I've used many chippers, and this one seems to be the very best at this price point.

I bought this during a severe drought in my area, when we were under a burn ban and I needed to do something about branches and leaves that were piling up. I guess whether you are happy with this chipper/shredder is going to depend on your expectation. It DOES NOT simply take and shred everything you throw in it. In fact, EVERYTHING MUST BE FED into the unit, including small brush and sticks.My first day was a bit frustrating until I figured out that you must arrange everything in a reasonably orderly manner and feed the smaller sticks and brush into the top chute, and the larger sticks into the chipper. Also do not put green, flexible wood or vines in or you will be digging them out. I spent a lot of time at first opening the cleaning access panel to remove these kinds of things.Regarding the chipper, the 3" width is the size of the opening, but you will likely not get more the 2.5", if that, and the wood must be almost perfectly straight. It will not tolerate any kind of dog-leg or curved piece, but for the pieces it does take, it is impressive the way it grinds them right up.I actually got more use out of the shredding function, since I had a lot of brush and leaves. I made a small bin out of a cut plastic tub that I bungeed to the input chute to reduce spillage, but I still had to feed everything. At no time can you just dump anything in and have it just shred it while you pick up the next load. Even with leaves, you have you control the flow of material into the chute.Another caveat is when shredding brush and smaller branches through the top chute, pay attention and be ready to let go fast, since it pulls material in very aggressively once it gets ahold of it.I could not go for 5 stars just because of the degree of prep work required, particularly for piles of brush, but that is not the fault of this model. I think all the shredders in this range work the same way and have similar limitations. Also, once you get used to collecting brush and stacking it for shredding instead of piling it up like you would to burn, it goes much easier, and I have not had to stop to clear jams since the second day of using this shredder.Once they lifted the burn ban, I quit shredding brush and sticks, since it is far easier to burn than to shred brush and chip sticks. Leaves are another matter. To me, this shredder excels at leaf shredding, and I continued to shred leaves even after I was able to burn. The shredded leaves make an excellent mulch and create a smooth quiet surface for pathways.As far as this model vs the others, this is very well built and starts easily, and was easy to assemble.

This machine works well for yard cleanup. I used it for a lot of limbs knocked down by the hurricane. The limbs were mostly live oak that has a lot of bends and twists. I cut the larger limbs into shorter sections. It was easy to start, following the directions on the machine.

There is nothing to dislike.Ruggedly made, and easy to put the few things they left us to bolt on, but other than that.Fantastic buy for me.Great Unit!CONS: Unit will suck in the branches, and toss out chips..keep hands clear of top portion . Do not lookinto the hopper on top, you may get a face full of chips! Unit is a bit scary to use...noise level requires you to wear ear protection. also use gloves and definitely eye protection! I am still glad i bought this unit..it eats up the branches and self feeds them into the 3 inch tube!Update: one week later : I put in the chipper some pumpkin vines...and it stopped the unit to a dead stop. I then had to remove the wheels and the vacuum housing to unclog the unit of the vines. It was so packed it took me over 30 minutes to clean the clogged chipper blade. After cleaning.., i re-choked the engine, and pulled once, and it came to life. This unit made very very short work of my three 10x25 gardens, I was a little dumbfounded when I realized how quwik it handled all the dead garden leftovers. If you take care of the unit...it will take care of you., and they have a website with other products you can buy.. BUT i cannot find a vacuum hose attachment for this unit..i wrote the company..,and am still waiting for their reply.Two more days later: I got a response from the company. they stated they do not make a vacuum hose to pick up leaves for this unit. They asked me to purchase an "Amazon" one to see if it fit their chipper.Only problem is the hose on "Amazon" costs $149.00. That is a pretty hefty cost for a plastic hose! More CONS: there was another pumpkin vine that decided to go into the hopper /chipper...I thought for sure it would go through the chipper this time, since i Cleaned out the blade area last use. Needless to say..One has to remove the wheels again. take the first cover off thinking it is the culprit ,only to find several more bolts behind that cover had to come off...showing just the blade and the back cover near the engine. there was packed vines and dirt in there the whole thing this time. I guess after missing that area to clean last time, the first three minutes of use of the chipper ran ok until it slowly started to stop the engine. It took some time to clean out the whole of the blade area this time...and this is not the only problem i ran into. I started the engine after cleaning the blade housing out, ran it until all the pumpkin vines were chopped up.... so I reached down to hit the OFF switch, and the unit started to slowly stop.. only to start up again on its own several times since i had the OFF switch in the OFF position! I will have to look into this problem too.. maybe the kill wire to ground on the unit is loose or broken somewhere under the engine housing, and my have vibrated loose. I don't know for sure.Just too tired after cleaning up the back yard gardens today, so will check it out at a later time. I still love this chipper...it is very powerful...do not let anyone under aged kid child or young one even throw a branch in the chipper or clippings into the hopper...very powerful and dangerous.But it WILL get the job done for you in short time.Thank you.

We ordered the unit to clear up some small branches from our back yard. The unit arrived with a bent discharge chute that we complained about and that the seller did not have in stock to replace it. After assembling the unit (and I temporarily was able to make the discharge chute work) we used the unit for about 20 minutes feeding very small branches into the top hopper and occassionally 1-2 inch diameter branches into the chipper/shredder chute. After that the discharge chute plugged up every 2 minutes and I had to manually clean it. After another 10 minutes or so I could not pull the starting coil (stuck) and disassembled part of the unit to clean it. I have to mention that if you feed branches up to 3 inch diameter into the unit, my unit did not 'suck them in' as shown on the videos. I had to literally push them into the chipper/shredder. Screws of the hopper assembly vibrated out within the 30 minutes of use (again the company had no replacement parts to sent). Long story short: Technical response to solve any issues was not on target, did not resolve any issues and did not have a specific person of contact. I finally settled with the company to return the unit.