot King Noble Flock Fir is a so-called Euro-style tree, with fewer, more naturalistic branches than you find on plump, symmetrical American-style trees.
But it does excel in larger areas that a mower can’t handle, either where you have too much of a slope or the ground is uneven. With proper technique, a scythe can cut the grass and leave costway patio umbrellas it in a neat and orderly fashion, making it easy to clean up once you’re done. Artificial trees are manufactured mostly in China, where environmental laws tend to be less stringent.
Other trimmers bound themselves up in the tall grass or, when faced with a dense patch, pushed the grass over rather than cutting it. This model far outperformed the other brands’ trimmers in run time and power. Its telescoping shaft and handle are easy to adjust and make the tool comfortable to use, even for extended trimming sessions.
As for run time and cutting ability, we have yet to find a property where a battery-powered trimmer falls short. The best of the battery models can slice through thick stalks of Japanese knotweed and can finish the work at large properties with plenty of battery charge to spare. We’re highlighting this model in particular because its lights (along with the branch-tip construction) are the same as those on our pick, the popular and widely appealing Downswept Douglas Fir. The lights have the same multiple colors and patterns (nine in total) that our staffers found so charming, including all-color, all-white, and the “sparkling” mode (some bulbs gently dim and rebrighten). Again, this tree has fewer of them (350 versus 750), but the Pencil Slim still looks fully lit because those lights are spread among a lot less foliage.
The other is contact with PVC dust beneath the tree, the result of physical decomposition of the “pine needles”—a particular concern for crawling infants. Significantly, new trees (new in 2004, that is) generally showed much lower levels of lead than trees manufactured in the 1980s and 1990s. We did a battery test on an earlier version of this Ego trimmer, and on a single battery charge it cut down about 3,400 square feet of dense overgrown grass, weeds, and stalky shrubs (an area measuring nearly 60 by 60 feet).