Over the next few months we hope to be doing a number of reviews on the powerful Victa 82V range of cordless garden tools.
We are kicking it off today with an impressive unit, the V82VGT lithium ion grass trimmer.
Let us show you how these Victa cordless tools can help you to do your gardening work quicker, with less mess, less noise and safer and perhaps even cheaper….
Most Aussies would be familiar with the name Victa. An iconic brand known for its mowers mainly. Finally, suburbanites could have a lawn without keeping a cow to keep it short. In other words, they have been in the gardening business for a long, long time. And as an old time aviator I even remember the Victa Airtourer from the early 60s when they built a couple of hundred of these great all-metal aeroplanes….
I think it’s a smart move these days to bring out a line of cordless appliances as most of the small jobs around the house and garden can be done without trotting out hard-to-start, cranky two stroke engines or dragging long extension cords behind you.
For years I’ve been adding to my line of Ryobi cordless tools where the real economy comes from not having to buy a battery and charger for every tool that you own. For instance, I have a dozen Ryobi 18V tools with only two chargers and five batteries.
The same economy applies to buying gardening tools.
In the Victa range we have a line trimmer, hedge trimmer, leaf blower, chainsaw and a mower, all powered by a humongous 82V lithium ion battery with an even bigger charger.
This is really the key ingredient in making a cordless tool useful: you need power and endurance. I’ll talk about power a little bit later when we do the testing but let me assure you that 82V means serious business. Anything higher than that and it might be illegal 🙂
As for endurance this grass trimmer should be good for 30 minutes at a time. See how we went in the testing.
Unpacking and First Impressions
As you might expect with most equipment some assembly is required before operation. The advantage for the manufacturer and retailer is that it keeps the shipping and storing costs down and for us consumers it’ll keep the price down.
All you need is a Phillips screwdriver to couple the upper shaft with the lower shaft, fit the trimmer guard and the front handle. After you’ve clipped on the harness you’re ready to go. Fortunately, the trimmer line was already wound on the spool because that is typically the trickiest bit of using a grass trimmer.
If you’re smart you would have plugged in the battery in the charger before you began assembly because it takes up to 30 minutes to fully recharge the 2Ah Briggs and Stratton battery.
Every brand has its own house colour and Victa has a nice deep dark blue. When the line trimmer is fully assembled it is still a reasonably compact and lightweight unit, weighing in at 6.1 kg with the battery.
Testing
We have a fairly large property that needs a tractor and slasher for most of the outer paddocks, a ride on mower and a brush cutter for the stuff closer to home and for the “grass” around the house the Victa range would be eminently suitable.
You might have noticed I put “grass” in quotation marks because it is nothing like the typical suburban front lawn. It’s tough, mixed with weeds and strewn with roo poo. Can’t get more Aussie than that.
To make matters worse this is the wettest season we have had in a long time and the grass is long and saturated. Which makes it an ideal testing ground because if it can handle this it can handle most anything.
I started by cutting the long grass around the fruit trees and finished up clearing the even longer grass along the fences. Even in these conditions the Victa did not slow down and it did as good a job here as my professional Husqvarna brush cutter.
After about 20 minutes I checked the battery LEDs and we were down to 1 LED (indicating about 25% to 40% of the capacity still left) so I notched up the speed a bit and put it in Turbo mode. This high-speed lasted for about 10 minutes after which I needed a break and the battery a recharge.
If you have a longer stamina you can choose a 4Ah unit from the Briggs & Stratton battery range that will give you double the endurance at a penalty of an extra 1.2 kg. Frankly, the only appliance that would have need of this bigger battery would be the lawnmower but for all the other tools the smaller battery gives you ample time.
If the job takes you longer just have a coffee break and in 15 minutes both you and the battery will be recharged enough for another 15 minutes.
Conclusion
Despite the atrocious weather we’ve been experiencing here on the south coast we’ve been able to test this Victa 82V Rapid Trimmer over the last few weeks with great results.
This is what we like:
1. great build quality with an alloy shaft, an easy to use bump head to feed the line and fairly lightweight.
2. The variable speed ensures that the line doesn’t break easily and being able to slow down is particularly important around fences or concrete.
3. Very safe to use and no mess or smell from fuel and oil that you have to mix in a certain ratio first.
4. No more engine service calls or yearly tune ups. Or, my pet hate: difficult starting!
5. And my pet LIKE: much less noise than my brush cutter!
6. A whopping 5 year warranty. Enough said. Victa really stand behind their products.
The official retail price is $499 for the unit that includes charger and battery.
Just the console itself is $299 so you can see the economy of investing in 3 or 4 other units with just a couple of batteries between them.
Highly recommended!
For more info check out the Victa website and then head to your nearest Bunnings to really check them out. Just in time for Father’s Day!
