Agri-Fab 45-0218, 26" Push Lawn Sweeper

I thought this sweeper worked very well. It doesn't pick up every little leaf/twig, but it does a really great job of picking up most easily. I read a lot of mediocre reviews for this before I bought it, so I was skeptical, but it's better than many reviewers give it credit for.Make sure to adjust the height correctly. That's the most important thing, and it's very easy to do. You should be able to feel the brushes brushing the ground. You want that to add a little resistance to your pushing but not so much that it's difficult to keep the sweeper moving. Level ground also helps as plenty of other people have mentioned, but it works fine on hills and slightly uneven ground.I disagree that it's only for light jobs. Our house backs up to a wooded area, and we get tons of leaves. But I could raise the sweeper to its largest height and pretty much tackle any pile of leaves. You won't get it in one pass by any means, but go over it a few times, lowering periodically if needed. It'll work. I actually think piles were easier than a large, light spread of leaves.The hopper is plastic and it fills up quickly. I don't get why this is a common complaint. It's a leaf collector. You want to it collect quickly. If it was any larger, it'd be unmanageable. It's a good size for transferring into a trash can/bag. You can fill up the hopper in about a minute, so you will spend most of your time emptying the hopper rather than sweeping. But that doesn't mean the hopper is too small. That's just how fast the sweeper works. As for the plastic durability, I haven't had mine very long at all, but it seems durable enough. It's made out of material like a common tarp, and we're just temporarily holding leaves here.The assembly isn't bad. Set aside an hour and you probably will be done early. The instructions aren't that difficult. You need some basic tools, really just a couple of wrenches. A hammer and needle-nose pliers will make your life much easier on the palnuts.This sweeper doesn't 100% pick up everything or eliminate the need to own a rake. In fact, it really works best if you rake leaves into little piles or rows that you can sweep over. My wife raked into rows that I swept over and we finished both of our seriously neglected, leaf-covered, not entirely level lawns in about 2 hours. That was 6 completely full 39 gallon trash bags of leaves. That would have been an all day project before.Clearing your lawn still takes some work, but this provides a massive reduction in the amount of that work. And it really doesn't take a ton of storage space when you're finished with it. It's easy to use and very effective. I highly recommend this product.

Ok I have a leaf problem. Basically imagine the largest Oak tree you can, and that beast's job this time of year is dropping tons of leaves and acorns on my yard, on my house, and its favorite mission: into my pool. I about killed myself with the blowing, raking, picking up and putting in the garbage can. (Here in Dallas we don't as of yet have yard waste disposal and I haven't been crafty enough to build a com-poster. Even if I were to build a com-poster, no way it would be able to deal with the massive volume of leaves my behemoth Oak taunts me with on a daily basis.I don't currently own a lawnmower,; I'm a recent transplant from California where I believe it's illegal to cut one's own lawn - we have always had yard service. Here in Dallas I think I have a yard guy, but I haven't seen him for about 3 months. Lawnmower is going to be next, but I wasn't ready for that major step as of yet - so after a couple glasses of wine I was "Priming" and today the Agri-Fab showed up on my front porch (along with a ton of other stuff - including a dozen or so iPhone charger cables - how do I go through so many of those?)The box is a little intimidating - you know, "Some assembly required." I'm at least a junior varsity home improvement guy and have a fairly respectable set of tools. Assembly took maybe 25 minutes and was pretty straight forward. Instructions were in English, and they had pictures. (The best part.) I assembled the Agri-Fab and took it outside for a test drive.The first key is setting the level of the bushes to the proper height. Too low and the sweeper will get bogged down, too high and it won't pick up anything. Once you get the sweet spot it actually does a pretty good job. I would wear eye protection the next time I do this. Also if your yard work includes a beer (like mine usually does) be careful because this little bastard really kicks up the debris up into the basket. Some hit me in the chest (gut) and I did have some beer penetration.Here is the good:Beats the crap out of blowing/raking. Hands down. I filled up a large garbage can in about 10 minutes and didn't have to bend all the way over like you do with the whole rake, pile, pick up maneuver.Here is the "could be better."That bag is pretty small and fills up quickly. disconnecting the bag from the sweeper thing to dump it could be easier. There are two elastic pieces that connect to hooks on the handle that are the most annoying - I ended up not connecting them on subsequent cycles.It's not the most heavy duty piece of equipment - pretty much what you would expect from a post-wine Amazon order. I think it will hold up ok.It bogs down with heavy lawn debris - that is to be expected. My yard basically has debris stalagmites. I worked out a technique of tilting and going back and forth at times.So am I happy with the Agra-Fab? Yeah, I would say so. It's not perfect, but it sure beats raking. It picked up some of my acorns - maybe if I get all the leaves up I can lower it down farther and let it try the acorns again. I'm not picking up acorns by hand again. I filled up a Home-Depot bucket with acorns by hand a few weeks ago and did such a number on my hamstrings I could barely walk for the better part of a week. Not doing that again.Hope this helps! Good luck.

I rarely write reviews on here, in fact this may be my first. This did such a poor job and it honestly took MORE effort to do this and put substantially more strain on my back to do this than raking would have. There is nothing better or easy about this, it's just an inferior method to gather lawn debris.Dumping the debris at the curb was also not well thought out, tried a few different methods and all of them were way messier than then should have been. If the bottom part of the tarp that stored the leaves while using the sweeper was fixed in place, you could easily dump the whole thing forward but that is entirely loose and just flops out making it lack any real grace in dumping the yard clippings or leaves.An you'll need divine assistance if your yard is bumpy at all, it will not work. One dip I'm pretty sure in the space of 2 seconds (it happening, me noticing, and me lifting it away) it broke one of the tires which just now barely spins. It spins begrudgingly sometimes but then will just stop.If a tire could be a toddler, this tire is now a toddler.I purchased this because I have 2 lower disk herniations and one disk herniation in my neck plus a shoulder injury from boxing. The whole point was for it to be faster and low impact.It was slower, grueling, and I ended up laid up barely able to move for days afterwards as it caused me so much pain.If you have a perfect, flawless, flat, manicured lawn (which means you wouldn't need this anyway) it may not be awful.For anyone who doesn't have a 1950's white picket fence idealized piece of suburban property stay far away from this thing.Unless you hate yourself. If you hate yourself, 5 stars.