When you’re asked to repair dangerous brickwork 21 metres up on a live school site, there’s no room for guesswork. Safety, reach, and machine behaviour all matter a lot. On this job, my own cherry picker simply wasn’t tall enough to do the work safely, so we brought in a Genie S65XC telescopic boom lift.
After three full days on site, working alongside my mate Seb, I thought it was worth sitting down and giving an honest, experience-based review of the machine, not just the brochure specs, but what it’s actually like to operate when you’re right up against buildings at serious height.
If you work at height, or you’re considering hiring or buying one of these machines, this is very much a “real world” perspective.
The Job That Required the S65XC
The task itself involved repairing unstable brickwork on a clock tower, directly above an active site. At over 21 metres high, this wasn’t something you tackle with marginal reach or compromised access.
That’s where the Genie S65XC came in – a straight telescopic boom designed for height and horizontal outreach. If you want to see the machine in action and get a feel for the scale of the job, I’d strongly recommend watching the full video.
Genie S65XC Specifications (The Hard Facts)
Before getting into how it feels to use, it’s worth laying out the key specs – because this is a serious bit of kit.
- Working height: Just under 22 metres
- Platform height: Just under 20 metres
- Horizontal outreach: Over 16.5 metres
- Below ground reach: Approx. 2.65 metres
- Basket size: Approx. 2.44 m wide × 0.91 m deep
- Platform capacity:
- 300 kg unrestricted
- Up to 454 kg in restricted mode
- Machine weight: Around 11–12 tonnes
- Overall size:
- Approx. 2.5 m wide
- Nearly 10 m long (stowed)
- Under 3 m tall
- Power: Diesel, approx. 48 hp
- Drive: Full 4-wheel drive
- Gradability: 45%
- Rotation: Continuous 360° turret rotation
This isn’t something that turns up on a trailer, it arrives on a low loader or HGV, and from the outset you’re dealing with a large-scale access platform.
On paper, the S65XC looks extremely capable. But specs alone don’t tell the full story.
The Positives: Reach and Workspace
Let’s start with what the Genie S65XC does very well.
Outstanding Outreach
There’s no denying it, the reach on this machine is staggering. Both vertically and horizontally, it gets you into places that many other machines simply can’t. For certain applications, that alone makes it the right tool for the job.
A Big, Comfortable Basket
The basket is another major plus. It’s large, stable, and comfortable, even with two people, tools, and materials onboard. Seb and I worked together in the basket without it ever feeling cramped.
For two-man work at height, it’s more than adequate and that comfort matters when you’re spending long periods in the air.
Where Size Becomes a Drawback
That large basket isn’t always an advantage.
When you’re working in tight access areas, moving sideways along rooflines, or trying to position yourself precisely near buildings, the basket’s size can make things more awkward than they need to be. Once you’re in position it’s great, but getting there can take more manoeuvring than expected.
A Critical Safety Reminder
A quick but important point for anyone new to large wheeled MEWPs:
Always know where the manhole covers are.
At 11.5 tonnes all-in, driving over a compromised manhole cover could easily cause a failure and at 21 metres up, that’s not a situation you want to be anywhere near. Site awareness is absolutely critical with machines of this size.
The Biggest Limitation: No True “Up and Over”
For the type of work I do (roofing and building maintenance) this is a major sticking point.
The Genie S65XC is a straight stick boom. That’s brilliant for raw outreach, but it lacks true up-and-over capability. When you need to get over gable ends, roof lines, or other obstacles, that limitation becomes very apparent.
For general high-level access in open areas, it’s fine. For detailed roofing work close to structures, it’s restrictive.
Control Behaviour at Full Outreach: A Serious Concern
This is my biggest criticism of the machine.
While the controls are easy to learn, I found them to be extremely sensitive at full extension, particularly when retracting the telescopic boom.
On this machine, retracting the boom had a tendency to induce turret movement at the same time. At full reach, even millimetres of turret input can translate into nearly a metre of movement at the basket.
That magnification of movement is dangerous when you’re working close to a building.
Retracting the boom should be one of the safest actions you can perform, you’re reducing leverage and bringing the machine back into a more stable configuration. When that action risks unintended slewing, it turns a safety manoeuvre into a liability.
Whether some of this behaviour was machine-specific or not, the overall sensitivity and movement amplification feels like a design issue, not just operator error.
Drive-Enabled Movement in the Air
The S65XC can be driven with the boom elevated using Genie’s drive-enabled system. In practice, though, making small positional adjustments isn’t always straightforward.
In some orientations, you end up having to slew the turret or reposition the boom just to gain a small amount of extra reach. That adds unnecessary movement at height and with height comes risk.
Final Verdict: A Machine That Excels in the Right Context
So, what’s the overall takeaway?
The Genie S65XC is a very capable machine – for the right job.
- Outstanding reach
- Comfortable, spacious basket
- Easy to learn and logical to operate
- Well suited to large, open-area high-access work
Despite being relatively inexperienced on this type of machine, both Seb and I felt confident operating it very quickly which speaks volumes about its usability.
However, for roofing and building maintenance close to structures, the lack of up-and-over reach and the control sensitivity at full extension are significant drawbacks. For the kind of work I do most often, those limitations outweigh the benefits.
That doesn’t make it a bad machine, it just means it’s very good at certain jobs and far less suited to others.
If you want to see exactly how it behaved on site and hear these points explained in context, make sure you watch the full video, and feel free to share your own experiences in the comments.
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