Still, when it came to regular trimming—even in heavier weed areas—this trimmer had little problem on multiple hilly properties in Los Angeles in spring 2020. The padding is comfortable, and it’s something we came to appreciate during longer trimming sessions, but it is delicate and can easily tear if you happen to snag it on a hook, a nailhead, or maybe even a rose thorn. After two years of use, our test unit has sustained a single tear (remedied with a little electrical tape).
This touching up of the blade, usually required every 10 minutes or so, maintains the edge while you’re using it. Eventually, though, the edge will wear to a point that honing stops being effective, which is where peening—the light hammering of the blade’s edge, which tapers and hardens it—comes in. “The peening aspect is probably the thing that makes it the least accessible for regular people,” said Miller.
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 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.
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 costway patio furniture 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.
And all of our picks come in multiple versions (width, height, lighting options, and so on). So if you see something you like but that isn’t your perfect tree, poke around the manufacturers’ websites. Virtually all contemporary artificial trees have branches permanently mounted on hinges on the center pole. Thanks to this design, they unfurl into place quickly when you set them up.
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, costway patio umbrellas 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.
I used to try a string trimmer in that area, and it would blow the grass, weeds, and stalks all over the place; the cut stalks would then dry out, turn brown, and look awful. Using a scythe leaves me with orderly rows of cut vegetation, which I can quickly scoop up and dispose of. The result looks way better, and the work actually goes a little faster (as this scythe versus string trimmer video demonstrates).
It involves a twisting motion back and forth, with the arms acting as stabilizers. If you’re doing it really well, it’s not super physically demanding,” Miller told us. All of the cordless trimmers we looked at could cut regular costway patio furniture lawn grass, but we wanted one that also handled tall weeds or densely overgrown grass. Weaker trimmers strained in tougher conditions, either getting bound up in the grass or pushing it over instead of cutting it.