DeWalt 20V Max XR 12 Inch Chain Saw

So, let’s talk about chainsaws. Specifically the DeWalt XR 12 inch in that photo up there. I bought it back in March and promised I’d talk about it after I’d had a chance to use it, and then forgot about entirely. So here we are, five months later, and I finally remembered. Better late than never, I suppose. But one good thing about the delay is that I’ve had a chance to use this little saw a lot over the last few months and, spoiler alert, I like it a lot.

Not everyone needs a chainsaw, but there are times when you just can’t get a job done with any other tool. I have a gas powered chainsaw that I use for bigger jobs like whacking down trees. But for simply trimming off a few limbs, cutting up some bits of wood for the fire pit, cutting up a fallen branch, or trying to trim down a nice piece of wood to fit on the lathe, well dragging out a noisy, dirty, smoking, leaking, oily gas saw is a pain in the neck. And in the shoulders and hands. And in the ears… Well, you know what I mean.

For small jobs like cutting off a six inch limb or cutting off a 4×4 that’s too long and things like that, these little battery powered saws do a pretty good job. They’re light weight, quiet, don’t require you to mix oil and gas, make less mess and are generally a lot easier to handle.

There are downsides, though. They generally have a smaller cutting capacity than the gas powered saws, have less power, often a lot less power, resulting in the motor stalling out or bogging down, and often battery life is simply woeful. But not all battery powered saws are like that.

So, the DeWalt. I picked this one because it uses the same batteries that all of my other DeWalt tools use, the 20V Max power packs. I was a bit anxious about that because I didn’t think a chainsaw would be able to run very long off one of those batteries, even the larger 5 Ah batteries I use. I was pleasantly surprised, though.

This thing will set you back about $150 without a battery, or a bit over $200 with a 5 AH battery and charger. That may sound like a lot, but in the world of chainsaws that is cheap. You can easily drop $600 or more for a good gas saw these days.

Build quality is pretty good. Yes, it’s made almost entirely of plastic, but these days, well, so what? High quality modern plastics are incredibly tough, almost indestructible, and that’s the kind of plastic the outer casing seems to be made of. If you look at the first photo you can see from the bar that this thing has been used a lot since I got it, but the case looks nearly as good as the day I got it. This thing has been dropped off a table, had wood dropped on it, at one point got hit with a flying piece of wood weighing about 10 pounds when I was splitting up some wood, and while there are a few scuff marks on it, it still looks almost new. Well, it would if I’d bother to wipe it down.

Using it couldn’t be easier. The only controls are a safety lock that has to be depressed before the trigger will work, and the trigger itself, and that’s it. It automatically oils the chain so you don’t even have to worry about that. And there is a safety shutdown system that all new saws have, of course, that’s the big paddle directly in front of the top handle. Push that and it stops the saw instantly.

It still requires the chain to be oiled. If it didn’t do that it wouldn’t be long before the chain would seize up entirely from lack of lubrication. But unlike my old Poulan gas saw there’s no manual pump to keep pressing with my thumb, the DeWalt takes care of that automatically. It should be able to use any decent quality bar oil. Just make sure to thoroughly clean the area around the filler cap before opening it so you don’t get sawdust in it and plug something up. Bar oil consumption seems to be no worse than other saws I’ve used.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from people who have battery powered chainsaws is that they lack power. That doesn’t seem to be a problem here. I cut a two foot tall, 20 inch wide block of wood straight down the middle with this saw with the entire length of the bar embedded in the block. It complained a little but as long as I didn’t put too much pressure on it, it made the cut without stalling out. In normal use no one is going to do something like that, of course. So a lack of power is definitely not an issue with this saw.

Basically this saw is easily capable of doing the job it was designed for.

Now, as for battery life, that was surprisingly good. See that big pile of cut up bits of wood in that photo? I did all of that with two 5 AH batteries. Oh, and the second battery still had enough life in it that I used it in my string trimmer to trim around the house and gardens.

I did have one issue, and that was my own fault. It was a really hot day, temperatures well into the high 90s, and I was sawing with it, and even though I could feel it was getting hot I kept on sawing and finally it just shut down on me completely. Basically it overheated and it shut itself down. I went in the house, got some lunch, cooled down for a while, came back out and it started right back up and I went back to sawing.

Adjusting the chain isn’t hard at all, and doesn’t require any tools. New bars and chains are readily available if you need them and aren’t expensive. Standard chain sharpening tools will work just fine to touch up the saw, which is something you will need to do.

This is most definitely not the kind of saw you’re going to take into the woods to make firewood all day long or whack down full size trees. But it isn’t made for that. It’s made for occasional light duty use like trimming a few branches off tree, cutting the occasional 4×4 or 6×6 when building a deck, cutting up downed limbs, and that kind of thing. And for those kinds of jobs it works very well indeed. Run time with a new, fully charged 5 Ah battery is, at least in my opinion, surprisingly good.

I did manage to overheat the saw on one occasion, as I said. That was my own fault. I was working on a day when the temperature was in the high 90s, and I was cutting at the maximum capacity of the saw for way too long, and it got hot enough to shut itself down. It recovered quickly and started back up as soon as it cooled down. That was the only glitch I experienced while using this saw over the last four months.

Overall I like this little saw a lot. I’ve had to sharpen the chain twice now, but considering how much it’s been used that’s normal. I haven’t had to drag out my gas powered saw since I bought it.

Endnote: Sometime yet this year a tree service is coming in to take down the big ash tree in the backyard. We’re going to keep the wood because A) it’s cheaper than having the service deal with it. A lot cheaper. B) We have a nifty heavy duty stainless steel high tech fire ring thingie we bought last spring and we need stuff to burn in it, and C) I might get some more wood to feed the wood lathe.

There is no way I’m going to be using the little DeWalt on that beast. The trunk is probably close to three and a half feet thick and the main limbs are bigger than most of the maple trees around here. And I doubt my elderly Poulan can deal with it either so I might end up still having to get a new gas powered chain saw this fall.