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Best loppers 2018 – [Buyer’s Guide]
Last Updated March 1, 2023
HELLO! I’m Brayden Diaz. After more than 27 hours of research and testing, which included using 25 different loppers in five cities and interviewing product teams at five major companies, I made a list of the best loppers of 2018
I’ll brush up on how to choose the best loppers and examine things like materials, quality, and weight. Like most products, some outdo others, so use my top three list below to get started on your search for the best loppers of 2018.
Best loppers of 2018
The best loppers will make your fairytale dreams come true! We’ve narrowed down our options based on the customer feedback (read positive reviews), functionality, material and size. In other words, we’ve put all fundamentals into consideration to come up with a comprehensive list that suits various needs.
I’ve based my selection methodology on customer feedback, the size, functionality, and budget to meet various demands. I have a variety of material used in the construction of loppers including metal, plastic, and glass.
Test Results and Ratings
| Rank | №1 | №2 | №3 |
| Product |  |
 |
 |
| Total | 4.8 | 4.5 | 4.3 |
| Ease of use |
5 points
|
5 points
|
5 points
|
| Size |
5 points
|
4 points
|
4 points
|
| Durability |
5 points
|
4 points
|
4 points
|
| Price |
4 points
|
5 points
|
4 points
|
| Awards |  |
||
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
How to save up to 86%? Here is little trick.
You must visit the page of sales. Here is the link. If you don’t care about which brand is better, then you can choose the loppers by the price and buy from the one who will offer the greatest discount.
№1 – Corona DualLINK with ComfortGEL Grip Extendable Heavy Duty Bypass Limb and Branch Lopper
| Total: |
4.8
|
Why did this loppers win the first place?
I was completely satisfied with the price. Its counterparts in this price range are way worse. The product is very strong. Its material is stable and doesn’t crack. I don’t know anything about other models from this brand, but I am fully satisfied with this product. I really enjoy the design. It is compact, comfortable and reliable. And it looks amazing!
5
|
5
|
5
|
4
|
№2 – Fiskars PowerGear2 Lopper
| Total: |
4.5
|
Why did this loppers come in second place?
Managers explained me all the details about the product range, price, and delivery. I like this product. For such a low price, I didn’t even hope it to be any better. It’s decently made. Seems that the material is good. It has a very beautiful color but I don’t really like the texture. This is a pretty decent product that perfectly fitted the interior of our office.
5
|
4
|
4
|
5
|
№3 – Fiskars 28 Inch Bypass Lopper
| Total: |
4.3
|
Why did this loppers take third place?
It is inconvenient to use due to the size. I am going to get something different next time. This price is appropriate since the product is very well built. It doesn’t squeaks nor bents. Looks great in my apartment. We are very pleased with the purchase — the product is great!
5
|
4
|
4
|
4
|
loppers Buyer’s Guide
Pro Telescopic Anvil Loppers
If you are in the market for reliable, high quality anvil loppers then look no further than this fantastic product. Designed to tackle enough the toughest dry and dead wood, this anvil tree lopper features a lightweight design and cutting technology that make tree and shrub maintenance simple.
A highly efficient compound action design and a very sharp blade allows the lopper to be used with much less effort than most other tree loppers. Thick branches should not be an issue with this feature, and you can remove a lot of branches without feeling the strain in your arms.
The lightweight design also makes pruning less of an effort. As the handles are made from aluminium, the lopper is so lightweight that you don’t have to worry about getting fatigued after a short while using it.
This anvil tree lopper is one of the best in the market. Offering the upmost comfort and ease of use, this is a product that makes your gardening that bit more enjoyable.
Pruning Tools
Pruning is a simple process which involves the cutting of dead, unhealthy, or overly extended branches of trees. However, it involves some precision tools which demand certain skills to be operated. It is better to hire a professional pruner if you ever feel you are not comfortable or skilled enough to perform the work. Any uncertain situation with large branches, could lead to serious danger.
Fiskars 32-Inch Power Gear Lopper
The loppers which are made of high-quality materials, they can provide a long-lasting lifespan. In addition, you must like the loppers which are able to be used for heavy use. So, the blade should be made of durable and rust-resistant materials. So, most of the blades are made of carbon steel. And the handle should be also durable, compact and easy to grip.
There are also some other important things like an easy storage facility, easy carrying facility and so on. And most importantly, the bypass lopper you are going to buy should be a nice combination of good quality and a good price.
