Fiskars 6201 Momentum Push Reel Lawn Mower review
13.5 years ago lawn, product review, push mower, reel mower, Uncategorized
Last weekend my old gas mower finally gave its last breathe of exhaust and so it was time to get a new mower. Provided I have a relatively small yard and a very cramped garage I decided to give a manual push lawn mower or more well known as reel lawn mower. After some research on the reel mowers on the market I finally ended up buying the Fiskars 6201 Momentum Push Reel Lawn Mower.
Though at a retail price of $199.99 you could easily get a gas powered lawn mower for the same price, but you also have to consider the maintenance cost on a gas mower which I estimate I normally paid out $25-30 a year between oil, air filters, spark plugs, and gas (with fuel additives). As a side bonus a push mower also produces no emissions so it is a much more environmentally friendly option.
What finally sold me on the mower were the two features that seemed to be lacking from the cheaper reel mowers. First was the ability to adjust cutting height from 1” to 4” this is important for a couple of reasons. First you should only cut 1/3 of your grasses length or this can stress your grass causing damage to the roots. If you grass is 4 inches tall and you mower has a static height of 2 inches this is not possible. Second I like to keep my grass cut at around 3 inches to help shade out the weeds that may be trying to poke up from below so with the other models this was also not a viable option for me.
The next thing that I liked about this mower is its construction, I am a pretty strong guy and looking at the design of some of the other models I could easily see myself barreling through some thick grass and have to end up bringing the mower back to the store in a couple of pieces. With this bad boy weighing in at just over 50 lbs it has some solid steel construction which should easily be able to withstand my man handling.
Upon opening the box the mower took about 5-10 minutes to assemble which was basically attaching four bolts to put the handle together and attach it to the main part of the mower. After adjusting the height to 3 inches I headed out to try the mower out. My lawn was about 4 inches tall and I was able to easily mow through my yard with minimal effort. Though the clippings were not as small as my gas mulching mower would create they still created a small enough mess that I didn’t think raking was necessary. To put the mower through its paces I moved the level down to 2.5 inches, this time it was a bit more of a workout to get through the grass and they size of the clippings were a bit larger (as expected) compared to when I was mowing at 3 inches but still at a reasonable mess to avoid raking. I also was impressed on how the mower easily cut through the few dandelions that I hadn’t pulled by hand yet without any problems.
Overall I was impressed with the Fiskars 6201 Momentum Push Reel Lawn Mower and did not experience any buyers remorse after my first use on the lawn. Overall the effort to push this around was not much different than a typical push gas mower when mowing 1” of grass, though can provide but of a workout when it exceeds that amount, but it is solid and has no problems barreling through the grass and weeds.
Disclosure: This review was conducted with no association or compensation from Fiskars or representatives.
