Earthwise GS70015 15-Amp Garden Corded Electric Chipper, Collection Bin

I was weary of purchasing this because of the bad reviews but I saw a cheaper version of this had quite good reviews so I figured this could be a price point expectation? I've only spent 1 day with it, but chipped for about 4 hours straight and my initial impression is that this thing is pretty capable. I jammed it up so that I needed to actually unscrew the unit 3 times -- once within the first 5 minutes because I didn't know what I was doing, once because I was trying to be way too greedy with the branch I was putting through, and once unexpectedly. In all cases, I probably could have cleared the jam by using some channel locks or pliars and just pulling the branch out from the top feed / hopper and this is preferable as a first step if only because it takes like 40 turns to unscrew the bolt that allows you to access the blades. To me, three jams, 2 of them definitely my fault, over 4 hours is totally acceptable. Also to be clear, I mostly chipped dryer softwood, but did do a fair amount of hardwood and fresher, greener, wetter stuff. But here lies a few tips. 1. Use safety protection!! Full eye protection is a must. Branches will whip side to side unexpectedly. Use ear protection! It's loud and you only have one set of ears. Even gloves are recommended because sometimes when the branch whips and it's big enough it can hit you pretty hard. 2. Do not be afraid to use some violence! Many "jams" were avoided by just smashing the branch through the hopper using the provided hopper tool. Also whatever you can fit through the feeder will chip! I was worried in the beginning about not feeding anything too big, but it's really about how well you can guide it through the feeder, not so much the size of the branch (at least with softer woods). And this guiding process is a bit of an art (see more below) 3. Use a 12AWG/20A extension cord. Otherwise the voltage drop when this thing pulls full amps chewing through a big stick will result in big power loss! At least I assume that's the case and is the recommendation in the manual! 4. Hardwood is definitely.. harder. So use some restraint in combo with my violence recommendation depending on the wood. Violence on soft wood works pretty well. Violence with hardwood will likely jam the machine. Thus -- 5. Have patience and do some prep. The biggest problem is with wood that has sharp bends or big knots that you can't turn through the hopper feeding guide. If you or whoever you are working with prep the pieces for success, you will definitely have more fun feeding the beast. 6. RTFM! "Read the ___ manual". It has advice on alternating easier feeding wood between harder feeds ones to help keep the chipper clear and recommends wet wood in between dry pieces. I personally didn't have any trouble with the limited wet / fresh wood but I chipped 95% older, dryer, soft wood (which it absolutely massacres). 7. You will definitely improve with time! The amount of violence I used definitely decreased over the day as I learned how to find the best rotation technique to get the branches to feed more smoothly into the chipper. My only "critique" is that it does chip into fairly small mulch (which is called out in the item description). This is totally fine and expected but I am kind of curious what the larger mulcher is like as I think I would probably prefer that end product, but not sure. I had pretty low expectation but it met them, definitely. And by the end of day 1 with the thing, I feel it has already paid itself off for the price. In the beginning of the day I thought okay maybe this is about a 4 star, but once *I* learned how to use the thing more properly, I feel it is probably a 5 star product. I mean for the price this thing is a beast!! I'm sure there are use cases where this thing just doesn't keep up but for me, this thing cleans up! Too bad it will soon cost 2.5x as much with tariffs as it's made in China. Thank you to our wise King for lowering the prices of products for those of us that actually work for a living. I don't know about the cheaper chippers on Amazon but (electrical) safety wise this thing is also ETL listed and has overload protection. It claims it is "built to last". We will see! Recommended!

Great Chipper for moderate usage, slow but sure. Leaves rating 2 - it's a chipper so while it reduces the size of the leaves it really doesn't "mulch" then into fine material. Flower stems, etc. rating 4 - it mulches stems and harder material much better. However, stringy leaves such as iris, tulips, and ornamental grasses are a struggle and plug up the chipper fairly often requiring removal of the blade cover to remove the blockage. Creates fine mulch. Limbs and branches (nine bark & ornamental pear) rating 3 - limbs over 1", especially knots are a struggle. Knots in particular are tough. It does make beautiful bark! Challenge - the round paddle used to push material into the cutter head was the most frustrating factor in using this chipper. Leaves wrap around the paddle making it too tight to fit through the feed hole in the hopper. This means it is constantly stuck pushing and removing the paddle from the hopper feed holes. It was frustrating enough that I immediately looked for an alternative. Grab a 3/4" x 4" x 12" piece of wood, add a handle, and 99% of the struggles with feeding disappear! Major Failure - After 6 - 8 uses the blade holder retaining lock nut came loose causing both cutting blades to contact the upper shroud and break off. Not a big deal except that the company doesn't offer replacement blades or the lock nut which as I will explain is a blessing! My advice based on this is inspect the retaining nut after every use and MOST IMPORTANTLY buy the blades sold by Amazon in the 4 - pack for this model. The blades have turned this into a completely different machine! The cutting speed and efficiency of these blades makes it feel like the chipper has gained 1 -2HP. It now cuts material up to the 1 1/2" and those nasty knots with virtually no strain on the motor. Secondly, these blades pull the material into the blades while the OEM blades required you use a lot of force to drive the material against the blades. Without the new blades and redesigned paddle my rating would not been above 3 but now it's a 4, maybe 5! And one last caution. There is an aluminum shroud above the blade holder that must be removed to clear debris that becomes lodged between the shroud and holder. Phillips head screws are used which means care must be taken to clean the screw to prevent damage. Secondly; these are self-tapping type screws threaded into plastic. Make sure to rotate the screws counterclockwise until they fall into the threads to prevent cross threading the lower hosing which holds the motor. It will be unusable if the shroud cannot be tightened!

