Hykolity vs National Tree Company 7.5 ft Trees

The short answer first, since that is why you clicked. If you want a 7.5 foot tree that fills a front window, comes with the lights already wired into it, and does not cost what a department store wants for the same height, buy the Hykolity. This December will be my fourth season with mine. If you want a narrow tree for a tight corner, branches that look closer to real, or a company big enough to sell you one replacement section in year five, National Tree Company is worth the extra money. I will show you exactly where they win in a minute.

Here is what I actually own, so you can weigh my opinion properly. The tree in my living room window is the Hykolity 7.5 ft prelit with 1,450 branch tips and 450 warm white lights, hinged sections, metal stand. The only National Tree Company item in this house is a 9 foot garland on my banister, battery powered, and I have had it for two Christmases. I have never assembled one of their trees. Their garland tells me how they build things. Their listings tell me the rest. I will keep those two things separate instead of pretending I tested a tree that has never been in my house.

One more thing before the table. I have been decorating this house for 24 years, and I have bought enough holiday decor to know that the piece which looks best under store lights is not always the piece that survives four trips up and down the basement stairs. So I am judging both of these the way I would judge them in January, not in November.

	Hykolity 7.5 ft prelit	National Tree Company 7.5 ft
What you pay	Less for the same height, and the tip count is printed where you can read it before you buy	More, and the number moves with whichever collection you pick
Branch tips at 7.5 ft	1,450 PVC tips, listed plainly on the box	Varies by collection, so read the row for the exact tree you are ordering
Lights	450 warm white LEDs already wired in, one plug for the whole tree	Prelit across most of the range, with different counts and styles by collection
How real the branches look	Even and full, and it reads as a nice artificial tree from the sidewalk	Their better collections use molded tips that look closer to the real thing
Setting it up	Hinged sections into a metal stand, about 20 minutes up and 40 more to fluff	Hinged on their prelit trees as well, so there is no real gap here
If a section arrives wrong	A smaller brand. I have not had to test their service, so I cannot tell you	A big name with a service line and a way to order replacement parts

How I Compared Them

Three seasons with the Hykolity in my own living room, which means I have packed it up and set it up three times, plugged it into the same outlet behind it every year, and watched how the branches and the lights held up. On the National Tree Company side I have two seasons with their garland, which is not the same product but is the same company building the same kind of thing, and I read their tree listings closely with my own tree standing right there for comparison.

I am not going to hand you a spec sheet and call it testing. Where I have not touched something, I say so. Where I am going on a listing or on what a company this size usually does, I say that too. You are spending your own money and you are allowed to know which parts of this are firsthand.

Where the Hykolity Tree Wins

The money, first, because that is usually the deciding row. I am not going to quote numbers, since listings move around all year and I would rather you check today's price yourself. What I will say is that when I stood in my living room three Novembers ago comparing them, the Hykolity was the cheaper of the two at the same height, and its branch tip count was printed in plain type where I could find it. That was the whole decision. I do not need a name on the box. I need the window to look right in December. I did it the way I do everything, with a notebook and a tape measure. I wrote down the height, the width at the widest point, the tip count and the light count for four trees I could afford, then sat at the kitchen table and crossed out the two that would not tell me their tip count at all. That took one evening and saved me a return trip in January.

The fullness is the part I did not expect to notice and now notice every year. 1,450 tips on a tree that measures 54 inches across at the widest point is enough that I can hang ornaments on the inside of the tree instead of only on the ends of the branches, and there are no bare gaps you can see from the street. My old tree was a 7 foot bare one from when we moved in, and every year I would squint at the same thin spots. I have not squinted at this one once. It stands 90 inches tall with a topper and still clears the ceiling trim in that room.

Then there are the lights, and this is the reason I bought it. Four hundred and fifty warm white LEDs, already on the tree, wired in so the whole thing runs off one plug. There is one outlet behind the tree and everything goes into it. My old routine was hauling out three tangled strings, testing bulbs on the floor, and losing most of one afternoon every year to something nobody ever sees up close. I do not miss it. The listing also calls it flame resistant, which I have never had to test and am glad of.

And it stores the way I need it to store. Three hinged sections fold down, everything goes back into the box it arrived in, and Gary carries that box down to the basement shelves and brings it back up the weekend after Thanksgiving. That is his entire job with the tree. The rest is mine and I do not mind it.

