I'm more of a Jiffy guy. My Jiffy has never EVER let me down so why not be...? But I'll also offer a review. Not a discouraging complaint.
Doing well so far for me!
I did buy the 2.0 on sale it was literally impossible to ignore, especially with the second battery, a 10 inch plastic flight and an incredible warranty on top of that!
I think i paid just over 700 for the full gamut, and just got a head cover to pack it on the snowmobile at Xmas. (I think they are about 60 bucks?)
I was humming and hawing for about a month and leaning toward the new eskimo to be honest. Although I didn't like how it felt in my hands, I'm pretty sure my 8 year old son could drill with it! And I have fished quite a bit with the guy with the 40V strikemaster and I didn't like it if I'm being honest. I just couldn't make myself fork out the full retail price for the ION, 10" flighting and and extra battery. Then buy extensions and covers on top. Maybe one day. lol.
It's aggressive, fast, and like you say the only cut outs I've experienced are on 33% battery or less, or if it's under extreme heavy load, which, generally you can drill without really loading it up. My one friend was actually pushing it like you would a traditional machine with ripper blade (which you don't need to do) - and he seemed to get it to cut out. I never had any cut outs on my first kick at the cat. I find if you actually let it kinda float in the hole or even just kinda hold it back if anything, it really keeps it's RPM up and it's literally effortless...
High level my feedback:
-Super efficient cutting blades. Insanely effortless. I can't get over the way it cuts, and especially how seemlessly it punches through.
-No shimmy or wobble whatsoever, very rigid. (I find the competitor brands all have more free play from the shaft to the flight.)
-Weight wise it's WAAY better than gas but not noticeably different than competitive electric augers. (I'm 6'0 260 lbs, don't really struggle with weight, or notice the difference unless I grab the eskimo)
-Frame size is good, and it feels really good in the hands (to me, a lifetime jiffy guy) - I prefer the bigger frame in hand as compared to how narrow the ION is. As above, the eskimo is significantly smaller; so outside the 1st generation factor, I actually didn't like how small the eskimo was, even smaller than than the ION in hand. I am still thinking that eskimo would be the best auger for a kid to drill with though!
-Flight is compatible with all my existing jiffy extension, cleans the hole really well, and me, with limited experience with electrics, the turbo mode keeps the hole super clean.
-Flight hauls out snow well, even after they corrected from the 1.0 adding the gaps in the flighting. Been drilling up to 18" with no need to clean holes whatsowever.
Experience-wise: LLB we did well over 80 holes in 8" ice, Dec 12th, -17 Celsius for the bulk of the holes. Ironwood I probably did 80 holes in 10" ice, -6 ish, then another 1/2 dozen the following day on LLB with 10" ice, without warming the 'in use' battery overnight. Both times I still had 30% battery life left. My first experience at LLB I did find the warmer I kept the battery, all in all, the better the peak performance.
6 times on the ice in December and I literally love drilling holes with it.
Don't have any late ice experience yet. Did several (maybe 20 holes total) last weekend, through 18-20" ice (that's the max so far).
Only complaints:
-Oblong handle makes it so it won't sit upright when stored in a horizontal position, which is worsened with the battery left in it.
-Maybe I'm a newbie... but I stuggle figuring out the time delay when releasing the triggers for the motor to actually stop. It doesn't even hesitate when it punches through, so you can pull up major water if you're not paying attention...it's so smooth, most times you can't even feel when you are going through the bottom...
my 2c.
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