Side by Side Comparison of: Worx vs Eco-Shredder

I love the mulcher for dry leaves

as expected

We recently got a WORX Leaf Mulcher and like it quite a lot but it goes through the red mulching line quickly. We have needed refills twice since we got the mulcher a year and a half ago. Having said that, the refills are inexpensive and the mulcher does a great job. I'm so glad that I can order these refills so easily and they are a PERFECT fit for it. We will continue to order these.

served purpose

I bought them with the basic unit on E-mail and two days later I was chopping up leaves. The delivery time was quick. The WORX works as advertised. The replacement lines are easy to install. They wear down if you have small twigs or rocks but they do chop leaves and grass blades rapidly.Happy gardener!

The WORX WA0050 is a nice item. Twigs do cause the lines to wear but if in a limited amount this should not be a problem. Also, the lines themselves are very easy to change so overall this is not an issue. It chews up the leaves quite well and was a good buy.

Great Product for the home for shredding, mulching and chipping those small jobs around the yard. Assembly Manual is useless. If you have common sense and a phillips-head screwdriver you will have no problems and assembly is fairly quick and easy. I had a dozen washers with no idea what they were for so they went into a baggy and stapled to the manual in case I found a use later. The output chute is 10"-11" from the ground if you want to fit a bag or bin to hold the mulch coming out. I found no reference for such online so use your imagination. I may use a Black Trash Bag to cover it for now to protect from the elements.

I love this shredder! This is the second one I've purchased. The first one lasted almost 7 years and is used a great deal. When it starts getting dull all you have to do is buy and replace the blades (it does come with 1 set of additional blades).

Very satisfied with product so far. I live in South Texas and like to sweep up the oak pollen each spring from the driveway and the street in front of our house to use as a low-grade fertilizer for the backyard. Only trouble is the pollen usually includes a fair helping of twigs and small sticks. The hopper does an excellent job of pulverizing most of the twigs and sticks. The mulched material is greatly reduced in volume and flows pretty freely compared to the original stuff so it's easy to just scoop up the initial pass-through and pour it back through the hopper again to pretty much take care the slivers of any twigs/sticks remaining after the first time through. The side chute chopped up the couple branches I fed it down to small slivers and again, if desired, that stuff could be fed into the hopper again.

I have found that by putting the material to be shredded into a 5-gal kitchen trash can and using the tamp-down tool as a shovel to scoop the material into the hopper, I can keep up a pretty good flow rate if I don't try to dump too much into the hopper at once. Drier, smaller stuff almost gets sucked into the shredder by itself and alternating pushing with the tool between the two hopper openings keeps stuff flowing into the shredder at a decent rate.

The downside of the product is that the assembly instructions are terrible but very little assembly is required. Also Amazon ships the product in its box so if UPS doesn't handle the box carefully, the legs of the product are likely to burst through the box as they did on the original shipment and started to on the second replacement.

I will update review as I get more chance to test the durability of the product but working great so far.

This little shredder is brilliant! I normally do not write reviews but I am so pleased with this item that I wanted to let people know. I have to say when we first got it out the box and my husband assembled it my initial reaction was we had made a mistake because it was a lot smaller than I had envisioned and I really did not think it would be up to the job - boy was I wrong. We live in Florida and have just got back from 4 months away - this translates into massive growth on all our plants and bushes. We normally fill up about 10 trash bins that then get put out once a week for collection, once the bins were full no more yard work until they are emptied..... but now I can shred everything. We have lots of soft growth on hibiscus, mangrove, other hedges etc., well it took care of everything. Yes you have to feed it in but I have no problem standing there for an hour or so as long as it frees up my bins, one very large trash bin full goes down to about a 1/3rd of a small tub, then can go on compost heap. You can get a good system going, the larger pieces can be fed into the 1st cutter which makes quick work of long branches, once it gets down to lots of leaves I just pull back out and then feed into the clippings opening, if you have lots of loose leaves that goes into the 3rd opening. Use the tamping down tool provided and it all works great. I am very pleased with this product the only slight negative is that we have not found a perfect receptacle yet for the shredded waste, it has a tendency to over spray, but just need to sweep. I am sure we can figure that out as we go on, Love it.

