Considering investing in a robot lawnmower but don’t know your boundary wire from your base station? Don’t panic.
We’ve taken a closer look at the newest models to help you work out which one is the best fit for your lawn, whether you’re an urbanite with a square-shaped garden, or the proud owner of a Downton Abbey-worthy pasture which desperately needs whipping into shape.
First things first. Robot lawnmowers aren’t the kind of thing you’ll casually drop into your trolley during a visit to your local garden centre. You’ll struggle to find one for under £500, and many cost over £2,000. But there’s a reason for the high price tags.
These lean, mean grass-slashing machines, most of which work in conjunction with apps, won’t just keep your lawn in check by trimming the grass but by relying on Bluetooth and GPS, detecting weather conditions to work out optimal mowing times, and knowing when to return to their charging bases for quick battery boosts.
While it’s not possible to provide an all-encompassing guide to every mower we’ve included (as shown by the Bible-like user manuals which came with many of the models we tested), we’ve focused on their main selling points, as well as the ease in which they can be set up.
Typically, you’ll need to use pegs to lay down a boundary wire, which acts as a perimeter outline for the mower. The two ends of this line will plug into the mower’s base (the “home” to which it returns when it needs to charge). When mowers map the area – which is the first thing they will do – they rely on this boundary wire. However, some mowers come with a second wire, known as a guide wire. This will extend, in a straight line, from the mower’s charging base across the centre of the area to be mowed. When the mower has finished its mapping or mowing, it will find this wire and use it to return to its base.
A few words of advice:
- Don’t be intimidated by the set-up process. We set up every one of the mowers below ourselves in under 20 minutes (after they’d been charged).
- The beauty of robot mowing is that once this has been done, it’s done, and making any necessary tweaks, such as changes to the perimeter, or to mowing schedules, is a breeze.
After rigorous testing, we can determine that these are the factors worth paying attention to:
- Traction - if your garden’s got more inclines than a Welsh valley, you’ll need a mower to match
- Layout - if your lawn has an irregular shape, a more intuitive mower might well do the best job
- Ease in which you can tweak parameters like blade height and programme mowing schedules.
- That said, don’t get too caught up with the latter – the Lawnmaster 10 Robotic Lawnmower we reviewed is a brilliant reminder that the best mowers don’t necessarily need apps.
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Husqvarna Automower 405X
This is the Lamborghini of the lawnmowing world. It’s seriously chunky, and takes the tech to a whole new level.
It doesn’t just have the app (one of the best we’ve come across incidentally), but offers gardeners the option to tweak the blade height using electronic controls on the mower itself. Typically, the most hi-tech mowers only have manual blade controls.
It’s designed for lawns up to 600m2, and its chunky wheels allowed it to tackle a wide range of terrains - including inclines of up to 40 per cent in our test garden - with ease. It seemed incredibly intuitive. It mapped our garden in record time, with less pauses than other mowers we tested. We also loved the fact that it came with a guide wire, which made it easier for the mower to dock.
The best bit? It’s got headlights – genius. Bonus points for the ultra-concise quick start guide, too.
Buy now £1549.00, My Robot Center
Lawnmaster L10 Robotic Lawnmower
This brand new mower is definitive proof that the best robot mower isn’t the one with the highest price tag or the most tech. It’s one of the few which doesn’t come with an app, but it was the only one to come with a peg driver – a tool which made laying the boundary wire, and hammering in the pegs required, a breeze.
It’s designed for gardens up to 400m2, and we loved its super quick charge time. It took only 45 minutes for a full charge. Honourable mention also goes to the ease with which we could switch between mowing time lengths.
Its three pivoting blades slashed effortlessly through our severely-neglected lawn. We used the dial on the lawnmower to crank up the grass-cutting height to its maximum of 60mm. It was also incredibly quiet - its 62 decibels put a nearby roaring manual mower to shame.
Buy now £429.99, Amazon
Flymo EasiLife Go 150 Robotic Lawnmower
Our favourite thing about the incredibly quiet EasiLife Go 150 Robotic Lawnmower? The FrostSense function, which ensures it “stays at home until it’s warm enough to mow.” Because let’s face it, we’ve all had those days when we’ve peeked through the curtains and decided to stay in bed. In all seriousness, it’s a brilliant feature which prevents unnecessary damage to rock hard, frozen lawns.
Setting up this mower, designed to mow gardens of up to 150m2, was easy, and it’s another mower which has a guide wire, allowing it to quickly find its way home after the lawn has been mapped or mowed.
We also loved the positioning of the wheels. Often, three-wheeled mowers have the larger wheels at the back, but having the larger two at the front meant it happily rumbled over uneven terrain. We admittedly struggled to pair it with the app at first and ended up relying on the manual controls, the upside of which was the realisation that although it’s a mower designed to be used paired with your phone, the manual controls are incredibly easy to operate.