Update October 2019: I've used this thing on and off (I never throw away trimmed branches - it's free mulch!), finally the blades got dull. It was very easy to unscrew them, lazily drag it back and forth on a coarse sharpening stone for about 5 min, put them back, and the chipper works as good as new. I didn't realize it at first, but blades are double sided, so I could have simply flipped them and used the other side ... But I wanted to see how long my sharpening job will last)). When the blades were dull, it started jamming a bit due to last thick but short chunks getting caught in the blade, but not too much (with the cross "thingy" gone - see below - jamming isn't an issue at all, really. And that collection bin is still the best. Happy chipping!.. January 2016 original review: I have used this thing for a day, and so far I am extatic. I hope it’s going to be reliable; just in case I purchased a 2-year warranty. Honestly, I don't know why other two brands of wood chippers out there sell so much better than this one. They look awkward and don’t have a receiver container. I was a bit apprehensive to get it for the lack of reviews, but there were 2 things going for it: very similar “chinese wonder” had excellent reviews on youtube and seemed so easy to "unjam" (one knob), and the container to collect the output (which works out beautifully and is a good size). This chipper seemed very "logical" to me, it has all that a chipper needs to have in my mind, larger acceptable diameter than other brands on Amazon, and it seems to be well-made. I guess, the time will tell how well. In a few hours that I used it, the pile in the picture diminished by 2/3, and it jammed on me ONCE (my fault, I put a wedge-shaped chunk of wood in it, that was thin, but wider than recommended diameter), took me less than 1 minute to get it out and keep going. You gotta love that! I didn’t put sticks over 1 1/2” into it (as many people report that electric chippers don’t really live up to the max diameter promise. (I don’t have much of thick ones anyway). The chipper didn’t do all that well with thin brush, it processed it, but the length of the sticks coming out was 2-3”. Nor a major defect in my eyes. It didn’t do well with a clump of weeds either. It milled it into pulp, but I had to open it and clear the chamber. I don’t consider it a true jam (the blade was still spinning), because at that point the receiving container was full and might have prevented the stuff from coming out, I didn’t have another clump to give it a second shot. Either way, I’m fine with it. My main goal was wood chipping, and wood chipping it does. Also, I must say that it is rather quit. I have sensitive ears, and always put on ear muffs when using my table saw. With this chipper I was perfectly fine without ear protection. It looks like perfect gadjet for a weekend warrior. It definitely will not see much of heavy use with me. Some sticks and twigs from our trees (this load is an exception, we got rid of a large bush that was overtaking our patio). If I don’t have enough, now and then I might collect some branches in the surrounding woods to make more bedding for my bird cage (I find that grass or wood chips blend in bird you-know-what better than paper or newspaper:). This way I know for sure that it’s clean wood and it’s safe for my birds to chew on if they want to. I also had an idea to try this wood mulch for growing mushrooms. It appears that all “regular” straw that you get at feed stores is hosed with either herbicides, or pesticids or the conbination of the two. Mushrooms have a tendency to accumulate all kinds of junk, so I’d rather have something ecologically clean to grow them on. I am not sure how well this will work out, but I’ll see in a few weeks… Happy chipping!