If you are looking for something that looks durable and performs really well then Spear & Jackson has the right product for you. Their 8290RS is designed to specifically meet your needs. For one, they are known for creating heavy duty telescopic ratchet anvil loppers that can cut through thick and hard branches.
The upper blades are coated with carbon steel so the sharpness can last a long time. It is also designed to resist rust so you don’t have to worry about rust-formation on these loppers. The handles are pretty strong yet feel soft when used. It comes with a locking catch so you can store it safely and a years’ worth of warranty.
Compound Pruners
Compound pruners incorporate a saw and pruner in one cutting head.
The advantage of a compound pruner is that the tool is immediately available to switch from pruning to sawing.
The disadvantage is that the saw can get in the way, if all you need to use is the pruner. Saw can also be damaged if you are using it in a dense tangle of branches.
Corona compound head pruner.
Corona compound pruners are valued by professionals as well as home owners.
The Corona TP 6780, has a 16-foot fiberglass pole but weighs only pounds. The pruner will cut branches up to one inch and a quarter, whilst the 13-inch blade can tackle very large branches with razor tooth technology.
A chain drive and pulley system brings real power to the pruner.
The Gilmour pruning saw’s rigid pole has great reach. A pruning head can be purchased for extra.
The Silky pole and saw.
The Silky 179-3is a professional quality model with a 25-foot reach. This is the most expensive model I recommend. It is aimed at professionals or homeowners with a lot of trees to care for.
Some people worry about a pole that offers such a large reach. Will it be too heavy? Will it be too awkward? This pole saw can cut as easily at full-reach as a cheaper model does at half the height.
The Fiskars 930offers good value and a long reach.
The Fiskars 930is fine for light pruning, and, with careful use, should last for many years. The pruner is operated by a cable outside the pole, which can get tangled in branches but this is a small drawback if you are only looking after a few trees.
The pruner shears will tackle one-inch thick branches. A saw blade is included which can tackle branches several inches across.
The ARS telescopic pruner.
ARS long-reach pruner can be extended from to feet, and is more suited to working on trees than the Corona. The chromed head resists corrosion and the clever engineering makes it surprisingly light for its size.
It is one of the most popular long-reach pruners around, and if you are mainly thinking of dead heading shrubs, it is a great alternative to the bigger, heavier pole pruners on this page.
Lopper from Fiskars showing gear mechanism
Loppers are slower than handle-operated pruners, but have a lot more power. This is partly because you use both hands to operate them, and partly because many use ratchets or gears to increase cutting power.
Power Drive Lopper, pictured below uses a ratchet system to boost power, making it far less work to cut thicker branches than comparable tools.
Power Drive 28-Inch lopper.
Power Drive makes a similar, if slightly shorter, lopper. Instead of gears, the Power Drive uses a lever system to boost cutting power. It is not as smooth to use as the Fiskars geared tool above, but it delivers five times the power of a conventional lopper.
Corona LR 3460 Long Reach
With this trimmer, you can make precision cuts easily, even in hard-to-reach places. It measures 4inches in length and has a high-carbon steel blade with non-stick coating. The blade can be replaced when needed, making this tool a must have for gardeners who plant thorny roses among other similar trees.
Fiskars 7.9-1Foot Extendable
For use in cutting high branches without the need to climb a ladder. You can also make low cuts without having to bend or kneel. The rope-free design makes it easy to reach into bushy shrubs and cut as desired. It can cut a maximum of a 1-inch thick branch and comes with a lifetime warranty.
Fiskars Softouch Micro-Tip
The ease of using this pruning snip has earned it the commendation of the Arthritis Foundation. The easy action design opens the blades with each cut, therefore, reducing the strain on the hands. It works well for living plants and is designed to stay sharp longer.
WORX WG306-Inch Electric JawSaw
For working on storm debris and heavy duty trimming, this is the best chainsaw. It has an extend pole so you don’t have to climb any ladder as it can reach up to 1feet. You don’t need any tools to attach the extend pole, and it is also easy to remove. It features an automatic oiler that keeps the bar and chain lubricated.
Fiskars Traditional
For general pruning tasks, this is the tool to purchase. The fully hardened steel blade stays sharp longer and has a rust resistant, low-friction coating for easy use. The handle is non-slip, and the self-cleaning sap keeps the blades from sticking.
