Sun Joe Snow Joe AJ801E 12 Amp Electric Scarifier Plus Lawn Dethatcher with Collection Bag, 13″

This review has two parts:
1. Product Review
2. Snow Joe Customer Service

Product Review
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Let’s start with the challenge I had to solve for. I have an lawn that spans 2000 sq. ft. that has never been dethached in the last 7 years. The lawn health has been steadily decreasing and no amount of chemical fertilizers or weed control have been able to restore the lawn to its early glory. After giving up on the chemical treatment path, I tried aeration. Presumably it helped, but I saw no real improvement in the health of my lawn. Finally, I hit upon dethaching. My lawn has become a patchwork of living and dead grass.

I picked up the Sun Joe AJ801E for three reasons:
1. It had the highest powered motor (amp consumption) on Amazon for dethaching
2. It had a scraper / scarifier, which presumably will allow me to more easily reseed targeted areas of my lawn.
3. My “Mow, Blow, & Go” gardener claimed that all the dethacthers for a lawn my size were rented out to golf courses.

Assembly is super easy, but I had some issues with one of the metal arms not fitting correctly into the main dethatcher. More on that later….

Product performance: I ran the Sun Joe at 0″ across a small section of my lawn. In one pass across 10ft of lawn, the catch bag was full of thatch! I was shocked. Looking at the lawn, I could barely tell that the Sun Joe had actually lifted anything out, but the full bag told me otherwise. I ended up covering 200 sq. ft of my lawn, having to run multiple passes to get all the thatch. This little machine is super efficient, but I found the catch bag filling up way faster than expected. I’ve got another 1600 sq ft of lawn to cover, but will have to attack it one week at a time. Just covering 200 sq ft filled my yard waste bin.

Pros:
– Easy to assemble.
– Efficient in picking up thatch. May need multiple passes if your lawn has been neglected.
– Safety switch makes it impossible for my young children to accidentally turn this on.
– Dethacther and Scarifier rollers are easy to swap

Cons:
– Small catch bag
– Safety switch is a bit of a bear when you need to stop and empty the catch bag often.
– Assembly requires some force to get the bent metal arm into the main dethatcher or the screw holes will not line up.
– Changing the Dethatcher roller for the Scarifier requires a 10mm wrench. Not a big deal if you have a crescent wrench or socket set. It just took me by surprise since I thought they would use sizes a little more common for the American do-it-yourselfer that has minimal tools.

Time will tell if this holds up over the 2-year warranty, but so far I am really happy with the performance.

Customer Support
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All too often we hear about poor customer support. I am here to tell you that Sun Joe has top-notch customer support.

When assembling the Sun Joe, you must insert the metal poles / arms into the main unit. If you look at the product picture, I’m referring to the black metal arms that support the power switch and push point. The portion that connects to the actual unit is bent at approximately 135 degrees. You must use a bit of force to get the arms into the main unit or the screw holes will not line up. On the unit I purchased, I was not able to push in the metal rod far enough to line up the screw holes, even after putting my weight into it. I was reluctant to use a rubber mallet for fear of bending the actual metal rod.

When I called Sun Joe, the gentleman listened to my concern. He immediately said they would ship a new one out.

Here is what totally blew me away…. Sun Joe support never questioned my ability to follow instructions, troubleshoot, or even verify that I followed the instructions correctly. I was preparing myself to verbally defend myself, which is exactly what you need to do when calling for support from nearly any other manufacturer. Nope. Not here. Sun Joe sent a brand new unit and provided a pre-paid slip to send the old one back. They didn’t even ask for any credit card information to secure a deposit!

Sure, I could have gone through Amazon to do the return process, but I wanted to give the manufacturer a chance to own the problem. No question about it, Sun Joe actually made it easier than Amazon.

I was a little wary about this product since it looks like so much plastic and I’ve never had much luck with plug-in lawn equipment. Of course I am going back 20-30 years for that statement! When I got the Sun Joe, it was packed very neatly in the box and everything came out easily. When assembling it, I found it very easy. I read that some people complained about the cheap phillips screws that screwed into the handle. I had only a slight problem with one so I screwed it into the handle first to start the threads and then removed it, put the handle together and then screwed the phillips screw back in. Worked like a charm! The cable clamps work okay but the cable seems to be much longer than needed so it sticks out in a loop and it did get caught once on something I was going around. I fixed that by moving the cable to the inside of the handle.

The real test was going over my very rough lawn the first time. I didn’t really think it would do much because of the 4 year drought we’ve had here in California. The ground was not super dried out since our very wet winter but I just wasn’t sure. I started it up and ran my first line down the yard. WOW! It cut right through that old grass like nothing. The motor felt very powerful and went through it like butter. I was amazed at just how much the scarifier pulled up! I was only going to test it but then got carried away and did the whole yard. It is about 550 square feet so it didn’t take too long. I didn’t want to rake all the thatch up so I used my blower to blow it all into a big pile. Then I threw it over the fence for the cows to munch on.

Then I decided “what the heck” and put the dethatching tool on and went at it again. This time I put the bag on to see if what people have been saying was true about it holding very little. They were right! I could only make 1 pass on each strip and then had to dump the bag or thatch would accumulate in front of the Sun Joe. In my case, I can just walk over the the fence and dump it over for the cows so it wasn’t that big of a deal. It took a little longer but I ended up with a huge amount of thatch that the dethatcher pulled out even after the scarifier did its job. Then I did another quick pass with the blower and was done.

After not dethatching my lawn for the last 10 years, I was quite pleased with the results. The machine was quick, light and efficient. It comes with a two year warranty but if you think about it, how often would you use this machine? Once every year at most so you may only get 2 uses out of it before the warranty is up. If it breaks down on the 3rd use, well, your warranty is already up but I don’t think that would happen after listening to it and feeling it cut through the mess I had. It handled it easily. I would highly recommend this product!

Please with the results. I borrowed one from a buddy last year and decided to invest in one for myself as I liked the results. Was easy to put together and use. Only have 2 minor issues. The first is with the small bag to catch the grass. Could barely make one pass before it was full – ~15 feet. I found myself still using it, but then went over the yard again with the mower. The other was the handle. I am by no means tall at 5’11” and found myself bending over because the handle was a little lower than I would have liked. Back was a little sore afterwards, but nothing an Aleve couldn’t take care of.

Im not usually one for electric tools but this thing has a really powerfull motor. I used it to thatch my entire back yard aprox. 5000 sq ft and it worked great at removing the dead moss and grass that was choking out my lawn. The only two downsides to this equipment is the collection bag is very small, making working large areas very time consuming. I just left the bag off then came behind with my push mower and cleaned everything up. The other down side is the fact that you always are dealing with moving an extension cord with you everywhere you go. It can be used as a scafer as well by easily changing out the shaft with two bolts. It has 5 level adjustments to meet your needs.

This thing worked great! It almost self-propells, so it’s easy to push. The bag is pretty much useless- it fills up fast. But if your maintaining your lawn that has been thatched previously, I can see using the bag for that. I’ve thatched with a take previously, but after using this unit, there’s no comparison. Quite pleased.

I did wind up running over my extension cord and ruined it, but that’s my fault.

Wow this little thing works great I just cleaned up after with my lawn mower.