Sun Joe Corded Electric Garden Tiller & Cultivator with Steel Tines, 16", 13.5-Amp Motor - Heavy-Duty Tilling Machine for Lawn, Yard, and Gardening Care, TJ604E

Finally had a chance to use it early this spring in preparing a section of front yard to be seeded with new grass. Did a great job of turning the soil down to about 4 inches, could have gone deeper easily, and turned long afternoon of shovels and rakes into a 20-minute walkabout. Despite the large amount of torque it puts out it isn't hard to control, and it didn't get clogged up. Can't say about its deepest setting. So far, it's been reliable and easy to maneuver even for an 80 year old like me<G> I'll certainly get more out of it over the summer as I work in some new areas among our many trees.

This is absolutely one of the best tillers available, in my opinion. While I do not use it in the garden any more, there are plenty of other uses that it is perfectly suited to complete. Caution is advised to those who may not have the strength to safely operate this machine. It is powerful, rugged, and does a great job in various applications.

I’m very pleased with this purchase. I have clay soil and it’s hard as a rock. This tiller is smaller and easy for a woman over 70 to handle. It has a lot of power even though being smaller.

I received my tiller from Spreetail, it is a good design, easy to assemble, powerful motor, solid tines and efficient. My experience is limited because I received a defective tiller that suffered a catastrophic failure soon after receiving it. HOWEVER, I am giving the company a high rating because they stand behind their products and take care of their customers. Defective products happen to every seller, but I recommend this company and therefore the products they sell because of the service and customer support after the sale. For the technical aspects of the tiller: * The tiller is AWESOME for quick jobs where you don't need to worry about gas, oil, etc. and just need to get to work. * The tilling depth was excellent in my soil (fairly normal yard soil, some grass, small rocks) * Operation of the tiller was smooth and easy to handle, I will admit that if you're going deep, you'd better hang on because this tiller has some power. * Storing this tiller was super nice, it's light weight, compact and folds up. * I was able to run the tiller easily on a 100' extension cord with no loss of power. The only enhancements I wished it had were: * A drag bar would be nice, the wheels work well enough but it tills the soil so completely that they sink in after the first pass * A little more weight or a way to add water or something else to weigh it down. It's so light weight that it seems like it would be easier to control with a bit more mass. This is not essential, just a thought about how it could be better.

I own a SunJoe lawn dethatcher/scarifier, an extension pole saw that you can remove the pole and have about a 13 amp 8" chain saw (it's awesome and then some). So, I decided this was a perfect tool to add for minor landscaping. Like the other two items, this had ample power to do the job without a hint of stress on the electric motor. It was easy enough to control, although I should have taken down the lattice first. I was going to try and just till down about 2 inches, but this thing was so easy to use it was difficult not to go down 6-8 inches or more. I'd allow the tiller to go forward a bit, then pull backwards and it dug into the soil with ease. I went back and forth a few times to really loosen the soil in our front flowerbed. Then I stood back and leveled the soil the best I could, and then used a 4x4 to pack the soil back in case it rained. Just like the dethatcher and pole saw, this worked very well. I cannot stress enough how important it is to use the correct size extension cord. Take the dethatcher for example. I follow a guy on YouTube that does professional landscaping and he wanted to make a video about this SunJoe dethatcher and aside from the very undersized catch bag, he loved this. He used it on several lawns in a professional manner, than started loaning it out to anybody and everybody in the area that wanted to use it. It worked flawlessly until #15. He left the dethatcher out on the driveway with the correctly rated extension cord. When he got home, the person took the dethatcher and left the extension cord, and the tool came back with a burnt out motor. I have a degree in electronics and I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that the person used an extension cord that was not rated for the 13.5 amps and burned the motor out. The extension pole saw...equally amazing. We had a hardwood tree in our back yard that was dying, and parts of the limbs were dead on the ends, and hanging over places like the shed, fence, and neighbor's shed and swing, so I had to remove the limbs carefully. My neighbor came over to give me a hand and with ropes and cuts and pulling, we were able to bring down the limbs without damage to anything besides dents in the lawn. He said he'd come back the following day with a gas chain saw to help cut the rest of the tree up. He went to borrow his dads chain saw, but it wasn't running at the time so he went and bought at 45cc Craftsman gas powered chainsaw. This 45cc gas chainsaw bogged down repeatedly, so once he had to leave, I pulled the SunJoe saw back out and went to work. The SJ saw never showed any stress with the cuts, even when I was using the 8" bar to cut through 14" hardwood making long cuts. Judging by the number of times I've refilled the bar oil lube container, I've probably used the saw for 5-6 hours of non-stop cutting time. That saw is a little beast. If the motor on this tiller is equal to those other two, this tiller will be powerful enough to do any job you need. It's not as big or heavy as a gas powered unit, but it's so much easier to use. Throw in the hassle of renting one at a big box store, the wait, the paperwork, loading, driving home, cleaning up, returning, waiting, unloading, etc. This little tiller is a great investment. If you're going to use this for tilling anything of decent size, be sure to do so after a rain or after watering the ground. Trying to till compacted and dry soil is tough. I tilled my 5,000 sq. ft. front yard with a big box rental tiller and made the mistake of doing it compact and dry soil, and the tines just skipped over the surface kicking up dust. It was a big learning lesson...

