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CNET
5 days ago
- Automotive
- CNET
I Spent Weeks Testing Robot Lawn Mowers. Here Are 6 Things That Surprised Me
I spent the end of my spring and the beginning of my summer turning my backyard into a parking lot to test the best robot lawn mowers. In the process of doing that, I learned a lot about their benefits and their shortfalls. One of the biggest lessons was that, like most forms of automation, they can be a real pain to set up initially, but once they're ready to go, they save you a ton of effort and time compared with regular electric lawn mowers. I didn't expect that initial annoyance going into that project, but I think it's important to document those pains so you can avoid them in the future. Here are some of the lessons I learned about the obstacles you'll have to overcome if you decide to pull the trigger on a robot lawnmower. Way more wires than I expected The wires running through my yard for the robot lawn mower. It's not the most attractive sight. Adam Doud The 800-pound gorilla in the room for robot mowers comes in the instructions that every mower company sends along with the robot. First, there are a ton of wires. You might need to run power to the base station or to the RTK beacon or both. If you're unfamiliar, RTK stands for Real-Time Kinematic, a beacon that corrects a mower's coordinates to improve accuracy. The mower companies tell you not to place the mower within 7 feet of a building or under a tree. They also tell you not to run wires through the grass. But if you're not supposed to place the base station under a tree or within 7 feet of a wall, where exactly are these wires supposed to go? I also ran into an issue where an animal chewed through a wire to an RTK station, and I had to drive 70 minutes (one way) to a service center to get it repaired. You'll want to protect your wires where you can. Burying them is one way of doing this. Since I had to run them around a garden, I ran them through pool noodles. It's crude, but effective. I had to use a pool noodle to hide the wires. It's not attractive, but it works. Adam Doud Not all yards will work well My backyard is almost entirely covered by a large tree, so it was difficult to find an appropriate installation space. Ultimately, despite instructions to the contrary, I had to line the mowers up next to my house. Only the Yarbo Lawn Mower and Airseekers Tron couldn't handle that; the rest were all fine. My yard isn't the simplest one for a robot lawn mower to navigate, with a large tree, trampoline and other obstacles. Adam Doud Yard boundaries are another thing to consider. Do you have a fence? Will the gate need to be opened to let the mower through? Do you have an insane neighbor who will set your yard on fire if a robot dares tread upon his property? Is there a boundary between your and your neighbor's property, like a fence, sidewalk or driveway? These are all important things to consider before taking a four-figure plunge into the world of robot mowers. I hope you have power outlets outdoors If you don't have an outdoor power outlet, you'll need to install one to set up your robot lawn mowers. I had to jerry-rig this one out of my outdoor light. Adam Doud One other important factor to consider: Do you have outdoor power? These mowers all need to be plugged in. In my case, I converted an outdoor lighting fixture into an outdoor plug; that may or may not be an option for you. The cords that mower companies provide you may not be long enough to get from the power to where the base station or RTK beacon needs to be, so you might have to buy extra cables, or you may need an electrician to come out and install a new outdoor outlet. Staying in bounds can be hit or miss The Eufy E15 was one of the easiest robot mowers to get working out of the box. I really liked its simpliciy. Adam Doud/CNET All the mowers I tested handle boundaries using GPS and an RTK beacon. The only exception to that is the Eufy E15 mower, which uses GPS and vision systems to navigate. Boundaries are typically set by manually controlling the mower around the property and saving a map. Obstacles are a different issue, though. Various mowers handle obstacles differently. Most robot mowers handle obstacles using vision sensors, and those that don't are not my favorites. The Sunseeker X3 has a bump sensor, like what you'd find on a robot vacuum, but I found it to be too sensitive and it would prevent good mower coverage. Others use a radar module, which I also came away less than impressed with -- or at least my toes did, since it wouldn't always stop before hitting my foot. The Sunseeker X3 was one of the best robot lawn mowers I tested. Adam Doud All the mowers allow you to set no-go zones for areas where additional sensors don't quite do the job. If a mower consistently gets stuck or otherwise has problems, you can set a no-go zone and the mower will ignore that particular patch. The common theme is that the more sensors you have working for you, the better off you'll be, but my favorites in order are: GPS, vision sensors, radar sensors and bump sensors. Maintenance wasn't demanding, aside from blades The mowers will need their blades replaced periodically as they wear down, but that's not too difficult to do. Adam Doud Robot lawn mowers are generally easy to maintain because they're designed to be outside. The most maintenance you'll have to worry about is blades and winterizing. Blades are fairly easy -- every mower I tested included a set of replacement blades. Keep in mind, these are small razor blades, so they may start to get dull a lot more quickly than a traditional push mower. They also might be more prone to breakage, so be sure you pick up any sticks or other debris in your yard, especially after a bad storm. Speaking of blades, these tiny razors that ship with the mowers make the mower more efficient by drastically reducing the weight the motor has to spin, but it comes with the trade-off that the blades may not last long. Upon concluding my first round of testing, I noted that most of the blades were starting to show signs of rust, which is not encouraging after only two months of use. That said, summer in Chicago is only about four to five months long, so one set of blades might make it, but if you live in an area where you're cutting the grass year-round, your blade budget will need to be higher. One of the blades of the robot lawn mower started picking up rust already after just a month or two of use. Adam Doud Beyond that, the main thing you have to do is bring the mower in for the winter. Preferably, before the first frost, you'll want to pack up the mower's components and bring them out of the elements. Each mower has its own set of steps and recommendations, but in general, you will want to store the mower in an environment that won't get frost. Your garage or shed may work. If possible, you may also want to remove the battery and store it inside your home at room temperature. You can also take this opportunity to clean the mower and the base station and even change blades. Your work is not done, most robot mowers will miss spots Just remember that a mower won't do all the work for you. If you have any narrow paths of grass in your lawn, the robot won't handle those well. You'll also still need to go out and trim the grass around the edges. You might also find some area the mower decided to skip for some reason -- maybe a sensor was tripped and the mower skipped an area. You'll still need to stay on top of things to make sure your lawn stays the best it can be. Our best overall, the Segway Navimow X390, is the most expensive robot mower you can get, but it offers the best performance too. Adam Doud/CNET Are robot lawn mowers worth it? Overall, the main thing I learned from my experience is that robot lawn mowers are ultimately worth it despite their foibles, an opinion I share with other CNET reviewers who've taken them for a spin. They eliminate a task that many homeowners don't like in the first place. Plus, they're easy to adjust. When the summer started getting too hot, I adjusted the cutting height higher to help the grass thrive. One day, when we were hosting a party, I just shifted the automatic mow time to a different day. Once you power through those initial steps, the mower takes care of itself. Just make sure other people in the family have access to the mower, so if you're in London, and the mower gets stuck, they can go help it out — and yes, that's based on a true story. But other than that, kick back and enjoy your perpetually shorn grass and your neighbor's envious glances.


