my dad has a no-name mini ex... it works great as long as you have realistic expectations... works great for digging in a water line, or power line, or whatever you gotta do that doesn't need to be quick digging.... Only issue we've had with his is the track does tend to pop off if you do a ton of turning and spinning around with it... easy enough to avoid, and easy enough to fix if you need to. I think his will only go down to about 5' deep... I think his came with a 1' wide bucket, which works good, but he bought another bucket that's only like 8" wide and it digs very well with that.