At a glance
I’d had my old strimmer propped up in the shed for longer than I care to admit, the kind of thing you keep meaning to replace rather than replace, until the bit of lawn edge running along the path finally got away from me one weekend and I gave in. Orange seems to be the only colour Flymo make anything in, and the Contour XT that turned up matched the rest of their kit sitting next to it.
It’s a corded 2 in 1, line trimmer one way and edger the other with a twist of the head, built for a small to medium garden rather than anything bigger.
Overview and first impressions
Out of the box it’s the trimmer, the wheel that clips onto the head for edging, a plant guard, and the instructions. The two halves of the shaft click together with a noise you can hear, which I liked, no guessing whether it’s seated properly. Cable hooks are built into the body for winding the lead away when you’re done, which seems an obvious thing to include until you’ve owned a trimmer that didn’t have them.
The box calls it the Contour XT. The actual instruction booklet inside calls it the Mini Trim Contour XT, a name Flymo seem to have dropped from the website everywhere except the one document that actually matters once you own it.
Weight is one of those numbers that depends which bit of Flymo’s own paperwork you read, somewhere around 2.76 to 2.8 kilograms either way, not enough of a gap to notice on the shoulder but enough that the two figures don’t quite match.
Check the lawn before every session. Stones, glass, wire and anything else hiding in the grass gets thrown by the line at speed. The manual’s own warning about an electromagnetic field is also worth a mention if you or anyone nearby has a medical implant, worth a word with your GP first rather than finding out the hard way.
Specifications and scores
Here’s the bit that actually made me laugh out loud reading the manual properly for the first time. The technical data table near the back states, in black and white, that this trimmer has a manual filament feed system. Two pages earlier, the section explaining how to use it is titled the double auto feed system, and goes on to describe the line lengthening itself automatically once the spool comes to a stop after you switch off, sometimes needing the switch off and on repeated up to six times to get there. One document, two completely different answers to the same simple question.
Mine behaves like the second description, switch off, switch on, and a bit more line comes out each time without me touching anything. So either the spec table’s wrong or somebody’s idea of manual stretches further than mine does. Flicking to the back of the same booklet, the compliance paperwork behind all this was signed off in Ulm, Germany in September 2021, once for the EU market and again under a near identical UK only version for sale here, both quoting the same noise figures, which at least tells you the two documents agree on something.
How it performed in our tests
Standard trimming is work position one, head flat, line spinning, sweeping along the edge of the border the way you’d expect. Twist the head round to ninety degrees and fold the plant guard up out the way, and you’re edging instead, guided along the path by the little wheel built into the head. It took a couple of goes to get the angle right on the edging side, lean too far and the wheel skips off the path edge rather than tracking it, but once I’d got the feel for it the line round the bottom path came out properly straight for the first time in years.
The line itself is where I’d put my one real complaint. Most sessions it’s behaved fine, but I did have a run early on where a fresh length of line snapped almost as soon as it touched anything with a bit of resistance to it, barely a few passes before it needed feeding out again. Once it settled in and I’d got used to not forcing it through thicker patches, that stopped being an issue, but it’s worth knowing going in that the line on this one isn’t the toughest I’ve used.
Let the motor reach full speed before you start cutting. Going straight in while it’s still spinning up is the single biggest cause of the clattering, jerky cut that makes people think something’s wrong with the line when it’s really just timing.
Assembly and starting
The two shaft halves push together until they click, and there’s a genuine pinch risk doing it, the manual’s specific about that and I’d believe it. Clip both halves of the wheel round the groove on the trimmer head until it turns freely, fit the cover on top, twist it until it seats, then rotate it anticlockwise until it locks. None of it needs tools and the whole thing took less time than reading the instructions did. Keep any small children well away from the box itself while you’re doing this bit, the manual’s specific that the polybag and small fixings are a choking and suffocation risk, not just clutter to tidy up after.
Starting is a proper two handed safety setup, push the interlock, pull the start lever, let go of the interlock, and it runs. Release the lever and it stops, though the line keeps spinning for a moment after, same as most of these. I’ve never been tempted to tape the lever down the way the manual specifically warns against, but I can see why they bother saying it.
Performance and limitations
It’s rated for domestic gardens only, not parks, verges or anything commercial, and the manual is explicit that hedges, shredding and compost have nothing to do with this tool. Eye protection and proper shoes are worth taking seriously given how much grit gets thrown about, and I’d add that the recommendation for a residual current device on the circuit is one of those things that’s easy to skip until the one time it matters. If you do run an extension lead, the manual’s fussier about it than I expected, a thin 1.0mm² cable is only rated up to 40 metres, you need 1.5mm² to stretch to 60 metres, and 2.5mm² if you’re going all the way out to 100. Grabbing whatever extension reel happens to be in the shed isn’t quite the same as checking it’s rated for the distance.
The electromagnetic field warning in the warn box above isn’t just boilerplate either, the manual specifically recommends anyone with an active or passive medical implant speak to both their own physician and the implant’s manufacturer before going near it, which is more caution than most trimmer manuals bother with.
Storage is the cable hooks built into the body, which I mentioned earlier and I’ll mention again because it genuinely makes a difference, no separate cable tidy to lose, no tangled mess in the shed. Flymo’s own suggestion is to hang the whole thing up by the handle rather than leaving it lying flat, which keeps the cutting head from taking the weight while it’s not in use.
Final verdict
For tidying lawn edges and the bits a mower never quite reaches, this does exactly what it’s meant to. The edging wheel is the standout feature, useful rather than a box ticking gimmick, and the cable storage hooks are a small thing that makes a real difference once you’ve owned a trimmer without them.
What costs it marks is the paperwork rather than the performance. A manual that contradicts itself on whether the feed is manual or automatic, a weight figure that shifts by 40 grams depending which page you read, and a cable length that Flymo’s own spec sheet puts at 12 metres while every other listing for it says 10, none of that should need a buyer to work out for themselves which version to trust.
Get past that and you’ve got a genuinely capable little trimmer for a small to medium garden, line that’s occasionally a bit eager to snap, but an edging feature worth the asking price on its own.
A light, capable trimmer and edger for smaller gardens, let down by a manual that argues with itself and line that’s not the toughest around. The edging wheel alone makes it worth a look.
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