Features:

  • Powerful 13 Amp motor with 8000 RPM mulches up to 12 Gallon (46 L) of leaves per minute
  • Reduces yard waste up to 1/16th its original size
  • Conveniently attaches to leaf bag-lined trash container for easy disposal
  • Adjustable control dial with settings for wet or dry yard waste
  • Dust-reducing motor cooling system for cleaner air during operation; Lightweight and compact for easy portability and storage
So far, so good.

This is one of the two most affordable shredders on Amazon. So far, I am pleased with it, and I will amend this review if my feelings change. It is simple to operate, and went together easily. The quality is about what you would expect at this price range. Warning: registering this item online is a real pain. The included paperwork includes a handy piece with the model and ser. numbers, but if you attempt to register online using the listed address, it goes to some wonky shared site that only wants you to download forms. I finally got it done by going directly to the company site, NOT the one stated in the paperwork. From there is wasn't too hard to get the job done. Good luck with yours!

Great leaf mulcher

I've tried the handheld mulchers before and in my opinion this one is a lot easier to use for mulching up a ton of leaves. The benefit of a handheld mulcher is you can just walk wherever the leaves are and suck them up. The downside is that the bag gets filled up really quickly. However, with this mulcher, just put it over a trash can and pile the leaves up in a stack nearby the mulcher and one at a time grab a pile, stuff it in the mulcher (use a stick to shift the leaves around to make sure they go into the motor...not your hands). With two people, one raking, and one mulching, it makes pretty short work of all the leaves. The hardest part is just safely stuffing the leaves into the motor area.

Best value purchase in a long time!

This Sun Joe does exactly what it is supposed to. My son wanted to force feed it but I found all that does is work the motor more. By feeding it lightly it accomplishes the same work with less effort on the motor. That is drop three small hands full one at a time and they go right thru without interruption or motor stress. Grab a big pile and shove it in and push down on the pile and it takes 3 times as long and you have to stop and loosen the leaves. Does not pay to rush. We have 2 100 year old oak trees and didn't get to the leaves in the fall. In 2 1/2 hours we got more than 1/2 done. We used a 32 gallon trash can under the tool and wrapped a tarp to fill the gap. I was worried about the machine throwing dust as I have tree pollen allergy but it was not as bad as some have said. The resulting material is chopped fine and resembles dirt. Very, very happy with this product! I would recommend getting spare cutting line as we went through 3 pairs in the 2 1/2 hours.

Easy to use and works great

After some online research looking at Flowtron and WORX, I concluded that Flowtron burns out motors too fast, and WORX does not have an adjustment for how finely or coarsely it shreds the leaves, and the gauge of the trimmer line it uses is too small. Since the first problem with the WORX was not that big a problem for me, and there was a simple modification described to retrofit the WORX to use a heaver line, and I have a WORX blower/vac combination that has worked well for several years, I decided to order the WORX. As I was in the process of placing the order, an add for the Snow Joe shredder popped up. I was not previously aware of it's existence, but I bought a Snow Joe electric chain saw last year and was very impressed with both the quality of the saw and the service from the company. Looking into the Snow Joe, I found that it used the heavier gauge shredding line, and had an adjustment for fine/coarse shredding. I changed my order to the Snow Joe. With Amazon Prime it came in two days. It was well packaged, assembled easily (10 minutes), and ran for about 6 hours over 2 days producing about 10 large trash bags of finely mulched oak leaves. It handled twigs in the leaves up to about a quarter of an inch in diameter with no problem. Adding bigger twigs forces you to change out the shredding lines more frequently. I replaced the mulching lines 3 times during the entire shredding process. Line replacement is simple (5 minutes) and does not require any tools. Overall the shredder worked very well. It shredded levees about as fast as I could bend down and pick them up out of a pile and load them in the shredder. My experience is with dry oak leaves, and for those, the shredder worked great. When I was done, I found that the shredder disassembles easily and packs into a very small volume for storage.

Not real expensive and it works great!

I had my doubts about this leaf shredder because it was the least expensive, and some of the reviews related it to problems. I am thoroughly pleased with it. I have a lot of trees and leaf raking and bagging has always been a real pain for me. This shredder was everything that I had hoped for. It worked flawlessly. Some reviewers mentioned having trouble with wet leaves but I put leaves through it that were pretty damp and no problem. Some reviewers mentioned trouble with the power switch. I just leave the switch on and plug and unplug the unit just in case but not a problem there either. The unit has no problem cutting up very small twigs either. I would recommend it to anyone!

Company stands behind its product.

This worked well for us the first year. We typically had 20+ bags of leaves, but were able to break it all down for the garden beds. It was great because the leaves have nutrients for the gardens, they compact and break down in less than a year, AND I found that they helped to keep the spring weeds at bay--or made them super easy to pull out. The second year, however, the shredder wouldn't start for us. So I called Sun Joe and because I'd registered my product, they stood behind the warranty and replaced. They didn't give me a hard time and made it super easy to return the current one. With that, it makes me more likely to try their other products because I know they want to stand behind them. I haven't tried the replacement yet since we used alternate methods of shredding while waiting for the replacement, so it will be awhile before I know how that one lasts. One thing--the representative I talked to said to be sure to use a 14-gauge extension cord and that outdoor cords come in 14 & 16 gauges. This may not be a big deal to most, but usually, the gauge is not listed on the cord where as the amperage is, so I'm not sure what gauge my different outdoor power sources are. If you're not sure either, I'd suggest buying a new cord with it or first determining what yours is.

