Fiskars PowerGear2 bypass loppers help you keep the bushes and trees around your home looking great, with long handles, a clever geared mechanism, and sharp steel blades. The PowerGear mechanism cuts through thick, green branches with minimal effort. We love the sharp, clean cuts that are so vital for the health of a plant.

We trimmed small tree saplings and established shrubs all around the perimeter of our yard, and these loppers consistently cut through branches up to 2 inches in diameter. We were especially impressed with how well they handled mature wood that typically calls for a different approach (like our best overall, anvil pick).

These loppers do struggle a bit with some 2-inch green branches, but a second squeeze is all it takes to get through the thickest cuts. There’s no crushing or tearing that could leave the plant open to infection, even on those more difficult cuts, and the blades remain in tight alignment. So tight, in fact, that we had to loosen the adjustment bolt a bit.

The long handles are great for reaching higher branches, but our best telescoping, bypass pick gets a little longer if you need the extra reach. These loppers are a bit heavier than that one, too, which can lead to fatigue when holding them over your head for long periods of time, but the handles are quite comfortable. If your branches are all closer to the ground, our best compact pick is shorter and costs a little less.

_{Type: Bypass︱Blade Material: Alloy Steel︱Overall Length: 32 inches︱Weight: 4 pounds︱Cut Capacity: 2 inches}

If you’re managing a landscape of mature trees and woody shrubs, you’ll appreciate the Tabor Tools GG12A’s solid anvil action, sharp steel blade, and powerful leverage that makes short work of the toughest cuts. Compound leverage multiplies the amount of force applied, so even extended pruning sessions feel less fatiguing.

We had some low-hanging crab apple branches that interfered with mowing, so that’s where we put these loppers to the test. They handled the mature branches easily—every cut was clean, with no crushing or tearing, thanks to the sharp blade and tight alignment of the anvil.

We cut through branches over 1 inch in diameter in one squeeze and enjoyed smooth operation through multiple trees and shrubs around the yard. The handles are comfortable, though basic, and the loppers are light enough that we only felt the weight when holding them up overhead for long periods of time.

These loppers have plenty of reach for lower branches, but they’re a bit short for reaching high branches. Our best telescoping, anvil pick is a little longer but also heavier and even more tiring to use on high branches. If you have a lot of high branches, you may want to consider a much longer option like our best pole pruner pick.

_{Type: Anvil︱Blade Material: Carbon steel︱Overall Length: 30 inches︱Weight: ‎3.75 pounds︱Cut Capacity: 2 inches}

These Fiskars bypass loppers deliver professional-quality limb-cutting results at a list price of just $20. Our overall best recommendation, a more advanced Fiskars option, costs over twice as much, so this is a great option for gardeners and homeowners who want an everyday pruning tool for less.

Bypass loppers are best for green stems and live branches, so we tested this one on a volunteer sapling that we found growing out of a bush in our yard. It sliced through the sapling with ease, and the long handles allowed us to reach deep into the bush to cut it off down near the root.

We also found a bunch of big sugar maple and fir branches around our yard after a big storm, and these loppers cut that hard, mature wood down to size. Our best overall, anvil pick can handle bigger mature branches, but these low-priced loppers perform surprisingly well on smaller branches.

These bypass loppers have sturdy steel handles with a rubber coating, and we found them comfortable to use. They don’t have a compound or geared cutting head, so you really need to stick to branches that are 1.5 inches or smaller in diameter, but the simple design performs exceptionally well for the price.  

_{Type: Bypass︱Blade Material: Alloy Steel︱Overall Length: 28 inches︱Weight: 2.9 pounds︱Cut Capacity: 1.5 inches}

The Fiskars 15-Inch Anvil Loppers are ideal for tight spaces, providing more leverage than pruning shears (with a powerful geared cutting mechanism) while remaining easy enough to maneuver between branches and deep into overgrown bushes.

After using these loppers to remove invasive bittersweet vines, trim forsythia, and prune a variety of backyard branches, we love the geared cutting mechanism and sharp, tightly aligned blades. The handles are much shorter than most of our favorite loppers, but the geared mechanism helps make up for limited leverage.

If you have a lot of lopping or pruning to do, and your branches aren’t thicker than about 1.25 inches in diameter, then these loppers are a good, lower-cost option.

They’re very lightweight (less than 1 pound), which makes them easy to use for long pruning sessions (the soft, rubber-coated grips help with that). We struggled with thicker branches, but the flexibility and maneuverability of this tool more than make up for that shortcoming.

_{Type: Anvil︱Blade Material: Steel︱Overall Length: 15 inches︱Weight: ‎13 ounces︱Cut Capacity: 1.25 inches}

The Wolf-Garen RR900T is ideal for homeowners who want one tool that’s capable of both ground-level pruning and overhead work. The long, telescoping handles lock into place securely for hard-to-reach branches and collapse down effortlessly for more precise cuts.

We put these loppers to the test in both extended and collapsed configurations, and the dual-pivot cutting head provides plenty of leverage even when the handles are collapsed. They cut through thick branches (ours were up to 1.75 inches in diameter) in one try and without a lot of effort.

