4 Electric Weed Eater Brands With Better Ratings Than Ryobi

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If there's one thing people can agree on about landscaping, it's that they don't want weeds taking up any space. While some lawnmowers can handle these pesky bits of foliage, sometimes you need a tool specially designed to handle this exact task. Many of us know these tools as Weed Eaters or Weedwackers, but those are actually brand names, much like how people use Kleenex to mean tissue. These tools are properly known as string trimmers, and there is a vast array of them on the market from every popular tool brand. One of them is Ryobi.

Ryobi offers string trimmers in a variety of styles, as well as models for its 18V ONE+ and 40V battery power systems. Overall, Ryobi string trimmers rate decently well. Consumer Reports rated seven of the eight models tested as good enough to earn CR Recommended badges. Pro Tool Reviews and Bob Vila were both quite taken with Ryobi's 40V 17-inch and 15-inch string trimmer options, respectively. There's a lot to like about Ryobi string trimmers, but they don't consistently rank among the best offerings on the market.

Here, we'll look at four brands that receive the highest approval ratings across the board. Rather than just identifying the most powerful string trimmer from each brand, this list will take into account the opinions of outdoor power equipment expert reviews along with the thoughts of actual customers. Along with the sources mentioned above, we'll also look at reviews from places like Wirecutter and Popular Mechanics. Using these outlets, we'll determine a consensus of string trimmer brands that rate better than Ryobi.

When you think of modern tool brands, one that most certainly comes to mind is Milwaukee. Between its M12 and M18 battery systems, it offers just about any cordless power tool you could want, including numerous tools designed for home landscapers. Within all that, Milwaukee produces some of the best-rated string trimmers on the market as well. All of them run on the M18 battery system, and both single- and dual-battery systems are available to best fit your needs.

Two Milwaukee string trimmers rank among the top four general-use string trimmers that are 14 inches or above by Consumer Reports. In fact, they're the top two, with one tied for first and the other tied for second. Both earn reliability scores as close to perfect as you can get and have excellent owner satisfaction scores. Based on CR's expert testing, they both earn top marks for trimming, edging, tall grass and weeds, and runtime. The only area where Ryobi's best-rated trimmer beat them was charge time, though Milwaukee's was still very good.

Bob Vila ranked the Milwaukee M18 Brushless String Trimmer Kit as the best overall battery-powered string trimmer it reviewed. It earned five out of five scores for power, ease of use, safety, and value. Its only sub-five score was for performance, but it still earned a 4.75. For comparison, the Ryobi 40V 15-inch string trimmer on the list earned a 4.5 for power and a 4 for ease of use.

The Home Depot customers are extremely happy with Milwaukee string trimmers too. The lowest average rating for any model is 4.1 stars out of 5. Meanwhile, a couple of Ryobi models have four- and even three-star averages.

Another major competitor for Ryobi tools — beyond just outdoor power equipment — is Makita. Like Ryobi, Makita offers several power systems, including 18V and 40V batteries. These are called LXT and XGT, respectively, and no matter which power system you want to use, Makita offers a range of string trimmers for both.

Among all of the string trimmer brands tested by Consumer Reports, Makita has the best outing for all of them. Two of its models tie for first and second place with Milwaukee trimmers for general-use battery-powered string trimmers over 14 inches long. Two other Makita models take the top two spots for light-duty string trimmers under 14 inches, beating a Ryobi model in third place.

Makita's reliability score is exceptionally high, with owner satisfaction scores close behind. Ryobi's big stumbling point with CR is reliability, rating significantly lower than Makita. The top-rated general-use and light-duty Makita string trimmers have perfect expert ratings for trimming, edging, handling, runtime, and tall grass and weeds as well. The general-use model also has a perfect charge-time rating.

Makita also rates highly for professional string trimmers. Based on Pro Tool Reviews' rankings, the Makita 40V max XGT string trimmer was the fourth-best for professional landscapers with an overall score of 84 out of 100. No Ryobi model made the list for professional use and was deemed suitable only for regular homeowner landscaping. Between these two endorsements, though, Makita offers string trimmers that satisfy both ends of the landscaping spectrum.