I bought this item to clear a bunch of fallen branches from a cluster of maple trees on my property. I assembled it and tested it immediately. It began to rain and wet the wood, so I stopped without a more thorough test. Here’s what I found – Pros: 1. The chipper was securely packed and was received undamaged. Light weight – about 35 lbs. 2. Comes with two wrenches needed for assembly. 3. Safety features are adequate. 4. Nice looking once assembled. 5. Easy to maneuver. 6. It chips DRY branches under 1½ inches thick – sometimes! 7. The chips are just the right size to use for mulch or compost. Cons: 1. The chipper was received three days later than promised. Unusual for Amazon. 2. The carton was received in the manufacturer’s box, not an Amazon over-carton. Contents could easily be seen by anyone with devious intentions. 3. During unpacking the chipper body spilled some wood dust and a few small wood slivers, indicating that it had been previously used (or perhaps tested at the factory). 4. Assembly by someone not mechanically inclined would be troublesome. The directions are sparse, confusing and incorrect when assembling the axel and wheels to the unit’s legs. The directions call for the legs to be secured to the body first, then the axel and its cover are supposed to be inserted into mounting holes in the legs. This is impossible, as the axel cover diameter is larger than the leg’s mounting holes. I had to remove one leg, insert one end of the axel, cover and washers in the secured leg, the other axel end in the loose leg, then reattach the loose leg to the body. Also, a 2-inch spacer is provided to separate the wheel of your choosing from one chipper’s leg. I found the spacer to be unnecessary. The wheels turn OK without a spacer. 5. Assembling the hopper ring to the hopper was impossible. The ring was just too large and misshapen to fit. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get the ring to snap into every hole provided in the hopper. I wound up breaking 3 of the ring’s tabs trying and had to secure the unseated ring with super glue. I don’t know why the ring isn’t integrally molded to the hopper to begin with. A very poor design and most annoying to assemble. 6. I was able to feed the machine a dozen known dry branches, each just under1½ inches thick and about 3-feet long. The chipper jammed twice (not good). The clearing process was relatively easy. Both jams, however, tripped a 15-amp GFI circuit breaker in the house (hmmm, not good at all). 7. As a safety measure, the manufacturer specifies using a 12 AWG extension cord, no longer than 25 feet in length. This tethers the chipper to the house, requiring distant wood to be gathered & hauled to the chipper (a bummer if one has a lot of distant wood to chip). 8. This chipper is marginally OK for very light work within 25 feet of the house. A small industrial grade gas-powered chipper is far better and mobile for heavier work at any distance. In summary, since I voided the warranty by breaking the hopper ring tabs, the unit cannot be returned. Sooo, I reckon I will have to keep it and deal with its sporadic operation or try to sell it to someone else.

Item assembled fast and easy. First use amounted to about a half full discharge bin which required a lot of branches to create. The branches were 1/4” to around 1.5” in diameter, a few with small leaves attached. This item worked on anything I could fit into it in the sense that a nice size mulch is created. The work did not get done without issues however. There is a learning curve. As the branches go over around 3/4”, they need to be very straight. Larger very curved or those with bends would not pass through the small input hole because larger branches are too rigid to be pulled or push assisted through, but rather get jammed because of the geometry involved. The other thing I had to learn was you must be careful with larger branches that will start okay through the input hole, but have joints along the branch from side branches that were removed. The irregular shaped joints might exceed the size of the input hole across ihe joint’s widest dimension. Then the branch would wedge in the hole and stop feeding. Sometimes when a curved or bent or large joint filled branch jams in the input hole, it will also jam inside the machine at the cutter blade. A branch jammed generally cannot be pulled out from the top. It is necessary to unscrew the lock nut that secures the top of the unit, pivot the top open, and then the jammed branch can be dislodged. Sometimes a jammed branch in the cutters will stall the motor and pop a circuit breaker. In my initial half bin of mulch I experienced 10 jams. Two jams I remedied by pulling the branch back out from the top. Eight times I needed to open the top to free the jammed branch. Two of the ten jams popped a circuit breaker. As I gained experience, the frequency of jams decreased. In summary, this item works well when it does not jam, but it is very easy to jam and then it is a bit of a pain to work with. You must be very careful of the shape, irregularities, and size of branches you feed into it or your work will slow way down dealing with jams. It is not meant for fast, easy, high volume work, but rather patient, slow cleanuo of waste branches that occasionally accumulate in your yard. The machine is not fast even when not jamming, branches feed in slowly by necessity. As I said, it does make nice size and shape mulch, but requires a lot of branches to get significant volume of mulch. I would give it 3.5 stars because for the price it is okay if you are patient and careful with realistic expectations, but I would not go 4 and certainly not 5 stars because it is too fussy and slow to work with.

