How Long Does The Battery Last On A Ryobi Cordless Hedge Trimmer After One Single Charge?

For many years, hedge trimmers have been powered by gasoline, but more recently, tool companies have started to introduce electric batteries to power these trimmers in an effort to be more environmentally friendly. One of these companies is Ryobi, which ranks quite highly among cordless hedge trimmer manufacturers. In Ryobi's case, you can most likely even use the same battery that you use for other Ryobi tools with these trimmers. Of course, part of the fear of switching to battery power would be wondering if you could get enough done on a single charge. Well, you can get some pretty good maximum usage times with Ryobi's batteries with these trimmers, but the actual numbers can vary wildly.

The most common battery from the company is for the 18V Ryobi ONE+ system. If you were to use this with the Ryobi ONE+ HP Brushless 24-inch Hedge Trimmer, you would get a maximum runtime of 25 minutes. However, that isn't a fixed number. There are multiple versions of the 18V battery that have different power storage. That 25 minutes is for the standard 2 Ah model, but there are also 4 Ah and 6 Ah batteries available for extra power. These would get you 52 minutes and 78 minutes, respectively, with the same trimmer. On the flip side, the size of the trimmer also affects the runtime. That same 2 Ah 18V battery with the ONE+ 22-inch Hedge Trimmer would get you just 21 minutes of operation on a full charge. If this is your battery, the trimmers with the HP — or "high performance" — branding will generally last longer than those without it.

The 18V ONE+ system may be the most popular Ryobi battery system, but it is not the only battery that the company offers. There is also a fairly large 40V battery system that may be better suited to your overall tool needs, and if you already have this battery in your arsenal for something like a Ryobi lawn mower, you can freely use it with some hedge trimmers as well.

Because these are bigger batteries, you can expect to get a lot more working time with these 40V batteries than with the 18V ones, even when you are looking at the basic 2 Ah models. When paired with a 24-inch Hedge Trimmer, the 40V is able to run for 46 minutes on a single charge. For those with a 4 Ah model, that time goes up to 100 minutes, and for a 6 Ah, you're looking at 144 minutes. You can only imagine what kind of runtime you'll get with Ryobi's 12 Ah 40V battery.

With this sized battery, the Ryobi HP hedge trimmers don't get you extended time, but that is because they are a larger model at 26 inches. Still, you can expect to have a maximum runtime of 35 minutes on a single charge with this model using the 2 Ah battery. Ryobi also offers a quieter version of this from its Whisper series, but that added feature brings the runtime down to 29 minutes. When it comes right down to it, every Ryobi battery and hedge trimmer pairing is going to give you a different single charge runtime.