Customer Reviews for Flowtron 21 in. 5 Amp Electronic Leaf-Eater/Ultimate Mulcher

This leaf eater worked great, for a short time (used about 5 times). Until the plastic spinner melted and needed to be replaced. The company doesn't sell that part as a replacement part. Useless.

I debated over similar products for a while. After doing some research i opted to buy this over other brands, based on reviews and online comparisons. Price was still higher than I wanted, but so far its worth the money. It was easy to assemble and use. It took me about 15 minutes to put it together, the instructions are as easy as 1,2, and 3. Took about six bags of dried leaves and turned it into useable mulch in about 45 minutes (I did run the leaves through multiple times to get them as shredded as possible) which I just then spread into the lawn. Very happy with the purchase, it beats gassing up my lawn mower after already removing the gas, storing bags of leaves until the spring, and/or paying and additional sticker per bag to have them go out with the garbage.

I have used this LeafEater on 2 weekends for the equivalent of approx. 80-90 bags of un-shredded leaves (e.g. used about ½ of the cutting lines supplied). Here are my comments: 1) On assembling legs #17 & 18, the wing nuts #43 were 8-32. I had to re-tap them to 10-32 to match the screws #42. 2) I also had to enlarge the holes in legs #17 & 18 to .203” dia for the screws #42 to pass through. 3) When attaching the funnel #1 to the main housing, one of the funnel halves developed a crack. 4) After some shredding, I removed the air filter #34 and noticed quite a bit of dirt that had collected at the bottom of that cavity (see pic #1). 5) After removing that dirt with my shop vac, I saw daylight (pic #2). 6) That means, dirt can get into the air supply duct to the motor directly from INSIDE of the housing (see pics #3 & 4), rendering the filter almost useless. 7) I’ve closed these openings as good as I could with duct tape (see pics #5 & 6) and after finishing all the rest of the remaining leaves, that area still looks pretty clean. However, this is not a solution and those gaps should never have existed in the first place!!! 8) Toward the end of my shredding, I noticed the spinner wobbling more and more and the rumbling sound of it getting louder. It looks like the upper bearing of the motor is badly worn and needs to be replaced (see pic #9). That is also the reason for returning this “Leaf Eater”, as I don’t think it would last another season and by that time it would be off the warranty. 9) When, after finishing the job, I wanted to remove the funnel from the main housing for cleaning and applied some pressure with my thumb, the funnel cracked at that spot. This material is just too brittle and not flexible enough! See also comment #3) above. Summary: The idea itself is good, but not well thought out. It is a flimsy design and needs some improvements. One can not feed the leaves by large handfulls, I had to hold them over the funnel and slowly “sprinkle” them in. That way there was a constant supply of leaves to the cutting lines and the motor never had to labour. It is slow going and I could live with that, but not with worn bearings!!! With other words, yes it is a flimsy design, not a “heavy duty” machine, but one can manage as long as one does not overload or rough-handle it. I would gladly buy another one, as long as all of the problems mentioned above have been rectified.

Once you get the hang of feeding leaves into mulcher you can make quick work of the leaf pile. I use my "Sunware" big grab hands to feed the leaf eater. It makes great mulch. Replacing cutting bands is quick and easy. No more bagging and lifting of leaves. Mulcher is easy to move around the yard.

The design of this unit could have been better. Assembly: The first thing is that the black cone shape should have come as 1 piece instead of 2. You need to line up pins on both halfes and they all snaped on me. Also it wasn't user friendly to attach this cone to the housing, pins did not line up properly due to its cone shape and the pins snaped at this location as well. Would have been simpler if this cone was screwed to the housing instead of plastic clips that ended up cracking the plastic when I tried removing it to realign the pins. Operation: inside the unit were the cutting lines are, they should have put a circular piece of sheet metal liner about 5" high to protect the outer shell from flying debris. A small branch hit the plastic housing wall which isn't very thick in my opinion and made a good size hole right at the seam (see photo) the chunk of plastic flew about 10 feet away. Luckily it wasn't in my direction. They do have great customer service to replace these parts, but I'm disapointed considering that this machine was built in the USA. Needs re-engineering and design upgrades to work out these bugs.

