Ryobi’s yard aisle sells most of its tools twice. String trimmers, blowers, hedge trimmers, chainsaws, and mowers each come in an 18V ONE+ version and a 40V version, and the two platforms share nothing, not even a charger base. I built my whole workshop around Ryobi ONE+ years ago, then added 40V gear once the yard outgrew what 18V could handle, so I’ve paid the entry fee on both sides. Most homeowners never need to. The right voltage comes down to how much ground you actually cover, and the number that settles the question isn’t the one printed on the tool.

Two platforms, zero shared parts

The overlap in the yard aisle is deliberate

Ryobi runs two separate battery systems that ignore each other completely. ONE+ spans more than 300 tools at 18V, most of them workbench and indoor gear. The 40V line is smaller at roughly 85 products, and nearly all of it lives outdoors: mowers, chainsaws, blowers, snow blowers, and the rest of the gas-replacement catalog.

The yard is where those two lines collide. Ryobi sells a string trimmer in both voltages, and the same holds for blowers, hedge trimmers, and chainsaws. In every one of those categories, the 18V version wears the lower price tag, sometimes by half.

That price gap is where the damage happens. Someone already holding ONE+ batteries buys the cheap 18V trimmer, discovers it can’t keep pace with the lawn, and picks up the 40V version a season later. The garage now holds two trimmers and two incompatible battery systems for one yard.

The second platform’s real price is the battery

A 40V pack costs more than the tool it powers

The 40V 15-inch Expand-It string trimmer lists at $119.00 bare. A 40V 4.0Ah battery packaged with a charger runs $218.00. The battery outprices the trimmer by nearly $100, which puts the true cost of stepping onto the 40V platform closer to $337 than to anything on the trimmer’s tag. Buying the pack by itself doesn’t rescue the math either, since a bare 4.0Ah battery is still $159.00. Kits hide that number rather than removing it. A 40V trimmer bundled with a battery and charger looks like a single purchase, but you’re still paying the platform fee, just folded into one line item.

Now look at the 18V side of the same aisle. The ONE+ 13-inch string trimmer is $69.97 bare. If ONE+ packs are already sitting on your shelf, $69.97 is the entire transaction. Nothing gets added for a charger, and the battery drawer stays exactly as full as it was. That asymmetry explains why the cheap end of the ONE+ catalog keeps paying off for people who stay on one platform.

None of this makes 40V a bad buy. It makes a second platform an expensive thing to enter halfway.

A small lot never needs the 40V shelf

Twenty minutes of runtime covers more yard than it sounds like

Ryobi rates the 18V trimmer at over 20 minutes of runtime on a 2Ah pack, and a 4Ah pack stretches it further than that. On a quarter-acre suburban lot, trimming means a fence line and a few bed borders. Call it five or six minutes of trigger time. Nowhere near 20.

The 18V yard lineup reaches past trimming, too. Ryobi sells a 12-inch ONE+ mower that also trims and edges for $149.00 bare, aimed squarely at small yards and crowded garages. Add the $69.97 trimmer and a homeowner with existing ONE+ batteries has the whole lawn covered for a little over $200, with no second charger involved and no new battery chemistry to keep track of.

Runtime worry pushes more people toward 40V than runtime itself does. On 2.5 acres, a pack dying mid-job costs you the afternoon. On a quarter acre, the job was over before the pack got warm.

My property doesn’t work that way. Most properties do.

Two and a half acres moved everything outside to 40V

The mismatched tool is where the money leaks

My lot runs roughly 2.5 acres in Northern Indiana, and an Exmark Lazer Z zero-turn handles the open ground. Everything the mower couldn’t reach used to fall to the 18V ONE+ trimmer, which survived exactly one wet Indiana spring. The head bogged down in anything past ankle height, and I burned through packs before the fence line was finished. That trimmer still hangs in my garage. It just doesn’t go outside anymore, and it earned a spot on my list of Ryobi tools that weren’t worth the money.

The 40V version runs an hour on a 4.0Ah battery, 119 minutes on an 8.0Ah, and delivers more power than a 25cc gas trimmer. My 18V blower went to my brother-in-law the same season, because the 40V blower had already made it redundant. One yard doesn’t need both, and the tools that earn garage space before spring tend to sit on a single voltage.

The one 18V holdout outdoors is my hedge trimmer. Shrub work happens in short bursts across a handful of plants, so it never asks for more than a ONE+ pack can hand over.

Battery Type(s)

Lithium-Ion

What’s Included

2 Batteries

One yard, one voltage

Ryobi’s overlap works out well for Ryobi. Both platforms are solid, and neither one is a mistake by itself. The expensive move is buying a tool from each column and paying two entry fees to maintain a single lawn.

Measure your ground before you measure specs. A small lot with ONE+ batteries already in the garage gets finished by 18V tools at the cost of the tools alone. More acreage than a trimmer can walk in 20 minutes, and 40V earns its $218.00 battery, provided every outdoor tool you buy afterward lands on that side too.