Best Hedge Trimmer 2025: Options for all budgets and jobs tested

If you’ve got a lot of hedge to get through, there’s nothing better than the Stihl HSA 60 Battery Hedge Trimmer. Built with STIHL’s usual quality and attention to detail, this 60 cm-long trimmer is powerful and flexible.

One of the best things about the HSA 60 is its rotating handle, which turns 90° in either direction. That makes it easy to hold the blade parallel to a hedge while reducing strain on your wrists.

Running on Stihl’s 36V AK battery system, this hedge trimmer is hugely powerful, and can cut through branches up to 16mm in diameter. We found this was true when testing, with the HSA 60 easily able to cut through thicker conifer branches.

General cutting is easy, too: the long blade slices through regular hedge growth quickly and neatly, and we found it was quick to get perfect results. And, the long blade gives a bit more reach than with much of the competition.

Battery life from an AK 20 battery (recommended) is about 140 minutes, so big jobs are easy: we blasted through a 25m long section of hedge, and still had power left.

It would be nice to have multiple cutting speeds, but that aside, this is a quality hedge trimmer for the toughest jobs and longest runs of hedge.

With its 45cm blade length, the Husqvarna 215iHD45 is about as small a hedge trimmer as is useful. While that means it’s not as quick at dealing with large areas, if you’ve got a smaller amount of hedge and don’t want to sacrifice power, this is a brilliant choice.

While Husqvarna is selling more products that use the 18V Power For All Alliance batteries (compatible with tools from multiple vendors), this hedge trimmer uses the company’s own 36V BLi batteries. A 2Ah battery is ideal, giving the right combination of weight, power and longevity.

Cleverly, the battery slots into a cutout in the middle of the Husqvarna 215iHD45’s handle. That helps with balance and makes this hedge trimmer really easy to wield.

Chunky controls on the back are used to turn the Husqvarna 215iHD45 on and off, and to choose between full power and the slower battery-saving SavE power mode, which is good for lighter cuts. We could even operate the buttons with a gloved hand.

We found this hedge trimmer very powerful. It easily sliced through our box hedge growth, and tackled a section with thick blackberry brambles.

With teeth space 33cm apart, the Husqvarna 215iHD45 can realistically cut branches with about half this diameter. That’s still exceptional, and we easily cut through thicker conifer branches without any problems.

Battery life is about an hour on SavE mode and half this on full-power mode, which is enough for smaller gardens.

Reviewed at just £74.99, the Vonhaus G-Series Cordless Hedge Trimmer is staggeringly good value, particularly as it comes with a 2Ah 20V battery and charger.

This hedge trimmer feels a bit cheap and little plasticky, but it’s overall robust enough. It’s also quite light at 2.8kg, which makes holding and turning the Vonhaus G-Series Cordless Hedge Trimmer easy.

Aside from the safety triggers, the Vonhaus G-Series Cordless Hedge Trimmer has no other controls; when not in use or transporting, we recommend removing the battery.

There’s a 51cm blade that has 14mm tooth spacing. That’s a good compromise between performance and reach, although we did find that this hedge trimmer is better for slightly smaller jobs.

When tackling our box hedge, the Vonhaus G-Series Cordless Hedge Trimmer cut well enough, although it was a bit slower than the high-end competition.

Thicker branches on the conifer tree were managed, although the Vonhaus G-Series Cordless Hedge Trimmer would often have to chew through them, taking several cuts to do the job.

We recommend this for slightly lighter jobs, where the Vonhaus G-Series Cordless Hedge Trimmer works well and proves itself as a brilliant-value tool.

Most pole hedge trimmers come with harnesses, as they’re so unwieldy to use. The Stihl HLA 56 notably doesn’t come with a harness, as it’s so brilliantly designed.

Using the ergonomically designed handle, which also features on the company’s grass trimmers, this tool is brilliantly balanced, and naturally presses against your forearm.

If you’re cutting for longer, you can buy the optional harness, but we didn’t feel as though we needed it.

At standard length, the Stihl HLA 56 is 218cm long, but there’s an optional extension pole if you need more reach. Cleverly, the hedge trimmer quickly breaks down into three sections, and there’s a mounting bracket in the box for easy storage. These features make the Stihl HLA 56 easier to store than a lot of the competition.

There’s a 45cm blade here, which would be short by standard hedge trimmer standards; with a pole trimmer, you’ve got more reach anyway, and a smaller blade helps reduce weight and improve balance.

With a pivoting head, we found it easy to use this trimmer to cut up high, across the tops of hedges or even down low, clearing out bramble growth. Standard box hedges were cut quickly and neatly, and thicker growth was chopped through without issue: the 30cm tooth spacing and 16mm cutting diameter makes this trimmer suitable for some quite thick branches.

Battery life is up to 100 minutes with the 36V AK 20 battery, which means we could cover a large area without worrying about running out of power. If you need the extra reach of  a pole trimmer but don’t want to compromise on usability or power, this is the one to buy.

Stihl has been expanding its range of tools that use its lightweight 10.8V AS system batteries, and the Stihl HSA 40 hedge trimmer adds more flexibility.

Thanks to the tiny batteries, this hedge trimmer weighs just 2.1kg. That low weight makes the Stihl HSA 40 really easy to use, even for relatively long periods.

Small and light it may be, but this hedge trimmer still has Stihl’s usually build quality, so you don’t have to compromise on that front if you want an easier-to-use trimmer.

With a 50cm blade, the Stihl HSA 40 has good reach for regular jobs. Its 24mm tooth spacing is good, but the 10.8V battery system does limit cutting diameter to 8mm, so it won’t cut through thicker branches, and is best for lighter jobs.

With growth from our box hedge, the Stihl HSA 40 was a dream to use. It’s not as quick to use as, say the HSA 60, but the overall cut was as good, and we found it easy to neatly trim with this tool.

Battery life is up to 40 minutes per battery, but this can be reduced with thicker branches. For bigger jobs, it’s worth having a spare battery; you can also buy this tool with two batteries and a charger.