Felco F-Classic
The tool has a forged aluminum handle that is light, sturdy and comfortable. Its blade is made of hardened steel for precise cuts and easy cleaning. The hand and wrist protection and the maximum force exerted is achieved by the angled head. The tool has excellent shock absorption and non-slip coating.
These pruners had the sharpest blades and required the least force to make the smoothest cuts of any of the pruners in our test. Not always easy to find, but if you encounter this model for the same price as the Felco, it’s worth getting.
Why you should listen to me
For this guide, I surveyed members of the Ecological Landscape Alliance and received recommendations from eight professional landscapers from all over the continent, asking about their favorite pruners they used themselves, as well as the models they give to their landscaping crews. I got recommendations for seven pruner models (the Felcos were mentioned more than once), a small chainsaw, and an “extendable pruner-gun” from a Quebecois orchardist who I’m not entirely sure I understood correctly.
How we picked
Pruners have one job on this earth, and that is to make straight, clean cuts without hurting your hands. Uneven cuts make it harder for a plant to heal, expose more area to insects and disease, and create crevices in which water can collect, increasing the chance of infection and rot. We wanted a pair of pruners that could reliably cut all the way through every last bit of a branch or stem without crushing it—or hurting your hands.
Pull Quote
Uneven cuts make it harder for a plant to heal, expose more area to insects and disease, and create crevices in which water can collect, increasing the chance of infection and rot.
The first criterion we considered was the quality of the blades. In general, the harder the steel used to make pruner blades, the longer they’ll stay sharp. That meant we were looking for “high tempered” or “carbon steel”—or better yet, “high tempered carbon steel.” Some companies put titanium or chrome coatings on blades to prevent rust, but that wasn’t a big influence on our search, because sharpening pruners removes the coating, leaving the metal as vulnerable to rust as plain steel.
Beyond a sharp edge, we wanted an overall design that allowed the pruners to cut well, and that came down to the center nut or screw controlling the distance between the blades. The blades should rest so tightly against one another that, if you look at their edges together, no light should shine through. As the Felco Store says: If a nut is too loose, branches will get stuck between the blades; too tight, and it’s hard to force the blades together to make a cut. We wanted a pair of pruners that was properly adjusted out of the box, and easy to tighten if it became loose. We also wanted a model with replacement parts available—even if they’re properly adjusted, and cleaned and sharpened, pruners are mortal.
We also wanted pruners that could perfectly fit a user’s grip and permit opening and closing with one hand, which is key to having a great pair. But this kind of thing is subjective. (As a garden columnist wrote in the Portland Press Herald, “Trying to pick a hand-pruner for someone else would be like trying to pick a mattress for them.”) So we focused on brands that made excellent tools in a variety of sizes—such as ARS, Corona, and Felco—so that if our pick didn’t fit your grip, there would be an alternative at another size.
Last, you can find two basic types of pruners: bypass pruners and anvil pruners. Bypass pruners have two blades that pass each other like scissors when you make a cut. With anvil pruners, a sharpened blade simply stops on a hard, flat surface; this design is better suited for dry, dead brush. Our search focused on the bypass style, which has the precision you need to make clean cuts in live growth, whether it’s woody branches or delicate stems.
How we tested
To simulate typical garden use, I tested the pruners by cutting a variety of delicate and woody stems: I hacked up scallions, ¼-inch-thick raspberry canes, ¼-inch and ½-inch wooden dowels, ½-inch Norway maple branches, and common ¾-inch buckthorn branches. I cut through each one 10 times apiece, and then I snipped through the scallions again and washed and dried the pruners so that my home office wouldn’t smell like onions while I was writing this review.
I judged the tools by the quality of their cut—whether they mashed the material or left fibers hanging, whether they required a great deal of force to make the cut, and whether they cut consistently throughout the testing. The scallions proved surprisingly challenging: Most models cut the green and white parts cleanly and consistently, while others squeezed them into mush.
While the stems tested the tools’ finesse, the woody pieces tested their delicate force. For the ¼-inch dowel, only the ARS HP-VS8Z pruners provided effortless, clean cuts; all of the other models mashed and flattened the wood as they severed it.