Great investment. I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep this (I ordered by mistake & tried to cancel). Glad it came and that I kept it. Only issue was one of the wheel covers had broken tabs that hold it in place. Doesn't affect operation.
This shredder is better than I thought. I live in the woods. It shredded green wood, green branches with leaves, dried leaves, twigs, branches @ 1 1/4 " diameter. It jambed once but that was my fault. May take some time to shred a large pile of sticks and branches but then it does shred them up perfectly. Probably saved me several hundred bucks rather than hiring a contractor to clean up the sticks, twigs, and branches that came down over the winter.
I am totally satisfied

These work just as advertised, but I must admit that now I have bought a spool of the same gauge plastic string line and cut my own to the same length and they work just as well at a much lower cost. If you don't want the hassle of cutting up a spool, these do the job great.

Ordered when I bought the worx unit, didn't need them

Only reason to not give a 5 is because of the flex line having to be replaced often. I would think they could develop a more better cutter system. The concept is great and the flexline is not a deal breaker it just slows the process down.

I have shredded 8 or 10 bags of leaves so far and like how this thing works. It is messy but it gets the job done.I would recommend it.

Easy install. Wears out quickly BUT I am using it for leaves that have a lot of sticks in them. Would be nice to have something more durable however obviously needs to be wear item since the tray on the mulcher is hard plastic

The Flex-A-Line works very well with the WG430 Leaf Mulcher. One package was included with the mulcher and I bought a second just in case. I'm glad I did. The line is made of plastic or nylon and wears down fairly quickly. I bought about using copper wire instead of the Flex-A-Line, but decided to let well enough alone. They are cheap enough as it is.

When i finally got a unit that worked (took 3 tries) it worked fine, better than some of the comments. the hopper is abut 1 square foot. you can put a shovel full of leaves etc. into it. poking it in with the paddle that is provided. i fed a few branches through the side chute, no problems. The chopped size is what i expected. There is a page with contact information to the company. with the extension for tech support. NO help, only busy signal. after 5 or 6 attempts, i tried customer service, got a human, but no help.
and they do not return phone calls. my conclusion is Amazon is the only after market help i will have. It would be nice if they pressured these guys to answer the phone.. It really weights 70 pounds. very sturdy lots of metal where it is needed.

Tough durable machine. It can clog a bit on certain wood pieces. It is not too difficult to unclog but it is a minor nuisance. Also, it would help if there was more room under the machine for a bag. I have to spend some time "pushing" the mulch to the back of the bag to keep it moving. That being said, for the money, this is a very good machine. It is solidly built and does a good job mulching. A good machine for a small yard because it can get tedious continuously feeding leaves and small twigs into the machine. If you have a very large yard with a huge amount of leaves you should probably look into something bigger. However, for my small yard this is a perfect machine. It helps me recycle all the leaves in my yard to get mulch for some flower beds and a woodland garden. It was easy to assemble and the extra set of cutter blades was a plus.

After returning a flimsy $100 string-based blade mulcher which died on me after 3 short uses and many many string replacements, I am very happy with this mulcher, after the first day's use.When it was delivered I already noticed that it is very heavy and solid. It got jammed twice by 2 tiny pieces of branches, but it was easy to remove. The mulches are fine enough. The wheels allowed easy movement in the yard, and it's compact shape allows easy storage.
The cons: The chute (feeder) is screwed onto the body by 5 screws which I think is an overkill since the top is not moving anywhere. The inconvenience comes when you have to take the chute out to unjam a couple times while in the yard. You will need the screwdriver. What I did was to leave the screws out until I finish the job for the day, and then put the screws back on before storage. If they can just have a couple of push-down latches that would be sufficient. The other minor con is that the manual is very very little in details.

