My neighbor has the 80 volt HF saw and I have used it a few times.
He is 84 YO and so has his grand kids (20 YO) use it for brush maintenence. It is quite powerful and fast, cuts similar to my stihl 035 saw.
But when brush cutting if the chain is not kept tight it will throw it and break off the drive links. His kids have done this 4 times with both the HF chain and aftermarket Oregon chains.
I think the saw is a good one if used carefully as I have never had an issue but in my 60+ years of woodcutting have never had a saw ruin a chain when it is thrown off.
Just happened to me with the battery saw. Threw the chain and made little burrs on the parts that ride in the bar. I only ever had that happen once before with the 24 inch bar on my Husqvarna. That was about 10 years ago so not a common problem.
I will have to check the number on the Echo Bruce. I bought that one because of the review the guy on Project Farm gave it. Rain wouldnāt bother is any. Itās the only one Iāve ever used so I have nothing to compare it to but Iām real happy with it and it was cheaper than the Makita, Stihl or Milwaukee. My neighbor has a Milwaukee and likes it a lot. I normally buy Stihl everything . I got the Husky when I was using the chain saw mill and wanted a saw with a 24 inch bar. The Stihl dealer wouldnāt trade out the 20 inch bar for the 24 and a few bucks. Wanted me to buy a new bar. The Husky dealer had not problem with the swap however I have had a lot of trouble with the chain oiler on the Husky. Itās actually sitting on my work bench right now with a new oiler and tubing that I have to kick myself in the ass and get put on. Itās a fiddly job. Iām not good at fiddly. Iāll check the numbers on the Echo when it quits raining.
Cody, usually you are not using the whole cutting edge of the 16 " when cutting. Find a 14" log and cut through it with a sharp good chain. If no problems I would say you could go with a little longer bar, the longer bar will add fiction surface to work with. My is a 20
Only issue is all the logs Iām dealing with are 30+ inches right now. Uncleās husqvarna gas saw is only 18" so I donāt see a need to waste fuel with a slightly longer bar.
My saw says itās made for 10-16" bars. I should see how long my momās cordless one can handle.
Kinda lucky in my opinion the corded saw has a manual chain oil pump so i can just lubricate it more often if I have friction issues.
Other plan was to find a chopping bandsaw that can drop and use that to cut my rounds out of logs.
Might pull the trigger on one of these. Automagical oiler, 16" bar but itās got a higher amperage than the McCulloch. 14.5 Amps versus the 11.5A. I could probably run a 20" bar no problem.
That is why i bought the Milwaukee M18 saw last year. I did change the bar and chain. It had a very narrow chain i bought a normal narrow kurf bar and chain for it. I donāt remember the difference off the top of my head but it made all the difference in the world. I isnāt as nice a saw as my Stihl MS261 the weight is pretty close but it has maybe 2/3 the torque of the Stilh MS261.
With 2 batteries i can fill my pickup truck so maybe half a cord of hard wood. It is all i want to saw when i run out with my truck and want to get it split and right into my wood shed.
But i did buy it because i had already bought the grinder and impact driver that are powered by the same M18 batteries. I started into the product line a little over a year ago when my old dewalt drill chuck got bent too bad to use. It has always had a little wabble but it got really bad and i needed a replacement. I have been very happy with the M18 tools.
I have used a friends M18 with the 16" bar and am impressed with it. I myself will be purchasing the dewalt 60v with 20" bar as I am well bought into the 20v/60v batteries. They claim 2.43x the torque of a stihl farm boss. However, I dont think any electric saw will replace my 372xp or 394xp any time in the near future.
This is a deep deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep rabit hole. Let me save you a ton of time.
In this price range there is only one saw to get. I did 3 years of research before buying mine and if you do the same I am 100% confident you will end up coming to the same conclusion.
My conclusion was getting the Greenworks and I got mine and love that saw. In fact I love that thing so much I sleep with it under my bed. I will put up against any Stihl or Husky in the same power range any day of the week.
All my wood processing equipment is electric. NO GAS! I can run everything on woodgas produced electric. No combersome moving a gasifier to run equipment. Just one set up to run the generator. I can then charge the batteries for the saw from it, or run electric power equipment direct from the generator or from stored battery / inverter power. I have a Wen log splitter and love that thing too.
My mom.has the older 60v version and I love it. My only complaint is Iām limited to a 16" bar and Iām not sure how long I can really reasonably go.
Mine is a 16 inch more than enough for what I do. As far as the battery energy it has more energy that I do, so thats no problem either. When the battery dies, that just means its time to get my ars back inside and take a nap!! lol
I have been using electric sawās now for about 4 years , i bought the 36volt Makita that came with duel charger and 2 x 5AH batts , i soon found out that to be real useful you must have spare batteries , luckily i had a heap of Makita tools and had spare batts , i also found some real good quality 9AH fake batts on Ebay at a little over $45 each now have bought 3 of these saws for Brian and myself and about a dozen spare 9AH batts and well pleased
One thing i would add to this is the electric saw is the fist saw i pickup after i have the tree down. I still feel more confident falling a tree with my MS261 or my MS460. But once the tree is down and i start limbing it and cutting it up the electric saw shines for what is a kind of odd reason. When you let go of the trigger the saw is off. Not idling you can walk or put it down without having to think about hitting the chain break. It took me about 20 seconds to fall in love with that aspect of it.
The batteries must charge really fast, because I was under the impression you didnāt sleep or nap at all.
But back to topic. Here is a roundup and reviews from popular mechanics. And they did disk cuts with them. Judging by the reviews, matt is probably right about the best bang for the bucking with the greenworks since it is only 220 dollars. They didnāt review the 80v version. My guess is most of them, you just order the saw and replace it with a better quality bar and chain. The popular mechanics knock on their saws was the bumper spikes which probably can be sharpened with an angle grinder.
They rated the husky the best, but that was 660 bucks or something but it cut like 50% faster. It depends on what you need. Like if I had a tree trimming company that did a lot of work in a city. It would totally be worth the 600 dollars to cut that fast and quiet. You get in and out before anyone notices and has a chance to complain.
Something that will do a good bit of work, most the small ones just seem like toys.