We had a lively discussion on this subject on a topic about counterfeit ARS pruners sold on Amazon by a source that had the cheapest price, apparently. In the course of an argument about what are the “best pruners” I found an impressively comprehensive comparison of 49 pairs of pruners and thought some members might want to read it. It is exhaustive, whatever you think about the verdicts (I personally disagree with it, my favorite is the ARS).
The ARS model description has a link to an Amazon offer of only $19, which I expect must be a counterfeit pruner. Price should be more in the range of $40, maybe as low as $36. For $19 you probably get a counterfeit Chinese job with inferior steel.
The NY Times deliberately makes it difficult to paste and copy its articles but I did my best within 20 minutes of effort. Somehow I didn’t get the description of how the comparison was done which was impressive in its effort. Here is a link of the full article, if you can open it. The Best Garden Pruners | Reviews by Wirecutter
The Best Garden Pruners
By Meg Muckenhoupt
Updated May 22, 2020
Photo: Meg Muckenhoupt
FYI
After reviewing our picks and considering long term testing, we’re confident that the Felco 2 pruners are still the best you can reliably get.
May 22, 2020
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After researching 49 pairs of pruners and testing 39 models on dozens of maple branches, buckthorn limbs, scallions, raspberry canes, and wooden dowels, we found that the Felco 2 Classic Manual Hand Pruner is the best pruner for most people.
Our pick
They’re sharp, durable, smooth, easy to repair, and easy to find. As thousands of gardeners already know, a Felco 2 may be the last pruner you ever buy.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $50.
In our tests, the Felco 2 made clean, straight cuts on almost everything we tried. Its bypass blades opened and closed smoothly, and required only slight force to cut thick branches. The hardened-steel blades are strong enough to withstand sharpening dozens of times, the plastic-coated forged aluminum alloy handles are nearly unbreakable, repairs are easy, and replacement parts for any worn-out pieces are widely available. Felco models are consistently priced, well known, and widely beloved among gardeners, many of whom have kept their Felco 2 pruners for a decade or more. The pruners crushed a ¼-inch dowel a tiny bit, and the handles spread a little wide for some people (if that’s you, the Felco 6 should work). But those flaws aside, they’re close to perfect.
Also great
ARS HP-VS8Z
Great pruners, not as common
These pruners had the sharpest blades and required the least force to make the smoothest cuts of any of the pruners in our test. Not always easy to find, but if you encounter this model for the same price as the Felco, it’s worth getting.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $41.
If you yearn for the perfect pruner, you’ll finally be satisfied with the ARS HP-VS8Z. This tool was the only model that consistently made perfectly clean, flat cuts in soft stems, woody growth, hardwood dowels, and even ¾-inch buckthorn branches without crushing or tearing anything—and with less effort. The ARS has stunningly sharp high-carbon steel blades that have been tempered for hardness and resilience, and the tight, precise tolerance between the two blades creates a silky-smooth cutting action. Every other pair of pruners jerked or stuck on something in our test, but not this pair. Comfortable plastic-coated aluminum handles (which are available in other sizes) make cutting easy. The HP-VS8Z is so good that we almost made it our top pick for this guide, but its pricing is inconsistent—and sometimes very high (we’ve seen it fluctuate between $50 and $80). We were also concerned about the availability of ARS models, as this Japanese brand isn’t as widespread as the Swiss brand Felco in the United States. If you can find this tool for less than the Felco 2’s price, you can be confident that you’re buying the best available pruner.
Budget pick
Corona BP 3180
Not as sharp
These durable pruners aren’t as smooth or sharp as our main picks, but they are perfectly capable, and best suited for larger hands.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $20.
If you want to pay a fraction of the price for performance that’s almost as good as that of the best pruners out there, the Corona BP 3180 Classic Cut Forged Bypass Pruner is a great budget pick. The blades are sharp enough to slice through spindly stems and thick branches swiftly and efficiently. We even cut a ¾-inch branch one-handed with this pair, a feat that only the best pruners in the test could manage. That cut, however, required more effort than with our top two picks. These pruners don’t make quite as clean a slice as the ARS and Felco models do, and they don’t move as smoothly. Like the top picks, the Corona BP 3180 accepts replacement blades, springs, and screws. You may need those parts sooner, though, as some owners claim that this pruner is prone to rust. The Corona BP 3180’s handles are also large enough, and splay out widely enough, to feel unwieldy for many people with small to medium hands—but if you have big hands and a small budget, the Corona BP 3180 is a solid choice.
