Wanting to buy a light weight battery powered weed eater, to replace my Stihl gas weed eater.
If a battery model will run for a half hour before needing charged, that would be fine.
What's a good quality, cheap,(about $100.) lightweight brand of string trimmer to get?
Battery trimmers come down to the quality of the battery. They all run great out of the box, but the test is in 2-3 years. Cheap ones won't hold a charge for very long.
The other consideration is what you are trimming. If you are used to the torque and power of a gas trimmer, be ready for a significant reduction with a battery trimmer. Battery trimmers are fine for grass growing up against the house or a planter, etc., but if you want to trim off 2-inch thick sod that is encroaching over your cement driveway, that probably isn't going to happen (where it did with a gas trimmer). But, you can always break out your old gas trimmer for the tough jobs.
That said, we have a Ryobi 18 volt lithium-ion model from Home Depot. For our tame, urban lawn, it's fine. We have about 15 minutes of trimming to do each time we mow, and it goes 2+ times without a charge. It's only a year old so I can't really comment on how the battery holds up in the longer run, but for now, it's working fine. I believe it cost about $120
