Flymo Contour 600HD Electric Grass Trimmer

Very disappointing, 26 April 2010

By 

Mrs. A. L. Bradshaw (England) –

  

This strimmer is billed as heavy duty and with automatic variation speed sensor – these are the main differences between this model and the lower ones. Sounded good – and as a gardener who has always been pleased with Flymo strimmers I decided to go for it. Turns out that the heavy duty element is simply the cutting line which is 2mm thick instead of the normal 1.5mm, nothing to do with any extra robustness or anything. This model has a new spool arrangment – you have to thread the cutting line through two very fiddly little discs – I know that the original holes can be a bit tricky when you’ve got your gardening gloves on but trust me this is a nightmare and the line breaks so frequently during use you will soon get very frustrated.

But the main problem with this strimmer is the completely unecessary speed sensor. The idea is that in lighter strimming conditions the motor will automatically slow down and then go at full speed when the going gets tough. Which sounded like a nice idea but in practice the motor speeds up and grinds down to a trickle completely randomly so you will be cutting quite happily one minute then suddenly the thing slows right down to the point where it almost stops cutting and starts churning and then takes ages to speed up again – if it does decide to speed up that is. So a fairly standard lawn edging job that normally takes about ten minutes took nearly half an hour what with all the stopping and starting and re-threading. You can, apparantly, override the automatic sensor by giving the trigger a quick squeeze and it should go back up to full speed but again this was very hit and miss and after a while the motor cuts out completely and you have to wait for the thing to calm down and then start the whole pantomine again. Decided I would give it another go the next day and would you believe that after a few minutes of stop-start, the motor cut out completely and wouldn’t restart at all. Needless to say the strimmer has been sent back and we got a full refund. Pity, really. Can’t understand why Flymo have fiddled about with what is basically a good product and completely ruined it. No noticable difference between 300 and 600W motors as far as speed or power is concerned, either.

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