BLACK+DECKERLawn Mower, Corded, 13-Amp, 20-Inch (MM2000)

Warning: Long, opinionated, sanctimonious, but 100% truthful review to follow, by a reluctant, foot-dragging self-styled expert in mowing with an electric mower. If you are easily POed, you have been warned.5 stars is based, not on this mower being the ultimate of all products I have ever used, but on perceived future worthiness and proper present operation. (As of July 17, 2015 I have been using this for 3 months.) I explain that because I realized people have radically different ideas about ratings after I saw a review of some cheap, perfectly functioning item which said 5 stars could only apply to sublime items, should you ever encounter one in your lifetime, which is how he rated novels less worthy than William Shakespeare, and that was how he was going to rate products. IMO, good sense tells us that mundane, engineered products all have inherent inadequacies in our losing struggle with the real world, so rating products as if they were art is foolishness. I will mention some faults with this product, but as a total evaluation, they should be taken as incidental. In other words, this mower cuts grass blades as well as any rotating mower can. It has the power, in effect, of gas powered mowers that might cost a few hundred dollars more, and is fabulously more convenient to use.You can stop here if all you want is an opinion without details.I weighed the mower without the bag (which I don't use because bagging is pointless) and it was 43 pounds. The Amazon specs say 53, which may be because of the bag.The height adjustment lever, which is convenient by being on top, and easy to move by having a long handle for good leverage, therefore also gets easily knocked out of its locked #7 position when it is hardly brushed against by low branches of my many shrubs, dropping to #4 position, scalping the lawn. For the first few cuttings this happened a lot, but now that I have learned to watch it doesn't.The top hand-operated skewers, something like quick releases on bicycles, that let the handle be folded quickly for storage, could not be made tight even with the adjustment knob all the way in. Some washers I added were enough. Since other reviews do not mention this, either something was left out in my case, or B&D has changed something. The levers on the quick-releases sometimes hook onto branches.In fact all kinds of things on the MM2000 get hooked, whereas the older models had smooth housings.I could make false, bragging claims about my wisdom when I decided on an electric mower around the year 1970. Like: It was better for the environment! (which it is.) Or: it is more economical to operate! (which it is.) Or: it is much lighter! (which it is.) Actually, I had a job in which my primary work during the growing season of Michigan was pushing a very nice and expensive gas lawn mower all day to get what the big tractor mowers couldn't get at, or near, or under. At home, I had a classy push reel-mower, which was murder in the blasted humidity and heat of summer, but I declined to replace it with a gas mower, because it was too much for me to endure the sound of a gas-mower for one more second than I had to. While again wistfully contemplating the gas mowers at S--rs, I noticed an obscured, wimpy little thing off to the side: an electric mower, audaciously claimed to be quiet-er. Whether you can claim something loud is quiet-er is a question for philosophers, but it did not sound at all like a gas mower. And it cut as well as the gas mowers, but much easier. It may not have survived the 4 foot weed stalks my on-the-job mower could manage, after I acquired the technique, but that was not even slightly relevant.That light, little, aluminum-housed, mower with a novel pair of side-by-side 8 inch blades, lasted, with some repairs, for 27 years, I suppose because my lawn was so small, and electric motors do not require elaborate engineering to be durable. (The repairs were: a switch, one set of brushes, and the two belts.) The old thing which I thought would last forever gave out in 2 years when I moved to where the lawn took 3 and 1/2 hours to cut. 27 years without smelling or keeping gas, without once having trouble starting, without any new spark plugs or tuneups, with less than half the effort of pushing and maneuvering a gas version, without hearing the nasty popping noise. That mower was followed by a B&D MM850, an ancestor of this current (but totally re-engineered) model, which could only handle a mere 17 year pounding, again with some repairs. (The replacements were a set of brushes, one new blade, a top bearing, and the clips that hold the wheels on. I replaced the rusted out, flimsy clips with