Bosch AXT 25 TC review: hours of shredding without a jam
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A powerful shredder promises to make short work of autumn garden waste. After hours with the Bosch AXT 25 TC, I found plenty to like and two things I’d change.
Autumn is a great time of year to start thinking about pruning jobs. Getting the last of the summer growth off a hedge, cutting back shrubs, or pollarding trees.
It's also the time of year when gardens start to look a bit messy, as leaves fall, branches are blown off in seasonal winds, and constant trips to the tip with the detritus become a thing.
Which is why I jumped at the opportunity to test a garden shredder. It's not something I've owned before, but I can appreciate their value. You just pile all your green waste down its spout, and a bucket beneath fills up with neatly shredded clippings, ready to lob in your garden wheelie bin or your compost heap.
The first shredder I've been testing has been the Bosh AXT 25 TC, and it's a bit of a monster. Available at B&Q for £389, it has 2,500 watts of power, a 45mm cutting diameter and a 53 litre bin.
As domestic shredders go, this is one of the most powerful shredders you can go for, from a name that carries a solid reputation. And I've got a corner of leylandii hedge to smash to smithereens. I guess I'd better get my gloves on.
What I like about the Bosch AXT 25 TC
The most obvious thing to like about this garden shredder is its grunt. With its brushless motor and turbine cutting system, it swallows up pretty much anything that will fit. The 45mm limit means a bit less when you're sorting through branches, but it'll only let you slot in a branch that will fit through the hole, so it's hard to over-face it.
In fact, during the hours I've spent with the AXT 25 TC I've yet to encounter a single blockage or refusal, which is seriously impressive. There is a button to reverse the shredding process if it has bitten off more than it can chew, but I haven't needed it.
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This inspires confidence in you to keep feeding in branch after branch, and it means you get the job done more quickly, even if that does mean very quickly filling the big bucket.
It's also relatively quiet. For such a powerful machine, it runs at 90dB, which is great. Obviously, the noise really ramps up when it's chewing through a fresh piece of bush, but it's still easy to live with.
Using it couldn't be easier, either. Just press a small sealed button and it's running, a red button stops it, and there's a reverse button on the same panel. It comes with a plunger to shove down any troublesome branches, but you won't need this often, given its power.
What I didn't like about the Bosch AXT 250 TC
It's a bit heavy. It runs on wheels, which makes it quite easy to manoeuvre around, but it arrives in a huge box on a pallet and, at just over 30kg, it's not easy to lift over thresholds. It does pack away quite neatly, which is useful, but when it's in working mode it's top-heavy, which means it's quite cumbersome.
I also wish the 4.5 metre cable was a bit longer. With 2,500 watts on offer it's best not to use it with a rolled-up extension cable, and much safer to plug it in directly to the wall, so this means you might have to run it a distance away from where your pile of waste is.
There's definitely space to store a longer cable when it's not being used, it's a shame it feels a bit short.
Overall verdict: should you buy a Bosch AXT 25 TC
It has to be said, £389 is a lot of money when there are products out there that will do a similar job for less money, and whether you need to shell out for something quite so powerful will depend on your garden.
But it also depends on how much work you want to do yourself. Because if you buy a less powerful shredder that can only take smaller branches, you'll find you have to pre-chop sections of hedge, or bisect big branches, before you shred them. Which can get tiresome.
Spending out on something this powerful reduces labour time, so you can spend longer rewarding yourself with that cold beer after a long session tidying your borders.
And you simply can't deny its usefulness when it comes to reliably chewing through everything you can physically fit in it. You're paying a premium, sure, but you're paying a premium for a trusty and dependable workhorse that ultimately saves you a lot of time.
Turning up at the tip with a bag of shredded waste rather than armfuls of big branches will never get boring. So it's worth buying a decent shredder in the first place, and that's exactly what the AXT 25 TC is.