The gearing has a few side effects which are important to note. First, you can turn the stepper by hand but not as smoothly as an un-geared stepper. It also means you shouldn't use interleaved or micro-stepping to control or it will take forever to turn. Instead use single or double stepping. The torque is fairly high but its slower than un-geared steppers - we maxed out at about 80 RPM when powering with 12VDC and about 50 RPM on 9VDC.