Confession time: Yes, I’m a big fan of the EGO PowerPlus tools for the garden.
So, we’ll grab any opportunity to review their products.
And such is the case with the Rotocut and the Edger attachments for the MultiTool System.
However, reviewing them this time posed a real challenge.
Why?
My property is bone dry here in the South of Western Australia. We haven’t had any decent rain for weeks and the grass is parched and short.
So, let’s really challenge these tools beyond their normal use, shall we?
The Rotocut
When I first had a look at pictures of the Rotocut my initial impression was here’s a bush wacker tool like no other!
It looked like a cross between a brush cutter, a hedge trimmer and a stack of rotary saw blades.
So my expectations were that the Rotocut would be ideal in getting rid of meters high brush, weed and bracken, just along the fence on my property.
And when I unpacked the unit it confirmed that impression: it was heavy and built like it could cut through metal!
Then I read the description of what the Rotocut was designed for.
It was the complete opposite.
The Rotocut has “two counter rotating blades which prevent debris from being thrown to make it ideal for use on grass and moss (!) in delicate areas…”
Delicate areas??
Not on my place!
Anyway, I spent a few minutes trying to find a more or less delicate area and applied this new tool where I normally would use the whipper snipper.
I could see how the precise cutting, combined with the low throw, would make it safer to work in confined areas and places near vehicles and trees.
It did what it was designed for very well. The high-strength alloy steel blades have a 23cm cutting width and run at 450rpm cutting speed.
Yes, it had quite some heft to it (2.6 kg) and for prolonged use I would recommend using a strap or even some handlebars.
The Challenge
Here at DRN we love to find other areas for the tools we test – even beyond what they were designed for. Like test pilots do for aircraft when they explore the edge of the flying envelope.
I want to know what a tool is capable of. And if it can safely perform other tasks as well, it would create a bigger market for the vendor.
Plus, it will also give us greater confidence that it will handle the tasks it was designed for, with no problems at all.
So, could it tackle the bush like a real brush cutter?
Yes and no.
If you look at the cutting gaps of the blades (23mm) they would indicate that, just like a hedge trimmer, brush up to that thickness could be handled. It has no trouble mowing down bracken as you can see in the video but anything thicker than about 10mm will be problematic.
So it works even though it was not designed for it.
It does work beautifully in dealing with cutting grass in areas where a line trimmer would normally be used: around trees and close to fences and grass edges.
We were able to test this out as my son-in-law maintains a nice suburban garden and lawn. Some of the clips on the video below were shot on his property.
Price here in Oz is AUD449 for the RTA2300 Rotocut.
Running time for a 2.5Ah battery is about 25 minutes.
Conclusion
Think of the Rotocut as rotary scissors – for fine work. In fact, in America these are often marketed indeed as Rotary Scissors.
If you have a lawn you want to keep immaculate, then the Rotocut would be a good choice to add to your arsenal of attachments for the EGO MultiTool.
And that applies to our next attachment as well: the EGO Edger
The Edger
Yes, it’s a traditional tool but made with the same quality as all the other EGO tools, coupled with all the benefits of a powerful 56V cordless system.
Even though edgers are almost as ubiquitous as mowers, neither I nor my son-in-law had ever used one. Yep, we might be a bit rough around the edges – or at least our grassy areas are and we’re OK with that.
So we struggled a bit to find the groove, so to speak.
It may have been made harder by not having a clearly defined border or not being able to go shallow enough with the blade.
My garden path to the shed has a concrete edge just below the grass and the Edger was not the right tool here. The Rotocut was ideal for this section though.
Never having made an edge in the garden, we found that the initial cut did throw back quite a bit of soil, grass and gravel. So goggles are essential even though both tools have a guard.
There’s also a split debris flap in addition to the blade guard on the Edger. The split is in line with the blade for easier alignment.
The depth of the cut is determined by adjusting the position of the guide wheel. You can cut as low as 75mm.
Making subsequent cuts will be very easy and faster with much less throw back.
The weight of the EA0800 Edger attachment is a little over 2 kgs and the RRP is AUD199.
For immaculate lawns the Edger is a must-have tool. Just buying the attachment if you already have the Multi-Tool is in most cases less expensive than buying a cheap stand-alone edger.
So, thumbs up for these two attachments!
And one of these days I may yet be accused of having green thumbs…
Check out the EGO Australia site here for the Multi-Tool system and many other tools for the garden.
For a quick impression of these two EGO tools, have a look at this 3 minute video EGO Rotocut and Edger MultiTool Attachments 2023 Review.