For the money, this has been a really good investment. I needed something to shred leaves in the fall, and oh yeah-- break down the crown of a 100 year old oak tree. It did so, epically, and survived, albeit with battle scars.

The worst was caused by some knucklehead who dropped a socket extender into my pile of leaves. This cracked one of the blades in half, and warped the rotating plate so that I couldn't attach a replacement. Even so, it works admirably with just one blade.

As with most chippers there's a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it jams will decrease in frequency. That said, jams will happen. Especially when working with hardwoods, or even with leaves if you start daydreaming.

Only having three bolts hold on the yellow housing is convenient for jam clearing, but their placement is a bit awkward, and re-engaging the safety button afterwards was often a finnicky process. Also, Jam clearing would have been made even easier if the black plastic guard on top was similarly quick to remove, but it's held on by five small phillips head screws.

Other Likes:
- The tamper
- The cost, compared to low end gas powered units

Now that the oak tree is gloriously lining my garden paths in chipped form, the workload should be lighter in the future with just fallen branches and autumn leaves to handle.

Fair price and fast shipping. Performs well. This is a great labor saver for home shrub maintenance. It is well made and appears to be durable. If used properly by putting dry leaves and twigs in the top and branches smaller than 1 inch branches into the side it does a good job. It does require some disassembly and cleaning after each use. Re-sharpening the blades is easy with a file and sharpening stone when needed. Bottom line is this is NOT an industrial or commercial tree trimming shredder. It work great for home lawn and shrub trimmings. With common sense use it is safe to use and easy to move around on its wheels. For durability I did add washers behind the cotter pins holding the wheels on to prevent the cotter pins from scraping on plastic wheel hub. I also had to replace an e-clip on one of the mounting screws cause I pulled to hard on it and lost the clip. I put a 6x8 plastic tarp under it when shredding to make picking up the shredded material easier. It weighs about 70 pounds so if you need to lift it for some reason you may want another person to assist you.

As advertised

Be prepared to replace the strings quite frequently. Works well as described.

Wasn't able to chop the leaves up like expected.

I'm not sure whether it was me or not but these break a lot. I really wouldn't buy the leaf mulcher again and these are a mediocre part in a mediocre tool.

They are the right model string, but they are not as stout as the strings the shredder came with. I am going to recheck it and elaborate. Used one. It broke on some coir that was mixed up with the leaves. You have to be careful to not let anything too thick get down there with the leaves.

Haven't used yet. Seemed logical to order along with my new Worx, but we're still using the supply that came with it!

Mixed bag (sorry for the pun)

Positives:
- Very powerful and well built. You can tell from the moment you get the box. If you don't throw out your back carrying the box you will be pleasantly pleased with the product.
- The leaves are crushed nicely. Once they go through, they are in pieces probably no bigger than a dime.
- Handy slot for sticks

Cons:
- Probably one of the worst product manuals. It doesn't tell you properly how to assemble. There are extra washers. I finally figured out that they belong on the upper part of the yellow cylinder.
- It doesn't explain very clearly how to clear jams. The way the product manual is written, you would think you are to take off the screws between the yellow cylinder and the block hopper. That is incorrect. The orange thumb screws will allow you to access the chopping chamber. You also have to take off the handle.
- There is not a lot of room from the bottom of the exit chute to the ground. So you have to constantly scoop away the chopped leaves.
- There are a couple spots inside the cutting chamber that catches the debris and eventually gets clogged. A couple small manufacturing changes would have solved this problem.
- The hopper is not that big. If you take both hands together and scoop up leaves, that is about how much will fit at one time.

I read reviews for similar products that are run by a string trimmer. This one is all metal inside and is exceptionally sturdy.

If the manual would be re-written to clear up things, this product would have gotten 4 stars.

