PowerBlade 22" 224cc Self-Propelled Lawn Mower

I have had huge issues with this mower arriving damaged with a flat battery that wouldn’t charge rendering my experience with the mower limited. I didn’t get to use the push button start before boxing up for return because that feature wouldn’t work due to the battery issue. The seller is listed as MillsBrand and the Marketplace is Woolworths. I… Read more

do not recommend either of these services and wouldn’t use in the future.

The marketplace is the unfortunate mediator in a return agreement that took over a month since notifying of the damage and fault. The boxed up mower has been taken but they are denying pick up. There was a significant delay in time between when they asked for it to be set out for pick up and when they say their courier actually arrived to pick up (5 days delay).

Still trying to get a contact for the courier as there is also a middle man (a second courier) in the mix so the lesson here is: go buy direct from a local store. Unfortunately when I decided on the Powerblade 22” push button I could not find it available in Perth let alone in a store. They really need to have a state based service centres to deal with faulty and damaged items given the drama this has caused.

Moving on, this is my review of the product itself.

It’s a nice looking machine. Heavy with bright blue features gloss black coating on the steel deck. Decent sized catcher bag. Mulching and side discharge attachments.

The pull cord takes a crazy number of pulls to start it. Exactly the thing that the push start was purchased to avoid.

Flimsy aspects of this mower are what let it down. It has arrived damaged and ignition not working. The push start and the tubing that encases the electrical wires from the engine to the ignition rendered that feature (which was a big reason for purchase) useless.

The 224cc engine doesn’t have the guts to get this 2 wheel drive self propelled mower around the work fast enough. It’s a frustratingly slow walk around my big lawns. I have 800m2 of Kikuyu that needs minimum 2 mows per week in summer. 3 is what I do. The old TORO 4 wheel drive self propelled I was replacing moved at double the speed of this mower. Very very disappointing.

Wheels, catcher, blades: For some reason I expected rubber wheels but the plastic used is thick and sturdy and the wheels are 10 inch. No significant track marks made with this 39kg machine they are supporting and moving across less compacted bush base soil.

The catcher is a great size as is the opening from the under deck to the catcher.

The blades arrived super sharp and it was a nice looking finish after using the TORO with old blades that I chose not replace when I looked for a new replacement option instead.

The mulching attachment I tried and if you’re mowing regularly this feature is great. Keeping nutrients in your patch of lawn rather than bagging up also saves you stopping and starting to empty a catcher.

Cutting height. 7 height options sounds great but it’s still a small range of height options.

Handle: The handle overalls feels like the thickness of my VICTA push mower. Thicker was expected of a handle pushing much more weight than that which my nephew (6 years old can push).

Despite a quick release feature to fold the handle for more compact storage I was shocked to realise it opens to one set height. A little effort in the design would have come up with a height adjustment option for the handles for those of us 5’2” and 6’0” plus.

My final notes I made on this machine are that the centralised cutting height adjustment sounded like a great idea and certainly made adjusting a quick process compared to the 4 stiff individual deck height adjustment levers on the old TORO.

However, I realised that my ability to do my cut with a low setting on one side of the deck and higher on the other side (as I do with the TORO) a couldn’t do with the Powerblade central height adjustor. My next machine once I get my refund on this (due to the faulty parts and damaged tubing) will be independent height adjustment once more.

Overall it’s too heavy (38kg) and too large (24”) for the 224cc engine. It needs more guts to pull its weight and to do so at a reasonable speed. Far too slow.

The makes need to invest more energy into the push button parts and construction which come across as ‘cheap and nasty’ afterthoughts which let the otherwise decent quality machine down on unboxing.

Reasonably good lawn mower , but needs attention to design and quality control details – This Mower (self propelled 4 stroke) is assemble yourself, The downloaded manual was not greatly helpful. So, a trial and error process. Mower arrived with the front bumper assembly ( plastic) broken off from its mountings so I had to glue and screw that back on. The main push handle where it attaches to the mower is a bad design, tried different… Read more

ways to tighten it using the parts supplied, but still very loose. Ended up drilling extra bolt holes to make it usable. The mower itself works fine, plenty of power. This is the second powerblade I have had, the self propelled gearbox on the first one died. Suggestions are ( for Edisons) to quality check the mower before despatch and pass on to the maufacturer the design flaw with the push handle.