Is it me or the site - but I can’t locate reviews about chainsaws. Help please.
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It isn’t you it is the site. Choice have not reviewed chainsaws but for some odd reason if you search for “chainsaw” you get ten hits - none of them involving chainsaws. Perhaps @BrendanMays could tell us why. It isn’t as if a line trimmer was close enough to a chainsaw to be useful. I don’t recall a horror movie The Texas Line Trimmer Massacre
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Welcome to the community @Billi.
@syncretic reply should get the attention of one of the Choice staff to explain.
I’ve changed the category of your post to ‘Request a Test’. It does not necessarily lead to a product type test. It will provide an opportunity to express their interest, or add relevant comment.
Is there a particular type of use or chain saw you are interested in? If you are not experienced in the use of chainsaws what questions are there about the product and uses?
I’ve two petrol powered chain saws I use on a small rural property. I’m not sure how great an interest there would be among the Choice membership for a review of the types and models I’m most familiar with.
I’d suggest there may be greater interest in the lighter duty - battery powered pole pruners and chainsaws. These are more likely to be of use in a more urban environment. There are some very effective new yard tools that are battery powered.
Note: Many common tasks that require chainsaws etc are best left to professionals, or those properly trained and experienced in their use, IMO. Experience is more than ownership and not having cut your self or dropped a tree on your head and lived another day.
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Hi @Billi,
Thanks for the post.
It’s correct that we haven’t reviewed chainsaws at CHOICE (so far), although I’m sure this would be an interesting one for us to test. There’s a number of factors that go in to deciding what items we test, including the requests we receive from members and our own research via our Consumer Insights team. Inevitably, there are some items that miss out. Apologies for any inconvenience this causes.
I will make sure to pass on your request to our product testers, and if there are chainsaw owners reading this, please leave a review or post your own experiences to this thread. For those interested, there’s some more detail about our product testing on our website.
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I bought myself a battery mini chainsaw. It’s a Stihl GTA 26 Garden Pruner. They are proving very popular with home gardeners, Council parks & gardens crews etc.
I just got tired of pulling the cord on the ancient Echo hundreds of times, have it stop frequently and working in a fug of fumes. The battery Stihl works at the touch of a button, does the jobs I want around the farm. We no longer cut firewood and use the large chainsaws for heavy work such as posts, felling trees and trimming up for the sawmill.
I suggest a test of the garden pruner type tool, but there being so much variation in usage and range, I don’t think a petrol chainsaw test would be feasible.
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While waiting … a starting point from a trusted review site Best Chainsaws in 2022 as reviewed by Australian consumers | ProductReview.com.au .
It may be trusted by some people but whether it deserves that trust is far less certain.
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What is the basis of your comment Syncretic? It would be useful if you could share evidence for negative contributions to conversations so they add value to the post.
Are you familiar with Product Review? They demand proof of purchase to publish your review as ‘Verified Purchase’. And by the way, Product Review will never change the rating on your review or take it down due to pressure from the provider. This has allowed me to exert pressure on compliance-resistant providers to refund or swap equipment. i.e. they give practical assistance to those trying to deal with those providers trying to shirk Consumer rights.
Obviously, you don’t give as much credibility to non-verified reviews. I think most of the people in this forum are very capable of judging the quality of review sites. e.g. I joined Choice because I wasn’t satisfied with Canstar Blue reviews.
Many consumers are aware of the Product Review web resource. As a source of user comment on individual products it can sometimes be useful to check if a particular product brand+model may be a lemon. Consumers are more likely to leave negative feedback than positive.
One frequent criticism of these types of review sites is they more often assess first impressions from the purchasers initial experiences. It’s not really a review of the same standard as Choice would provide. I looked to the ProductReview site feedback provided on 2 products I’ve first hand experience of. It’s not sufficiently comprehensive, or a reliably complete assessment of those products IMO.
Note many of the products have only a single or small number of users providing personal feedback on their purchase. Critically each user can only rate a product relative to their individual experience. It may only be of a single product over their lifetime, or a comparison with the previous brand and model many years older. Few of us can say we’ve had 12 competing brands of similar spec models laid out for a reliable comparative trial. Even fewer to have used every one for more than a day or two. It’s a significant limitation of the site that it is not capable of objectively comparing product performance.
Looking to those who use powered yard equipment every day might offer some clarity on usability and reliability. Several I know purchase from the more expensive products of the big name brands. Several others purchase the trade branded and much cheaper products from one of the well known nationwide specialist tool stores. Definitely not a national popular hardware chain.
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