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.

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

Expect to receive what you pay for when buying this object.The main selling point is it's price. Incredibly affordable if you're desperate to have a strimmer on a budget. It cuts grass and turns on.However it is a heavy piece of equipment that can and will tire you out. The adjustable handles offer little support in this area as they remain at the same position relative to each other meaning the load is always being carried at the top of the handle. The telescopic handle is incredibly stiff to use and I feel like I'm going to break the handle when attempting to extend.The operation of the machine is also impractical. The safety switch is located towards the front of the upper handle (inside the arch) and makes it hard to keep the trimmer running as it is awkward to operate whilst simultaneously holding the machine up and moving.The edging feature while good, does suffer from the string breaking almost instantly upon use. The "auto" feed is anything but, and you will find yourself on the floor more often than not, as you will constantly be needing to adjust the line back out to cutting length. The trimmer does not have a auto cutting feature for the string so you will need to ensure the distance is correct every time.3/5 for price, that it turns on, and that it cuts.

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.

My 18 year-old Flymo grass trimmer recently gave up the ghost. The plastic joint on the shaft had snapped and whilst the motor was running as well as ever, it was rendered unusable. I did my usual research and decided upon this particular 300W version as a like-for-like replacement.The main selling point for me was its lawn edging ability and in particular, the design of the edging wheel. Many trimmers seem to have only one or two small rollers which I though may not last the test of time whereas this one has a large central wheel - much sturdier and more practical looking. It's performance on paper is slightly higher than my old one with 50 extra watts of power and a 2cm larger cutting diameter. It doesn't seem like much of a difference but in practice, is very noticeable.If I had reviewed this strimmer immediately after using it for the first time, I'd have said it was horrible and wouldn't have recommended it. It was a bit of a faff to build (mainly because I found the instructions to be poor due to the lack of text) and I ended up just looking at the photo of the trimmer on the box to see what it should look like once assembled. It's a wee bit heavier than my old trimmer - probably because its bigger but is still pretty light. However, the shaft flexes at the plastic joint and this means that it wobbles about a bit when you're using the trimmer to cut tall grass. I'm not entirely convinced of its longevity but we'll see.The main issue I had when I first used it was that when used as an edger, you have to strim from right to left. With my old one, I did the edges from left to right so found it quite difficult to control and had to work out an entirely new route around the garden instead of the one I'd followed for 18 years. This meant that some plant leaves met with an untimely end and the lawn edges looked 'less than linear' (a mess!) in some places. With my old trimmer, you only had to flip the entire thing over to swap between edging and long grass trimming but with this, you have to push a button and flip only the trimmer head over; a case of slightly pointless 'progress.' However, with an open mind, I thought that I'd gradually get used to this new approach and I certainly have. I'm 5ft 10in and find that the overall length of the trimmer is just fine and I don't have to stoop at all, especially when using it as an edger as most of the weight is over the large wheel.I mentioned the slight step up in specification compared to my old Flymo trimmer. The extra 50 watts makes this trimmer feel significantly more powerful than my old one to the degree that wearing PPE is a must. Even a stray bit of strimmer line pinging off can feel like you've been shot with a BB gun and will leave a 5p-sized red, painful lump on uncovered legs. It'll easily kick up small stones when you're trimming around gravel beds and generates enough dust in dry conditions to make me appear as if I've served a shift down t'pit. I'm exaggerating about that but a shower is definitely in order after using this! The extra 2cm cutting diameter means that the trimmer will do a better job of edging further down the sides of the lawn where grass can grow outwards. I'm not finding the rather flimsy-feeling leaf protector to be much use though and just take a bit of extra care around tree trunks and overhanging plants instead.I've had no issues whatsoever with the twine breaking during use. I've always found that the trick with auto-feed systems is to stop completely every 45 seconds or so and allow the trimmer to spool out more line, thereby preventing it from getting shorter and shorter then eventually becoming unclipped from the reel and having to be re-loaded. It's certainly cut through everything I've asked it to - and then some!I have about 300 linear meters of lawn edge to trim each week during the growing season and (now!) find that this trimmer is well up to the job. It's a mixture of straight and curved edges against soil beds, patio and gravel, with a couple of tree trunks thrown in too. I've included some photos showing the type of edging I do and the results I've achieved. This is a good trimmer, especially for lawn edging. It's more than powerful enough for general domestic use and with a bit of practice, gives excellent results. My only reservation is that plastic joint in the shaft and if that was sturdier and of a better design, the trimmer would be worthy of five stars.