Top positive review
127 people found this helpful
Works well for home use
By Sundowner on Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2018
This is a great trimmer for home use. It's light, can do both trimming and edging, and has improved significantly over the previous model. The cordless concept gives you a lot of freedom. I have a corded edger with a blade and it's great for the really challenging parts of the lawn, but nothing beats the convenience of this cordless model. How well does it trim? For a home with a front and back yard (probably around 4000 sq ft lawn space) I found the 3Ah battery just enough to cover both yards if using a judicious mix of the two power settings. The low power setting is fine for most of the trimming and even some of the edging, but I use the higher power setting for thicker growth. This is for St. Augustine grass common in the south. If you have hardier substances to cut or if you need to use the higher power setting more than I do you may have to charge in the middle of the job and it does take a while to charge an empty battery. You can also buy additional compatible batteries on the Black and Decker 20v systems on Amazon which I would recommend for those with larger/tougher jobs. Which one is for you? The biggest differences with this model series are the batteries they come with and the string feed mechanism. I've included a chart to help understand the differences between the models. Some thoughts: - The basic 522 and 523 appear to be physically identical trimmers except for the string feed. The 522's is automatic, the 523's is manual. My old 400 had an automatic feed that worked but there were times I would have liked to have been able to feed it when the automatic didn't trigger. - The 523 appears to be sold in two options (at least it was when I bought mine). One option comes with a 3Ah battery, the other comes with a 1.5Ah battery. The bigger battery is heavier but lasts longer. If you have a smaller lawn, or you want the lightest weight, maybe the smaller battery unit is better for you. Although the unit is not heavy, you may feel it after using it for forty minutes. Again, if battery life is an issue, Amazon sells additional batteries separately, and they're compatible with the whole line of Black and Decker devices including cutters, drills, and more. - The 525 seems to be identical to the 523 but comes with a choice of either a 3Ah battery or two 1.5Ah batteries. - The entire 500 series (522, 523, etc) are a big improvement over the 400 series due to modifications to the trimmer/edger conversion mechanism and also the change of the auxiliary handle's friction clamp to instead a fixed pivot point on the handle assembly. This makes the 500 series easier to use and more reliable. 6-Jun-2019 update: Saw a bunch of negative reviews from people that had issues with quality control on their units. I don't doubt them. I had issues with the previous generation of this unit. All I can say is that even with issues, I got four years out of the previous model and this one so far has worked fine. Stories of the awful (and probably outsourced) support from Black and Decker are disappointing, but that's the price of dealing with some corporations.
Top critical review
4 people found this helpful
Good trimmer, battery/charger another story
By pk on Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2019
This review is based on performance after only a few uses of the trimmer. As such, long term durability of the trimmer or overall battery life cannot be assessed. The demand on the trimmer would be considered as light/medium duty. Primary tasks include basic grass trimming along rock walls fences and other similar boundaries not reached by a mower. Additionally, it is used frequently on patios and driveway comprised of paver stones, both along edges and the surfaces themselves (weeds, crabgrass grow between stones). Update Sep 2020: Within a month of each other both the battery and charger failed. This is about 15 months from purchase date and after generally light and infrequent use. Just purchased aftermarket battery and charger and significantly less cost than Black and Decker which would have set me back about the cost of a replacement trimmer. Durability of the new charger and battery TBD. The trimmer itself continues to work well. Overall, the trimmer performed well: reasonably light and easy to handle, better than expected run time (use of both power settings), effective cutting of most grasses and medium sized weeds. Edging also works reasonably well but the lightness of the trimmer works against it slightly in that it tends to want to wander a bit until you get used to it. As expected, there was power starvation in the presence of thick and tall growths. The higher power setting helped, but don’t expect performance to rival a more robust gas powered trimmer. One annoyance is the lockout button which is required to be depressed (in this case horizontally) before the trigger can be activated. Since I like to pulse the trimmer, the need to push the lockout button for every time I want to pull the trigger becomes annoying and uncomfortable. Continuous use is not an issue since the lockout button will remain depressed as long as the trigger is activated. Line replacement is easy enough to do and takes only a few minutes. Although the user guide indicates the line needs to be wound uniformly and without crisscrossing, in reality the winding can be done imperfectly as long as it is not overly sloppy and tight. Ironically, the only time the line failed to auto-feed was on initial use of the trimmer with the factory wound spool.
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