This reliability comes from their production process, which takes place in a former Swiss watch factory. Felco also has made every individual part of the pruners available, so if anything on them ever does break it’s an easy task to source and replace the broken part.
A word on Felco maintenance: If you do happen to find your long-lost pruners deep in the compost heap, you can adjust the hardened-steel center bolt to make sure the blades still align correctly. Out of the box, we found this blade-to-blade tolerance to be precise and accurate, but all pruners go out of alignment eventually. You can adjust and fine-tune Felcos whenever you wish. That’s another feature that separates Felco models from the cheaper pruners.
Another Felco difference is how much easier making a cut feels with these pruners. When you step up to the Felco 2 from the Corona model (our budget pick), for instance, you get a pruner that takes less effort to open and close. The Coronas are stiffer. You may not notice for the first few cuts, but after 15 or 20 minutes of use, you’re going to start feeling it, especially if you’re an older gardener.
Felco pruners are also easier to grip than cheaper models, with contoured handles and a modest open width. The Coronas seem to be designed for landscaping crews full of big, burly guys with wide palms. The Corona pruners are sturdy, but a lot of women can barely get their hands around them when they’re open. The Felco (and ARS) models are just a bit easier for men and women of more modest size to handle.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
The Felco pruners were nearly perfect in our test, and the very few problems they had in cutting performance seem like only shortcomings when compared with our also-great pick. The Felco 2 pair required some minor effort to close on a Norway maple branch—that task was easier with the ARS model—and the Felco blades slightly crushed a ¼-inch dowel, which the ARS managed to sever more smoothly. But these were tiny flaws. The Felco pruners cut every other sample perfectly and effortlessly, and performed better than any of the other tools we tried.
If you have small hands, be aware that Felco pruners are sized for larger hands than some other brands are. The Felco 2 is ½ inch longer than our also-great pick, the ARS HP-VS8Z. That size differential holds for other equivalent models as well: The small Felco, the Felco 6, is ¼ inch longer than the small ARS, the HP-VS7Z, while the Felco 7 rotating-handle pruner is an inch longer than the ARS HP-VS8R. Women testers preferred the ARS over the Felco because of the way the ARS handles fit in their hands.
The Felco 2 also has a construction quirk that’s either a flaw or a feature, depending on how you look at it. Unlike with other Felco hand pruners, the F2’s lower blade is riveted, not screwed, into place. That rivet means that the lower blade is firmly attached—but it also means that if you ever need to replace the lower blade, you’re going to need to rivet it, or find someone who can. Odds are, you won’t need to do this, ever, judging by how long people keep their Felco pruners, but to my mind, it’s a slight flaw.
Also great: ARS HP-VS8Z
Also great
ARS HP-VS8Z
Great pruners, not as common
These pruners had the sharpest blades and required the least force to make the smoothest cuts of any of the pruners in our test. Not always easy to find, but if you encounter this model for the same price as the Felco, it’s worth getting.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $41.
The ARS HP-VS8Z pruners cut better than any other pruners we tested, leaving fewer bits of bark and ragged ends of stems than every other pair. They were the smoothest-feeling pruners we tried, slicing straight through both hefty branches and wispy scallion tops with no hesitation, jarring, or jerking, and they never got stuck. Although ARS doesn’t publish maximum cutting diameters for its pruners, the ARS HP-VS8Z even managed to cut through a ¾-inch branch with aplomb—unlike several other pruner models that were rated to cut 1-inch branches. If you can find this tool for less than a Felco, there’s no reason to pass it up.
The ARS pruners probably work so well because they are very, very sharp. As one blogger put it, “ARS stands for ‘Always Really Sharp.’” The pruners’ blades, made of what the manufacturer calls “high-carbon granular spheroid annealing steel,” have a Rockwell hardness scale rating of 59 (900 on the Vickers scale). Typical hardware-store pruners score in the range of 50 to 54, and several companies (Felco and Bahco, among others) will not release information about the hardness of their steel. But from what we could determine, this pair was harder than any other pruners we tested, except the Okatsune (60). Beyond a sharp edge, the ARS tool’s blades have a very precise bypass tolerance straight out of the box, which is critical to that smooth, never-stuck cutting action and the perfect results you see on every cut.