UPDATED REVIEW

OK, I have had this for over a year now and I've used it many times. I wouldn't change any of the comments above. Still think they are all valid.

I will expand on a couple of items.

1) The hopper and speed of work. As mentioned above, the hopper is really small. Within the hopper itself, there is a passageway from the hopper to the shredding area. That passageway is very narrow. I suppose it has to be for liability reasons. If it was bigger, you could get your hand in there and no one wants a hand that's been through a shredder. Consequently, pushing leaves through there (we have big oak leaves) is very slow. Mostly, I have just used my hand mower with the mulching blade on it instead of this unit. So, not sure I would buy this again. It just takes way too long to shred the amount of leaves I have (acre of land and 150 trees).

2) Sticks. Sticks are like kryptonite to this unit. When you have a whole pile of leaves and you scoop up a handful, it is really hard not to get a 1/4" diameter, 5" long stick in the mix. Put 4-5 of those through the hopper and you'll be taking the top unit off to fish them out. This is just a hard size. It's not like an industrial unit (because of safety concerns) and it's not like a string trimmer.

My suggestion would be to spend you money on a good mulching mower.

Although it does the job I purchased it to do, it has one major design flaw. It has to do with the 5 or 6 threaded inserts that are pressed into the back side of the chute that holds the chute in place.
While assembling the chipper and attempting to line up the screws with the pressed inserts on the back side, one of them came loose and fell inside the chipper. I had a heck of a time putting it back in place but I finally succeeded.
Then while I was using the chipper I had a jam which is bound to happen at some point. The only way to un-jam the chipper is to remove the chute and clear the blades, thus undoing the time spent assembling the product in the first place. There's more. While putting the chute back on after clearing the jam, two more pressed inserts came loose from the back side. There must be a fix for this before anymore are manufactured.

It works okay, not great. I really have to stuff the leaves down the chute, but it does do a good job of shredding them for my compost pile. A bug plus is how quiet it is compared to gas ones.

The challenge was putting this chipper together, since it comes with many more pieces than the manual tells you to use. For example, there are five screws and washers to attach the chute to the frame, but the manual says there is just one. There are extra washers for the wheels as well. And a plastic clamp was included to hold the hexagon spanner used to unclog the motor onto the handle so it is readily available, something not even mentioned in the manual. It's a good thing the chipper is almost fully assembled when delivered, or this would be a real challenge!

This review is mainly of assembly, though I did check that it chopped a single twig pretty well. I agree with some of the negative reviews that complain about the assembly instructions. Very sparse and incomplete instructions with poor pictures that don't show much. That said I was able to figure it out without too much difficulty and I'm only moderately handy. I am impressed with the heft of the machine. I ordered it because it was heavier than other chippers I saw, plus it has the ability to process leaves (cycle 1) twigs (cycle 2) and small branches (cycle 3). Both cycle 1 & 2 enter in the top and get chopped the same way, there's just two different sized slots in the top (so it's mostly marketing to call this 3 different cycles. The branches are fed in a hole in the back.

The plug is hard to connect to an extension cord. The 3 prong plug (male) is surrounded by a plastic cylinder that prevents you from plugging in directly to a wall outlet (it's a very short cord anyway). The problem is that the cylinder is too small to fit an extension cord, b/c all 3 prong extension cords (I have several) have a bump above the two receptacle slits (on the receptacle/female end). This bump sticks out too far to fit inside the cylinder. I was able to make it work by pushing very hard, flexing and bending the cylinder, but I'm worried that the plastic cylinder will eventually crack, potentially exposing the innards of the plug. I suppose I could hack/slice off either the cylinder or the nub that sticks off the top of the extension cord.

Despite these issues I'm optimistic that I'll get good use out of this machine.

I like the ease of use of the electric. No starting problems that I had with my gas shredder/chipper.

