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- Very well priced
- Versatile battery ecosystem
- Thicker line than many budget strimmers
- Very well priced
- Versatile battery ecosystem
- Thicker line than many budget strimmers
The Flymo 18V UltraTrim 300 may well be the sweetest of sweet spots for the average gardener: impressive specs and exceptional ease of use. Add into that its Power For All alliance batteries, and it looks mightily impressive on paper.
Throw into that competitive pricing – around the £190 mark at time of writing – which includes a 4.0Ah battery and a charger, and it’s a hard strimmer to ignore.
So I’ve put it to the test to see whether it has the performance to match its promise and price and will see whether it sits among the best cordless strimmers you can buy today.
What do you get for the money?
While Flymo doesn’t publish an RRP on its website, the 18V UltraTrim 300 is typically available, with a battery and charger, for around £190 – but I’ve seen it for as little as £155 on Amazon.
That’s very keen pricing, particularly as you’ll be able to use the battery in a range of cordless products from Bosch, Gardena and Husqvarna, amongst others, as well as the entire cordless Flymo line-up.
The UltraTrim 300 has a 30cm cutting width and comes with a 2.0mm diameter line, which is at the thicker end of strimmers at this price. The line uses a bump-feed mechanism, so you need only tap the strimmer on the ground to release more.
It also has a Powerboost mode, which increases the cutting speed allowing you to attack thicker plant matter with ease. It’s all operated through clearly-marked buttons, alongside a series of always-on power indicators. There’s also a light which illuminates when the line is too short for effective trimming and needs extending.
At the business end, there’s a tough metal deflector to help avoid damaging plants which rotates out of the way when not required. The boom separates to make storage a little easier.
There’s no shoulder strap, but at 3kg including the battery, it’s not really necessary, especially with an ergonomically sound loop handle.
It’s a shame, then, that there’s no edging mode.
How easy is it to use?
There’s nothing particularly complex about unboxing the Flymo 18V UltraTrim 300: you attach the two halves of the boom and the handle. The line deflector is a bit of a faff to attach, but the metal guard just clicks into place.
The 18V, 4.0Ah battery takes a rather pedestrian 244 minutes to fully charge, and the charger itself is tiny – about the size of an early 2000s flip phone – and attaches onto the battery, rather than the battery docking into it.
There’s no lock button to operate the UltraTrim 300; rather, you press the power button, wait half a second for it to wake up, and then press the trigger. It’s very easy, although it does mean it could be rather tempting for curious kids if it’s left lying around in the garden.
Ahead of the power button is the Powerboost button, which toggles an increase in speed, and beyond that are three LEDs which indicate charge levels, plus a red error light – which illuminated when I didn’t install the battery correctly the first time out.
The Flymo isn’t balanced as well as the Stihl FSA 50, because it’s rather nose heavy. Still, the location of the handles means that’s not too much of an issue.
It lacks any real novel features such as a hanging hook or a folding handle that would make storage easier, but because the boom separates, it’s easy to stow in tight spaces or clip into a spring-loaded, wall-mounted tool holder.
At 85dBA, it’s pretty much average in terms of noise. I recorded 3.2mm/s in my vibration test, which is at the quieter end of strimmers like this:
In my continuous no-load runtime test, it lasted for 74 minutes before the battery expired, which places it among the best trimmers for battery life I’ve tested this season (the overall winner here is the Ryobi RY18LT23A-0 at 83mins):
Removing the line is easy – you just unclip the cap and pull out the reel.
How well does it trim?
On flat and undulating lawns, the Flymo cut very well indeed, and shrugged off thickets of damp grass like they weren’t there. I tried the Powerboost mode, but it was working so well, all I could detect was an increase in volume.
Given the focus on ease of use, I was a little sceptical about its ability to cut back thicker undergrowth. In fact, it blasted through nettles and thicker, straw-like undergrowth very well indeed. It was more than up to the task of taking care of smaller brambles, but it struggled a bit as the diameter of these growths increased. And the Powerboost mode didn’t really seem to make a huge difference.
Regardless of how hard I tightened it, I found that the loop handle had a tendency to slide around, even when locked down, which meant it would become uncomfortable to use over time, cured only by stopping to adjust it.
And although the line is slightly thicker than other strimmers, I found it was prone to breaking should it come into contact with concrete or stones. That meant I had to re-seat the line in the cutting head.
Should you buy the Flymo 18V UltraTrim 300?
If you’re looking for a cordless grass trimmer on a budget, and are focusing on the lighter side of grass and scrub clearance, then the Flymo 18V UltraTrim 300 ought to be on your list. That’s because it’s very well priced for a substantial-feeling, well-specced strimmer – and it’s hard to overlook the usefulness of the Power For All battery, because you could share that battery with an unrelated bare tool from Bosch, Husqvarna and a number of other brands.
The handle is a frustrating feature, but that seemed to become more of an issue the harder the going got. If you’re a fair weather trimmer, using your Flymo for a Sunday afternoon tidy up, it’s unlikely you’ll find it a showstopper.
In most other regards, it’s an easy to use and nicely rounded product.
