4 Chainsaw Brands With Better Ratings Than Husqvarna

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Husqvarna has produced many different products over the course of its life. The Swedish company was founded all the way back in 1689, beginning as a manufacturer of muskets, but over the next 337 years, Husqvarna has dipped its toe into everything from sewing machines to cast iron kitchen appliances to motorcycles. Today, though, it's best known for its range of outdoor power equipment, including chainsaws.

Many people are really big fans of the Husqvarna Power Axe 350i chainsaw. It tops Popular Mechanics' list of the best chainsaws on the market, and both The New York Times' Wirecutter and The Spruce praise it for its power. While there's no doubt the Power Axe 350i is a great model, the overall chainsaw line doesn't exactly get the same consensus praise. Many people have problems with their Husqvarna chainsaws, including oil leaks, lubrication issues, and more, and rarely do you see another model rank among the best on the market. The company may have a crown jewel product, but as a whole, it may leave something to be desired.

There are a number of other brands out there, though, that do earn very high praise from both expert reviewers and customers alike for several models they offer, rather than just one. Here, we'll look at four chainsaw brands that consistently earn higher ratings than Husqvarna. We determined this from a mix of expert opinions from publications such as Wirecutter and The Spruce, hardware stores like Northern Tool + Equipment, and actual customer reviews from Consumer Reports, which also has its own in-house experts testing these chainsaws.

Although the Husqvarna Power Axe 350i is a battery-powered chainsaw, the company's offerings are generally better received in its gas-powered chainsaws. These are becoming less popular as technology shifts, but they're still an important metric to consider. With that, there's really only one other company that goes beyond what Husqvarna can provide in the gas-powered chainsaw market, and that's Echo, owned by the Japanese company Yamabiko Corporation.

Among the five highest-rated gas-powered chainsaws by Consumer Reports, three of them are Echo models. Husqvarna models round out the top five, but two Echo models are tied for joint first place. The Echo brand consistently has better reliability and owner satisfaction scores than Husqvarna. It's the Echo CS-3510 that's really the standout model, earning very good scores for its cutting speed, ease of use, and safety, and it earns top marks for handling; the CS-590-18 stacks up well too with its top-notch cutting speed. The Echo CS-3410 wasn't tested by CR, but Popular Mechanics names it the best-value gas-powered chainsaw on the market.

That publication also throws praise on one of its battery-powered options, the Echo DCS-5000 18-inch cordless electric chainsaw. It names this the best-value electric chainsaw out there, retailing for $299 with a 5 Ah battery and charger. For comparison, the lauded Husqvarna 350i Power Axe sells for $329.99, and that's before you factor in the cost of a battery and charger, upping the total cost to $479.99. So, not only are you getting chainsaws from a brand that rates highly with experts and customers alike, but you're also getting good deals for them too.

If something exceeds Consumer Reports' standards, the publication gives a product a "CR Recommended" stamp of approval. For battery-powered chainsaws, only one Husqvarna model earns that: the Power Axe 350i, and considering 23 different models earn that badge, that's not a good showing for the Swedish brand. The outdoor power equipment brand Ego, on the other hand, has four different models that earned the "CR Recommended" badge, and that includes the model that ranks first overall among battery-powered chainsaws, the Ego Power+ 20-inch CS2005 chainsaw.

Overall, Ego delivers some of the best brand reliability scores of any brand tested, and its owner satisfaction scores are also excellent, ranking second only to chainsaws manufactured by Stihl. In CR's expert testing, the top-rated Ego CS2005 earns tremendous ratings for cutting speed and handling, while also getting very good marks for safety and ease of use. The Ego Power+ 18-inch CS1804, 18-inch CS1815, and 16-inch CS1611 are the other models that get the "CR Recommended" badge, and each one has its own top-notch strengths.

The Ego Power+ 16-inch CS1611 is also a big favorite of The Spruce. It ranks this model as the best cordless chainsaw on the market. Pro Tool Reviews is also quite hot for it, naming it the best battery-powered chainsaw for the money for homeowners. As for the CR top-rated Power+ 20-inch CS2005 model, Popular Mechanics rates it as the best heavy-duty electric chainsaw, which sliced through its test log in just four seconds. There's a lot of love for Ego's line of chainsaws everywhere you look.

