Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I hate yardwork, and I hate my lawn - if I had my way, I'd just pour concrete over all of my grass and be done with it. My backyard is large enough to ALMOST merit a riding mower, slightly sloped (maybe 25 degrees at the extreme) and lumpy (I have no idea) with strange drainage issues that result in some patches of the lawn growing 4 FEET HIGH around its brethren, like some kind of tyrannical grass dictator (welcome to spring in the Pacific Northwest). This year, I put off mowing for so long my backyard basically turned into a meadow. My small dogs were disappearing into it, and it's entirely possible there are still neighborhood children in it, waiting for rescue. So right out of the box, this mower feels like a toy. I laughed when I opened it because it just seemed so...flimsy. It looks like something Fisher-Price would put out. It was easy to assemble - just the handle and attaching the tiny grass bag (which I took off 10 minutes into mowing). I wheeled it around the living room a little - it's light, fairly easy to turn and is so narrow I can actually just push it through my house and out my back door to start mowing (which is nice, because now I don't have to open my garage, go around to the back gate, unlock it, get the mower, come back around, mow and then do it all in reverse when I'm done). Imagine my immense surprise (and delight) when my husband shrugged, carried it outside, started it up and the mower immediately started chewing on the grass, spitting it out like an old-timey baseball player with a mouthful of chaw. After the third time we emptied the little bag that came with it, we just abandoned the bag and let the grass fly all over creation. If you are here looking to perhaps switch over from a gas to an electric mower, please allow me to share a few thing I wish someone had told me when I first started using an electric mower: - you need the right cord: different extension cords have different gauges (this might have been why my first two electric mowers bit the dust prematurely). The gauge depends on the length of the cord itself. DO NOT IGNORE THIS PART. I've had 2 electric mowers before this Sun Joe, and I think this is probably what killed them (using the wrong cord). - you need to be realistic about your expectations: they are never as strong as gas-powered mowers. If you are weak, hurt, impatient with yard work in general, horribly out of shape or otherwise don't think you can push around ~30lbs then don't get this. I'm in relatively decent shape (I do Jillian Michaels 3 days a week!) and even I struggle sometimes with getting this mower up and over my lumpy yard (I have no idea why it's lumpy. It just is.) - because electric mowers aren't as strong, you can end up going over the same area multiple times (3, 4, sometimes even 5 if your grass is high enough). You have to use common sense - when you hear the mower struggling, STOP MOWING. If you don't, you'll do what I did to my first two electric mowers and burn out your motor (learn from my fail, people). - these don't really save time as far as the mowing itself (see above), but it is REALLY REALLY NICE to just be done when you're done mowing (no oil, spark plugs, gas to worry about storing, etc). You literally just wipe it down, make sure all the nuts and bolts are still tight then wheel that sucker into the garage and take a nap. As you can see from the photos, 1.) this mower was able to handle my decent sized yard (over the course of several days) and 2.) I really wasn't lying to you when I said I don't care what my yard looks like, as long as the grass isn't higher than the fence (so the neighbors won't complain!) The before photo is what the entire lawn looked like before I started. Don't get me wrong - this wasn't an easy job. The Sun Joe did stutter and seize up a few times, especially when I got into tough areas of grass (where the blades of grass are like actual blades, WTF). But ultimately, it was able to take everything down with multiple passes. I choose to use electric mowers because they're better for the environment, less noisy and I don't have to figure out where to store gas or how to maintain the mower each fall. I'm willing to mow my yard in sections (giving both myself and the mower a rest), and go over areas multiple times, and do it over a course of several days. If you're short on time or patience with a yard larger than a postage stamp, then skip right over this guy and pony up the money for a good gas mower. If, however, you're like me and too lazy to upkeep a gas mower AND super cheap (and willing to do boring labor over a week), then this guy is pretty hard to beat for the price.