endcaps.)I will mention that I have a 4 year technical degree in electronics, which does not qualify me to design electric motors, but it is some credentials, in case somebody wonders. The electric motor of this model supposedly is rated at 13 amps. It does not use 13 amps. A rating means different things when applied to different equipment. So, for instance, you have circuit breakers in your breaker box rated at 15 amps. That means you could use 15 amps, not that you are using 15. Electric mowers by their nature pull more amps if you load them down. 13 amps in the case of this mower's motor probably means that past 13 amps the motor will progressively get hot enough to burn the insulation on the windings. (And the rating is probably done in free air, not inside a stifling enclosure such as the mowers housing.) That means you risk failure if you operate your mower at 13 amps for prolonged periods.I rigged something to measure the amps while cutting grass 3 inches taller than the mower's maximum height adjustment, at which the mower was pulling 3.7 amps, not 13. At as fast as I could walk, and you could then hear the motor bog some, it was 4.2 amps. So when the manual advises a 14 or even 12 gauge cord, this is because of lawyers, not either safety or the requirements of the mower under normal operation. Naturally, I did not think of this when I bought my cords. I have a 100 foot, 14 gauge, 2 wire cord, to which I add a 50 foot, 12 gauge, monster 3-wire cord to get to the furthest part of the lawn. It is of no use to run a 3 wire cord to a device that has two prongs, as this mower, and practically all electrical lawn equipment does. So why are two wire cords very hard to find?This mower, as well as its ancestors like my MM850, has a DC motor with a bridge rectifier to convert the house AC to pulsating DC. AC motors are everywhere and not expensive, and refrigerators and furnace blowers use them. It makes sense to use AC motors with AC, does it not? And AC motors don't necessarily have brushes, which wear out and cause problems, nor bridge rectifiers, which drop the voltage a couple volts and waste a bit of power. The rectifier drops voltage (2 volts), in the same range as 150 foot cords some people seem worried about. And there ARE mowers that use AC motors. For what reason is B & D going with DC? It is my understanding that DC motors do not overheat when they are slowed down significantly, or when operated at lower voltages, as some AC motors do. That's good. (DC motors turn slower, and use less power, at lower voltage.)But brushes do cause problems. Probably most people who think their lawn mower "has conked out" (and it isn't just the switch) have worn out the brushes. (Brushes are what they call the replaceable contacts that supply the rotating motor with electricity.) It is not a difficult replacement if you are handy with a screwdriver. But I have also had my old mower suddenly refuse to run, or run very slowly. After getting off the cover, blowing out the astounding amount of very fine crud inside, and working the brush springs, to get out particles blocking the brushes from good contact, the mower is revived. Lifting and banging the mower down on the sidewalk a few times often works, but don't get carried away. Although the manual instructs you not to get inside (as demanded by lawyers), that means debris will accumulate inside until it ultimately strangles the motor to death. People accustomed to replacing their cheap-crap gas mowers frequently may not realize they can get another long period of good operation out of their electric mower by getting inside.The motor cannot be totally sealed, because air must circulate to cool the motor. (There indeed is a fan inside the blade housing which draws air through a couple of small holes (prone to clogging), which draws cooling air into miscellaneous openings on top). But dust and mostly tiny particles of grass which the mower kicks up gets drawn inside, and can get in the motor and lodge in the brushes. The first time I opened up the forbidden motor compartment of the MM850, after a couple years, I was baffled why they would line the inside with a greenish foam rubber mat molded exactly to the interior of the cover. They didn't!The new MM2000 makes it just as difficult to get inside, by having screws set in deep holes that fill up with fine grass clippings you have to blow out.The reason electric motors last a long time, compared to gas motors, is that the only wearing parts are the two bearings that hold opposite ends of the shaft that turns, and those don't cost much. Gas mowers have that and a lot more, and the parts take a tremendous pounding from the brief but strong explosions of the gas. Yes they can make cheap gas engines, but they can't make gas engines that last cheap.Battery mowers are a mistake. You may feel a cord is too much hassle, but lugging and charging expensive batteries, which are only able to last a couple of years, because the high energy cycling wears them fast, is a hassle.Isn't electricity expensive compared to gas? Yes, but the conversion to useful work is much better for an electric motor than a gas engine. 