As long as you aren’t expecting something that works like a full-blown $2000+ gas powered chipper, which it is not, it works well for what it is. It’s best for branches - not leaves. You should get a leaf shredder for that. It works fine for smaller branches, but you do have to break off most of the twigs so they will fit in the hopper. I got this one because it was the only one I could find that has a hopper. The hopper isn’t very big, but it does help to guide the material into the holes. The slide-out collection bin is easy to pull out and empty. You’ll know when it’s full because you won’t be able to feed branches anymore. You will quickly get a feel for how much the motor can take before it jams by listening to it. If you feed the branches properly it will almost never jam. If it does jam, it’s easy to open the bin to access the blades and remove the jammed wood pieces. A word for the wise: watch out for those rocks. They are bad news. If you hear something clanking around and/or see sparks in the hopper, turn it off immediately and open it up, remove the rock, and see how badly damaged the blades are. I found it difficult to find replacement blades specifically for this unit, but there are blades for a couple of other brands out there that should work. Removing the blades is fairly easy, and you can do it without unscrewing the 8 screws that hold the blade guard assembly. All you need is a 6mm hex/allen wrench, which is included. For each blade, you access the outer screw from the front, and the inner screw via the access hole in the back. The instructions kind of show this. It’s nice that the blades are double-sided, as you can just rotate them to get double the use out of them. Sharpening the blades rather than replacing them is an option. I wouldn’t use a file or a sharpening stone unless you have a really good jig to hold everything at the proper angle, and it’s also very time-consuming. I have a pretty nice bench grinder with adjustable tool rests, so I can set it at the proper angle and sharpen the blades fairly quickly, dipping them in water frequently to keep their temper from being destroyed . I have been experimenting using the mulch this chipper produces for my fireplace. It works pretty well as long as you have a hot fire going, but it does use a lot of mulch. The mulch should also work outside around plants, trees, etc., but I have never tried that because I use redwood mulch and none of the branches I shred are redwood. So overall, it’s very good for light residential use. I’m happy with it.

I did my research and this seemed like the best chipper for me. I wanted to reduce the amount of baggage and was tired of branches and sticks poking through even heavy-duty contractor bags. There are some issues though: 1) The hopper on top is a marketing gimmick. It gives off the illusion that you can feed leaves or fill it up and have it go in, but that's not the case. This is like most other residential chippers: it works best with straight branches. It doesn't do leaves very well. 2) The collection bin on the bottom is nice, and one of the reasons why I choose this over the competitors. But the machine fills the bin very unevenly. Ever so often you have to tilt the whole machine to the back so the pile of chips on one side equalizes within it. If you don't the chips quickly get plug the output. 3) It doesn't do stringy wood very well.. like bamboo. 4) I wish the pushing stick provided with the chipper had a different design. Like a cup shape at the end, or at least two-cylinder to match the hole on top. It's very hard to push branches in with it. 5) Like most residential chippers, it handles very straight branches. I recommend you get another tool like a pruner, a power cutoff or oscillating tool with a wood blade to help reduce the work of cutting off sub branches to make it straight. This machine ADDs more work to cleanup, for the benefit of having to use fewer bags. A good option if you are limited on the amount of foilage you are trying to get rid of in a set period of time (e.g. your weekly green bin). If you are unlimited, or if you have an insane amount of foilage, you are better off mass hauling it away, because it would be too much work to process everything into straight sticks.

Really good small mulcher/shredder. You have to be careful about the diameter of branches that you feed in, but I have mulched up enough branches from my yard and neighborhood to cover a substantial part of my yard to retain moisture in a desert climate. I regret that I jammed the machine with some bark I was trying to mulch. Normally I can open the chute and remove any jam, but in this case I could not open the chute. I called customer service for help, and they had US-based customer service who answered immediately and spent a lot of time with me. However, I was still not able to open the chute, and the machine is still jammed. I'm going to try again in the spring, but I fear it might be jammed for good. Until this point, I really enjoyed using the machine and consider it good value for the price.

Funciona muy bien no he tenido problema, es ideal para ramas de 3 a 4 cm de grueso. Si las ramas son muy delgadas se puede atascar y las ranas muy gruesas no entran. Recomendable para un jardín con árboles medianos.

I received several notifications that my shipment date was changed and then when I went to track it, it said that my package may be lost but it did come in later that day. The product works very well with branches but it is VERY difficult to put leaves through.

If you let the machine do the work without trying to jam pieces through it fast as I seen some people do on You Tube, it works just fine. If you put in branches with lots of green leaves, it has a tendency to plug up over time but it is easy to clear up. Demo video show lady putting leaves through the top but it is way too time consuming I consider it useless for shredding leaves. I am quite happy how it chipped the branches and twigs. It is far less noisy than gas operated chippers. Collection bin is a definite plus. As noted, the reason I did not give it five stars is it should not be advertised as leaf shredder (misleading) and it's tendency to plug up with branches with lots of green leaves.

En terminos generales funciona bien, lo único es que me imagine el proceso mas rápido y no encontré la opción de ordenar unas cuchillas adicionales.

Works like a hot damn, I've already put a tonne if branches through it ( even an old shovel handle )it can clog up if you put too wet of branches through it ( fresh willow bungs it up a bit ) but, it's easy to clean out and inspect. I don't use the collection bin it came with, I mounted it onto my yard trailer. That small bin filled up too quickly is all ( the bin is now used to hold empty beer cans in my shop )