Ryobi OLT1832 ONE+ Cordless Grass Trimmer Review

Anyone who’s familiar with Ryobi’s huge range of tools and garden accessories will be familiar with the design of the OLT1832. The lurid green is hard to miss, and I’m happy to report that the grey GripZone handle is as comfortable on this trimmer as it is on the rest of their tools.

The safety switch on the back of the handle is intuitive, it engages with the palm of your hand and doesn’t require any special movements you need to learn. It has a decent size trigger, and the hand guard is big enough to accommodate large hands with gloves on.

It’s impressive how lightweight yet functional this trimmer is. Weighing just 2.3 kg without a battery on board, it’s extremely light and easy to carry around. It should help to keep you working for longer and doesn’t really require a shoulder strap that a heavier machine might demand.

The front “D” shaped handle is almost infinitely adjustable. You can move it to any position around the shaft, raise it or lower it, and lock in your preferred position with the tool-free fastener. You need to tighten it down quite hard, otherwise it works itself loose quite quickly.

You can also easily change the length of the shaft by up to 20 cm to make it comfortable to use, whatever your height, and manipulate the cutting head in several different ways. It’s held in place with a plastic locking catch that can be hard to engage, but I’m sure it’ll loosen up over time.

What Ryobi call “EasyEdge” is the ability to turn the cutting head through 180° and pivot it to three different angles. You can use these angles to cut your grass or edge your lawn without bending over or twisting your wrist. It’s very handy, but it lacks a guide wheel to make edging even easier.

A little feature that makes this one of the best grass trimmers out there is the clever and innovative line cutter. The sharp angled piece of plastic that trims the string inside the blade guard can be turned through 180°. It cuts a 30 cm wide path straight from the box, but if you turn it around, the path is reduced to 25 cm. This narrower cut path will save your battery life as the motor doesn’t need to work as hard.

I was really impressed by how light this trimmer felt in my hands. It’s easy to flick it around the garden and get it right into the awkward spots around fence posts or around my raised vegetable beds. It was well balanced, and thanks to the ergonomic grip shape it wasn’t too tiring on the hands.

Something that holds this trimmer back, especially when tackling long grass, is the single string setup. As much as double string trimmers can be a pain to spool up, having two strings is better than one.

It won’t cut grass or weeds quite as quickly as a double string trimmer, but I can’t fault this trimmer for strength. I tried to bog the motor down by sticking it straight into long grass, but it didn’t stop. It slowed down momentarily then continued cutting. For such a lightweight machine, the performance is great.

The OLT1832 uses an auto-feed system that reduces string waste, unlike other trimmers that feed more string each time you pull the trigger. It’s a handy feature to have, especially since the price of string has gone up so much.

With the heavy duty disc and dual blades attached, the performance on thick weed stalks and rough grass was impressive. It made short work of them, but they didn’t react well when I tried to trim against a brick wall. The blades are sharp, but they don’t last long when they hit hard materials. Spares come in packs of 10.

The only other issue I had with the heavy duty blades is the width of cut is reduced. At just 22 cm across, you lose 8 cm, so it will take longer to clear a wide section of grass or weeds. However, changing from string to heavy duty blades to suit the terrain takes just a few seconds so it’s not a huge problem.

If you’re not already familiar with Ryobi’s ONE+ battery system, it’s a great battery system. It means that you can share the same batteries between a huge number of tools.

Where some tool brands force you to buy into batteries with a range of different fitting types or power levels, Ryobi have kept it simple. If you have a ONE+ battery, you can use it in more than 280 different tools. It’s impressive, and it might save you a few quid in the long run.

Sold as a bare tool, the run time you get from this trimmer depends on what batteries you already have or are going to buy. Ryobi reckon you can get up to 50 minutes of trimming time with one of their big 5.0 Ah batteries, which is enough for a huge garden.

For testing, I used a smaller 2.0 Ah battery, because it’s what I had to hand. I was still able to trim up the garden without it running out of power, but if you want the maximum run time, you’ll need a bigger battery. Failing that, you can use a couple of smaller batteries and always have one on charge.

The sound power level rating for this trimmer is 94.2 dB. That’s roughly the equivalent to a blender going at full speed, so it’s essential that you use the proper hearing protection. Exposure to this level of noise for more than 30 minutes can cause damage to your hearing, so I always wear quality ear defenders.

It’s not the loudest trimmer I’ve tested out, and it’s certainly quieter than a petrol-powered version, but it might still annoy your neighbours if you decide to trim your lawn early on a Sunday morning. It runs at quite a high pitch compared to the BLACK + DECKER STC1820, which makes it a bit grating on the ears, even with protection.

Using a grass trimmer doesn’t come without risk. In my experience, the dangers come from stones or other hard objects being hit by the spinning string. They can fly off in any direction, so make sure you’re wearing eye protection whenever you’re working with a tool like this.

The shrapnel that can sometimes fly off when using a trimmer isn’t just a danger to the user. You need to keep people and pets at a safe distance when using a trimmer like this. Ryobi recommend keeping a 15 metre cordon around the working area, and I happen to agree with this idea.

Sold as a bare tool, this trimmer represents excellent value for money. Once you’ve bought into a stable of batteries and a charger, you can save money by only buying the tool without the accessories.

If you want to use the heavy duty blades, you’ll need to buy a separate disc that attaches in place of the standard string line one. It’s another expense, but the results are impressive when you need to tackle seriously thick weeds and overgrowth.

If you don’t already have a battery and charger, you might want to look for a trimmer kit that includes everything you need to get working on your garden straight away though.

It’s hard to beat this trimmer if you’ve already got Ryobi tools, batteries, and a charger. It’s a relatively inexpensive and highly capable piece of kit that makes short work of weeds and grass, especially with the heavy duty blades on board.

Unboxing and setting up the trimmer was a piece of cake. I didn’t need any special tools, and it was all completed without a single swear word.