CNET
24-06-2025
- CNET
Best Robot Lawn Mowers: My Backyard Is Now a Mower Test Lab
Robot lawn mowers of yore started off using a boundary wire to determine where it could and could not go, and they were problematic. The boundary wire had to make a complete, unbroken circle. And if anything happened to the wire, you had problems. These days, robot mowers work via GPS, but it's GPS with a little bit extra in an RTK beacon. Scott Porteous, head of robotics for Husqvarna broke it down for me. Adam Doud/CNET GPS navigation GPS today is accurate down to a few feet. That's fine when you're navigating in your car, or looking for Tupperware in the woods, but it's not good for things like property lines. The Real-Time Kinematic beacon also communicates with GPS satellites to provide a fixed location on Earth that the satellites know about. In essence, the RTK beacon tells the satellites, "I'm always here." Meanwhile, the mower drives around, and the beacon tells the mower that the satellites think it's 5 feet to the north, so the mower should take the location that GPS is reading and adjust it accordingly. This allows robot mowers to get accuracy down to the centimeter. GPS coverage Another thing to consider is your general GPS coverage. If you live out in the suburbs, there's a good chance you'll be able to find a spot in your yard to set up a base station and RTK beacon. If you live in the city, that might be challenging. Also, wherever you set up your mower, you'll probably need to be within Wi-Fi range for the mower to operate properly. A mower like the Yarbo actually gets an ethernet cable that runs to a router. If you decide to go with the Yarbo, that's something you'll need to do. Adam Doud/CNET Cutting width Robot mowers have a lot of difficulty with narrow paths. The reason for this is due to those blades and its overall construction. For example, the Segway mower's chassis is 20.5 inches with a cutting width of 9 inches. The Sunseeker, one of the smaller bots, has a 14-inch width accompanied by a cutting width of 8 inches. This is not conducive to cutting narrow paths. Even if the body of the mower fits there, it can't get the right angle to cut all the grass. Mostly, they just wiggle back and forth, which doesn't do a heck of a lot. Camera systems Most mowers have camera systems that allow them to avoid obstacles and navigate. Eufy relies on that camera system, so much so that it can't operate at night at all. Other mowers have the ability to turn off nighttime mowing because obstacle detection is a lot worse for obvious reasons. Adam Doud/CNET Scheduling All of the mowers have scheduling abilities, so the mower only runs when you want it to. Some of the mowers even take weather into account -- if it's raining when it's time to mow, it delays the mowing. It's important to remember that consistent mowing times are crucial to the proper operation of the mowers so the grass won't get too long for it to handle. Human oversight Finally, it's important to remember that robot mowers are exactly that -- robots. A human can look at a patch of grass and know exactly how to move through it. Robots, not so much. It can be frustrating to watch a mower make its way through a lawn and just skip past a piece of grass. If you don't obsessively watch the mower (like I had to in order to review them), you might come back after it runs a cycle and see patches that it skipped, which can also be frustrating. As a human, you might have to do some tidying up after a robot mower, but it'll be significantly less work than doing the whole thing yourself. Adam Doud/CNET My backyard is a wonderful minefield of obstacles and grades that embodies just about any condition you might have in a yard. I have a trampoline that none of the mowers seemed to be able to navigate (the supporting pipes on the ground couldn't be climbed over). My tree is large and has roots sticking out of the ground. I have dogs who were curious about their new robot friends creeping back and forth across the lawn. I also have a fair amount of landscaping and some narrow paths that none of the mowers did a good job of cutting. My front yard is much more straightforward except that neither of my neighbors have a boundary between their property line and mine, so I had to rely on GPS and the RTK beacon to test. I found them to be accurate enough. I programmed one of the mowers to also cut my elderly neighbor's yard (not the colorful one, the other one), which he appreciated. This is why you don't mess with the tech reviewer. Adam Doud/CNET During my testing time, temperatures varied wildly from 40 degrees Fahrenheit to up over 90 degrees -- welcome to the midwest. We also had a few rainstorms, including one torrential downpour that didn't kill any of the bots, so that's a plus. After every mower did its thing, I waited several days for the grass to grow back to test the next one, however I didn't wait too long because -- again -- maintenance, not mowing. I put these mowers through their paces for the past six weeks, but I anticipate some long-term testing will be necessary. We plan to keep this list updated with more mowers as they're released, or even mowers we didn't get to this time around, so be sure to check back.