Gardena EasyCut 23/18V review: Easy strimming, easy storage

The Gardena EasyCut 23/18V is a lightweight, easy-to-store grass trimmer aimed squarely at those who want to take care of their lawn, but don’t need some super-powered weed-whacker to keep their grass in shape. It’s cleverly designed, convenient and good at what it does. It won’t be the best grass trimmer for everyone – for a few reasons that I’ll go into – but it’s going to be a good option for a lot of gardens, especially if you like to keep things simple or if you don’t have a lot of spare shed or garage space.

I’ve been testing it over the last week in my own garden to see how it measures up against some of the best small garden strimmers, including the budget Titan TTI821GGT and the superb Bosch EasyGrassCut 18V 230. Here are my thoughts.

Gardena EasyCut 23/18V review: What do you get for the money?

The Gardena EasyCut 23/18V is a cordless grass trimmer with a 9,500RPM motor and a 23cm cutting width that runs on 18V Power For All batteries, as used by other garden and DIY power tools from Bosch, Flymo and Husqvarna as well as Gardena.

There’s no battery or charger included with the strimmer, but you can pick up a Bosch or Gardena-branded charger, plus a 2.5Ah battery, for roughly £60 to £75.

It has a telescopic shaft that allows you to alter the length for comfort, an adjustable head that will work at angles of zero, 10-degrees and 60-degrees, letting you steer it under garden furniture and other places lesser strimmers might not reach. Alongside this, where most grass trimmers use a cutting line and spool, the EasyCut 23/18V uses a small plastic blade that slots easily into the head.

Gardena EasyCut 23/18V review: How easy is it to use?

My first impressions of the EasyCut 23/18V were positive, if only because it’s so easy to get it up and running. I had to attach the two-part shield and the plant guard onto the head and insert two screws. Then expand and lock the telescopic shaft and click the secondary handle into position. With my battery charged and slotted into place on the main handle, I was good to go within ten minutes of opening the box.

There’s just as little fuss using it – push the safety switch forward, squeeze the start trigger and you’re away. If you need to adjust the shaft length, simply unscrew and loosen the clamping sleeve at the top, pull the tube in or out and then tighten up the clamping sleeve again. Meanwhile, to switch between the three working angles, you push and hold the angle lock button on the top, raise or lower the shaft and then release it. It couldn’t be much easier.

What’s more, the light 2.4kg weight and adjustable height and angle make this a very easy grass trimmer to wield. While my arms got tired manoeuvring the Bosch AdvancedGrassCut 36 or the Makita DUR181RT, I could just keep on motoring with the EasyCut 23/18V without any weariness creeping in. In this respect, it’s easily as good as the Titan TTI821GGT or the Bosch EasyGrassCut 18V 230, and, in fact, feels a bit more solid than the Bosch and has slightly more power than the Titan. It’s also neater than either of them to store – just shorten the shaft and re-align the handle, and it’s only 99cm long – barely taking up any space at all.

The EasyCut 23/18V also has one other potential advantage. If you have a lot of experience with trimmers, you’ll know that a line and spool can be a real pain: sometimes the line doesn’t feed out of the spool; sometimes it gets (temporarily) stuck; when you run out of line you’ve either got to wind new line onto the spool, or spend extra to buy a new spool with the line pre-wound. Gardena’s blade system – which I’ve also seen on some old Flymo trimmers – is much easier: the short plastic blade protrudes through a slot on the head and clicks into place, then you just push it in towards the centre when you need to replace it.

The downside is that the blades can’t take an awful lot of wear and tear. Use them on a relatively well-cared-for lawn, being careful around hard landscaping and furniture, and a blade should last you through a session or two. But if it comes into contact with hardwood, stone, brick or even chunky brambles or thistles while you’re strimming, it’s not likely to survive. If you’ve got some rough stuff to deal with, it’s perfectly possible to go through two or three blades in a single session. With one blade pre-installed and four attached to the handle in readiness, you only get five in the box and 20 spares will cost you roughly £5.

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Gardena EasyCut 23/18V review: How well does it trim?

This really depends on what you’re trying to trim. If you’re just looking to cut back some moderately long grass before your first mow of the year, or deal with a few tricky patches near walls or garden furniture, you won’t have any problems and the EasyCut 23/18V will deliver a nice, sharp trim. On my neater front lawn, it dealt with everything I asked of it with little fuss or hassle.

However, if you’re looking for something that can deal with longer grass, thicker grass or chunky, woody weeds then you might find the EasyCut 23/18V falls short. It will tackle some heavy stuff, but push it too far and you’ll lose blades and the motor will get jammed as long grass winds around the head.

Though there are no edging features on this model – a similar tool, the ComfortCut 23/18V P4A, has a more adjustable head with a specific edging mode – I found I could still edge my lawn by adjusting the angle, holding the trimmer vertically with the plant guard pushed in and the shaft shortened, but it’s not ideal.

As for battery life, your results will vary depending on your garden. Working on lightweight grass, I squeezed 47 minutes from a 2.5Ah battery, but on the thicker grass and weeds in my rear lawn, this dropped to 32 minutes.

Gardena EasyCut 23/18V review: Should I buy it?

It depends. This is a fantastic trimmer for small gardens with well-kept to slightly shaggy lawns. It’s easy to use and easy on the arms, and there’s no need to faff around with lines, spools or obstreperous feeds. It’s more adjustable than rivals like the Bosch EasyGrassCut 18V 230 or the Titan TTI821GGT, and it will store away in quite a small space, once you’re done.

But if you’ve got a rougher, tougher garden to deal with, or you need to take care of some bigger weeds, this strimmer might not be the one for you. Plus, once you factor in the cost of a battery and charger, it’s also a little more expensive than many of its competitors. That extra might be worth it for an easier trim – not to mention easier storage – but it’s worth checking prices against the Bosch to make sure you’re getting the best deal.