Stihl is the brand synonymous with chainsaws. It's been the best-selling chainsaw brand in the world since 1971, and for a company to have that kind of dominance, it's clearly doing something right. We also put Stihl at the top of our chainsaw brand rankings. While many other brands have been elevating their game to compete or, in some people's eyes, surpass Stihl, there's no denying that there's still a lot of love out there for the Germany-based company.

Northern Tool + Equipment, a major retailer of all kinds of tools, rates Stihl as the very best chainsaw brand on the market. The company spotlights two of its 12-inch battery-powered models, the MSA 60 C-B and MSA 70, and each one has earned an impressive average of 4.8 out of 5 stars from customer reviews. The review numbers are somewhat small for these, but for the three gas-powered models it spotlights, these reviews number in the thousands, ranging from satisfaction averages of 4.2 to 4.5 stars.

Popular Mechanics also has a lot of praise to heap on a number of different Stihl models. The Stihl MS 271 Farm Boss 20-inch model ranks as the publication's favorite heavy-duty chainsaw that's powered by gas. For its best-value deal, PM selects the Stihl MSA 80 C-B, a 14-inch battery-powered chainsaw that's light and great for pruning. Lastly, there's the Stihl MS 391 25-inch gas-powered chainsaw, which is the most powerful farm and ranch saw according to the publication. All this praise shows that Stihl offers a wide range of chainsaws for different needs, and nearly all of them are highly rated.

Most chainsaw brands that can outpace what Husqvarna produces come from companies that focus mostly or entirely on outdoor power equipment, but that's not true of every brand. Some of the most popular all-around tool brands can match Husqvarna, and one of those is Milwaukee. Northern Tool + Equipment may rank chainsaw stalwart Stihl as its best brand, but it places Milwaukee right below it in that ranking, which is also notably right above Husqvarna.

Three different Milwaukee chainsaw models earned a "CR Recommended" designation from Consumer Reports. The highest-ranked out of the three is the Milwaukee M18 Fuel 20-inch dual-battery 2827-22 chainsaw, which ties for third place. The Milwaukee chainsaws tie with Ego models for the second-highest overall owner satisfaction score of any brand, but they surpass Ego in brand reliability. That 2827-22 model gets incredibly high test scores for its handling and cutting speed, while also being quite easy to use, and the other two "CR Recommended" models earn very good test scores as well.

Among the 17 best-rated chainsaws by customers from The Home Depot — designated by a 4.8-star average customer rating or above — Milwaukee chainsaws take up six of those slots, which is twice as many as the next most represented brand in that bunch, Makita. These customers are particularly big fans of Milwaukee's mini chainsaws for pruning, whether they run on the M12 or M18 power systems. Professional reviewers aren't generally as effusive in their praise of Milwaukee chainsaws, but based on thousands of customer reviews and ratings, they're clearly delivering for the people who actually buy and use them.

Determining which chainsaw brands had better ratings than Husqvarna required us to consider a number of different factors. First, those ratings had to come from a mix of professional reviewers and customers. For professional reviewers, we looked to publications with dedicated space to rate and review outdoor power equipment like chainsaws, including Popular Mechanics, The Spruce, The New York Times' Wirecutter, and Consumer Reports' expert in-house testing.

Consumer Reports was also an important source for finding the opinions of actual chainsaw customers. Along with CR, ratings and reviews from customers at specific retailers, such as The Home Depot, were also crucial for finding a consensus opinion on a particular model. Lastly, if retailers were particularly enthusiastic about showcasing a particular chainsaw brand because of their in-house expertise, that was also taken into consideration, which is why Northern Tool + Equipment is a source.

Beyond the consensus ratings from professionals and customers, another crucial factor was finding widespread love for the different chainsaw models a particular brand offered. If a brand produced only one highly rated chainsaw but its other offerings didn't measure up, it wasn't considered. The brand as a whole needed to deliver those high ratings. After considering all of this, the four brands were ultimately selected because they had the widest-reaching consensus of ratings, which were higher than those for chainsaws produced by Husqvarna.