While Ryobi offers tools for just about any job, some companies focus mainly on outdoor equipment. One such company is Ego. From chainsaws to lawnmowers to snow blowers, Ego's arsenal of power tools will be able to satisfy anybody working outside. What helps is that these tools, including its string trimmers, are highly rated as well.

The New York Times' Wirecutter ranks the Ego Power+ 15-inch Powerload string trimmer as the very best on the market. Further solidifying the brand, the runner-up on that list was Ego's 16-inch model. Wirecutter found these trimmers to be incredibly easy to load — which Bob Vila agrees with — along with being among the quietest trimmers that it tested. The publication states that the 16-inch model is the better tool but opts for the 15-inch to be in first place for the price. The publication describes Ryobi as a "fine choice" but specifically calls out Ego as a better option.

Consumer Reports also rates Ego string trimmers highly. Makita and Milwaukee tools may be at the top of its ranking of battery-powered general-use trimmers over 14 inches, but Ego trimmers take the next five slots. There's even a sixth one on the list before Ryobi is even listed once. These Ego string trimmers have the highest owner satisfaction score of any tested by CR, and most of the expert tests come back with top marks as well. Ego's reliability score is lower than Milwaukee's or Makita's, but it still outpaces Ryobi in that department.

For some, it's second nature to call string trimmers "Weed Eaters," and if you're wondering where that brand name went, look no further than Husqvarna, which revived the "Weed Eater" name in 2022 for its modern battery-powered lineup. Not every string trimmer sold by the company now bears the Weed Eater name, though. Regardless of whether they are one or not, Husqvarna string trimmers get some tremendous ratings, particularly for those looking for professional or upper-tier options.

Pro Tool Reviews rates the Husqvarna 36V 525iLST as the very best overall string trimmer on the market, particularly for those aimed at professionals. It earned an overall score of 93 out of 100, ranking first overall in runtime and tying for second overall in both battery efficiency and vibration control.

Both Wirecutter and Bob Vila spotlight a different string trimmer from that one in their rankings: the Husqvarna Weed Eater 320iL. Wirecutter dubs it the best upgrade pick for a luxury string trimmer on the market, highlighting the convenience of its buttons to activate turbo power or switch the direction of the reversible trimmer head. Bob Vila certainly concurs with that latter point, naming it the best dual-direction string trimmer. The publication also notes that the tool is quite comfortable to use and among the quietest models that it tested.

Popular Mechanics also has a Husqvarna string trimmer at the top of its list, but it's the Husqvarna 110iL FLXi string trimmer. It also spotlights the Husqvarna 330iKL combination switch and string trimmer for its use on large properties. When so many different models from the same brand are getting lauded, Husqvarna is clearly doing something right.

To make this list of string trimmer brands with better ratings than Ryobi, we needed broad consensus for a brand to potentially make the cut. We determined this using a mix of professional and customer reviews. For professional reviews, we looked to publications like Pro Tool Reviews, Wirecutter, Popular Mechanics, and Bob Vila. All of these publications delivered reviews and rankings of string trimmers based on their own testing to determine which models and brands performed best across categories such as power, performance, noise production, and more.

For customer reviews, the primary source was Consumer Reports. The publication's in-house experts' testing was also taken into account, but owner satisfaction and reliability scores were also contributing factors. Customer reviews from retailers like The Home Depot were taken into consideration, though those should sometimes be taken with a grain of salt depending on factors like the number of reviews or any underlying motivation to post a public review rather than participate in an anonymous survey.

If a string trimmer brand performed well across multiple or all of these sources compared to Ryobi, it was in contention for the list. To get the number down to four, a selection of different types of tool manufacturers was used to give a representative range of what options are on the market, from massive tool companies that produce everything to outdoor equipment-specific companies. After all of that was taken into consideration, these four brands were selected.