It's strong enough to do do what it is supposed to do. The technology is good however, the sheet metal work needs improvement, which has no influence on the functionality of the machine. Also the placement of the emergency button has to be placed differently because it's easy to trigger it by mistake. All in all at this point, I would buy it again.

I have run it for about 5 hours now. Chip size is very consistent. It devours softwood no problem. But dry hardwood is very difficult to feed and pulls the engine down. And as i expected, petrified wood wants to bouce back. But all in all it works pretty good. I hade a rock go through it so i needed to flip the blades already. I bought an extra set , but i plan to sharpen them when needed, however there is no blade adjustment, so i believe after sharpening it will produce larger chips due to design.

Glad I got the 5 inch throat. I have only used it for blackberry Vines. Wish it had a self feed roller like the Vermeer 1000xl. Those are safer otherwise you have to be really conscientious of how far you put your hands down. The blades are extremely sharp and will cut anything thrust down there without a problem.

The pull start is pretty stiff if you can get an electric start it would be nicer.

Remember 5 inch throat doesn't mean it will handle a 5 inch diameter branch. Maybe it would if there were no side branches to cause it to hold up in the throat.

Overall it's a good machine for small garden use.

I only wanted it for my vines and the occasional small diameter branch. For everything bigger i have a couple of real wood chippers. One 12 and another 18 inch throat with autofeed rollers. Oh and make sure everything is cleared out of the chamber before quitting. Doesn't matter how big the chipper. It will jam otherwise.

Overall, I am really happy with this wood chipper. I am using it to make a wood chip trail through a wooded area in my backyard. Pros: Easy to move around - especially like the handles on the chute, and the large wheels, that make it easy to move around. Engine seems to be good quality. Cons: I was having a major problem with clogging in the outflow chute. I found the problem for that... the wood chips were not getting thrown up all the way out of the chute (the chute had about one foot of metal on the underside). Especially wet branches. The chips were falling back down into the cutting rotor and clogging it. Once I realized this, I cut off the bottom part of the chute, as seen in the photos, using a metal cut off tool (angle grinder). So now the bottom of the chute is free to disperse the wood chips and this totally fixes it and I have not had clogs since. If anyone else buys this I highly recommend to do the same. And I would recommend the manufacturer to also modify this outflow chute to prevent this problem. One other con - The marketing says this cuts 4 inch branches - but I have not had luck with that... they do fit in the chute, but I feel the cutting rotor (whatever it is called) is not capable of chopping up that size of branch. Other than that, I am really happy with it so far. My wood chip trail is coming along nicely.

Pretty good quality for a chinese made product. Seller provides excellent customer service and is extremely responsive in getting issues and problems addressed.

I am not sure if my unit got damaged during shipping or if the tolerances for the rotating anvil/blade within the drum are very tight so it does get stuck sometimes without a physical obstruction but so far I have been able to forcefully get it unstuck and get it operational again. I have only used it a few times so maybe this will get better with time and happen less and less.

Other than that, it does extremely well and makes mincemeat out of the thick 5" branches and starts up immediately with the electric start.

If you want to save some significant money compared to name a name brand american made product, this is about as good as it gets.