Where National Tree Company Wins

Realism, at the top of their range. If you have ever stood beside a very good artificial tree and had to touch a branch to be sure, that is what molded tips do. Their better collections are built that way, and they look more like a tree than mine does. Mine reads as an artificial tree from about three feet away, which is fine for my window and my eyesight at 62. Theirs reads as a tree. If that difference is the thing you have been hunting for, it is real and it is worth paying for. I noticed it in a store display before I ever read a listing. There was a tree near the front of a big box store that I touched twice before I was sure it was not real, and the tag on it carried the National Tree Company name. That is the whole reason I know the name at all. My Hykolity is a good tree and it has never once fooled me.

Shape options. They make slim and narrow profiles and flocked trees, and the Hykolity is one wide full tree at 54 inches across. If your living room will only take something narrow beside the fireplace, my tree will not fit and theirs will. That is not a knock on either one, it is just two different jobs. I have the wall space, so I never had to care about it. If you do not, you probably should.

Service and parts, which is the boring row and the one I would weigh hardest later. A company their size has a phone number and a way to order a replacement section, and I have never needed to find out whether the smaller brand does. I would rather tell you that honestly than pretend it does not matter, because in year six it might matter more than anything else in this article.

One caution from the garland on my banister, since it is the only National Tree Company thing I do own. It is well built, the battery box tucks behind the bottom post where nobody sees it, and two seasons in, every light still comes on. But the tips carry silver glitter that sheds a little every December when it comes out of the basement, and I keep a lint roller in the drawer for exactly that reason. If shedding glitter would annoy you on a staircase, it will annoy you more on a tree.

What the First Hour With the Hykolity Is Actually Like

Gary brings the box up and I open it on the rug. Three sections, heaviest one first into the metal stand, and the stand holds it steady while I work upward. The hinges drop into place and the sections line up without a fight. From opening the box to standing there with a lit tree is about 20 minutes, and most of that is me going back and forth because I am 62 and not in a hurry.

Then comes the fluffing, which is the honest cost of a tree that comes in a box. Forty minutes, spreading each branch out from the center so the tips separate and the whole thing stops looking like it just woke up. I do it once, properly, and then I do not touch it again until January. Skip it and the tree looks thin. Rush it and you will see gaps in the photographs your daughter takes on Christmas morning. Put on something you like and treat it as part of the afternoon. I start at the top and work down, and I do the back of the tree first because nobody ever looks at the back. My hands know the pattern now, so by the third season it took closer to 30 minutes than 40. The first year it took the full 40 and then some, because I was afraid of snapping a hinge. I never snapped one. The branches bend further than you expect and they spring right back.

Four hundred and fifty lights and one plug. The tree I strung by hand every year cost me an afternoon I never got back, and nobody ever saw the difference.

Two Things I Would Check Before You Order Either One

Measure the footprint and the ceiling. My Hykolity is 54 inches across and 90 inches tall, and 90 inches is the whole tree, so a topper adds more. I had to move a lamp the first year. I measured that wall twice, because the first number I wrote down was wrong by four inches, and the lamp that used to sit in that corner lives on the other side of the sofa now. Both brands sell many trees under names that sound alike, so read the size line on the exact listing you are buying rather than the one you looked at last week.

Read the tip count and the light count, not the photograph. A photograph is lit by someone who knows what they are doing. The tip count tells you whether the tree will look full in your own dim living room, and the light count tells you whether it will glow or just glimmer. The Hykolity numbers are 1,450 and 450, printed right in the listing. Whatever you buy, make the seller tell you the same two numbers out loud before you spend anything. Write both of them on the back of a receipt, along with the height and the width, and keep it where you will find it. You will be surprised how many listings make you hunt for a number that should be the first thing they tell you.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the Hykolity if you have one tree to buy, a window that wants filling, and a normal budget. Buy it if you are tired of stringing lights by hand and want the whole thing on one plug. Buy it if you are willing to spend 40 minutes fluffing it once a year and then leave it alone. It is the tree I would buy again tomorrow, and after three seasons I still have not found a bare patch I care about.

Buy the National Tree Company tree if the room will only take a narrow or flocked tree, if molded branch tips that look closer to real are worth real money to you, or if knowing a big company will still be there with parts in year six helps you sleep. Buy neither if you have nowhere dry to store a box that long, because a good tree ruined by a damp basement is the worst outcome in this whole article.