battery chainsaws

Anyone bought a battery powered chainsaw yet? What brand and how do you like it?

https://permies.com/t/28750/labs/solar-electric-chainsaw

I got the light duty Ryobi for small trimming and limbing jobs - works ok for some cleanup and an occasional large limb.

I read Dale's excellent review before picking this up - I don't have much use for the other Eco tools, so I went with the cheaper Ryobi that I can share battery with their line of hand tools.. It has been a convenient little saw.

I have the black and decker 20v cordless chainsaw with the extended pole. Its mainly for cutting branches high up in the tree. I purchased it at Walmart. I love it. The battery lasts longer than I thought it would.

I got a Makita 18-Volt Lithium-Ion Cordless Chainsaw for Christmas and have gotten it out for a few sessions so far. I'm really liking it.

I spent an afternoon clearing out a woody area near our house. I limbed quite a few larger spruce and fir trees, cut down 4 smaller trees (8-10" diameter trees) and cleared maybe 100 ft of small bush and saplings for a fenceline. I think I spent 3-4 hours working and didn't run out of battery life. Of course I wasn't running the chain saw the entire time but was using it quite a bit. I loved that I could just sit it aside while I dealt with hauling some limbs out of the way and then pick it right back up and cut the next section without having to deal with the pull start like on our gas saw. I also did some limbing from a ladder and this was much safer as I could climb and position myself on the ladder with the saw off. Only once I was in position and stable/safe I could turn the saw on. Didn't have to worry about yanking a cord without falling off ladder.

The saw handled all of the above jobs with no problem. Cutting through the slightly larger trees was quite a bit slower than with our gas powered Stilh. But it got the job done and didn't have any bucking, binding, or other issues. The Stilh is a huge heavy beast...great for downing trees and bucking up firewood but kinda overkill for smaller jobs. Which is why I wanted the smaller electric saw.

I'm quite happy with the Makita cordless for these smaller jobs and I think it'll make a great second saw for limbing when we're collecting firewood this summer. I don't think it would stand up to hard, heavy use though so if you're cutting cords and cords of firewood, felling lots of larger trees, or other big jobs then you're going to want something else. I did try cutting a few larger rounds just to see if this saw could do it. It did but took much longer and had to apply more pressure so it would make for a long tiring job if you were doing a lot of larger cuts or harder wood. If you just need to fell the occasional tree, clear out brush, coppice, limb and trim then something like this saw is great.