Grab One of These Top Pruning Shears to Tend to Your Bushes, Flowers, and Gardens With Ease

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No gardening tool collection is complete without a pair of pruning shears. These shears help you keep dead branches trimmed away and cut your flowers back with precision. As a result, choosing the right pair for not just your gardening needs but also your hand size and plant life is key.

A good pair of gardening shears is built with durable blades and an ergonomic handle. Whether you’ve been tending to your plants for decades and need a replacement or are just noticing a tinge of green in your thumb, check out the best pruning shears options below, as well as some helpful info to keep in mind when looking for our next pair.

Read more of our gardening tool reviews: Mini Chainsaws | Tools for Landscapers | Garden Hoses

The Best Pruning Shears

• Best Overall: Fiskars PowerGear2 UltraBlade

• Best Value: Dramm Stainless Steel Compact

• Best Adjustable Shears: Clipper BP Flex Dial Bypass

• Most Versatile: Gardena Two-Step Adjustable Bypass

• Best Heavy-Duty Shears: Banco Ergo Bypass PX-M2

What to Consider

What Type of Shears Do You Need?

The basic types of gardening shears are anvil blade, bypass blade, garden snips, and ratcheting pruners. Anvil blades have a straight blade and falling, slicing blade. Anvil-blade pruning shears are best equipped to handle branches, larger roots, and dead wood.

Bypass pruning shears have two curved blades and are best for slicing twigs, thin roots, and vines. Our top pick, the Fiskars PowerGear 2, is a bypass pruner.

Ratcheting pruners have a mechanism that locks the blade at certain increments as you pull the handles together. This improves the cutting ability by not relying solely on your hand grip strength.

Gardening snips have smaller, usually flat blades that are designed for more precise cuts to smaller plants and flowers.

Handle Style

The style of the handle is dependent on a number of factors, including comfort and size. Many handles meet the blade at an angle to provide greater leverage on your cuts. These angled handles can also provide more comfort when you’re using them and reduce the stress on your wrist.

Many pruning shears also have varying handle lengths. The options can help you fit the gardening shears to your hands. Shears that better fit your actual grip can help reduce strain and actually improve the effectiveness of the cutting than when operating a pair of shears that’s too big or small.

Materials

Nearly all pruning shears are made of steel. The quality and strength of that steel does obviously vary with each option, but steel is proven to be most reliable for the garden work that shears may be used for. Many options are hardened with carbon or come with an added exterior coating designed to improve long-term durability.

How We Selected

We chose these pruning shears based off of our own research, consulting brand and retailer pages with an eye on a number of key factors such as design, durability, variety, and positive verified customer reviews. We also considered out past Popular Mechanics coverage and tool testing, including our Yard & Garden Awards. We have no shortage of green thumbs here.

PowerGear2 UltraBlade Pruning Shears

The name “PowerGear” refers to the design that includes gears inside the pruner, which amplify the force of your grip up to three times to offer a shorter cut with more strength behind it. The “rolling handle” of the PowerGear2 facilitates this and offers additional comfort by rotating as you close your grip to stay in line with your fingers. But it doesn’t afford too much freedom for those unaccustomed to the feature—a clever balance.

It has a lifetime warranty, too. This Fiskars is a bit on the large size, which makes this tool ideal for medium or big hands.

Stainless Steel Compact Pruning Shears

These smaller pruning shears from Dramm are the ideal option for light trimming and snipping in the garden. They come with flat blades for seamless, easy cutting.

The shears have a corrosion-resistant coating on the blades that should help them last for many years even with the affordable price tag. The blade-lock latch is easy to use and requires only one hand to operate.

The grips on the gardening shears come in several unique colors, so you can choose the one that best fits your taste.

Clipper BP Flex Dial Bypass Pruning Shears

For a family who needs a pruner to fit multiple hand sizes, the FlexDial system on this Corona model offers a simple solution. Via the adjustable dial on the handle, you can choose from eight different positions to create the proper opening to match hand size or cutting needs.

The quality bypass cutting mechanism—with a high-carbon steel blade—gets the job done. A unique feature on the pruners is the gel grips, which are built to eat up some of the pressure and improve comfort.

Two-Step Adjustable Bypass Pruning Shears

The Gardena bypass pruners are built with enough strength and torque to handle larger roots and vines while still offering precision and sharpness for nipping flower stems. These pruning shears also have an adjustable slider; it doesn’t offer as many options as the Corona Clipper BP does, but it changes the handle width for a more universal fit.

The blades on the gardening shears come with a non-stick coating so you can easily cut through sappier branches and roots without fear of them gumming up the blades. The handle also has grippy, grooved sides for improved comfort.

Ergo Bypass PX-M2 Pruning Shears

Manufactured in France, these burly hand pruners have fiberglass-reinforced handles. These provide the comfort you need so you can lay into them and produce a stellar cut with the Xylan-coated, high-carbon steel blades. Expect a robust feel in your hand.

Bahco offers eight different configurations of the Ergo. You can choose from a variety of handle lengths and cutting heads sizes to tailor yours to your hands and pruning needs.

The angled handle design also reduces stress on your wrist and forearm while providing a bit of extra torque. Bonus: Certain parts are replaceable, so the whole pruning shear isn’t shot if one piece breaks.

F-8 Ergonomic Pruning Shears

The popular Swiss pruner maker Felco constructs the well-known Felco F-2, but this F-8 offers up versatility in cutting size. It can handle branches up to an inch thick (and thicker with a strong hand behind it).

The angled handle helps prevent the pruner from sliding through your hand. And Felco backs the aluminum alloy construction with a lifetime warranty.

Each part is replaceable, even though the premium, tempered steel holds an edge longer without the risk of rust. The Felco F-8 features a cushion stop, a sap groove, fine blade adjustment, and a wire-cutting notch to boot. If you have smaller hands, drop to the F-6.

20V NITRO Pruning Shear/Lopper

For a more powerful cut without breaking your wrist, the Nitro pruning shear/lopper is worth considering. The shears come with a 20 volt battery and brushless motor, so instead of relying on your hand strength, the pruning shears slice through branches and stems with the press of a button.

According to our test editor, Brad Ford, and senior home editor, Roy Berendsohn, the electric shears have, "enough power with both live wood and dead up to its full jaw width of about 1 inch."

The electric garden shears are also sensitive to the touch of the button, moving sequentially with a lighter touch and all at once if you hold down.

7.2-Volt Lithium-Ion Cordless Rechargeable Power Pruning Shears

Unlike other options that require a certain level of grip strength, the Scotts rechargeable power pruner is automatic. With an internal motor, these gardening shears have enough power to slice through solid roots.

The battery life is capable of making up to 800 cuts on a single charge. The gardening shears also come with a number of potential attachments, including a pole for high-up branches.

You can also purchase a 20-volt model for even more intense cutting.

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