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Challenge Hedge Trimmer
by NotMyToothbrush
Our garden is fairly large as this was one of the main factors we took into considerations when moving house 4 years ago. With a large garden (generally) comes lots of hedges. With lots of hedged comes the need for a lot of hedge trimming. For this reason we obviously needed a hedge trimmer but, considering we had just moved, we really ... didn't have the money to get an expensive one which, we thought, may do a better job. For this reason we got this hedge trimmer from Argos at around £25 which is very reasonable - when looking around Focus, the standard price for trimmers appeared to be about £40-£50!
Being so much cheaper than others trimmers we were expecting the worst when it came to actually using the trimmer though. Despite our doubts we still went ahead with the purchase and were pleasantly surprised when we came to use it. We have all sorts of hedges around the garden; some thick, some sparse; some old, some new; some tall and some small; but this hedge trimmer handles them all the same - with ease. One swoop over the hedge with the trimmer is usually enough to take off all of those stray branches and make the hedge look neat again - from time to time you may need to go over parts of it for a second time but at the end the result is near perfect - far better than you would ever expect from a £25 machine!
Operating the trimmer is the same as most others. Hold on the sideways handle with one hand (Your non-dominant hand usually), and hold onto the other handle with your other. The second handle has a safety switch which controls the blades, whenever you let go of the trimmer with this hand, the trimmer will instantly cut off and the blade will come to a halt, preventing any nasty accidents which could otherwise occur. Being a safety switch where you must press two buttons simultaneously, it reduces the changes of any little hands getting to operate the machine without you being aware and putting them in a dangerous situation.
The trimmer features a shield to cover the users hands from cut branches. Whenever I used a trimmer before this one, one of the things I hated was that I could end up with cuts all over my hands from branches hurtling towards them after being cut down. This is a thing of the past thanks to such a simple inclusion in this product and my hands thank the designers for this!
The biggest issue with this is that it is wired. Despite the wires being very long and pretty flexible means that you are not really restricted by it, you run the risk of cutting through it. The power of the trimmer means that you can do it extremely easily, you could go through it without even realising it. This means that unless you know how to connect the two ends of wire together, you will be left with an unusable trimmer.
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Black & Decker GL5028
by theshoes
On first appearances this seems strange little beast as you'd expect a Black and Decker to be green not orange.... But colour confusion aside this thing is the business for keeping edges neat and tackling bits the mower will not go near.
It's got a 500w electric motor but it comes with a relatively short power cable (6 ... metres) so if you don't have one already you'll need an extension cable as this will likely fall short in any longer gardens or with anyone without an outside power socket who has to put the cable through a window!
Assembly of this little machine was absolutely minimal and it's so light! I can remember tackling my mums garden years ago with a similar looking model and after half an hour my back was broken.. No chance of that here thankfully as this is very light indeed and has a telescopic shaft making it easy to adjust to your height so no bending over...
Performance wise this Strimmer does not disappoint at all. It's got good cutting power and width for a small machine and the metal "guide" that sticks out the front makes it easy to cut round washing poles, fences and to edge the lawn without burning through piles of string through hitting solid objects. The guard is also very effective as there is minimal "kick back" of debris from cutting through weeds etc although safety gear is a must with all power tools, and if you use a left to right motion you further reduce the risk of kicking stones etc. back at yourself from the rotating cutting string.
Feeding string is also very easy. Simply release the power button, press the head of the Strimmer into the grass, release and press the power button again... This Strimmer has one of the most reliable auto-feeds I've ever used and coming from a family of bad gardeners I've burned through many a Strimmer over the years!! When the string is done the cartridge is very easy to replace and very cheap to source online - another plus for this machine as so many "cheap" Strimmers sting you after the fact when you need to pay a fortune to replace the cutting string.
On the downside it's very noisy, more so that other machines I've used, but to be fair the cutting power of this machine is astonishing for its size so that can easily be forgiven and ear defenders are best worn anyway. And back to the cable length... Way to short for this short of product, if you don't have an outside power socket your guaranteed to need to buy an extension cable.
In short a good little Strimmer but the short cable lets it down a little.
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