ARS makes the rest of the tool as carefully as it does the blades. ARS crafts its VS-series pruner handles out of cast aluminum coated with plastic, so you don’t have to worry about the handles snapping off, unless you keep a metal-chomping Pulgasari for a pet. The handles come in three sizes: the ARS HP-VS8Z, the 8-inch model I tested; the ARS HP-VS9Z, a 9-inch model for larger hands; and the ARS HP-VS7Z, for smaller hands. Unfortunately, ARS does not make left-handed pruners; for that, you’ll have to get a Felco 9. For an explanation of the difference between right- and left-handed cutting tools, see Wirecutter’s scissors and kitchen shears review.
The ARS HP-VS8Z and the Felco 2 performed almost identically in testing. The main difference was that the ARS HP-VS8Z cut large branches slightly more smoothly than the Felco 2, requiring a little less force, and making a flatter, cleaner cut.
The ARS HP-VS8Z and the Felco 2 performed almost identically in testing. The main difference was that the ARS HP-VS8Z cut large branches slightly more smoothly than the Felco 2, requiring a little less force, and making a flatter, cleaner cut. The Felco 2 also crushed our ¼-inch dowel a little bit, while the ARS HP-VS8Z made a perfect, round cut. These are minor differences, and most people might not even notice the distinction if they mainly prune branches smaller than ½ inch in diameter.
The main drawback is availability: ARS isn’t that common in the US, especially compared with Felco models, which have been widely marketed for decades in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. If you can’t find these at Amazon, try GrowTech, ARS’s US distributor.
Budget pick: Corona BP 3180
Budget pick
Corona BP 3180
Not as sharp
These durable pruners aren’t as smooth or sharp as our main picks, but they are perfectly capable, and best suited for larger hands.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $20.
The Corona BP 3180 is an economical choice that can easily trim delicate scallion stems and slice right through raspberry canes. The action was smooth enough—and the blade was sharp enough—that I was able to cut through a ¾-inch branch single-handed with the Coronas. The only other pruners in my sample that could do this, the ARS, Felco, and Bahco models, all cost more than twice as much as the Corona BP 3180. Corona’s blades are made out of high carbon SK5 steel, and should keep their edge for a long time after sharpening.
The reason this model isn’t our top pick is that the Corona BP 3180’s cuts on large branches weren’t quite as clean as the cuts that the ARS and Felco pruners made, because the Corona pair didn’t cut as smoothly and easily, and because users with small to medium hands will find them unwieldy. This model has a very wide handle span—when splayed open, these pruners are hard for many users to grasp. Wirecutter editor Michael Zhao happens to own these pruners, and he said he’s had such problems: “They have a wide neutral stance, so they’re not good for people with smaller hands. I would also say that I have above-average hand strength (from climbing), and find that they have more resistance than I’d like.”
The plastic-coated metal handles feel sturdy, but they aren’t especially shaped or molded to fit your hands and fingers like the handles of an ARS or Felco pruner do. The Corona handles are straight with just a slight arc at the end, which partly explains why they can feel awkward if your hands aren’t quite large enough to grasp them. Corona does offer a smaller model, the Corona BP 3130 Classic Cut Forged Bypass Pruner, but it’s rated to cut branches only up to ½ inch in diameter. Most home users would be better off with a pair of pruners that can tackle a broader range of branches.
A minority of commenters on Amazon also complain that this model is prone to rust. Zhao has had this problem, too: “I wipe them down after using (not super carefully), but they’re still covered in rust. They probably want regular oiling that I’m not giving them.” Still, even with these issues, you could keep the pruners going for years with replacement top blades, springs, and screws. The lower blade, however, is put together with rivets and cannot be replaced.
The competition
Most of our testing was on standard bypass pruners, but we also tried pruners with rotating handles to reduce fatigue, as well as ratcheting pruners that make large cuts with less force.
The Felco 6 model is a smaller version of our top pick. It has the same sharp blades, but with slightly shorter handles (7¼ inches, not 8½), a lighter weight (7.5 ounces, not 8.5), and a smaller blade capacity (0.8 inch, not 1 inch). If you have smaller hands, this pair is a great option. The Felco 14 is another smaller tool we’ve tested and found to be as consistently excellent as the other Felco tools we’ve tried over the years.
