I have gone back and forth so much on the miniX vs. backhoe attachment debate, my head still hurts over it.
Yeah, no argument there. The things that sold me .. for my use case.. on the miniX were:
- Longer reach on the boom (I have a lot of cleanup tasks where this will be hugely beneficial due to limited access).
- a fair bit more digging power, not sure how much that actually matters to me.. more for stumps I guess but that's kind of an and-also use case.
- an actual blade (yeah it's not a dozer.. but it's a bit heavier than the FEL so for light grading it's arguably a better choice)
- and the real kicker was the ability to move (albeit slowly) around stuff clutched in the claw (also wanting a hydraulic thumb for this reason). This is largely for brush cleanup and moving smaller logs around the log yard...
I also have miles of cleanup work to do with intermittent timelines so it's significantly more convenient to just have the machine on site rather than rented... for a large one time project especially with a fixed timeline? I'd probably rent.
For more stationary and close in work.. like just digging some stumps and maybe a couple culverts? IDK.. a lot tougher call, the TLB is possibly a better choice.
I've eyeballed the Chinese imports and feel mostly like you do.. the engines aren't always what they say either "Yanmar licensed engine" would in a lot of cases be more apropos when you look at the specifics of the manufacturing. It seems like some of them aren't too bad, but I'm not sure I'm smart enough to really figure out which ones. A lot of them are also WAY too small/light for serious digging or forest/road work as well, fine for back yard stuff but .. yeah. Anything under about 5000lbs in this class is a pretty light, it's one of those slippery upward slopes.. 7K looks like kind of a "sweet spot" for what I want, but 10-14k would arguably be better for some cases.. I've been more looking at older used machines for that reason.
Another option would be an actual old loader backhoe.. if you're handy with machinery.. you can get a real heavy machine like an old case 580 for $5-6k and it'll out dig either of the above options (unless you rent a larger excavator in like the 12000lb+ range), and it won't loose any meaningful value if you kept it for a year or two (unless something goes wrong with it.. ofc..) so resell is easy. You kinda have to know a bit what you're looking at there though, lots of dodgy old hydraulics and leaky cylinders with the chrome plumb gone that "run" but don't "work" so well.. but also a fair number of old machines in not-to-bad of shape that still have plenty of hours left in them.
The other downside of course is having two machines which seems like it's twice as much to go wrong... but often feels like it's more like four times as much hah.
