Etcokei Electric Yarn Ball Winder for Crocheting & Knitting, Automatic Yarn Baller Winder, Stepless Speed (2 Min/Ball), Large Capacity (Up to 10oz), Crochet Tools, Knitting Supplies

I bought this at the beginning of August, around 6 weeks ago. I needed to replace my Boye electric winder, which I bought 8 years ago but which has become impossibly noisy to use over the years.I had a few skeins I needed to wind ranging from laceweight to sock / 4 ply so I thought I'd try this machine recognising I was taking a risk - at the time there were zero ratings or reviews available. The alternatives I was faced with were either winding a gazillion metres of yarn by hand, or to use the screamy, shouty, grindy Boye. So I took the plunge.Out the box comes a pretty blue and white winder, a tension arm, the cone and the power lead. Also the instruction book, the tension arm screw, a bonus screw and an ickle screwdriver. This bit is really well thought out. It took seconds to attach the tension arm, watch the videos, attach it to a table and plug it in. And that's pretty much almost - *almost* - where the happy stops.For context, I have an Amish 4-armed swift, low profile with movable pegs which I prefer to my umbrella swift because it's so easy to set up and use, has a low profile and so takes up very little space when whizzing around. It glides and offers very little resistance or snag when skeins are properly tensioned.This really is an incredibly quiet electric winder - barely noisier than my manual winder - and at first I was overjoyed at the lack of noise. But it didn't take long to realise why it was so quiet - it's horribly, horribly underpowered. The advertising blurb suggests that this will cake a skein of yarn in 2 minutes, and cut out automatically after 4 minutes. In the manufacturer's dreams, maybe. Not only does the machine cut out at the merest hint of tension, it can take up to 8 or 9 attempts to restart it because it isn't even strong enough to pick up the slack and turn the swift a quarter revolution.The 1st skein I caked (not pictured, 4 ply) took 4 or 5 attempts to get started, bearing in mind this was my first attempt to use this machine. The yarn from whipping out from the tensioner, the spring would ping and the cake would go weird. Eventually it settled and although the cake wasn't perfect, I put this down to new machine, trial and error and a very slippery silky yarn.The 2nd skein I caked is pictured (cream laceweight) and henceforth shall ever be known as the Cake of Perfection. It is a thing of beauty and I got very, very excited at the prospect of all the subsequent cakes looking that good. I mean, in years and years of doing this, I've never produced a skein so perfect. Just for once I don't begrudge Amazon's default single star because this one Cake of Perfection deserves one star. But that really is where the happy ends.Cakes 3 and 4 (not pictured) were progressively worse than Cake 1 had been. Strange shapes messy tops and tails because every time the machine stopped and needed restarting - a dozen times by cake 3 - the machine would start caking above or below the original cake. And then we come to Cake 5.Cake no 5 is pictured here twice. This time the winder produced two distinct cakes plus a bird's nest out of a single skein of 4 ply that was such a snarled-up, gnarly mess that I had to manually rewind it back onto my swift. Had I tried to knit from the cake, I'd have had to use scissors to rescue it. In years of winding yarn from skeins, never have I had a winder produce such a horrendous mess. I have no idea what the gasket is supposed to do - it's not shown in the instructions at all - but whatever it's supposed to do, it doesn't. Once I had reskeined Cake 5, I attempted to recake it but by now, the Etcokei (pronounced It's OK? It really isn't OK!) was stopping dead after every single arm movement - every quarter turn. After 16 restarts, 4 revolutions, and another messy top and tail cake getting worse with every spin, I just took the cake off the spindle and wound the remainder of the yarn into a ball by hand.At this point I gave up. I suspect I'm outside the returns window but I'm going to try to get a refund. It's simply not fit for purpose.

I do like the size of the cakes it turns out, but they're not very tight. The slightest bit of tension causes the machine to stop. I understand that's a safety feature so the motor won't burn out, but it’s frustrating to deal with it shutting down every minute or so.The cakes are quite squishy when finished. I prefer a more solid cake, although I can work with it. The variable speed is nice if you can keep the tension down. Easy to set up and use.

Overall I like this Winder! It’s got a learning curve. I had a problem keeping the yarn in the post threader. Keeping the tension requires you to hold the yarn. But after caking a skein several times, I think I have it. I have RA and am unable to crank a winder. This certainly helps!

It's smaller than I thought and it looks like I have to put it together

Es muy practica solo que se detiene bastante con facilidad deja de funcionar hay que apagar y prender de nuevo cada que siente un pequeño jaloncito