Most lawn gear reviews are written by people who’ve never touched the equipment.
You’ve probably noticed. Ten “best lawn mower” articles, all recommending the same five mowers, all describing them in the same words — because they’re all assembled from the same spec sheets and the same retailer copy. Nobody mowed anything.
Lawn Gear Scout works the other way around. I buy the product, use it on an actual lawn for an actual season, and write it up afterward. Including the times the expensive one wasn’t worth it.
Who I am
I’m Chad, and I run Lawn Gear Scout out of Wisconsin, where I maintain 1/2 acre of Kentucky Bluegrass lawn.
I’m not an agronomist and I’ve never worked for a lawn care company. I’m a homeowner who got tired of buying products based on reviews that clearly weren’t written by anyone who’d used them — and who found out the expensive way that a lot of lawn advice online is wrong.
I moved into my house in 2017 and inherited something that wasn’t really a lawn — mostly leaves, weeds, and bare dirt where grass should have been. Eight years of fixing it taught me more about what actually works than any amount of reading did, mostly because I got a lot of it wrong first.
The lawn is in central Wisconsin, zone 4b, where the growing season runs roughly mid-May to early October, and the first hard frost usually lands in the last week of September. That matters for a site like this: the advice here is written from a cool-season climate with a short window and real winters. Where something works differently in the transition zone or the South, I say so rather than pretending my conditions are universal.
What I do have is a lawn that gets used as a test plot, a garage full of equipment I paid for, and a willingness to publish results that don’t flatter the products.
How I test
This is what separates this site from the ones you’ve been reading.
I buy the products. They aren’t sent by manufacturers or borrowed for a weekend photo shoot. Occasionally I’ll buy used and resell after testing, which is how a small site affords head-to-head comparisons — but the purchase decision is mine and no brand approves anything before it publishes.
Testing happens on the same lawn, under the same conditions. When I compare two spreaders, they run across the same turf, with the same product, at the same settings. That’s the only way a comparison means anything. Two products reviewed in different yards in different seasons aren’t being compared — they’re being described.
Results get measured where measuring is possible. Coverage width. Runtime. Color change over a set number of weeks, photographed at the same time of day from the same position. Where something is genuinely subjective — how a machine feels to push, how loud it is in practice — I say so instead of dressing it up as data.
Season-long tests take a season. Some things only show up in month four. Handles loosen. Batteries fade. Plastic that felt sturdy in April cracks in August. Those reviews take as long as they take, and I’d rather publish late than pretend.
Everything gets photographed as it happens. Every photo on this site is mine, from the actual test. When you see a bare patch on this site, that patch was in my lawn.
What I’m testing on
Half an acre of Kentucky bluegrass, full sun over most of it, with the usual problems — compacted strips where vehicles have parked, thin patches along the driveway, and a few areas I’m still fixing eight years in.
The equipment is whatever I’ve bought over those eight years: [Craftsman Front-Engine 24 HP Kohler 54in Riding Lawn Mower, Stihl FSA 56 Electric Trimmer, Stihl BG 56C Blower, Scotts Deluxe Edgeguard Spreader]. Nothing here was supplied by a manufacturer. When I compare something new against what I own, I say what I own.
What I won’t do
- No paid rankings. No brand has ever paid to be placed, ordered, or described a particular way, and none ever will. If that offer arrives, the answer is no, and I’ll say publicly that it was made.
- No recommending things I haven’t used. If a product appears here without a hands-on test, the article says so plainly.
- No pretending the expensive option is always better. It frequently isn’t. Some of the most useful things I’ve published are the ones where a $40 tool did the job as well as a $200 one.
- No buying, filming, and returning. Products stay bought or get resold honestly.
How this site makes money
Openly, and worth explaining, because most sites bury this.
Lawn Gear Scout earns affiliate commissions. If you click a link here and buy something, I may earn a percentage — at no extra cost to you. It’s what pays for the products I test.
Here’s the part that matters: commissions never determine rankings. The products that win on this site frequently pay less than the ones that don’t. Where a recommendation would earn me nothing at all, I still make it. A site that recommends whatever pays best is worth exactly nothing to you, and it wouldn’t survive contact with readers who go buy the thing and find out.
You’ll find an affiliate link disclosure at the top of every article containing one. Full details on the Affiliate Disclosure page.
Why there’s a section for lawn care businesses
Alongside the homeowner content, this site covers software and systems for lawn care companies — quoting, scheduling, invoicing, getting paid.
That started because the same questions kept coming up from people running one or two trucks: how do I quote faster, how do I stop chasing invoices, how do I know if a job was actually profitable. The tools that answer those questions are reviewed the same way as the equipment — used on real work, with real jobs and real customers, before anything gets written.
If you run a lawn business, start here.
Get in touch
Corrections, questions, disagreements, or a product you’d like tested — I read everything. Contact me here.
There’s also a YouTube channel at @LawnGearScout, where the same tests get filmed rather than written up. It starts in January 2026 — the equipment reviews are easier to trust when you can watch the thing run.
If I’ve gotten something wrong, tell me. I’d rather fix it than defend it.