Did the job. As long as you’re frequently change out the cutting string at the bottom of the device it works quite well. I have absolutely no complaints. Generates a lot of dust. Make sure you wear a mask and clean the filter on the device. Overall a very good value and helped us a lot with decreasing the quantity of leaves. Would definitely recommend device.

Works great,performs much better than i expected easy charging of the shredding lines. Easily shredded wet or dry leaves does exactly what they clame

Only used just once so far but wasn't disappointed. Mulch the dead leaves like I had hope. Will cut down on the need of lawn bags significantly. Unsure of the durability though, having used only once so far.

Can handle small amounts of wet leaves at a time, must clear frequently, but so far chopping cuttings pretty nicely.

Works as expected, just need to be a bit patient with wet leaves and not put so much in at once.

Easy to use. It's a real mulch monster!

Funnel should've attached better. Its quite flimsy....

Decent for small residential use

I've run this twice. A small stick destroyed the weed whacker cord, so I replaced it. Another stick threw the breaker. If you're going to use this, you need to carefully put each hand full of leaves in, and make sure all the sticks are sorted out, which is the right pace, because it really isn't very fast. Someone recommended mulching twice. I am having a hard time seeing how I'll get 15 bags of wet leaves through this before I collect another 15 bags this fall.

Does not accept enough volume of leafs in the hopper. The string trimmer is not adequate and poor design.

This is exactly what we need, easy set up, save bags, not so expensive! Nothing to lose to try it, lots gain for us! Happy leaves day!

I use the Flowtron to chop hay for a geriatric horse. It works quite well for that. I use the course setting because that seems to be her preference. Keep in mind this is an electric string trimmer not a gas powered chopper/shredder. It isn’t designed/intended to chop up twigs and sticks. If it starts bogging down, I know I have to either feed it more slowly or change out the line. Changing out the line is like changing out the line on a walk behind string trimmer. It is very light weight making it easy to move. If you use it for jobs for which it was designed you should be happy with its performance.

This is definitely NOT an ultimate mulcher as the title states. Boggs down too easily and trips the breaker. Breaker reset is not in a good place.

This Mulcher is just that - a Mulcher. It is a Weed-Whacker mounted in a cylinder. It will not cut up anything heavier than a 1/8" stick. It will not mulch wet materials. It will reduce the size of dry leaves and grass clippings to wonderful mulch for a garden. Let your grass clippings dry out for a week before putting them through the mulcher. This mulcher has a lower current rating than some of it's competitors, but that is an advantage when you are running off long extension cords in a far corner of your yard.

We live in the woods and needed help to control the leaves. I had mix expectations and read all the reciews before buying. The reason I bought this leaf-eater was the drum size and ability to select your leaf needs. It also includes an option to chip pine needles, which we have. It works great! We made sure to pick out sticks and pine cones before raking up the leaves. We dumped them in and watched the magic happen. Our leaves mulched to a managable amount and I felt would decompose quicker. Very happy! The top black piece just sits on top, but it did not come off while the chipper was in use. So the bad reviews on this feature aren’t a big issue.

There is a lot of down time in changing the trimmer lines. On shredding oak leaves, about 2 changes of included line per 30 gallon of shred. I found that .095 ridged string lasts for 30 gallons of shred. Small sticks will jam the chamber and funnel.

works sufficiently - a little more time involved feeding it and a bit of struggle to attach collection bag to device but it works good. Compared to what was 23 bags from last years accumulation was shred down to 4 not full bags of mulch is a plus. Good purchase for me.

Have used it a short amount of time so far, no issues, simply what I expected. You have to be careful to not overload and make sure sticks are kept out of it also. It eats through pine needles and leaves at a fairly even pace, doing what it should. Plastic trashcan under it instead of bags works well, at least for me. I would purchase again and ha e told friends about it.

Have trouble keeping the bag on, the little stretch straps aren’t strong enough…but other than that it works fine…oh, and if you use metal cable string instead of plastic weed trimmer string it works wonderful!

This is my second leaf-eater. The first one lasted 20+ years. It does a fantastic job with a LOT of leaves. I spread the mulch all over my landscape garden in the spring and don't have to weed.

It’s great! Easy to set up and use.

Rating provided by a verified purchaser