The Tierra Pro 38-1713 7.5″ Bypass Pruning Shears and the Tierra Pro 38-1710 8.5″ Bypass Pruning Shears failed to cut one of the 10 scallion samples, they slightly crushed raspberry canes and dowels, and they needed extra force to close around a ¾-inch buckthorn branch. But the cuts were clean, and the blades didn’t strip bark from live branches. Look for the 7.5-inch model first—the 8.5-inch type was similar but felt rougher to close, and it tore some bark from raspberry canes.
The Okatsune 101 7-inch Bypass Pruners are a favorite among bonsai enthusiasts. They’re made of “Izumo Yasuki Japanese steel to deliver a Rockwell hardness of 60 +/-1,” which means that they’ll stay sharp longer than pruners with softer steel. Slim and short, they open very wide (6 inches across at the base), making it hard for users with smaller hands (like me) to grasp them, and the handles feel slightly slippery in damp conditions. They cut live branches and dowels perfectly—really, perfectly—with little torn bark and smooth, flat cuts, but they failed to cut through scallions on three out of 10 attempts. They last, too: Owners on BladeForums make comments such as “I have used the same pair of 8" pruners professionally for the last 9 years and they will definitely outlast me.” Wayne Schoech at Stone Lantern said his firm carried replacement Okatsune springs.
If you live in the UK, the Burgon & Ball Professional Compact Bypass Secateur GTO/PRL performed almost as well as the Okatsune in testing, though it felt slightly more rough and jangly, and the force of closing the pruners made cut ends go flying. No US merchants currently offer this model. I hope that either Burgon or Ball takes care of that soon.
The Tierra Garden 35-1731 Ergo Forged Bypass Pruners don’t perform quite as well as the Tierra Pro models. The Ergo model cut scallions perfectly but tended to crush the dowels and Norway maple branches, and it required more force to close around live branches than the other Tierra models did.
The Burgon & Ball RHS GTO/SC Bypass Secateur is like the Royal Horticultural Society that endorses it: respectable. It opens wide and snaps shut hard, but it could cut a ½-inch dowel or ¾-inch buckthorn branch only if I forced it with two hands. It tended to crush the dowels, but it did sever them, and it made good, flat cuts in live branches.
The Fiskars Quantum Hand Pruner is not made to slice scallions, and it left dangling onion bits on more than half the cuts. The Quantum also cut the ⅜-inch Norway Maple branch unevenly and tore bark. The tool’s plastic latch extends out slightly beyond the level of the handles, which can be irritating if you’re using the pruners without gloves.
According to Fiskars, the Fiskars PowerGear2 “multiplies leverage to give you up to 3.2x more power on every cut.” However, power is not the same as finesse. In testing, the PowerGear2 tended to crush live branches and dowels slightly, and it required more force to close than other pruners. I needed to reopen and squeeze the PowerGear2 pruners three times to cut through a ¾-inch buckthorn branch. The blades also didn’t close especially smoothly.
The Gardena 8757 Classic Vine Bypass Hand Pruner required more force overall to close than other bypass pruners. Although it’s supposed to cut materials up to 20mm (.79 inch) thick, cutting the ½-inch dowel and the ¾-inch buckthorn branch with this pair was challenging. There are better options.
The Tierra Pro 38-1707 7″ Bypass Pruning Shears cut through scallions only half the time, and could barely cut through a ¾-inch buckthorn branch, leaving cuts with torn bark and an uneven surface.
The Corona BP 3350 Bypass Pruner with Adjustable Grip is economical, and you can buy replacement blades. However, I needed to use two hands to force it to close on the ½-inch dowel and the ¾-inch buckthorn branch, and both the ⅜-inch and ¾-inch branches were slightly crushed in the process.
The Corona BP 6310 had a hard time cutting scallions, and required significantly more force to close than most other bypass models; I needed two hands to cut the ¾-inch buckthorn. For $30, the Okatsune 101 is a better deal.
The Kenyon Forged Bypass Pruner 41406 did a decent job on scallions and raspberries, but it required more force to cut through wooden dowels and live branches than most other pruners in my sample.
The Zavaland Pruning Shears were the only pruners in my sample that were completely incapable of cutting through scallions. They could not cut anything without hard squeezing, even raspberry canes, and they just barely cut the ½-inch dowel and ¾-inch buckthorn branch. Do yourself a favor and get the ARS HP-VS8Z or Okatsune 101 instead.
