I have a hate-hate relationship with yard waste. Not a love-hate. Pure, unadulterated hate.
Every fall, my half-acre turns into a leaf-bombing range. Every spring, the pruning shears come out and suddenly there’s a mountain of branches piled by the fence, mocking me. For years I did the garbage bag shuffle — stuffing wet leaves into those flimsy brown paper bags until they ripped, then hauling them to the curb like some kind of landscaping Sisyphus. My city charges for yard waste pickup now, by the way. Twenty bucks a month for the privilege of them taking my dead twigs.
So yeah, I bought a chipper. Then I bought a second chipper, because the first one was garbage. The Earthwise GS70015 is the one that’s still sitting in my garage five years later, and I’ve got opinions.
The Setup Nobody Warns You About
Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way because it actually matters. This is a corded electric unit — 15 amps, which is on the beefier end for homeowner chippers. It’s not cordless, despite what the slug on this post might suggest. You’re going to need an extension cord, and not some wimpy 16-gauge lamp cord from the dollar store. Get a 12-gauge, 50-foot outdoor cord or you’ll trip the breaker every time you hit a decent branch.
The collection bin is the part I didn’t appreciate until I used a chipper without one. It’s a hard plastic bin that clips onto the back of the unit, and it catches probably 85% of what you feed in. The other 15% sprays out the sides like confetti. Wear safety glasses. I learned that the hard way after catching a piece of mulch in my cheek that left a mark for a week.
Assembly took me about 20 minutes with a beer in hand. The chute goes on top, the bin clips on the back, wheels bolt to the base. Nothing requires an engineering degree.
What It Actually Chews Through
Here’s the honest breakdown, because the marketing copy will tell you it handles “branches up to 1.75 inches” and that’s technically true in the same way that a Honda Civic can technically tow a boat.
Soft stuff — leaves, grass clippings, small garden trimmings: This is where the Earthwise shines. Dump a pile of wet oak leaves in the hopper and it eats them alive. The 15-amp motor has enough torque that you’re not constantly jamming. I’ve mulched entire fall cleanups into a bin of fine, crumbly leaf mold that went straight into the compost pile. That alone paid for the machine in two seasons of avoiding bag fees.
Twigs and small branches — pencil-thick up to about an inch: Fine. No drama. Green wood is easier than dead wood, which surprised me at first. Dry, brittle branches actually chatter more in the cutting chamber.
Branches approaching 1.5 inches: You can do it, but you’ll hear the motor change pitch. That’s your cue to slow down and let it feed itself. Force it and you’ll trip the thermal overload, which resets after about 10 minutes of sitting there feeling stupid.
Anything over 1.75 inches: Don’t. Just don’t. This isn’t a commercial chipper and pretending otherwise is how people kill these things in month two and leave one-star reviews.
I made that mistake once with a piece of seasoned oak about two inches across. The blade jammed, the motor groaned, and I spent 40 minutes disassembling the housing to clear it. Not the machine’s fault. Mine.
The Blade Situation
The cutting mechanism is a single hardened steel blade on a spinning disc. It’s simple, which I like. Fewer things to break. But it’s not self-sharpening and it’s not reversible without flipping it, which means you’ll be pulling the blade off every 15-20 hours of hard use to hit it with a file.
Replacement blades run about $25 and take ten minutes to swap. I keep a spare on the shelf. If you’re the kind of person who’s going to complain about sharpening a blade twice a year, this isn’t the machine for you.
One quirk — the blade tends to dull faster on dry, sandy material. If you’ve got gritty soil on your roots, that’s going to accelerate wear. Not a dealbreaker, just something I noticed after my first season.
Noise, Weight, and the Reality of Corded Life
This thing is loud. Not gas-chipper loud, but loud enough that my neighbor came over to ask what I was doing the first time I fired it up. Ear protection is a good call if you’re running it for more than a few minutes.
It weighs about 30 pounds. The wheels help, but you’re still dragging a cord behind you, which means planning your work area around outlet placement. I’ve got a 100-foot 12-gauge cord that reaches most of my yard, and I still find myself working in weird patterns to avoid running over the cord with the machine. Small annoyance. Real annoyance, but small.
If you’ve got a massive property where dragging a cord is a non-starter, this probably isn’t your tool. But if you’re on a typical suburban lot with a garage outlet, you’re fine.
How It Compares to the Alternatives
I’ve used a couple of other electric chippers in this price range, and honestly the field is crowded. The Yeryork Wood Chipper, 15-Amp 1.8 inch Cutting Diameter Electric Wood Chipper & Shredder with 50L Collection Bag is a direct competitor with a slightly larger claimed cutting diameter and a bigger collection bag. It’s a solid machine and worth a look if you want more capacity. But the Earthwise’s build quality feels a touch more solid to me, and the bin design on the Earthwise is easier to empty in my experience.
I also spent a weekend with a Sun Joe Wood Chipper Shredder and Waste Shredding Machine, CJ603E at a friend’s place. The Sun Joe is lighter and easier to move around, but it also feels a little more plasticky. The Earthwise is the one I’d buy again if I had to start over.
The Price Reality Check
At around $170, this is smack in the middle of the homeowner chipper market. You can go cheaper — the $100-$120 range gets you into flimsier units that’ll struggle with anything thicker than your thumb. You can go more expensive and get into gas territory, which opens a whole new can of worms about maintenance and fuel storage.
For what it is — a suburban yard waste solution that turns a pile of branches into a bin of mulch — the price is fair. Not a steal, but fair. And if you’re paying for yard waste pickup like I am, it pays for itself in about 8-9 months.
If you pick one up through the links here, I might get a small cut — doesn’t cost you extra and it helps keep the lights on.
Earthwise GS70015 15-Amp Garden Corded Electric Chipper
The Stuff That Bugs Me
The 3.9-star rating across 4,000+ reviews tells you this isn’t a perfect machine, and I want to be straight about where it falls short.
The bin doesn’t catch everything. That 15% spray I mentioned earlier gets old after a while, especially when you’re working over grass and have to rake up the overshoot.
The thermal overload is finicky. Push it hard on a hot day and it’ll shut down to protect the motor. That’s a feature, not a bug, but it’s still annoying when you’re in a groove.
And the plastic body, while sturdy enough, doesn’t love being left outside. Mine lives in the garage. If you leave it out through a rainy season, expect the housing to get brittle. I’ve seen reviews from people whose units cracked after a winter outdoors. Don’t do that.
Who Should Actually Buy This
If you’ve got a quarter-acre to half-acre lot with normal tree cover, this is the machine. It handles fall cleanup, spring pruning, and general garden waste without drama. It’s not going to process a tree removal, and it’s not going to replace a gas chipper if you’ve got serious acreage.
But if you’re tired of bagging leaves and paying for pickup, and you want to turn yard waste into free mulch, this is a legit answer. Five years in, mine still starts on the first flip of the switch. The blade’s been replaced twice. The bin’s got a crack I patched with duct tape. It’s not pretty. It works.
That’s the whole review.