I ordered the brute in April and arrived just yesterday. 5 hp, 20 inch spiral with the inset cutters. Packaged nice and tight like most of Grizzlys schtuff. The setup was almost non existent. infeed/outfeed rollers and wire on a 220 plug. The table had some rust spots on it that didn't thrill me, but not a deal killer. My gawd it is a heavy s.o.b., they supply built in lift rods so movement won't to much trouble (set up for a forklift)
When they tell you its quiet, its an understatement. Barely more noise than a jointer. The finish it put out was good, but...not as good as a fixed 4 knife planer.
I ran some Doug-fir through it to start and there were clear individual knife marks. Tore into it and checked each cutter head (which I should have done to start with). there were definitely some that weren't seated as well as others ( I think there's 80 total or so...).
Ran some ash through, better but still visible cutter marks. I called Grizzly and they told me to pull each cutter, clean, oil and reset...
Then I ran a 16" x 10' black walnut through and the finish was definitely worse than a fixed knife machine. There were visible marks from many of the cutters and it just wasn't a crisp clean finish one might expect, (granted it is an unforgiving species for marks)
I next ran a mixed bag of maple, figured maple and white oak through and took the final pass with 1/64" or so and the finish was good. No cutter marks, worked WAY better on figured grain than a fixed knife machine but still not a "Great" finish. Not as clean as a 4 knife machine with new knives. I would compare it to our old Bellsaw after it had ran 500 feet or so.
No snipe out of the box and the feed system is great. Grabs the board, great anti-kickback system. Came with 10 extra cutter insets and 10 fixed screw tip extractors. Two speeds, of which I need to experiment with more (all the test boards were on the faster of the two).
Its about an extra $1000 for the spiral head. I like it overall so far, but need to run a few hundred/k board feet through it to say its worth the extra money! Definitely a heavy duty planer for the money.
First review ever...just thought I'd post my two cents worth.
Schroeder