A few weeks ago my Flymo Compact 300 gave up the ghost. I had only had this lawnmower for 2 years, and over the last few weeks, a crack started to appear in the main casing at the front. As I kept mowing, the crack developed into a rather large hole and a large chunk of it dropped off. One of the side clips had also "pinged" off, getting lost in the shrubbery, so I had tied this up with a strong plastic tie.

As the model had a 5 year guarantee (parts), on ringing Flymo, I took it to my local dealer to be looked at. After waiting 3 and a half weeks, I returned to the dealer, only to be told that a Flymo representative had called and that the mower was not covered by this parts guarantee. To add insult to injury, the representative accused me of "abusing" the lawnmower!

You may wonder why I have spent half the review talking about my old mower, well, I then went to B&Q to purchase a new one. After taliking to the salesman, he could not reccommend any lawnmower at all, basically stating that they were all complete rubbish and now throwaway items, with the lawnmower manufacturers making models out of cheaper and cheaper materials to save money. I therefore decided to simply go for the cheapest model with the longest guarantee.

This happened to be the Elan 32 cylinder mower. I had to assemble this, which took about half an hour. The model comes with a handle which you can move, depending on how thick the grass, which then lowers the blades. However, I have tried this handle on various different settings and neither of them makes any difference at all to the cutting prowess of the lawnmower. The grass simply seems to flatten rather than cut, and really doesn't give a great cut at all.

The grass collector box is also very inferior for the price, it might as well be one of those wicker-effect plastic boxes that you collect washing in, as it is just as flimsy. I don't really think it's going to last more t
han 5 minutes, not 5 years.

To conclude, I'm very displeased with lawnmowers as a whole, it seems that they are following the same path as many household items these days, as we go along the increasingly disposable society.