The Best Chainsaws of 2024

When it comes to buying power tools, homeowners don’t typically place a chainsaw high on the list—unless you’re planning on cutting your own wood to burn. But when you need it, the best chainsaws beat out all of the competition—there’s really no other tool that outperforms them at their job. From clearing brush to bringing down dead trees to cleaning up large-branch debris from a storm, a quality tool that you rely on can be a homeowner’s best friend.

After lopping slices off of logs, trimming branches from felled trees, and cutting up firewood, we named the DeWalt FlexVolt DCCS670T1 (available at Amazon) the best chainsaw, and the Husqvarna 440 (available at Amazon) as the best gas-powered chainsaw. However, there are plenty of great chainsaws in our guide to pick from.

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Other Chainsaws We Tested

How We Tested

The Tester

Hi, I’m Jean Levasseur, a former conveyor mechanic, current property manager, and a hobbyist woodworker. I'm also a writing instructor at a local university. I come from a family of tool users—my grandfather was a carpenter, my father owned an excavation company, and my mother was a mechanic. Between growing up working for my family’s businesses and then moving on to my projects, I’ve used most tools you’ve heard of and quite a few that you haven’t.

The Tests

In testing these gas and electric models, we tried to recreate real working conditions that homeowners would likely experience. We wanted to be out in the field, so to speak, using these chainsaws on real trees in real yards, in practical applications.

In my yard, I had a few dead trees, a pile of firewood logs, and a bunch of brush to cut up, so we had plenty of practical applications to test.

Our first test was basic: How easy is it to set up the chainsaw and get it running? I added fuel, charged batteries, filled the bar oil (never forget bar oil—battery-powered chainsaws need it, too!), adjusted the chainsaw chain tension, and started every one of them. With one exception, all of the saws were easy to set up out of the box and fired right up without much effort.

From there, I took each saw through a precision cutting test. I had quite a few beech logs ready to be cut up into firewood. I selected several similarly-sized logs, about 14 inches in diameter, and cut 1- to 2-inch thick rounds off of them with each chainsaw. We didn’t time each test because of the lack of uniformity in log size and engine size. Instead, I paid attention to how easily the saw cut through the wood and how much effort was needed to keep it tracking straight. A good product with a sharp blade should pull itself through the wood without any downward pressure from the user.

Once I ran through the log slices, I went into some precision maneuverability. I had several areas of brush and fallen trees that needed the branches trimmed off. The point of this test is to see how easy it is to wield each saw at different angles—could I cut high and low and side to side with ease, or is the saw burdensome to move around? This is a function of weight, balance, and length.

After these two tests, the original plan was to select the top few chainsaws to buck some trees into firewood. However, at this point, I didn’t have a good sense of which saws were best, since they all performed well. So, I decided to buck trees into firewood-length sections with each of the saws, getting a better sense of how each saw felt in the hand over a longer period.

Finally, I took the chainsaws down into my workshop to do some basic maintenance. I changed the air filter, sharpened the chainsaw chain, replaced the chain, and replaced the guide bar. These tasks were all essentially uniform and very easy across all of the saws. Not one posed any difficulty in doing basic maintenance. The saws all also come with a wrench/screwdriver tool to perform most of these tasks, so the only basic tools you may need to purchase are the chainsaw sharpener and the tool to adjust the carburetor if your model can do that.

The obvious missing test here is felling a tree. We decided not to do this for a few reasons: lack of enough trees needing to be cut down, safety concerns, and my comfort level. I am not an expert logger, and I didn’t want to do something as potentially dangerous as felling trees while using different, unfamiliar equipment each time.

What You Should Know About Buying A Chainsaw

Safety

Power tools are dangerous. Chainsaws are no different and can cause severe injuries. According to the CDC, there are around 36,000 chainsaw injuries each year, enough to have dedicated an entire webpage to safety tips.

This is one of those tools that can send you to the hospital with a single mistake or lapse in attention. Do I tell you this to make you nervous?

Absolutely. If you’re not a little bit nervous when using one, then you’re probably not being careful enough.

These motorized tools are used by millions of people every year safely, and there’s no need for your experience to be any different. I highly recommend reading through the CDC's safety tips, as well as carefully reading the manual for your model.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Understand how your chainsaw works and its safety mechanisms. Every product is different, and these differences are important. The chain brake operates slightly differently on gas and electric models, for example. Chainsaws also have different starting and stopping procedures.
• Wear the proper equipment. The right safety equipment can save limbs or lives. Every time I started up a chainsaw, I wore steel-toed boots, special chainsaw chaps over jeans, special chainsaw gloves, safety glasses, and a helmet with a face shield and ear protection. Don’t run a chainsaw in shorts and sneakers.
• Know what you’re doing, and know your limits. Understand the kind of cutting that you’re doing, and how best to do it. You’ll notice that our testing didn’t include cutting down any trees. Part of my decision was practical—I don’t have 10 trees in my yard that I wanted to take down. But more importantly, I didn’t feel comfortable cutting down trees while switching between saws. If you feel uncomfortable with a task, you should stop and think about if it’s right for you.

Chainsaws are a great tool for any homeowner to have and be able to use comfortably and confidently. But this is one tool where you can never skip over safety.

Size Matters

When you’re buying a chainsaw, you want to make sure that you’re getting a tool that’s the right size for your specific application. A chainsaw that’s too small will frustrate you at not being able to complete the job—or worse, you’ll try anyway and put yourself in a dangerous situation.

