Flymo Contour 500E Electric Grass Trimmer and Edger, 500 W, Cutting Width 25 cm, Orange

As people who know me will tell you, I am a very hard person to please. I also very rarely write positive reviews about things I buy, but this strimmer is genuinely so good that I felt compelled to write one. But firstly, just to get them out the way, there are two slight negatives: 1) The dead man switch is a little too firm to keep pressed down, and it does end up aching your hand every few minutes. People with less strength could struggle. 2) The spool does occasionally need to be manually pulled through. However, these are the only negatives I can find. The strimmer absolutely burned through our incredibly overgrown garden (the grass was almost a meter tall in places with weeds everywhere, tree stumps to navigate, big stones and bricks hiding underneath, and stone/fence edges too) and the machine didn’t use anywhere near as much nylon as I expected it to, and it easily stood up to every test. Whilst the machine is slightly heavy - and you do have to switch arms every 5-10 minutes - the results are certainly worth the pain! Genuinely didn’t expect the experience to be pleasurable, but it really was! Top marks, highly recommended!

Easy to assemble with a little help from YouTube. Head swivels nice and easy. The cable is long so i didn't need to use an extension lead. On the first use, found it a little heavy and trying to keep the switch depressed made my hand ache. Overall a good product at a good price.

After several seasons of backache after bending to cut lawn edges (and we have a few!) I took the time to read reviews on 'best' strimmers & this one seemed to tick the boxes, although not the cheapest out there. It arrived, was put together (simple with a little hindsight than actually on the day, but still quite easy), then out into the garden. Although it felt quite weighty at first, adjusting the front handle so that it became balanced to your height/preference made all the difference. My OH was very comfortable with it and the shoulder strap makes it even easier to move about with. It cuts well & the supplied cord seems quite heavy duty stuff that should last awhile. When the cord needs to be replaced it's well worth doing a search for 'other options' rather than the overpriced manufacturers ones. So far, well pleased with my purchase.

Once you’ve got it setup and gotten over the fact it requires a little bit of elbow grease it’s a very decent product. I’ve used mine a few times and it’s exactly what I want. You can see from video reviews online it edges well and it’ll strim down grass and weeds no problem at all. I’m extremely happy with the purchase. It does require some elbow grease. Weighs 3kg but it’s obviously sticking out a fair way in front of you. It’s much easier than going round the garden with shears though in my opinion.. granted they’re lighter but you spend 5x longer going around with them and I don’t know about you but my back/arms hurt after using them. Assembly instructions are awful, absolutely awful. There is a good video online however which made setting it up easy enough, would throw the instructions they send you straight in the bin. I’d never used a strimmer before and I wish someone had written this - you can go right up to the fence with it, use it right next to a patio. It doesn’t have a blade on it so you aren’t going to damage anything with it. Think it uses the little bit of cable inside to slice through the grass. Very good piece of kit and I’m happy with it. Just be mindful of the weight.

At the most basic level, this Flymo Contour 500E strimmer did its job and helped me cut down the area of overgrown lawn I was worrying about. So that's good. However, I had a struggle putting it together (the instructions were very poor) and I found it really unwieldy & awkward to use. The power lever requires a pretty strong grip to keep it squeezed. The product comes in a conveniently compact box for delivery, but the down side of that is that you have to assemble the bits. There are instruction diagrams and (very limited) text descriptions, but there are errors in some of the explanations, for example the numbers identifying components in the text don't match the numbers on the diagrams. I'm moderately capable with this kind of thing, but it took me 15 minutes to put everything together and I'm still not confident that I fitted the strimming cord properly. The product came with a cassette of strimming cord in place in the machine, which is good, but I'm unsure whether it is fitted right, as the diagrams for that are really unclear. But it cut the grass and I still have both my eyes and all my digits, so I guess it's OK. Having said that, my arms really ache after using the strimmer for 20 minutes or so. It isn't really heavy, but it doesn't feel well balanced and it takes a real effort to keep the power lever pressed while manoeuvring the machine. I'm a middle aged man of average strength and it seemed like a really hard squeeze was required to keep the handle pressed to keep the motor running. So for me or my stronger, fitter friends this is ok to use, but I would not be recommending it to anyone who doesn't have reasonably strong arms and a good grip! Overall, it does the job but could be more user friendly and needs a better set of assembly instructions.

As described . Lightweight and easy to handle/use

I was thrilled when I first got this. It has a head on it that you can adjust and it's great for trimming the edge but ti's very heavy. I'm a woman but I suffer from a bad back so it was problematic in that way. It's a beautifully made product well thought out, and good for the money. However the thing that absolutely let it down was as with all strimmers the blooming wire. It had a double one so I thought thank God for that I won't have to keep stopping switching it off to save my fingers and sorting out the wire every two minutes. Nope it still did it That thing when the wire snaps and you have to either disasemble it or get a pair of tweezers to pull it out. It took longer to do that but it's still the same. Still a beautiful piece of kit, if you want sturdy and reliable this is it.

I'm delighted with the grass trimmer, which is sturdily built, powerful, looks nice, works well and is good value for money. It is packed into a small box, so it needs a bit of assembly, but the parts push together and click into place - no tools are required. The grass trimmer does a neat job, but the automatic feed only operates when you let the machine stop, so if you keep it running, the cutting cord soon becomes too short to do anything. I'm glad I bought some extra cords! (There is a manual feed, but you'd be daft to operate this without unplugging, which is inconvenient at best.) I particularly like the lawn edging facility - the little wheel helps to guide along the edge of the lawn and to produce a neat finish. This is particularly important to me: I got the 25 cm machine to it wouldn't dig down too far at the edge. It says that the start switch needs two hands (to ensure you don't endanger your hands) but it doesn't! However, it would be hard to start it accidentally and it would need some contortion to get one hand in the way. It comes with a 10-m orange flex with an ordinary 3-pin mains plug, which is good because I guess most people will need to use an extension cable. The machine has cable storage lugs, although I tend to coil the cable and hang it up with the machine. There isn't really an easy way of hanging the machine up in my shed - I will have to install a storage bracket, as I don't like things cluttering the floor. I kept my previous grass trimmer for 20 years and this looks like it will be good for the same. My Flymo hover mower has done 30 years with little maintenance - so I have high expectations for this one!