A word on Felco maintenance: If you do happen to find your long-lost pruners deep in the compost heap, you can adjust the hardened-steel center bolt to make sure the blades still align correctly. Out of the box, we found this blade-to-blade tolerance to be precise and accurate, but all pruners go out of alignment eventually. You can adjust and fine-tune Felcos whenever you wish. That’s another feature that separates Felco models from the cheaper pruners.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
The Felco pruners were nearly perfect in our test, and the very few problems they had in cutting performance seem like only shortcomings when compared with our Upgrade pick. The Felco 2 pair required some minor effort to close on a Norway maple branch—that task was easier with the ARS model—and the Felco blades slightly crushed a ¼-inch dowel, which the ARS managed to sever more smoothly. But these were tiny flaws. The Felco pruners cut every other sample perfectly and effortlessly, and performed better than any of the other tools we tried.
For smaller hands
This smaller version of our pick has the same sharp blades, but with slightly shorter handles (7-1/inches, not 8-1/2), a lighter weight (7.ounces, not 8.5), and a smaller blade capacity (0.inch, not inch).
If you have small hands, be aware that Felco pruners are sized for larger hands than some other brands are. The Felco is ½ inch longer than our Upgrade pick, the ARS HP-VS8Z. That size differential holds for other equivalent models as well: The small Felco, the Felco 6, is ¼ inch longer than the small ARS, the HP-VS7Z, while the Felco rotating-handle pruner is an inch longer than the ARS HP-VS8R. Women testers preferred the ARS over the Felco because of the way the ARS handles fit in their hands.
The Felco also has a construction quirk that’s either a flaw or a feature, depending on how you look at it. Unlike with other Felco hand pruners, the F2’s lower blade is riveted, not screwed, into place. That rivet means that the lower blade is firmly attached—but it also means that if you ever need to replace the lower blade, you’re going to need to rivet it, or find someone who can. Odds are, you won’t need to do this, ever, judging by how long people keep their Felco pruners, but to my mind, it’s a slight flaw.
Make the cut with minimum affort
I took this photo because I wanted to show you something. I think I can safely assume that most of you aren’t foot tall, with strong hands, and 2years of landscaping experience. And if you’re not, these anvil loppers will be too heavy, and with an opening range way too large. Plus the cutting point is way above the average man’s hip height. All this means you would have to use all your strength, while at a strange angle, to make the cut you want. Not very practical. So now that you understand what you should avoid, let me tell you what you should look out for.
The Craftsman bypass Lopper is manufactured with a high carbon bypass cutting head which is easy to use and makes precise clean cuts. The cutting power is tripled by the compound cutting action, and with a 1.inch cutting diameter, you can trim medium to small branches from your trees. This tool comes with aluminum handles which makes it very light in comparison to the heavier steel loppers available. The high carbon steel head is treated to keep it sharper for accurate cutting.
The handle which is 30 inches long, comes with a comfortable grip for easy handling. This is the perfect lopper for trimming trees and bushes in your garden. It is lightweight with extra sharp blades that work with a compound cutting action which will allow you to get more done in less time. Craftsman tools, which are manufactured in the USA come with a lifetime guarantee.
The Power Of Cutting
While checking out a lopper I suggest you consider its power of cutting about its weight and also if you can handle it. Ensure you are comfortable with how fast or how slow it cuts.
Heavier loppers have a low cutting power as compared to lighter loppers which you can use to slit the small and light branches.
Design And Build
Grip And WeightThe ability for you to maintain the lopper in your hands is also very important. And that will happen if the lopper has comfortable handles. A comfortable handle is covered with smooth or rugged rubber.
It also depends on the weight of the blade. Blades made of steel are quite heavy hence need to be constructed with good grip features, unlike the light ones.
How to save up to 86%? Here is little trick.
You must visit the page of sales. Here is the link. If you don’t care about which brand is better, then you can choose the loppers by the price and buy from the one who will offer the greatest discount.
Final Word
First of all thanks for reading my article to the end! I hope you find my reviews listed here useful and that it allows you to make a proper comparison of what is best to fit your needs and budget. Don’t be afraid to try more than one product if your first pick doesn’t do the trick.
Most important, have fun and choose your loppers wisely! Good luck!
So, TOP3 of loppers
- №1 — Corona DualLINK with ComfortGEL Grip Extendable Heavy Duty Bypass Limb and Branch Lopper
- №2 — Fiskars PowerGear2 Lopper
- №3 — Fiskars 28 Inch Bypass Lopper
Questions? Leave a comment below!
Chatting about loppers is my passion! Leave me a question in the comments, I answer each and every one and would love to get to know you better!