This one does a really good job on dried leaves- breaking them down to about little finger nail size. I am not certain it is really a 10 to 1 (which is advertised), but it definitely reduces the volume. Shredded leaves break down into leaf mold in a month or so; whole leaves can last several years.

weeds from garden - need to be really dry or the shredder clogs. Access to the "out" chute is not easy: the opening is too small to reach into it easily. The manual suggests removing the top - but that would take removing 5 screws. If they really want you to clean out clogs from the top, it needs to be an easier removal (like a twist top ¼ turn to 'lock' and one machine screw with a plastic knob).

The shredder also clogged on christmas tree branches fed through the chipper.

Other 1" branches chipped into very small items - a good dense mulch for garden.

Too expensive. I ended up buying a reel and cut them myself - cut at an angle so its easy to feed through. If it curls too much just dunk in boiling water and they straighten out on their own.

A waste of time and money, it was faster to use a mower and a rake. Don't waste your money.

The chipper stalled on a small branch and that overheated the motor. The breaker did not activate and the motor burned out. I had to go to the manufacturer for warranty service /replacement It's been over 45 days and no product

This wonderful little machine worked well for about 6 months. Then, it quit. It seems that a "circuit breaker" makes the machine stop as soon as it starts. The guarantee is not much good because we must send the machine back to where ever and the guy on the telephone says he has never known the company to send a new machine. It's a big item to be sending anywhere.

I wouldn't buy this model again. You get one thinking it will save you some work, but it's a lot of work to feed this lil monster. If you're too quick, it will jam . It only likes dead, dry branches or it will jam and you cram it into the smallest hole, not the top - that's just for leaves. I had to replace the cheap blade that came with it, but the replacement is holding up so far.

Much better than my old one, but much harder to remove the top when it gets jammed. Have to remove the handle then move the blades if, as usual, they are pressed against the sides, then unscrew the three screws to remove the top. Bad engineering here. But otherwise a nice small chipper/shredder.

Addenda: I've only used this thing a few times, and today it jammed and I can't get it started, no matter what I do to clean the blades, insides, etc. As i mentioned, taking it apart is a real pain, especially since you need to remove the handle first.

Pros: the motor is powerful design is compact and easy to store; easy to assemble; is rather quite/very little noise when operating; even though the machine is heavy, with the wheels it is easy to move around; the blades are sharp and when the leafs go through it comes out real mulched; the overall materials are strong and heavy, giving the machine stability.

Cons: it takes a VERY long time to shred a bag because the top portion where you put the leafs is very small, more like the size of a salad bowel--you can only put a handful of leafs each time. If the leafs are damp/wet the machine clogs and does not work, requiring to take apart and clean below the blades. If there are stick mixed with the leafs you need to remove otherwise it will clog the machine. The mouth where the leafs comes out is only about 12 inches from the ground so you can't put a bag to catch the mulched leafs and needs to be constant removing the mulched leafs or moving machine making small piles all over the place. This is more like a toy but if you only have a very small amount of leafs and is a very patient person, you will be ok. It is beyond me why they put a powerful motor and very sharp/good quality blades in a machine that can handling only a very small intake of leafs.

This is a powerful little machine and it would be perfect for someone who has a small pile of leaves to take are of now and then. If you have a whole yard full of leaves this is not the tool for you. For one, the leaves do not get "sucked" into the mechanism, they need to be pushed. And pushed and pushed and pushed. The hopper is way too small. I could only put in a small handful of leaves at a time. The branch mulcher will take in small branches rather quickly, but the last bit of it stays put against the blades and makes a lot of noise until you stop the machine and remove it manually. All in all, I thought this would be the answer to my needs but it ended up being more work and a big time consumer. Frustrating!

This pack contains (24) 13" flex lines. On average, I had to change a pair of these flex lines for every 2-3 30gal bags I fill.

Cheap. After every barrel of leafs, you have to replace the strings. It is easier just to jump up and down in the barrel like a fool than trying to mulch with these cheap pieces of thread.