Missing Parts - No legs - UPDATE - 1 start to 5

My original review is below and was written when I was a bit agitated that I had to send the first unit back due to missing parts. But, the replacement unit arrived in short order and I have now put in about 8 hours of use and I am not disappointed. Wet leaves have not been a problem (other than you do have to stop the unit more frequently to clean it out), and I have had no issues with over-heating. I have a LOT of leaves in my yard that have accumulated over the years, and even if this shredder breaks down after a few weekends of hard use, it will have been worth it. So far, I am very pleased. The two bits of advice I would give are - feed it slowly with jamming leaves in and make sure you have plenty of extra string/cord especially if you have many twigs mixed in with the leaves. ___________________________________ I think Amazon may be losing its "Mojo". Item arrived without it's legs. This is now the second time in a row that I have received an outdoor tool that was "dead on arrival". Now I have to go through the trouble of sending it back. Very frustrating. A replacement is on the way and I will revisit this review assuming it arrives in proper working order.

Great for what it does and for the price! Does work with wet material, with limitations.

I had a whole bunch of weeds come up after the rains in the areas that were mulched. With intermittent rain, I could not get to them till last week, by which time they were all about 1½ feet tall! After pulling them out by the roots, I decided to use my Patriot Shredder to grind up this stuff. I have had the Patriot for several years, and it has been great for chipping and shredding broken branches and after pruning the hedges. It gets through dry and wet branches with ease, as long as I don't "choke" the machine with too much stuff at one go. Well, I put the fresh, long weeds through the top hopper, and it just would not suck the stuff down. I then used the chipper opening, and there was nothing coming out of the discharge chute. The machine bogged down and stopped. I found the entire flywheel, hammers, and chipper blade coated with wet green "mush". The machine just could not handle this stuff. It took me about an hour just to clean out the Patriot. I was looking for an alternative, so read some reviews, and decided to go with the SunJoe Shredder. Most reviews were negative regarding "wet" stuff, but I was willing to give it a try, especially with the price being less than $100.00. I used the cloth bag from my Patriot Chipper and it was a perfect fit! I would strongly recommend you use some sort of "cloth" bag. Plastic bags tend to get ripped if there are stems or twigs. Paper bags tend to rip when you are trying to secure them, and it is hard to get the right size. The elastic cord is very tight, and in the process of pulling the bags to fit around the bottom flange you will end up ripping the bag. The Patriot bag is a heavy gauge synthetic material and is "breathable" so as the bag fills up, air can be pushed out. The bag can also be reused for many years. The bag is expensive, about ½ the price of the shredder, but I think it would be worth the price if you are planning on doing a lot of shredding. It is available here on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Patriot-Products-888000100-Shredder-Collection/dp/B004W5YKBE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1437233760&sr=8-3&keywords=Patriot+Shredder. The bag has a cord which cinches the opening of the bag. The bag is an almost an exact fit for the bottom of this shredder. I hook one edge under the bungee cord, and then work my way around the bottom rim with the bag. Then I just cinch up the bag with the built in tie. The bag works well with dry or wet material. I already had the bag, so it wasn't an issue. This bag has held up for several years, chipping branches so should hold up with shredding leaves. If cost is an issue, I would suggest you look for other re-useable "cloth" bags. It makes it a lot easier to use this machine. Back to the review of this machine: I was apprehensive about how this would perform, but with care, and slow feeding, it ground up all the fresh weeds and stems without an issue. It does get clogged up after about 10 minutes. It is easy enough to stop the machine, and reach in from the top and scrape off the accumulated "mush" and push it down through the opening into the bag. It never tripped the circuit breaker, but I was careful about how much I put in. I filled up 4 bags of this mushy green ground up weeds, and all of it went straight into my composter! I changed the "string" on one side because it was becoming short. I wish they had put the blade that cuts the string our further, so that the string could reach a little wider in the hopper. As it is, there is about a ¾ inch gap between the end of the string and the sides of the hopper, and this is where stuff builds up. Not a big deal, but an annoyance. I am very pleased with the way this made short work of grinding up this wet stuff. As a bonus, it was ready for the compost! If you work within it's limitations, it is a great machine. I cannot vouch for it's longevity, but it has already been worth it. My only advise is to get a cloth bag, unless you really need to put stuff in paper bags for disposal. If you have a composter, you would not need to worry about disposal either. Guide to images (for some reason the order of the images changed after it was posted and I can't change the order, so follow the numbers to the right image): 5. Weeds growing in front of hedging - looks like tall grass 3. Sun Joe Shredder with Patriot cloth bag attached 1. Shredder, cart with weeds to be shredded. Please note the gloves, goggles, and ear protection - makes quite a bit of noise 2. String and internal blade that cuts string to length. The gap between the outside of the blade and the hopper is where stuff builds up 4. Size of shredded material. Note: one or two long stems get through unscathed 6. Composter with material from three cart loads of weeds (please refer to picture #3 for "one" cart load). Nice reduction in volume.

Perfect for the homeowner.

I chose this brand based mostly on claimed volume reduction (16:1) and the price. I was surprised at how well it works. I haven't experienced any issues with the motor or durability of the moving parts. It'll take any type of leaves, wet or dry, as well as plants with non-woody stems (such as English ivy) and produce a nice pile of mulch, as fine or coarse as you desire. I did find that the supplied cutter lines would wear out fairly rapidly. It seems that the material of which they're made is too brittle and fractures/frays easily. And once the ends of the lines get frayed (think split ends), they wear quickly. After replacing the lines a half dozen times, I decided to substitute some trimmer line I had in the shed (round, 2.4 mm/.095 inch diameter) for the provided cutter lines. This line is much more flexible and definitely resists splitting at the ends. The result was a more than 100% increase in the life of the lines. Overall, I'm quite happy with this purchase.

Full Reviews