Stihl FSA 80 R review: One mighty cordless strimmer

Do you have wild corners of your garden where the weeds are out of control? Are you struggling with invading brush and brambles on your borders? If so, the Stihl FSA 80 R could be the answer to your prayers. This cordless grass trimmer and brushcutter looks and feels like a professional gardening tool – and has the performance to match – yet Stihl has designed and priced it with home gardeners in mind.

It’s a little too big and too ferocious to appeal to everyone, but if you’re in the market for a seriously powerful strimmer and weed-whacker, the FSA 80 R is in a class of its own.

Stihl FSA 80 R review: What do you get for the money?

The Stihl FSA 80 R is a lengthy cordless grass trimmer and brushcutter, with a large 38cm cutting width. It uses Stihl’s AK-series 36V batteries and comes supplied with an AutoCut 27-2 mowing head, giving you two lengths of 2.4mm line coiled up in a metal, double-sided spool. It’s a thick line that will easily slice through woody weeds and brambles but if it’s not beefy enough, you can also fit a wide range of Stihl mowing heads and metal blades. Stihl also bundles in a simple loop harness and a basic pair of plastic eye-protection glasses.

The 80 R will set you back £266 but as this version comes without a bundled battery, you’ll also need to buy a battery and charger. Batteries start at around £70 for the 1.6Ah AK10 and go up to £150 for the 2.5Ah AK30, with the AL101 standard charger selling for £44.

Stihl FSA 80 R review: How easy is it to use?

Before you can use the FSA 80 R, you’ll need to attach the mowing head, the guard and the loop handle, with the latter consisting of several different parts. Using the slightly opaque instructions and with no thanks to the tiny diagrams, this took me just under 30 minutes, though at least Stihl provides all necessary tools within the box. Once everything’s in place, you have a secondary handle you can rotate or move up and down the shaft by releasing a catch, though there’s no way to adjust the length of the shaft or the angle of the head.

This is a big and heavy strimmer, with the shaft 1.78m long and the whole shebang weighing in at 4.8kg, even without the 1.3kg AK30 battery installed. The good news is that the weight of the battery, slotting crisply into a compartment at the back, does a solid job of balancing the weight of the head, while the bundled harness can take some of the load from your arms and shoulders. I wouldn’t fancy using the Stihl FSA 80 R for hour after hour, but I didn’t find it much more tiring over shorter sessions than some smaller and less well-balanced strimmers.

With the battery in place, I found it easy to start and use. Just shift the lock lever up or down and then squeeze the trigger to start. It’s also easy to extend the line coming from the spool just by tapping the mowing head on the ground. You have a choice of power settings too, with Eco prioritising battery life and Maximum prioritising performance. There’s a bit of an art to manoeuvring the head around, and the sheer power on offer means you need to keep a firm grip, especially when cutting through heavy brush and weeds, where the head can bounce around. With practice, though, it’s nothing you can’t get used to.

Make sure you’re wearing protective clothing. Stihl recommends protective boots, gloves, ear protection and protective eyewear. I heeded this warning and even with the boots on, I found that chunks of grass, weed and dirt were occasionally pelted at my legs at stinging (though not skin-breaking) velocity. Tip: don’t wear shorts.

Stihl FSA 80 R review: How well does it trim?

For all its power, the FSA 80 R also does a great job of basic grass trimming. Its larger cutting width occasionally makes it tricky to get in narrow corners or trim grass short on uneven ground, but otherwise it will help you get your lawn looking tidy in no time at all.

But that’s not really making the most of its talents. There are some frankly neglected areas of my garden where regular grass trimmers often come unstuck, with long grass wrapping around the cutting head or brambles stopping them in their tracks. Not so with the FSA 80 R. Even on Eco mode, it sliced through the long grass like it was nothing and chopped through chunky brambles.

I was so enthralled by the FSA 80 R’s performance that I took it to deal with a patch of garden that we’d left to go to meadow for the spring and early summer, plus another patch of brambles that had developed next to the fence on a corner. In both cases, Stihl’s strimmer was triumphant, making short work of jobs I was dreading. Big brambles, woody, dried-out weeds – nothing seemed to phase it. What’s more, it’s not hideously noisy, putting out 75dB in Eco mode and 81.5dB on Maximum, similar to the noise output of the Ryobi ONE+ . Try finding a professional petrol strimmer with that kind of output.

In fact, there’s only one thing that holds it back: battery life. At Maximum setting, the AK30 battery lasted 17 minutes, though switching to Eco boosts this to 28 minutes. This isn’t a huge issue if you have spare batteries, but they’re fairly expensive. They also don’t recharge all that quickly; you’re looking at three hours and twenty minutes using Stihl’s basic AL101 charger.

Stihl FSA 80 R review: Should I buy it?

Most people don’t need a strimmer this big, this heavy or this powerful. If you have a garden or a plot of land that’s often overgrown or under siege from chunky weeds and brambles, then you’ll love the way the FSA 80 R monsters through every task. And while in comparison to other cordless strimmers it’s unwieldy, it’s a lot easier to use and manage than equivalent petrol models. Those looking for something cheaper and lighter with a bit less power might look towards the excellent Ryobi RY18LTX33A-0, but if you want the mightiest heavy-duty cordless strimmer, this is the one to buy.