Online reference sources and stores: there are few authoritative sources in issues that regard electric trimmers, lawn edgers, and related accessories. As usual, the best resources are forums and sources of user-generated content. Good expert reviews are few and far between, and, as is normal for the part, include little of the reliability information that would be critical for homeowners getting ready for a purchase.
Online Sources
The best of the user-generated sources is gardenweb, with several active forums in the subject. The best of these forums is the Lawn Mower's Forum, but interesting information can also be found in the Lawn Care Forum and the Garden Tractors Forum. An example of such direct testimonies is this Worx thread - although, because of the nature of the topic, this thread includes little information about long term reliability. Another example is this electric vs gas trimmer thread. The equivalent site for commercial operators - rather than homeowners- is the Lawn Site, with a wealth of information regarding professional equipment, which, unfortunately, rarely scales well to home use due to different requirements. Another forum primarily focused on commercial operators is the Lawn Service Forum. The Lawn Mower Forum is a good source of information for powered mowers primarily, as is the section of My Tractor Forum focused on lawn tractors. While there are many other lawn-related forums, we have not found them either to have enough traffic or to focus sufficiently on lawn tools to be useful.
Good numbers of valuable user reviews for electric trimmers and edgers can be found at Amazon, Lowe's, Home Depot, Sears, Walmart, and Mowers Direct. Other retailers also carry reviews, but in smaller numbers, and therefore are less useful. Unusually, Troy-Bilt also offers customer reviews - a laudable feature that we would like to see on all manufacturers' sites.
As usual, expert reviews are less useful - they typically fail to assess reliability, and often usability, in a manner that allows them to appropriately map to users' concerns. Consumer Guide has reviewed several string trimmers and lawn edgers, and the reviews appear to have been written by people who actually used the item. Consumer Search published a general string trimmers review, which includes specific selections for electric trimmers. Their background discussion is good, although some of their selections suffer from lack of in-depth analysis. Consumer Unlimited offers a weak summary review of string trimmers. Galttech, while short of providing a thorough analysis, offers a quick selection of some good models for lawn edgers string trimmers. This Old House has a brief and incomplete discussion of cordless electric trimmers and of multi-head string trimmers. Lowe's recently dropped its string trimmers buying guide, and only has brief buying guide for hedge trimmers and edgers buying guide. Garden Guides has a short discussion on grass edgers.
Online stores
Beyond Amazon and the large superstores, we found few specialized retailers with a good selection of power garden tools. The best places to find electric string trimmers and edgers online are Amazon, Home Depot, Lowe's, Sears, and Mowers Direct.
1 comment:
If you have a large area to edge/trim with a lot of driveway, sidewalk, and concrete alley to cover, a walk-behind gas-powered edger trimmer (like a McLane 101) will let you complete the edging trimming in about 1/4 of the time and with a lot less work. I use a string trimmer for the hard to get to places, only about 10% of my yard.
Post a Comment