Ryobi Chainsaws

Ryobi's 40V HP 14-inch is the chainsaw for the enormous crowd that already charges Ryobi lawn batteries in the garage: brushless, genuinely capable in the 8-12 inch wood that suburban trees actually produce, and rated 4.8 stars across a couple hundred reviews on Ryobi's own site. Home Depot's ecosystem makes it the path of least resistance — tool-only around $149-189 if you own packs, or roughly $299 with a 4Ah battery and charger. Owners praise the instant starts and the HP brushless motor's refusal to bog in moderate cuts; the honest limits are the ones the class shares: the 14-inch bar and 40V platform top out around small-tree felling, the plastic-heavy build reads homeowner-grade because it is, and Ryobi's stock chains and bars are mediocre enough that enthusiasts upgrade both. Within its lane — cleanup, limbing, occasional small felling on a shared battery platform — it's hard to spend less and get more.

The budget path to a big-bar battery saw — $379 at Home Depot buys an 18" bar, a 6.0Ah pack, a rapid charger, and Ryobi's claim of more power than a 40cc gas saw with over 90 cuts per charge. It replaced the well-liked RY40580, and for the homeowner who clears a couple of storm-downed limbs a year and wants zero maintenance, dated Home Depot reviews are full of converts from cranky gas saws. The gripes in those same reviews are consistent and worth knowing: the chain derails and needs frequent re-tensioning more than any other saw in this class, the bar-retention knob works loose mid-session, and sustained cutting heats the 6.0Ah pack enough that it needs a cool-down before the charger will accept it — a real bottleneck if you only own one battery. Power is honest mid-pack: fine for 12" softwood bucking, laboring in big hardwood. You're trading refinement for price, and at $120-250 less than the comparable EGO, Milwaukee, and DeWalt kits, plenty of owners consider that a fair trade.

The Whisper Series 12-inch is the chainsaw distilled to its most convenient form: an 18V ONE+ tool light enough to feel like a big pruner, quiet enough that Ryobi built the marketing around it, and compatible with the batteries half of American garages already own. At $249 for the kit — much less as a bare tool — it exists for pruning, storm-limb cleanup, and breaking down small logs, and owners consistently describe it as the saw that actually gets grabbed because there's zero ceremony: click a pack in and cut. The physics are the honest limit: 18 volts through a 12-inch bar is a light-duty proposition, sustained cuts in hardwood drain packs quickly, and anything beyond ~8-inch wood belongs to its 40V sibling. As a second saw for trim work, or a first saw for a small yard, the convenience-per-dollar is unmatched; as an only saw for real firewood, it's the wrong tool and doesn't pretend otherwise.