Buy now £372.99, Amazon
McCulloch ROB S400 Robotic Lawnmower
Designed for gardens measuring up to 400m2, the McCulloch ROB S400 is a rugged robot mower which is surprisingly compact, but refreshingly sturdy. It has large wheels with two big ones on the back teamed and a smaller one at the front that gave it added stability.
Once the mapping had been done, it docked into its base neatly – partly due to the presence of the guide and boundary wire. That said, the start-up process took a little longer, and while other mowers happily set off with a battery life of 60 per cent or more, this one refused to budge until the battery reached 98 per cent.
Buy now £749.99, Amazon
Bosch Indego S+ 500 Robotic Lawnmower
If you are drawn to the Honda model above, this iteration from Bosch may just find itself in your basket – because they’re almost exactly same. Yes, that’s right, in the same way car brands rebadge certain models of car and sell them under different names (for example, the Toyota GT86 is also known as a Subaru BRZ), it turns out the same robot mower can be given different names, too.
The immediate obvious difference is the colour. The Bosch Indego S+ 500 has a more muted black and green colour scheme, while the Honda’s had a monochrome paint job.
Then there’s the price – Bosch’s mower will cost around £100 less. Honda states that only customers purchasing their version – the MIIMO 40 Live - can opt for an installation service, and this will cost another £200 or so. We were able to install both mowers ourselves in a matter of minutes but Honda’s installation option could well be a godsend for gardeners who aren’t tech-savvy. By opting for this service, customers would certainly ensure they’re getting the most out of their mower.
Installation aside, unless you’re particularly partial to monochrome mowers, we’re struggling to work out why you’d pay £200 more for Honda’s version.
Buy now £629.22, Amazon
Gardena Smart Sileno city 250
In the same way you can use Phillips’ Hue Bridge to control multiple Phillips Hue indoor and outdoor lights, the hub which comes with Gardena’s mower, designed to mow gardens of up to 250 m2, can be used to control multiple Gardena products. Sadly, we can’t lay claim to a garden filled with Gardena kit, but it’s a brilliant concept. For example, if your Gardena sprinkler is on, your Gardena mower will sense this and take a rain check (if you’ll excuse the pun).
The mower was easy to pair and it was the quietest model we tested. A protective strip on the outside of the wheels meant it could mow close to low-lying greenery without leaves or stems snagging, and we loved the extra stability provided by its extra-large front wheels. We also loved the colour scheme – a pebble grey with a cheery turquoise trim.
It’s also worth noting that this is the only mower which flashed up a weather alert. Our tests took place on a particularly chilly day and we were warned that the frigid temperatures could be an issue. Nevertheless, it went on to do its thing without any complications.
Buy now £729.99, Amazon
Honda MIIMO 40 Live Robotic Lawnmower
This super-quiet mower was another one which was incredibly easy to set up. We started by simply scanning the QR code handily displayed on the side of the box, before downloading the app, which guided us through the set-up process in a clear, concise way.
It appeared to be slightly more sensitive than the other robot mowers we tested – it stopped twice when confronted with an “obstacle” (an errant strand of ivy). It responded by asking “is this the base?”, then asking us to remove the obstacle, which we did, after which it carried on with its session.
However, this enhanced level of sensitivity could well appeal to some as it’s designed for smaller gardens covering up to 400 m2, which will inevitably have more delicate areas. It’s perhaps an unavoidable downside to such a compact mower but the advantage is that it tucks effortlessly into the smallest of spaces. We also appreciated the presence of not three but four wheels, which (barring the ivy incident) gave it added manoeuvrability, and allowed it to tackle gentle inclines without losing traction.
Buy now £790.00, Honda
Husqvarna Automower 415X
If you’re lucky enough to have a huge lawn, then the Husqvarna 415X Automower is for you. It tackles up to 1500m2 in size, and comes packed with the features you’d expect to see if you’re spending your hard-earned cash on a lawnmower like this - namely GPS theft tracking, GPS-assisted navigation and what’s known as Firmware-over-the-air (FOTA). This means, in a nutshell, that the mower’s software will automatically update.
It’s another incredibly rugged model with a sturdy bumper, extra-grippy wheels and the ability to mow slopes with an incline of 40 per cent.
We were particularly impressed with the ultra-bright LED lights. These weren’t just useful on darker days, but also act as an alert system, and will flash on and off in the event of a problem.
Buy now £1949.00, My Robot Centre
Verdict
Both Husqvarnas (despite being quite different, and designed to tackle very different sizes of lawn) ticked all the boxes. From the seamlessly pairing with the brand’s app or the way they tackled rough, uneven terrain, to slashing through our embarrassingly overgrown lawn in the blink of an eye.
We were also blown away by the Lawnmaster L10 Robotic Lawnmower. It put some of the priciest models we tested to shame, despite costing under £500. Finally, we loved the Flymo EasiLife Go 150 Robotic Lawnmower, which served as a welcome reminder that one of the world’s most popular lawnmower brands is still very much one to be reckoned with.
