The Milwaukee M18 Chainsaw was one of the most anticipated new tools for 2018, certainly not the first cordless chainsaw to hit the market but the first to do it with just 18 volts, as competiton is at 36V, 54V, or even as high as 80V. Could Milwaukee deliver a professional 16” chainsaw and still make it compatible with the hundreds of other tools? We originally posted on the 2727-21HD in May (Coptool post) but now that we’ve got it out in the field with professionals at Ahlum & Arbor Tree Preservation we wanted to take a closer look and see if it’s lived up to the hype as well as how they might hold up under wear.
With thousands of the M18 FUEL 2727-21HD ($399) chainsaws now in the market we can say pretty definitively the response has been extremely positive. We actually sent this saw along with several Makita cordless chainsaws (more coming very soon on those) to Ahlum & Arbor and they are very positive on the benefits of cordless. While they are not going to give up their larger gas saws anytime soon, they did say for smaller jobs, climbing work and specialty applications they were very impressed. For power to weight very similar to what they expected from top of the line gas units of similar size and with little to no hassle in just a few weeks of use became they preferred option for certain tasks.
Our video is more of an INSIDE LOOK light as we didn’t do a full tear down at Ohio Power Tool, if you are interested in a full tear down AvE does a really deep dive in the video below for this saw. We focused here more on giving it to the guy who actually maintains a fleet of hundreds of tools for Ahlum & Arbor’s crews and wanted to get his take on what looked like it would be a problem down the road for maintenance. They are heavy into gas tools with no battery chain saws currently so he seemed to start out very cautions.
After some time with the M18 Chainsaw he seemed to come around, impressed with the construction, blade tensioning, gearing and other parts that typically need his attention on chainsaws. Without getting into the electronics, battery connectors and how those components might perform over time, he was very optimistic on the longevity these might have in the field, which we don’t think was where he started.