This is the GTA 26 handheld pruner. This is a cool little three inch chainsaw that's battery powered that I'm adding to my list of Stihl stuff that I keep in my garage. I actually changed over to a lot of the Stihl battery handheld tools probably five or six years ago. I had a leafblower, a string trimmer, I had a chainsaw for a little while and I'm adding this one now, too. I've enjoyed a lot of this Stihl battery powered stuff. Stihl does a really good job of making great quality stuff. Known for their gas equipment being very high quality, professional-level stuff that you're going to see people out doing firewood and landscapers running and that kind of stuff.
I think heritage is important to understand when it comes to their battery-powered tools. There's a lot of consumer crap out there when it comes to this kind of stuff. Things that you're going to toss your drill battery in or really low price stuff out there that's just not made to last. One thing that's impressed me about Stihl's battery line of stuff is that in a lot of cases, it performs as well is their gas powered counterparts and really still has a sense of quality even though we're talking handheld battery-powered stuff. It's just kind of a race to the bottom in a lot of ways and this line of stuff does not feel that way when you get out and use it. Really impressed how this has felt in my hand out here working today. Going to show you a couple of the different features of this thing. Cut for you a little bit, tell you some of the places that it might fit well into your garage.
When you open up the box for this thing, it comes in this little carrying case which is the most pathetic of caring cases to be honest. Don't you hate when good tools come in silly little things like this? I suppose this is something you could store it inside of. It has some pockets in here and stuff for extra chains and tools and that kind of stuff, but I think for most people, this is probably going to go in the trash more than likely because really it's not needed.
When you look at the saw here itself, the construction of this thing is actually really solid. It's something that would be just fine bouncing in the back of a utility vehicle or thrown into a tractor toolbox or something. The rubber grips that are on the back here, aren't just plastic, they're actual rubber. They feel really good in your hand. The little battery right here comes along with its own little charger. Is a good, solid little thing. You can see the three individual cells in the bottom of that. They pop right up there into the bottom of the grip.
To turn this thing on, you simply are going to push a little safety here on the side and then pull the trigger in order to run it. There's no on/off switch at all. This little button that's here on the side that looks like it could be a power button, that's actually there just to show you the level of the battery. This little knobby thing here on the side that looks like it should be a flip cap for fuel or bar oil is actually a side cover here that pops off. If you need to get in here to change the chain or adjust your tension or anything, it's done down here underneath. Not actually bar oil. To do bar oil on this, it's actually manual. You need to just manually apply bar oil onto the chain. It comes along with a little bit in that plastic pouch.
When you're ready to cut with this thing, you just simply lift that safety up out of the way, remove the world's tiniest chainsaw shroud, and then go to work. Now I can probably do a lot of this trimming work with a set of loppers, right? Very simply coming along here and cutting these things off, but this is fast. You really easily can slide this thing into place and cut through it a lot faster than you would with a set of two handled loppers. Then when you get into the really big stuff, I got a portion of the tree here that's probably about a good inch and a half around that I can power right through. You wouldn't be able to get through that kind of thing with a little set of hand loppers. The little thing is surprisingly capable.
The main reason why I got this was for cleaning up this kind of stuff, but also for doing small firewood for campfires and that kind of thing. Now, I have a real chainsaw. A powerful one with a 20 inch bar, one for cutting firewood and that kind of stuff. This thing is never going to be good for heating and that kind of stuff, but to be able to come out and knock off these kinds of things off of limbs and clean up and find good stuff for your campfires, it's fantastic.
I had the small Stihl battery powered chainsaw as well. There's a little 12 inch version of this same thing. One thing I'd always been surprised by these is the amount of cutting time that you get out of them. Despite the small battery sizes and that kind of stuff, usually I'm surprised. Battery powered tools can often go one way or the other on that kind of thing, where they have really long life or disappointingly short life. This is one thing that I would say runs for a surprising amount of time. You can come out here and with my chainsaw probably work for about 90 minutes or so with that. Now, I don't expect this to go that long, but the runtime on them is very acceptable.
Going to get back in here into the meat of this. This little bar is about three inches long here that you have for cutting. Look at that, that's not chump change, right? Again, I think the comparison to this is not a real chainsaw that you're going to use for firewood. It's the handsaw or the loppers or that kind of thing that you're going to keep in your garage that this is really the replacement for. Now, we didn't cut for a long time, but you can see even after what we did here for the video, we're still on a full charge. We've had a long time to go.
This is a supremely fun little tool. These are $159. We're doing our best to keep them stocked in most of our stores, but reality continues to be that the demand for these little things is still out stripping what Stihl has been able to deliver to us. For $159 bucks and the capabilities of this little thing, I think it's a really worthwhile addition to your garage. Like I said, this is not something that you want to look at and think firewood. Eh, camp fire, okay, but not something that you're going to do that kind of work with, but a really productive and nice replacement to loppers or to a little tree saw. A nice tool to get out and do a lot of this trimming and cleaning up work really quickly.
I prefer this actually to Stihl's larger handheld chainsaw. That thing made me want to do chainsaw kind of work with it and I just prefer the gas one for more demanding cutting like that. For small limbing and stuff that's say three inches around or less, this is really fun. It's really easy to handle. It doesn't kick back very much. It feels really safe in the hand. Something I'd be okay with my wife using outside. I think it's going to find a regular place in my garage. This is actually mine, not just a little demo unit.
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