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

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!

The assembly instructions were difficult to follow thank goodness for google and you tube videos once assembled the trimmer does all you would expect regarding cutting and edging apart from it being slightly heavy it’s a very competent tool

Excellent item. Easy to put together. Fantastic quality and value. Perfect. Fast and efficient.

Arrived in good condition . The flymo Trimmer is excellent tool & sturdy in manufacture works really well, the height adjustment makes it easy to use & no strain on my back. Very easy to assemble instructions. Would recommend this tool.

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.

Excellent purchase, it is so much more powerful than other makes/models and so easy to use. Fantastic on your lawn edges and does not struggle at all. Only comment I would make is it’s a heavy unit being the bigger model but doesn’t bother me. The black & decker went straight in the bin