Posts Tagged ‘flymo turbo compact 330’

Flymo Turbo Compact 330-Any Good ?

A well manicured lawn is attractive to the eyes. It might sound silly, but it invariably cheers people up and makes our houses look much more pleasant and more importantly cared for. But unfortunately mowing a lawn can be a real pain especially an oddly shaped lawn. Fortunately some of the best lawnmowers on the market can make the job a lot easier that it used to be – the question is does the new flymo turbo compact 330 cut the mustard. I’m not a big fan of hover mowers but to be honest it’s been a while since I tried one.

Click for Best Price on Flymo Turbo Compact 330

The Flymo Turbo Compact 330 Grass Collecting Electric Hover Lawn Mower (phew that’s mouthful) has a 33 cm metal blade powered by 1500 Watt motor which should be more than adequately powered for most gardens.

With a fairly large grass collection bin which can accommodate 30 liters of grass, it does minimize the main time consuming part of mowing the lawn which is emptying the grass every five minutes. To be fair the Flymo stored a decent amount of grass although it doesn’t compress nearly as much as some lawnmowers so you’ll still have to empty it quite a bit on a normal sized lawn.

The brochure says the unit is designed to withstand the test of time with a minimum level of maintenance, although I found this particular Flymo to fee a little flimsy but it’s often the case with the electric mowers which make a real effort to minimise the weight.

The cable is approximately 15 meters long which is a decent size, if you’ve had an electric mower before you’ll know whether your garden is suitable. If you haven’t just think for a while, if you’ve got lots of ornaments, shrubs and flower bed interspersed in your lawn are you going to manage pulling a cord along. It’s perfectly ok on many lawns where there aren’t many obstacles – but on some lawns using a corded mower is an absolute nightmare.

Inside the package, you get the Turbo Compact 330 unit (which is the mower in case you’re wondering), an instructional guide and a guarantee registration card. The instructional guide will help you set up the unit. It will also help you on how to properly use the product. It has the dos’ and don’ts so you will have an idea on how to take care of your unit. A one year warranty is already included with the product. It’s pretty easy to set up but as I mentioned it doesn’t exactly feel sturdy – despite this feeling it’s actually quite heavy compared to many electric lawnmowers even when hovering.

Now for the real test, how does it actually cut the grass? Well I tried the Flymo Turbo compact 330 on a relatives lawn – the grass hadn’t been cut for about two weeks in August so was quite long. It was perfectly dry though so it shouldn’t have been too bad, but I’m afraid it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

When I started using it all my remembered horrors of using Flymos in the 1980s came back, it doesn’t seem that they’ve improved much. My main problem (which is a fairly fundamental one) is that it doesn’t cut the grass well – because it’s quite heavy the hovering motion just seems to squash a lot of the grass rather than cut it.

I went over the lawn twice and there were big areas which just had squashed grass, it just lefts these clumps all over the lawn. It was fairly pointless going back over them as the more they got squashed the less likely the grass would be cut – I’m sorry but this is a big fundamental design flaw if the Flymo Turbo Compact 330 I used is typical. Maybe mine was faulty but it looked like more than that to me.

These mowers are pretty cheap but there are loads of better ones at similar price points. It’s honestly not worth saving a few quid getting a mower like this, it’s kind of depressing spending ages mowing a lawn then it not looking much better and the Turbo Compact 330 made a right mess of cutting my relatives lawn. It’s main selling point is cost but you’d expect a few years service out of even a cheap mower and this mower is just not that good at cutting grass – have a look what others think on the Amazon site – Opinions on 330 – I am not alone I think!

Do yourself a huge favor and spend a few pounds extra and get the much, much better mower here – I’ve had mine for four years and it cuts beautifully – it is frankly in a different league to this hover thing.