90% efficient is not a big deal for an electric motor. 30% efficient in practice would be a miracle for a gas engine. IAC, here is the calculated cost for me. Around here, the total maximum charge for 1000 watts for 1 hour is $0.17. While in operation, the mower uses under 500 watts. If it took less than an hour to cut the lawn, it would cost under $0.09 for the electricity. For 3 1/2 hours, it would be under 30 cents. (0.17 x .5 x 3.5)At $200 for the mower, assuming it lasts 15 years, that comes to $13.33 per year. In my case, that comes out to 44 cents per cutting. So, not counting my labor, total out-of-pocket cost is 74 cents per cutting.I mentioned that bagging clippings is pointless. Here is how I came to think that: In the later 70's the ecology movement erupted. One idea was that to reduce creating ever-more eco-destructive landfills, we should not put biodegradable material in them. Manufacturers and eco-fanatics then proclaimed that specially designed mulching mowers, which chopped the cuttings short enough to fall unobtrusively between the grass blades (provided the lawn was left long enough to hide them) were eco-correct. Frankly, I 'd prefer to avoid bagging the clippings, not because of eco concerns, but that bagging is three times the work of not bagging. So I, after seeing articles claiming that they had found some ordinary mowers that did just as well as the mulchers, tried my suddenly out-dated mower (set to maximum height) and found it worked too. I monitored for the potential lawn disease that might result, which never happened. On the contrary, the lawn stayed greener between fertilizer applications, and after a few years of this, I seldom put fertilizer on the lawn. (True, the grass is not that deep blue-green you get after fertilizer anymore, except in spring, but it is a pretty green.) To be clear, if you cut more than an inch off the grass blades, or have the height lower than 3 1/2 inches, you risk seeing grass clippings laying on the lawn. I have not bagged the clippings since around 1975.The mower is working fine as of July 7, 2016.(To be continued when I have time. )

What is there to say, it does what it says. Nice power, easy to adjust the height, very light and easy to push. With a good blade, it leave a good quality cut. My last mower was 13 inch, so this 20 inch is a real time saver.

The media could not be loaded. This review covers three elements: Amazon's support, Black & Decker's support, and the lawn mower itself.I purchased the BLACK+DECKER MM2000 corded lawn mower on Amazon Resale with the condition marked as "very good". It arrived with a small broken piece, just a cord holder. Not a big deal. To be honest, I did not notice that it was a "resale". I found this out later.In any case, I contacted Amazon about the broken piece. I was told that I could decide later (without specifying the time frame) whether to return it, so I kept it. Over the course of two months, the mower became progressively weaker. It now dies within minutes of use. See video uploaded.I contacted Amazon for support and was told they cannot help because the 30 day return window had already expired. I was told to reach out to the manufacturer. The manufacturer asked for a video of the problem, which I sent.The manufacturer then refused warranty coverage, saying the mower was bought as an Amazon Resale and that the warranty only applies to the original purchaser.Neither Amazon nor the manufacturer will take responsibility.Amazon support just says it's their policy, they cannot help after 30 days. I asked to be escalated to the leadership team. They just repeat the same blurb about their policy. I ask whether the policy has any exceptions and try to reason with them but they stop replying with this phrase: "Since there is nothing else and I have given you the answer we have to go by, I will let you go at this time to help other customers. Have a great day!"At the end of the day, this purchase showed me that Black & Decker makes poor quality products, that their support is terrible, and also that Amazon no longer has a good customer support, either.

This mower worked great, but it only lasted 3 years- almost to the DAY, and the motor seized. I liked using it, but I did not re-purchase this time.