What the convention amounts to
Cordless garden machines are sold in two forms. One arrives with a pack and a charger and can be used the day it comes. The other arrives with neither, on the assumption that the buyer already owns both, and it costs substantially less.
The trade marks the difference with a word, and every platform has chosen its own.
Solo is a suffix inside the model name on several German platforms — the machine’s designation simply ends with it. Ohne Akku and ohne Akku und Ladegerät are the plain German statement, usually in the listing title. Bare tool and body only are the English equivalents. Some listings use a -0 or a -Solo in the part number and say nothing in words at all.
Nothing defines the convention, and nothing requires it to be used. A machine may be sold without a battery and say so nowhere except in a bullet point below the fold.
What it does not promise
It does not tell you which pack fits. A bare tool belongs to a platform, and the platform name is a second convention — an ecosystem badge that decides compatibility, often shared across a manufacturer’s whole range and sometimes across several brands. A bare tool without its platform named is an unusable listing.
It does not tell you whether a charger is included when a pack is. Those are two separate omissions, and a “with battery” listing that omits the charger exists.
It does not make the price comparable. This is the practical damage. A price table on a cordless shelf that mixes bare tools with complete kits ranks by carton contents rather than by machine, and the cheapest row is the emptiest one.
It does not cover the voltage naming that sits beside it. The same pack is marketed as 18 V by one brand and 20 V by another — nominal against peak — and that is a third convention again, with no more definition than this one.
The documents it sits next to
The pack’s rated capacity has a real document behind it, and a page here. The machine has its machinery and appliance standards. The platform badge has nothing.
Which shelves it reaches here
Every cordless family: battery mowers, blowers, shears, the battery scarifiers, the powered spreaders and the battery sprayers.
This site handles it in one way, consistently. Where the listing states that the machine comes without a pack, the page says so in its own first lines rather than in a footnote. Where the listing is silent, the page states that the contents are unstated. And no comparison table here places a bare tool and a complete kit in the same price column without the distinction printed in the row.
The questions that keep coming in
Does Solo always mean no battery?
On the platforms that use it, yes — it is that maker’s suffix for a machine supplied without pack or charger. Other brands write ohne Akku, bare tool, body only, or nothing at all, and the last is the problem.
Is a bare tool a worse machine?
It is the same machine. The word describes what is in the carton. If you already own packs on that platform it is the correct purchase, and if you do not it is an incomplete one.
How do I tell when the listing says nothing?
By the price against its own platform, and by whether a charger appears anywhere in the description. This site prints what the listing states about the pack, and prints the silence where there is one, because it is the single most consequential thing on that shelf.
Last reviewed 26 September 2026