At a glance
There’s a stretch of fence at the bottom of the plot that grass and brambles have been fighting over for years, the kind of patch that makes any new strimmer feel like it’s being tested for real rather than shown off on a tidy lawn somewhere. I’d gone through two cheaper electric trimmers on that exact stretch before, both giving up on anything past ankle height, so I wasn’t expecting much when the BLACK+DECKER GL9035 turned up.
It’s a 900 watt corded strimmer with a curved shaft and two different cutting heads built in, line for the easy stuff and a heavier duty option for anything that fights back.
Overview and first impressions
Out of the box you get the trimmer itself, a standard single line spool already fitted, a spare heavy duty spool, and ten lengths of the heavier line to go with it. That’s a useful starting point, most electric trimmers I’ve used give you one head and leave you to buy the other separately. The shaft curves rather than runs straight, which puts the cutting head further from your feet and angled flat down at the grass rather than at the usual slant.
It’s licensed under a name everyone recognises, which doesn’t always mean much on its own, but the build quality here backs it up rather than just trading on the badge.
Check your ground before you start. Sticks, stones and wire all get thrown by the line at speed, and crossing a gravel path while it’s running is specifically warned against in the manual. Keep bystanders well clear, and never put the trimmer down until the line has properly stopped spinning.
Specifications and scores
This is the one that actually made me check my own scales twice. BLACK+DECKER’s current product page lists the weight of this trimmer as 0.0032 kilograms. That’s 3.2 grams, about the weight of a couple of paperclips, for a 900 watt power tool with a curved shaft you can feel the heft of the moment you pick it up. The manual that comes in the box says 3.2 kilograms, which is the figure every retailer selling it agrees on too. Somewhere along the line, three zeroes got lost off the official page, and as far as I can tell nobody’s gone back to fix it.
The noise figures fared better. Two completely different testing bodies signed off this machine, DEKRA in Stuttgart for the EU market and Intertek in Brentwood specifically for the UK under its own separate regulations, and both came back with exactly the same numbers, 95 decibels measured and 96 guaranteed. That’s reassuring in a way the weight figure very much isn’t.
It shares its manual with two smaller siblings, a 700 watt and an 800 watt version with the same curved shaft and the same features, just less power behind them. Worth knowing if you ever see one going cheaper and wonder why, you’re not getting the same motor.
How it performed in our tests
That fence line finally went properly. Grass and weeds well past ankle height came down without the motor labouring once, and where the brambles had got a proper hold I switched to the heavy duty dual line and went through them in a couple of passes rather than fighting it. The single line head on its own takes a bit longer to clear an area than a double line would, that’s just how a single strand works, but it’s noticeably less fiddly to rethread when it does run dry, which on balance I’ll take.
The curved shaft took me a session to get used to, the head sits further from your feet and points straight down rather than at the angle most trimmers use, but once it clicked it made working along that fence line easier, less leaning and twisting than the old ones I’d gone through on the same patch.
Whichever head you’re not using, don’t lose it. There’s a dedicated storage slot built into the body for the spare spool, the only two models in this range that have one. Clip it in there rather than leaving it loose in the shed where it’ll inevitably go missing.
Assembly and switching modes
Fitting the guard is one screw, the secondary handle clips on over a button on the side and locks with a satisfying click once the teeth line up properly. The telescopic height adjustment only stretches about ten centimetres in total, less range than I expected, but I’m an average height and never once wanted more.
Switching between trimming and edging mode is a case of releasing the height clamp and rotating the tube one way or the other, clockwise for trimming, anticlockwise for edging, and it only turns in that one direction each time rather than spinning freely, which took a session to stop fighting against.
Performance and limitations
It’s not a light tool and I won’t pretend otherwise, you feel the 3.2 kilograms by the end of a longer session, real kilograms, not the 3.2 grams the website would have you believe. Ear protection is worth taking seriously given the guaranteed sound power sits at 96 decibels, and the second handle earns its place rather than being a token gesture, get its position right and the balance through a long stretch improves noticeably.
It’s double insulated, so no earth wire to worry about if you ever need to fit a new plug yourself, brown to live, blue to neutral, and the manual is specific that the earth terminal should be left untouched entirely. A 30mA residual current device on the circuit is worth having for extra peace of mind, the manual recommends it rather than insists on it. An extension cable up to thirty metres of the right gauge causes no drop in performance, more reach than I’ve needed on my own plot but worth knowing if yours runs longer.
The usual warnings about prolonged use apply too, regular breaks to avoid hand and arm strain, and the manual’s own residual risks section even covers dust from cutting, copied over from a different tool category by the look of it since there’s not much sawdust involved in strimming grass. Spare line and spools are easy enough to track down by catalogue number if your local shop doesn’t stock them on the shelf.
- Real 900W power, copes with proper overgrowth
- Both cutting heads included with a spare spool slot built in
- Curved shaft makes long sessions less of a stoop
- Generous 30 metre extension cable allowance
- Genuinely heavy for a corded electric trimmer
- Official spec sheet has a glaring weight error
- Telescopic height adjustment is narrower than most
- Spool cover can be stiff to remove first time
Final verdict
That fence line is finally winning for once. The power’s real, the dual cutting system genuinely covers two different jobs rather than just adding a second box on the packaging, and the curved shaft is one of those design choices that sounds minor until you’ve used it on a long stretch and felt the difference.
Where it loses a little ground is the weight and the paperwork around it. It’s a heavy tool, no way round that, and the official spec sheet’s own weight figure is wrong by a margin so large it would be funny if it weren’t also the kind of mistake that should have been caught before it ever went live. Neither changes how well it cuts.
If your garden has actual overgrowth rather than a lawn that just needs tidying, this earns its place. Just trust the manual over the website if you ever need the real number.
A powerful electric strimmer with a dual cutting system that actually earns its place, let down only by its own weight and a spec sheet typo nobody’s fixed. The best choice in this batch for genuine overgrowth.
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