Nearly impossible to find this mower in an actual Lowes store anywhere in the Upper Midwest in mid-August! Finally ordered on Lowes.com and, after a week's delay, got one sent. $375 after online Lowe's coupon I found. Set it up when it arrived yesterday (well, after I charged up both batteries first) and took it right to the tall 6" grass in our ditch. (It was the only thing growing much this month in our parts.) OK, it didn't match our 21-year-old Toro recycler for speed and power but, with the setting on the highest level, it did take care of business at a somewhat slower rate than we're used to. The 30 pounds LESS weight we pushed/pulled/turned made mowing the ditches a LOT easier on the muscles and joints. My wife's grin pretty much told it all. Yes, she does most of the mowing. I do all the fixing ... like replacing the gas tank on the old Toro with a new one that arrived the day before the Greenworks mower. Since nothing else was growing much we dropped the level down to where we're used to, remowed the ditches and all looks good. You can actually TALK(!) to each other while mowing when this is humming along. Gone are the shouting episodes or just plain shutting down the Toro to talk to the operator. We DON'T have a manicured, golf course sterile, biological desert lawn without weeds. We LIKE wildlife and diversity so we have lots of GREEN things growing in our lawn that are NOT grass species. (It's why our lawn is green and others' are brown right now, unless they pour liquid $$ out their hoses onto the grass every few days.) I did mow one small strip of the yard that is pretty much just grass, about 5" long (remember our Toro was out of commission) due to the neighbor's overspray from water and fertilizer. This thicker grass did manage to get balled up under the Greenworks set at our regular trim level but would not have looked a whole lot better with our Toro since the grass was that long and dense. Another pass or two and the clumps were chopped up.
BOTTOM LINE IN TERMS OF PERFORMANCE -- we think that not having to buy gas, fill and refill the tank, store gas, treat the gas over winter, change oil, change plugs, change air filters, take up a bigger footprint in the garage, having to lean UNDER the bottom to clean it (so gas/oil doesn't leak out when tipped on side) are all factors that overrule the negative aspect of having to move a bit slower in the taller grass with the Greenworks mower. I wish we'd have gotten it earlier in the season to be able to give a more valid review but we will post here with any and all irritating flaws if/when we come across any. I should note that we did not use the grass catcher in our trials and really don't plan to in the future. (Why take the nutrients OFF the lawn?)
IN TERMS OF CONSTRUCTION, I'd agree with some other reviewers that the connection points with the handle to the mower could be problematic in the long run. I'm hoping the lighter weight of the overall mower will not stress those joints as much as I've seen in other mowers we owned or used in the past. I'm pleased with the detailed diagrams and list of ALL parts in the user manual but am concerned with others' reports of problems getting Greenworks parts and dealing with their customer service. It's convenient that the two-piece handle will collapse and you can tip the compressed unit 90[SUP]o[/SUP] so that it can be stored vertically with only the back wheels on the floor (front wheels skyward). You'll have to create some way for it to STAY that way because, unlike other electrics I've seen, it doesn't automatically do so on its own. I'm concerned about the handle connections because we expect to do this every time we use the mower and will have to loosen and tighten all 4 connectors each time we do this. There are no tools needed for this but I wonder how long the threads will withstand this repeated usage. If we ever decide to really get RID of our Toro, we won't need to store the Greenworks in this small of a space, but I can't see getting rid of that oldie until it really dies.
REGARDING THE BATTERIES, we noted that after 20 minutes of mowing those ditches we were able to get 2 out of 4 lights to light up on the larger battery's indicator. I would crudely figure that put the usage at 50% of this new battery mowing tall grass and weeds. We haven't had the need to use the lower capacity battery yet. After reading way more than enough at
Battery University about lithiums, I'll withhold judgement as to what that even means but will post ASAP if we experience any disappointing results. I do plan on buying another large capacity battery as our lawn is about 1/3 acre and we don't want to have to do it in two sessions. (First we'll see if we can get the whole thing done in one shot with the 2 batteries that come with the unit when the grass is normal length.)
Stay tuned for more details (if we ever get rain). I'll also post on our experience mulching up leaves when they start getting thick and heavy in the coming months. I would venture to say that we will likely never attempt to mow/mulch in conditions as wet as we have in the past with our Toro. Though these occasions were rare, I just don't think the design of the Greenworks would be suited for those situations.
Mow on!