We trimmed green sucker shoots and overgrown lower limbs, and these loppers cut through both with ease. These loppers are so effective that we cut a bunch of branches up for kindling to use in a backyard bonfire. The only real issue we had was when the tightly spaced blades held on to some severed branches, and we had to force the handles apart to let loose.

The cutting head feels heavy compared to the lightweight handles, which take some getting used to. It’s especially apparent when holding the loppers overhead, but the weight distribution felt like it reduced our wrist and shoulder strain compared to other loppers. They’re almost half a pound lighter than our best telescoping, anvil pick, which helps with fatigue as well.

_{Type: Bypass︱Blade Material: High carbon steel︱Overall Length: 26.5 to 35.5 inches (adjustable)︱Weight: 3.86 pounds︱Cut capacity: 1.97 inches}

These telescoping anvil loppers provide all the force needed to cut through the toughest branches, so they’re perfect for properties that have a lot of trees with high limbs and bushes that sit lower to the ground. We love the ratcheting mechanism, which makes them exceptionally powerful without requiring a lot of effort.

We tested these loppers on peach and cherry tree limbs, and the ratcheting mechanism makes the job easy every time. They have the same cut capacity as our best overall, anvil pick, but the handles extend a bit longer (and collapse for precision pruning work as well).

We also tried these loppers out on other tasks, like removing sucker shoots from under a fence and cutting up kindling for firewood, and they work well there too.

The grips are quite comfortable for extended use, but these loppers are heavier than our best overall, anvil pick, and most other options. That makes them a bit more tiring when working overhead, but the long handles help make up for that. The ratcheting cutting mechanism helps with fatigue, too, since it doesn’t require as much effort and gets through big jobs faster by cutting through thick limbs with a single squeeze. 

_{Type: Anvil︱Blade Material: Carbon steel︱Overall Length: 15.75 to 31.5 inches (adjustable)︱Weight: 4.2 pounds︱Cut Capacity: 2 inches}

If you have a whole lot of pruning and lopping to get through, or your branches are especially thick, the Black + Decker Alligator Lopper is significantly more powerful than other options. This battery-powered device is similar to anvil loppers, but the anvil has teeth for gripping, and the blade is a chainsaw.

We used these loppers to prune flowering bushes with small branches, remove a volunteer sapling that had grown to about one inch in diameter, and cut up 4-inch branches that wouldn’t fit into an electric wood chipper—perfect for kindling.

Due to the powerful chainsaw cutting action, these loppers require less physical effort than any others we’ve tested. They’re quite heavy, which can get tiring, but there’s very little force required to make each cut.

You won’t find loppers more powerful than this one, but that has a downside. The alligator grip prevents slippage and results in the cleanest cut we’ve seen a chainsaw make on a branch, but the cuts aren’t as clean as you’ll see from loppers that use sharp steel blades.

_{Type: Alligator︱Blade Material: Steel︱Overall Length: 24.4 inches︱Weight: 6.8 pounds︱Cut capacity: 4 inches}

The Ryobo One+ battery loppers slice through branches, both green and mature, with no manual force. The design is similar to pole loppers, like our best pole pruner pick, but with the ease of use expected from a battery-powered model. They’re ideal for casual gardeners, since there’s no learning curve, and also great for lopping a bunch of branches quickly.

We used these loppers to clear low branches and overgrown bushes along our treeline to make mowing easier, and the clean cuts impressed us (along with the speed at which we completed the job). Ryobi lists the maximum branch size as 1.25 inches, but we cut through branches up to 1.5 inches in diameter cleanly on the first pass.

These loppers are heavier than our other recommendations (our best heavy duty pick, the next heaviest, is about 1 pound lighter). That tends to make it tiring to hold overhead for long periods, but we felt no fatigue at all when lopping branches down closer to the ground.

Due to the pole-like design, we found these loppers very easy to maneuver and pick out specific branches to cut without getting stuck (even when holding them up overhead). They aren’t great for tall trees if you don’t have a ladder, but we trimmed lower branches from the ground more easily than we would have with manual loppers.

_{Type: Bypass︱Blade Material: Steel︱Overall Length: 30 inches︱Weight: ‎7.8 pounds︱Cut capacity: 1.25 inches}

The trouble with most loppers is you can’t reach high branches without climbing a ladder (and operating loppers on a ladder can feel precarious). The Fiskars Tree Pruning Stik is the solution to that problem, with a pole that extends up to 12 feet and a smooth bypass-style cutting head that cuts cleanly even when reaching high overhead.

We used the Tree Pruning Stik to lop maple and crabapple limbs up in the canopy, and also trim back lower shrubs (although it’s a little awkward for that due to the length). We recommend smaller loppers, like our best compact pick, for close-up work like that.

Fiskars recommends sticking to branches smaller than 1.25 inches in diameter, but we used the cutting head on slightly larger branches without any issues. If you have thicker branches, the flip-out tree saw works well on branches up to 6 inches in diameter.

In addition to excellent overhead pruning performance, we also love how lightweight the Tree Pruning Stik is. It’s about the same weight as our best telescoping, anvil pick, even though it’s almost 11 feet longer, so we never felt fatigued when lopping high branches.

_{Type: Bypass︱Blade Material: Steel︱Overall Length: 7.9 to 12 feet︱Weight: 4.3 pounds︱Cut capacity: 1.25 inches (up to 6 inches with included tree saw)}