Husqvarna 115iL

What is the Husqvarna 115iL?

Designed for grass and light weed trimming duties in larger gardens, Husqvarna’s 115iL is a powerful cordless strimmer with a large 330mm cutting circle. Supplied here with the BLi10 battery and QC80 charger as a kit, but with plenty of other battery and charger options available, it offers normal and low-power modes to deliver 30 minutes’ cutting time per charge.

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Get past the Husqvarna’s weight and size compared to many compact cordless grass trimmers and it’s a potent and effective performer. There is no slowing in wet grass, the savE mode works well and keeps things quiet, and the cut is clean. The in-line charger is not as convenient as a dock but there are plenty of compatible Husqvarna battery and charger options to choose from.

Husqvarna 115iL – Design and features

The 115iL isn’t your typical lightweight cordless strimmer aimed at small to mid-sized domestic gardens. This is a proper bit of garden machinery, packing in a 36-volt motor with two power options, a wide 330mm cutting circle, and an adjustable shaft to cater for a wide range of user heights. Promising up to 30 minutes’ run-time, this is a grass trimmer for larger gardens and even semi-professional use. Ironically, then, it’s Husqvarna’s smallest and least expensive cordless grass trimmer.

Key technology here is Husqvarna’s long-lasting brushless motor that delivers very high torque, despite being relatively low in weight. Spinning at 5500rpm, this ensures there’s no slowing or bog-down when you hit long wet grass or tougher weeds.

Down at the cutter head, the unit comes supplied with Husqvarna’s basic T25 bump-feed line spool and 1.6mm round line. The head can handle a slightly thicker line than this up to 2mm. The 115iL’s talents aren’t limited to that, however; Husqvarna offers a bewildering array of line heads that can take even heavier gauge line, and we don’t doubt the motor is up to the task. Seek a dealer for advice on that one.

The shaft is telescopic to adjust in length with a tool-less cam-clip locking mechanism. It ‘ spring-loaded to help you lengthen the shaft, but doesn’t help if you’re going the other way. The loop handle is at a fixed angle but this can be slid up and down the shaft and locked in place with another cam-clip. The 115iL is very easy to adjust on the fly and the user-height range is wide.

The main grip handle is softly contoured with a dead-man’s kill switch on top and trigger below. In front of those is an intriguing bubble-button control panel that apes the panels on Husqvarna’s smart connected mowers. There are no wireless smarts here, but you do get the main power button and the ability to choose between normal and battery-saving “savE” mode.

Husqvarna 115iL – Battery, charging and run-time

Husqvarna sells all its cordless tools separately from batteries and chargers to provide plenty of options, and as a basic kit that saves you a few pounds on the total price. The 115iL kit we have on test comes with the grass trimmer, a 2.1AH BLi10 battery and the basic QC80W charger, all for a discounted price of £250.

While the QC80W charger is a solid 80W unit that charged up the BLi10 battery in around 1hr 15mins, it’s a bit fiddly. As an in-line charger it has two cables to contend with; power from the mains and charging lead to the battery. The clip onto the battery is a little awkward and you do end up with charger, battery and a tangle of cables on the work surface. We much prefer the convenience and simplicity of a drop-in battery dock for charging.

If you do want such convenience then it is available as an option. Husqvarna’s QC330 dock is a powerful 330W charger that will take BLi10 from flat to full in 40 minutes.  If you need quicker still, the QC500 will do the job in well under 30 minutes.

The battery clicks into the strimmer body in two stages, the first disconnected for transport and the second ready to go. In constant use on the normal power mode, we managed around 20 minutes’ solid working run-time. Start hitting heavy, wet grass and light scrub and that figure drops a little – but by seconds rather than minutes.

If you don’t need the speed or gumption of full power, the savE mode is just as effective on dry grasses and light weeds. That put the run-time on average to over 30 minutes, stretching out to nearly 40 minutes in total on a day of stop-start strimming.

If you need longer run-times then Husqvarna offers an unrivalled range of battery packs starting at the BLi10, through two larger packs, and culminating in the BLi200 – which is good for 1hr 15mins of strimming. Each comes with its own extra weight penalty.

Need more still? Pull on one of Husqvarna’s battery backpacks, attach the umbilical cord to the 115iL, and you can trim for up to a whopping 5hrs 30mins on a single charge. We get tired just thinking about that, but the option is there if you want.

Husqvarna 115iL – What is it like to use?

Tipping our scales at over 4.2kg with the BLi10 battery in place, the 115iL certainly isn’t a super lightweight trimmer for your elderly mum. We tried, she said it was too heavy.

Shaft length is very easy to adjust despite its odd spring-loading, and being able to alter the position of the loop handle makes it highly adjustable for fit. That said, there’s no getting away from the weight, and while it isn’t as cumbersome as a 4-stroke petrol brush-cutter, it’s a serious piece of machinery. Clearly only burly blokes do the lawn care at home in Husqvarna’s native Sweden.

Thankfully, the extra beef turns into a brawny performance as the powerful motor and 33cm cutting circle rip through wet or dry grass with consummate ease and speed. The wire guard can be flipped up to get really close up to less delicate areas, but it takes quite a solid tug or gently prising apart of the wire loop to get it over its lock lugs and move position.

We tackled a variety of grass, weeds and some scrub with the 115iL, and the only limiting factor with regards to its cutting performance was the relatively fragile 1.5mm trimmer line. We’d go for 2mm when we needed to replace the supplied line and ideally a triangular or square profile version to further improve the sharpness of the cut on fine lawn areas. The 115iL is more than up to that upgrade.

The T25 trimmer head’s bump feed worked almost flawlessly. Once we were getting close to the end of the line on the first spool and the area was clogged with debris, it did have a couple of minor sticky moments. Given that bump feeds are notoriously fickle when dirty, that’s still a good result.

Given the high-speed cutter and powerful brushless motor, no surprise that the 115iL wasn’t the quietest strimmer we’ve tested. It rocked 85dB at elbow height above the head; running free it went well over 90dB when cutting the rough stuff. That’s about the same as a larger electric grass strimmer, so at least you’re not going to annoy the neighbours on a Sunday morning as you did with your old electric model.

After several weeks in use around the farm, we struggled to find too much to fault with Husqvarna’s baby grass trimmer – other than it was quite a big and heavy baby. Thankfully, that translates into potent trimming performance, great build quality and decent run-times from the BLi10 battery.

We’d probably opt for the bare tool and add a dock charger and larger battery to back up the 115iL’s serious large lawn performance, but if you want good-sized strimmer that won’t let you down then the 115iL is a great choice.

Why buy the Husqvarna 115iL?

The 115iL might be Husqvarna’s “light”duty cordless grass trimmer, but its size and performance fight well above that billing. At 4.2kg with battery, it’s a bit heavier and more cumbersome than many entry-level cordless strimmers, but the performance is anything but lightweight.

It cuts a large circle, doesn’t fade in the face of tall wet grass or heavy weed growth, giving 20-30 minutes’ run-time with ease – even with the basic BLi10 battery supplied. For smaller lanes in the dry, the savE eco mode reduces noise considerably and offers plenty of extra run-time too.

As ever with Husqvarna, fit, finish and build quality is irreproachable. If you can live with the large size and untidy charger, the 115iL would be a great choice for medium-sized lawns and up.

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