A chainsaw that’s too large may tire you out quickly. You may also not be able to keep control of the machine, again creating a dangerous situation.

Our two overall winners are chainsaws on the larger size, but if you’re not planning on working with firewood or any kind of hardwood, these two may not be the best options for you.

The first measure of chainsaw size is the guide bar length, which is very literally the length of the bar that the chain wraps around. In general, bars range from around 6 inches up to 6 feet or more for some professional-grade machines.

As a general rule of thumb, you want to buy a chainsaw with a bar about 2 inches longer than whatever you’re going to be cutting most frequently. So, if you’re planning to cut up 12-inch diameter logs, then a 14-inch chainsaw is what you’re looking at. You also want to think about the kinds of tasks that you’ll be doing.

Smaller chainsaws, in the 6-inch to 12-inch range, are great for pruning trees and shrubs. Some of these, called pole saws, are attached to long, extendable poles to reach up high into branches. They’re good for regular maintenance of your yard and keeping your trees and brush under control. We didn’t test any smaller chainsaws.

Medium-sized chainsaws are those with longer bars in the 14-inch to 18-inch range and are great for a wide variety of jobs. They’re small enough that you can get into brush and cut it back, but large enough that you can cut up or cut down some decent-sized trees. What they’re not going to be good for is getting branches that are high up in trees or cutting trees more than 14 inches to 16 inches in diameter, unless you have training and equipment.

Once you hit the 20-inch bar size, you’re getting into true professional territory. These chainsaws are big and heavy, with power to match. They are primarily made for taking down large trees beyond what the majority of homeowners would be comfortable doing.

Power

The next sizing option that you’ll want to look at is power. In gas chainsaws, power is measured in ccs. In electric chainsaws, power is measured in volts. In both cases, the higher the number, the more power your chainsaw possesses.

For the most part, chainsaws all have a lot of power. But, if you know that you’re going to be cutting primarily through hardwood like oak rather than only pine, you might want to look into something with a few more ccs or volts.

The cc range for the gas chainsaws we tested was fro 30ccs to 42ccs, while the battery chainsaws ranged from 36V to 80V. There is a noticeable and important difference in power and weight at each end of those ranges.

Power Source

There are three ways to power a chainsaw: gasoline/oil mixture, electricity via an extension cord, or battery. All three have pros and cons, and you’ll have to decide which one works best for your needs.

Gasoline-powered chainsaws are standard, tried-and-true tools. Their biggest advantage is that they’ll cut for as long as you have gas to power them, and they’ll put out a lot of power. You can also buy a gas chainsaw for quite a bit less money upfront than a battery chainsaw saw.

Gas chainsaws are generally louder, and you have to deal with both the smell and environmental consequences of the fumes from a two-cycle engine. They also require more maintenance, which can get pricey if you don’t do it yourself.

Finally, you have to factor in the cost of fuel, which is much more expensive than recharging a battery.

If you’re a moderate-to-heavy chainsaw user, bucking firewood or cutting down decent-sized trees, then you’ll probably want to go with a gas saw.

Over the past few years, battery-powered technology has come a long way across the tool industry, and chainsaws have been a major beneficiary of those improvements. Many battery-powered chainsaws have plenty of power and battery life for average homeowner tasks. However, they do tend to have noticeably less power than their gas counterparts.

All of our electric chainsaws completed the same tasks as the gas saws but took a long time and more effort to do some of them.

Battery-powered chainsaws are generally quieter (though still loud) and aren’t going to release nasty fumes. This said, they will run only as long as your battery has a charge, so you will need to either buy a pricey second battery or be prepared to take hour-long breaks whenever your battery runs out of juice.

They also have a higher up-front cost, though the long-term cost of fuel consumption (electricity) and maintenance tends to be lower.

If you’re looking for something basic to clear away debris or brush or cut up some fallen branches, or if you’re concerned about the environmental impact of your tools, then a battery-powered chainsaw might be the right choice for you.

The last way to power a chainsaw is to plug it into an outlet. Like battery-powered saws, these are less powerful than their gas counterparts but are still plenty of saw for many homeowner applications. The big advantage of an electric/corded chainsaw over something with a battery is that you never have to worry about running out of juice.

It will run for as long as you need it to, without any breaks. They also tend to be the cheapest chainsaws that you can buy.

Having an extension cord that can reach where you’re cutting is the drawback since you are tethered to that cord. It limits the distance from the outlet you can travel and can be frustrating to work with if, for example, the cord gets wrapped and tangled around logs and branches and rocks and feet.

We decided not to test any electric chainsaws, recommending that homeowners focus on either a gas or battery-powered saw due to the increased portability.

Dealer Versus Big Box Store

One last decision that you’ll have to make is the brand of chainsaw that you want to purchase, and the benefits or drawbacks of each brand.

A few of the chainsaws that we tested—Stihl, Husqvarna, and Echo—all have dedicated local dealers that you can bring your saw back to for service. There’s something to be said for having a knowledgeable professional nearby when something goes awry, though oftentimes you’re paying a premium for those brand names.

Pricing for one of the big box store-branded chainsaws may be lower, but you’re not going to get the same level of service that you would at a local, dedicated dealer. So, thinking about how you will handle maintenance, and how much access you want to support, is an important step in the buying process.

And, finally, you want to think about longevity. This involves thinking about the quality reputation of the brand itself and the warranties that are offered by each company.

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