I wanted an electric mulcher/chipper because they are small and easier to maneuver than a gas powered chipper. Unfortunately this product was a complete dud. The engine seems relatively robust, but one wheel fell off due to chintzy fasteners, and the machine jammed repeatedly when using the hopper. I used it two afternoons and after repeatedly disassembling it to clear hopper jams, sent it back to Amazon in pieces.

Edited on 10/29/16. I bought this unit in 6/2016 and have used about once a month since purchased. You can read my previous review below. I have learned over time you must only put in much smaller branch size than stated in manual. Even so, unit still jams easily and because I have had to use the hex wrench so often, the hex opening on the bottom of the unit has totally stripped out, thus making u jamming the unit very time consuming. I should have returned the unit after the first use but I so wanted it to work. It may work fine for leaves and grass clippings but why wouldn't you just use a mulching mower with a bag for those items. This is basically useless for the small branches I had hoped to use it for since the best way to unjam it has stripped out in four months time? I have attached a picture of the female finer sized branches that have caused the latest jam.. Original review: For the price, I believe it performs as expected for an electric chipper. I bought an electric because I'm female and reviews of gas powered state they are hard to pull start for women. I think I would be happier with the power and quality though of a good gas powered mulcher though. So far, I have used this unit to chip/mulch 1 inch or less cedar branches. Rather than mulch, this feeds out of very small chips just above the size of saw dust. With a heavy rain, this "mulch" will easily wash away. Also, even given the small size of branches I'm running through it, if there is variation into a bit larger branch size, this unit jams easily. Sometimes you can unjam with the wrench to use in the bottom of unit. Other times, even though you can use the wrench to get the blades moving again, it still won't turn on, and you have to unscrew the three bolts holding the top on, as well as the handle bolts to open the unit and see if you see the piece of wood jamming the unit. More than a handful of times, after removing the top, nothing could be seen that had caused the jam. Since the unit jams so easily and you have to remove the top so often, a much better design would have been to use clamps rather than the bolts that must be unscrewed everytime. Also, the bolts that hold the handle in place on my unit do not both line up. I'm only able to get one of the bolts into the handle and the post on the unit. The other handle bolt hole and hole on unit do not line up close enough to get it to work so my handle is never completely secure. Directions for putting the unit together are not clear and neither are directions for use. However, if you are slightly mechanically inclined, you can figure out how to put together and you can, by trial and error, begin to figure out what you can and can't feed thru it. I have thought about returning the unit, but I think for the price and being electric, this is probably the best I can do. I would be happier putting up with the frequent jamming, if I could just get a bigger actual mulch size result rather than tiny chips.

I know it was listed as a light duty chipper, but come on!..... The feed hole is so small that even when shoving in twigs, everything gets jammed up if there is a fork in the branch or something. Seriously, anything that isn't straight as an arrow isn't going to chip well here.

Long story short? It's sitting in my backyard rusting in the rain. Has been for a month or two. I really don't care. I would never feel comfortable selling or giving this glorified boat anchor to some poor unsuspecting sole so it's next stop is the landfill.

Have to return the first one cause it has some missing parts on the wheels. The replacement ES 1600 doesn't look good either because the box looks like it's been open before and seems to me like a return merchandise. So anyway I assemble it anyway but I soon as I start using it, every time it jams, it also trips my house breaker or fuse panel and I have to return this merchandise again for good. I think the ones they gave me is just a piece of S___t. Maybe they just gave me something that was bad. I have reviewed this Shredder before and it supposed to be a good one.

This item does not do any of the things it claims it can do. Housing of electric motor is flimsy and has gaps where debris can enter. Jams constantly with just leaves and twigs. Takes too much time to shred small amount of leaves. Vibrates and squeels very loudly with little amounts of leaves and twigs. Sticks a 1/4" to 1/2" cause it to jam constantly when manufacturer claims it can handle much larger sizes. Save your $200 and put it towards a better model. Received it just a month ago and now I can not return for a refund. Buyer beware!