Great for me! | Black & Decker NST2036 Heavy-Duty 36-Volt Cordless Electric String Trimmer

Powerful tool, lousy battery charger! | Black & Decker NST2036 Heavy-Duty 36-Volt Cordless Electric String Trimmer

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	• Black & Decker NST2036 Heavy-Duty 36-Volt Cordless Electric String Trimmer Black & Decker Black & Decker average customer review:based on 62 reviews view larger image
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Great trimmer but not great for edging

If all you are interested in is a line trimmer, then this is a great product. It is very powerful and one battery will do an average sized yard. My only complaint is that it is not very good for edging because you cannot rotate the end of the trimmer like you can with the B&D Grasshog. Instead you must flip the entire thing over which leaves you with the handle facing down and the trigger facing up.

Great for me!

I have been using this since the first "cut" of spring 2009. I like it. I always used a gas trimmer but saw this and decieded i needed to try it out. As others have stated, the "balance" is off on this machine but using the enclosed shoulder strap is a big help. Powerful? YES, Hard starts? NO, Gas/oil? NO, Spark Plugs? NO. All around i really like this machine and will not be going back to my gas trimmer. Battery life has been fine for me and my 60x100 yard, i have never run out of power. FYI..Bought the B&D cordless lawn mower two years ago and LOVE it for all the reasons stated above.

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Powerful tool, lousy battery charger!

I have cut grass around the neighborhood since I was 13 years old. Nowadays, I just maintain my own property, and my grandparent's place on the other side of the neighborhood, and I use this trimmer for the job along with a pushmower. I have used several gasoline powered trimmers before during my foray in the landscaping business. The noise, vibrations, smoke, maintenance and the annoying hard-starting I thought was simply a necessary evil of having a trimmer with enough power to do the job, and not have a cord following me around. That was until B&D came out with this tool. This tool has plenty of power for cutting through some very thick stuff just like a gas trimmer does, but without all the annoyances a gasoline motor brings with it. The battery pack's available power is great for a typical suburban 1/3 acre lot like mine and my grandmother's.

For those that are getting short battery life, the key to getting better life is to not run the trimmer at full throttle. This trimmer has plenty of power to do most jobs at 1/4 to 1/2 throttle. It is important to remember that electric motors have more power and are more efficient at slower speeds (whereas gas motors produce more power at high speeds...think Toyota Prius versus a regular car!) For a typical suburban yard if you don't let your grass get out of hand, you can do quite a lot of trimming and edging in slower speeds. The battery will give a good 30 to 40 minutes of run time to complete the job when running it like this. Full throttle is only needed to blast through some seriously extra thick stuff, which it does with ease, but running it at full throttle like this does eat up battery power quickly (as would a gas powered tool eat up gasoline quickly too!) At full throttle, I can only get about 10-15 minutes of run time, but thankfully, I rarely ever need to run it this hard for this duration, but it's nice to have the power there when it is needed. I would give this tool 5 stars except for 2 reasons:

The biggest gripe I have with this tool is the lousy battery charger. I thought it was broken at first, as I dropped the battery in and charged it for an hour, then went out and tried it, and the tool only ran for about 1 minute before quitting. It was only after reading the manual that I found 12 hours or so is needed for a full charge, and I realized it was actually functioning properly. In my job, I am very familiar and experienced with using cordless power tools, and have used all sorts of 18 volt cordless tools like sawzalls, hammer drills, and circular saws. These tools have the advantage of having 1 hour chargers, and allow one to work all day swapping batteries with one on the charger and one in the tool getting used. If this trimmer had a 1 hour charger. it would be MUCH MUCH more useful. I could work all day long swapping batteries between the tool and the charger just like I do with my other cordless tools. Due to the wimpy charger this trimmer has, when the battery is dead, you are down and out till another day passes and the battery(s) are charged. Why the heck did B&D make such a wimpy charger with this trimmer?!?! I know that slower charges are better on batteries. Maybe the best design would be to have a fast/slow selector on the charger...fast for when you have more work to do, slow for when you are finished and want to charge overnight. My opinion is maybe they did this so that this cordless tool wouldn't cannibalize sales of their gasoline powered tools in the professional market (it certainly has the power to!)

My second gripe is the totally stupid grip design. Most typical gas trimmers have a grip in front of the engine on the bar, and another handle grip farther down the bar. This trimmer has the bar grip behind the battery...what were they thinking?!?!?! This tool weighs about as much as a gas powered trimmer when the battery is in it. The reason gas trimmers have the handle in front the engine is because that is where the center of gravity is. The handle grip is then use to direct the tool where the user wants to operate it. With the design of this tool, all of the weight of the tool is born on the hand that is holding the handle grip, while the hand on the bar grip behind the battery actually has to push DOWN to guide the tool. The handle grips are not balanced at all and makes the tool very awkward to use. While the tool reduces fatigue because of it's lack of a gasoline engine, this bad handle and grip design re-introduces some fatigue because of it's poor balance and bad design.

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Great, but heavy

It is extremely powerful. It works like advertised. The initial battery use was fairly short, but the second charge has lasted much longer. The downside is the weight of the battery. I think the battery weighs about as much as the trimmer itself.

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