Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have been cutting my 1/2 acre lawn (19000 ft2 of actual grass) with reel mowers for 7 years now. Reel mowers make for a healthier lawn since the blades of grass are sheared off rather than bludgeoned off like with a standard gas powered rotorary mower. This results in thicker grass, fewer weeds and fewer bugs. This is why golf courses use reel mowers almost exclusively. I started with the standard Scott's 20" mower from the local hardware store. It worked OK, but it was hard to push because the blades are in contact resulting in a lot of drag even when not cutting grass. And it didn't cut very evenly with lots of little tufts of grass left uncut. The result is that I had to often cross-cut the yard if I wanted it to look good. With this big a yard, even with 20" width that was just not practical. Next I tried 16" Brill mowers from Germany. These used a non-contact cutting system that greatly reduced the resistance, one because there was no friction with the blades since they don't contact each other but two because the blades are made of harder material and stayed sharp longer. The Brills had two problems. One there were too narrow. They did cut well in one pass, but there were just a lot of passes. And two they didn't cut tall enough. If you have very rich deep soil with frequent rain or where you can water often, then the grass can do very well when cut to the 1"-1.5" height that the Brill can cut. My yard has neither of these things. Then Fiskar came out with the Momentum mowers (now StaySharp Max) and we got two (my wife and I mow together, which is how we manage such a large yard with push mowers, though I have done it myself on occasion, so it is possible for one person to do it all). These mowers are unique in that they throw the grass clipping forward where they were cut and recut until they were cut into very fine pieces and fall below the level of the cut grass. The Momentum has a non-contact cutting system like the Brill, but it had a much heavier reel which resulted in higher momentum in the reel (hence the original name). This allowed more energy to be stored in the reel which keeps the mower from bogging down in a spot of heavy grass or stalling on a tiny twig. Also this mower adjusted for cutting heights up to 4"! Finally I could cut my grass at the 2" - 2 1/2" it does best at. But, and sadly there is a but, I came to not like the fact that the clippings were being thrown forward. First it tended to mat down the uncut grass resulting is some unevenness in the resulting cut, and two in thick grass it could be very hard to push since you were cutting new grass and recutting previously cut grass several more times. I think that all the recutting of clippings as well as the very large size of my yard resulted in the blades of these mowers becoming dull after just two years. When they first came out Fiskar didn't make a grass catcher for this mower, though there is one now. I am sure that with a smaller yard and the use of the catcher when the grass is very tall or especially thick that the mowers would have gone more than two seasons before becoming dull. So finally at the start of last year we bought two of these 17" StaySharp mowers. They use the same high momentum reel of the original Momentum, but these discharge the clippings to the rear. The maximum cutting height is 3 1/2" rather than 4", but truth be told I never cut at 4" with the Momentum because the clippings pushed the uncut grass down below the 4" cutting height resulting in many places not getting cut! The 3 1/2" maximum cutting height on the StaySharp should be just fine. I find the mowing effort to be much lower than the Momentum because the clippings are only being cut once and then discharged. Plus the clippings are falling on already cut grass so there is no matting down of uncut grass. The result is more visible clippings on the surface of the grass as one would expect. My solution if the clippings are too thick for my tastes is to take an electric leaf blower and just sweep the airstream over the surface of the lawn. This causes the little clumps of clippings to be broken up and *all* of the clippings magically disappear below the surface of the lawn. I can sweep in 10' - 12' wide swaths, so this doesn't take very long. But I only do this because I am fussy. The clippings for the most part dry up and then disappear below the surface in no more than a day on their own. And lastly if the trick with the leaf blower doesn't work I have a 36" manual yard sweeper that has rotating bristles that sweep the recalcitrant clippings off the lawn and into a catcher. This also fluffs up the wheel marks so I can catch them when I cross-cut if I want a perfectly manicured lawn. Based on all of this experience, I very highly recommend the StaySharp reel mower. One last word on reel mowers, I think that anybody without a clear physical disability or more than a 1/2 acre of grass (and really do you need to keep so much in grass? let some of it become meadow) should be cutting their lawn with a reel mower. We all need more exercise. My wife and I try to mow a 1/3 of the yard at a time (about 5000 ft2). For our sized yard and with two of us doing it only takes 20-30 minutes for each 1/3. So at a minimum we get 3 really good aerobic workouts a week. Since there is no fueling or starting, we can just come home from work, jump into our lawn clothes and grab a mower and go. So it isn't hard at all to get in a little mowing each day. In the spring when the grass "explodes" out of the ground, we often need to cut each section twice a week, so our workouts increase to 6 a week. But this is just in time to blow off the rust that has accumulated all winter and lets us get our "beach bodies" back. The best thing is that at the end of our workout we also have our yard cut. If instead we went to the gym and made a treadmill go round and round 3-4 times a week, we would still need to spend 3+ hours on the weekend guiding a hugely noisy gas mower over the yard. So with reel mowers you get the exercise we all really need more of and you don't "harsh the calm" of your neighbors. Viewed as a piece of exercise equipment, the $150 StaySharp is a very cheap investment in your health.