Opening the package everything was jumbled around. I noticed that there was a supplied 500w 120v to 230v transformer in the box. This is not suitable as by my calculations this rotates it requires at least over 1600watts. A small inverter would not be powerful enough to run the rotavator. It's also a point of failure. I don't see it lasting very long. If you're from the UK / euro I would avoid buying this. We've started the return process. We're very disappointed as it was a long wait for delivery.

I ordered this after reading most of the reviews on it. I bought a few Sunjoe products and I've been happy with the quality and performance of all of them so far. I like that all the packaging inside is cardboard, and easy to recycle. I plugged it in taking care to use a good heavy extension cord as it recommends, of course. This machine is a beast! It chewed through some hard ground with medium sized rocks in it that hadn't ever been tilled and was nearly impossible to put a shovel into. I had a 10x20 ft plot fully tilled to a beautiful powder consistency within about 15 minutes and right to its maximum depth about 8 in"! It hit a few tree roots, the smaller ones of which it just broke up no problem, a few of the larger ones I had to stop and unwind them from the tines but that's to be expected. The handles and height are very comfortable and make it easy to control the tiller moving forward and backward. The weight of the unit compared to some other small tillers I think really helps it dig into the ground. My ground included quite a few clay sand and small rock clumps that were hard to break up with a shovel. This guy just ate them like it was no problem at all. Impressive. I 100% recommend this unit for anyone that's got a small garden area to till and wants a machine that puts maximum effort in. You won't be disappointed!

Used this little monster to break up an 11' diameter circle of very healthy lawn as the Vice-President of Life ordered a flower bed to be emplaced. This little tool (and it's so small, it's bordering "cute") worked like a hot damn - but there are limitations. The advantage of this being a very small, very light tiller is a disadvantage when breaking well-grown grass and/or areas with thicker roots. When doing the breaking, it bounces all over the place and really isn't all that effective if you let it move it's natural forward direction. What I found however, is that if you hold it in spot for a bit to do some digging/initial breaking, then PULL BACKWARDS AGAINST THE ROTATION, it will cut up against the sod and it works pretty well. It's still pretty light though and any substantial roots will have it bouncing. Just ease it off and come at it again. If the root is getting to the 1/2" size, stop and take it out with an axe or spade instead. With it bouncing around like that, it's hard to keep the trigger all the way depressed - but that's a safety feature I wouldn't remove, just would have preferred a palm switch over a trigger finger one to make it easier. After "backing up" over the whole area (and yes, there's a heck of a bicep workout there) and the core sod broken (and raked clear), I set it a incrementally deeper and let it go forward - holding back in areas that needed more attention. The unit is so light that it'll happily "walk over" areas of strong resistance (and more roots.) When encountering those, I just pulled back over top of them (just like "vacuuming the bed") and the reverse-cutting motion did the job. If I had a full-size, gas-powered rototiller, the job would have been quicker and with less arm work. Having said that, I don't want or need that kind of beast and now that this areas is broken up, I can use it at leisure next spring. The thing is zero-maintenance and so light it's quite easy to store. Just needs a little manual effort to convince it (really hold it back) in the tough areas. I haven't looked at seeing if I can selectively take tines out for ultra-thin tilling - maybe next year. It's only 16" as it is though, so likely not necessary. Having to manage the electrical cord was a bit of a minor pain - but still far less than gas, oil, and seasonal maintenance. Definitely a recommended buy for smaller gardens, flower beds and places where you just can't justify getting the heavy duty equipment.

I bought this Tiller because I needed to do some work for my lawn. I wasn't keen to go and rent a machine. After looking at some reviews and videos, I decided to get it. Don't let yourself fooled by its size. It can do the job very well. since it is light weight, the machine might bounce around if you hit a big rock. But it's easy to control. I did the job probably much faster then a conventional gas Tiller. It is light weight. easy to carry around. I finish the job I had to do in less then 10 minutes. Because it run relatively fast, it doesn't take time to get the job done. I highly recommend it.

Every year is the same struggle at the beginning of growing season ... digging out dense roots that have taken over our small garden and 2 above ground gardens that we grow tomatoes in. Below the surface our gardens are essentially a giant brick of roots. A few months ago I was wondering if there was such a thing as a mini rototiller ... something that was small enough to be used in the above ground gardens. It turns out that there's loads of them. I wish I had known this years ago. I did my due diligence and this rototiller scored high. Today was the day that I put it to use. I have to say that the results were incredible. Beyond all expectations. I can't believe how much time and energy this machine is going to save me every year. It's a little hard on the wrists when the roots are really dense, but overall it's pretty easy to use. One of the fears I had was how far it would be tossing the soil around. It wasn't bad at all. The only issue, which exists with all rototillers, is that you have to cut all the roots away from the blades. I just used a small kitchen knife. I actually spent as much time digging the roots away from the blades as I did using the rototiller. Bottom line is, I couldn't be happier. I highly recommend this rototiller, especially if you have a densely rooted garden or above ground garden.