For a slightly lower price than the Felco 2 pruners, you could get the AM Leonard 1286 Traditional Bypass Pruners—and keep them for the long term, since AM Leonard also sells a replacement-part kit for about $8. AM Leonard pruners are almost as comfortable as the ARS HP-VS8Z, though this model required two hands and force to cut a ¾-inch branch. These pruners shut more roughly than the ARS, Felco, and Bahco models.
The Fiskars 7936 PowerGear Pruner required more force than other pruners to cut scallions and raspberries, and cut the ¼-inch dowel inconsistently, but then it cut through the Norway Maple branch with just one hand. The clasp, the handles, and the gear housing are all made of plastic.
A rotating handle can reduce hand and wrist fatigue, but it can be awkward and reduce your power per cut. The ARS HP-VS8R Signature Heavy Duty Rotating Handle Hand Pruner resembles the ARS HP-VS8Z but has one handle that swivels on a pin in a 90-degree arc as you close your fingers. Otherwise, it features the same smooth, perfect action, and has the same sharp blade, as the ARS Signature Heavy Duty Pruner. The rotating sleeve did reduce the amount of power I could put into a cut: I needed to use two hands on the ¾-inch buckthorn to force the blades closed, whereas the non-rotating handle could do it one-handed.
The Felco 7 is similar to Felco’s other pruners but has a rotating handle coated in a stickier, rubbery material. Its blades’ action felt slightly rougher than that of the silky-smooth ARS HP-VS8R, but almost anything would.
The EZ Kut Heavy Duty Ratchet Pruner used to be a pick. In our tests this pair sliced through ¼-inch raspberry canes easily without ratcheting, and it ratcheted through ½-inch dowels and ¾-inch branches with no fuss and little force, but it could barely cut two out of 10 scallion samples. Ultimately, we think the flaws in the construction—riveted connections, plus an anvil-style blade that mashes green stems—overshadow the advantages of the ratcheting mechanism.
The Gardener’s Friend Ratchet Hand Pruners were the easiest-cutting ratcheting pruners we tested—and the second most expensive. Cutting through ½-inch dowels and ¾-inch branches with the Gardener’s Friend requires significantly less force than doing so with most other ratchet pruners, even though it takes the same number of ratchets for each pruner to cut through (two to three for the dowel, three for the ¾-inch branch). The Gardeners’ Friend pair also comes with a little mineral-oil-saturated sponge embedded in the handle for cleaning and oiling the blade, which saves you the bother of getting a rag out.
The Corona RP 3230 Ratchet Action Anvil Pruner is an economical choice. It’s lightweight, and it ratchets easily through thick branches, but it can also cut delicate scallion tops. However, the handles spread very wide, and the anvil blade is broad as well. When I tested the Corona RP 3230 on berry canes, I could not get it to cut ¼-inch canes without engaging the ratchet—and in the time it took to make three ratchets, the canes were well mashed by being held under pressure against the anvil blade.
The Flexrake LRB205 Ratchet Anvil Pruner did a mediocre job of cutting scallions, tearing four out of 10, and it could not cut through raspberry canes without engaging the ratchet. When I used the ratchet, it crushed and tore the canes on a majority of cuts. It worked better on dowels and branches, though, cutting the Norway maple and the buckthorn flawlessly.
The Gardena 8798-U SmartCut Ratchet Pruner is far more expensive than anything else in the category, mostly because it has an unusual feature: a lever to switch the pruners from plain bypass to ratchet mode. Unfortunately, the ratchet action doesn’t improve the Gardena’s performance except on the thickest branches. It failed to cut scallions six out of 10 times. It also crushed the raspberry canes, crushed both dowels, tore off some of the outer layer of the ½-inch dowel, and left strips of wood hanging from the Norway maple cuts.
The Flexrake CLA349 Classic 8-Inch Ratchet Pruner required more force to close than any other ratchet pruners when cutting every material except scallions. Since the point of ratchet pruners is to use less force, I can’t recommend this model.
I was unable to complete testing for the Flexrake LRB168 Ratchet Anvil Pruner because a tiny screw that holds the ratchet to the blades popped out and disappeared.
The Gardenite Ratchet Pruning Shears are slightly larger than other pruning shears, and they require a second squeeze at the end of every snip to engage the ratchet for a clean cut—even on soft scallion tops. That final squeeze makes cutting feel somewhat clunky compared with the EZ Kut’s smooth action. The Gardenite also required more ratchets to cut through branches: four to cut the ⅜-inch Norway maple branch, five to get through the ¾-inch buckthorn.
