I looked at units costing $800 and up, but thought I'd give this one a try at less than a third the cost. It performs well for the price and it's relatively easy to move around and use. The top opening for leaves/twigs is small, so you have to feed in a little at a time. It takes quite a while to shred a large amount of material. I have several pine trees and planned to use it shred their needles, but on that count it doesn't do well. The needles pass through pretty much as-is. I haven't used other shredders so don't know if others would do any better.The chipper handles smaller branches (up to around 1/2 inch) but the vibration and noise discourage me from using it for larger ones.Be careful not to get rocks or metal into it - seems to happen to me a couple of times an hour, and you have to unscrew the three wing-nuts around the base and lift off the cover to clear it.