Honda Izy HRG415PD 16-inch Wheeled Push Petrol Lawnmower

The range of lawn mowers that is available these days is mind boggling. Even when you've narrowed your options down to a petrol rotary mower you still have 20+ manufacturers, 4 wheel or rear roller, push or self drive and different cutting modes to consider !. When you start to look through all the options you also quickly realise lots of makes/models are clones of others, so its difficult to know who makes the actual unit for who. Honda don't appear to make for anyone else. The Honda IZY415 is about as simple a petrol mower as they come, so is free of all extra features which look good on a spec sheet but often mean little, or are not used, in the real world. The slightly higher price you pay for a Honda mower goes into what you really want the mower for, reliable grass cutting.
This mower packs a powerful 4.5bhp Honda petrol engine with auto choke start, so no fuel priming or choke settings to make prior to starting - Just depress the handle and pull the starter cord - first time starting in cold and hot weather.
The main body and cutting deck are a single piece heavy gauge steel casting, powder coated for durability in an attractive silver finish.
The blade design has been changed recently to further improve air flow into the collection bag and reduce noise levels.
The large wheels make for easy manoeuvering in smaller spaces and are placed slightly narrower than the cutting width, allowing the user to cut close to trees and lawn edges with little effort.
The supplied collection bag looks a bit small but the reality is that for the average household garden (up to 200m2) its ample. For bigger gardens you may have to empty the bag once or twice, but this is better than pushing the extra weight of a large bag of clippings.
Cutting height is quoted at 20-75mm, adjusted by two simple levers, one for the front wheels and one for the rear. Set in the third lowest of its six settings i find the mover cuts at a length comparable to my old Flymo hover mower (which was set at its lowest point) - a good allround height for a family garden, and not too short to encourage disease, bare patches, moss or brown patches in dry weather. You'd have to be very careful with the Honda set at its lowest height on any uneven areas. The highest setting is ideal for lesser used areas or grass verges alongside roads where you want a consitent cut rather than a bowling green finish.
The cut is very consistent, very clean and the mower copes with wet grass easily. I particularly like the fact Honda also use the same engine on the slightly bigger 465 model, so the engine has plenty in reserve in this smaller ca.16" application.Competitors often use a smaller 3.5hp engine for this size of mower.

On paper it looks expensive compared to other similar spec mowers, or basic in nature compared to others at the same price point. Rest assured that extra money pays for quality design and engineering, longevity, ease of use and a machine that does what you want. One thing to note is that to qualitfy for the 3 year Honda warranty you must have the mower serviced by a Honda agent at the specified intervals.

We have only had the mower a month or so but five stars so far, only time will tell, our last one lasted 23 years, will this one last that long? Starts first pull, Seems to cope very well with damp grass (we have a lot of it in Scotland) and also economical on fuel: so far, so good.

i purchased one of these in 2004 - not from amazon.

it has performed very well since then, often on long grass.

i have an acre of garden and the mower has had a tough life and it recently started to show signs of wear.

i decided to replace it via amazon.

the new model has an automatic choke, otherwise it seems much the same.

highly recommended.

ps. i have tried the self propelled version and found it harder to manoeuvre.