Like so many others I can only add my experience, used very little just over 2 years old, half of it spent in my beautiful Log Cabin it looks like new but now the motor is burnt out! I cannot find the words to describe how disappointed I am with this product and more so the brand, Bosch. When I purchased it was A highly rated and relatively new model so it just goes to show it pays to go with something slightly older with a decent track record! hopefully a proven model. This is landfill of the worse kind, I would never purchase another Bosch product again be it Fridge, Dishwasher etc how a leading manufacturer can associate itself with such a low quality product beggars belief.

My mower has hardly done one season and the over-run brake has siezed up. i.e. the belt will slip and start to smoke. I knew straight away what the problem was because I have had the same with the larger Flymos. Quickest way to rectify was to remove the friction discs. I used a Dremel tool to cut them away - no point in trying to remove the grooved pulley from the shaft as the two have plainly siezed together. So much for safety featurers! The flippin things have a deadmans handle which is something elce which was not bothered about in the sixties, which was when I started to buy mowers!!

Engine goes wrong within a year. It a bad construction No way to repair, or it costs half of the original price.

Had it 23 months motor just burnt out luckily I have 1 month left for new motor I thought buying bosch was better than flymo how wrong was I go and buy a flymo for under £50 pounds miles better

My Rotak 40 expired in a flash of sparks from the switch array on the handle. It is about three years old and was bought to replace a Flymo I had for 16 years. Until it gave out I was satisfied with it without being particularly impressed. It cut closer to the edges than the Flymo but I still needed to strim so any advantage was negligible. I was far happier with it than the Bosch strimmer though. I felt that it would be better suited to someone left handed it has never felt comfortable to operate, and the strim-wire supplied with it was incredibly flimsy, it broke every few seconds. The machine still works though which is something to be grateful for. I tried to find a Flymo similar to my old one without much luck. Most in B&Q or Homebase were either too small or hovers (I prefer all the power to go to the blades rather than half to generating lift). I've settled for a Qualcast which came with a strimmer and used both for the first time today. Initial impressions are good but its too soon to give a recommendation. I can categorically state though that the strim-wire supplied with the Qualcast is a vast improvement on the Bosch. 100 pounds for the mower and strimmer combined in Homebase. It sounded like a good deal and nothing has changed that impression yet.

as a single mother of teenage daughters money is usually carefully spent so when I was given a choice of gifts from my company for 25 years service, instead of a nice piece of jewellery I went for the practical choice - the bosch rotak lawn mower. Its been used less than 20 times and has now stopped working. The blade does not turn althought the motor is still making a noise! after reading these reviews it looks like i am out of luck and will not be able to fix it. I did spend two hours yesterday with the instruction book trying to get it to work. I cant afford to replace the mower and am just so disappointed that a supposedly good quality product has let me down. Its a shame that a company passes off such shoddy quality goods to its customers.

Our Bosch Rotak 40 Rotary Lawn Mower motor burnt out just one week after the warantee expired so it's just over two years old. Having read the other reviews and now with our own experience, we definitely won't be buying another Bosch product. It was a good mower but with this short "life span" it's very poor value for money.