My uncle recently found himself in a bit of a pickle with a knee surgery keeping him from mowing the lawn and his son back at school unable to help. As a former landscaper, he couldn't stomach the thought of paying $60 per week for a local crew to cut his yard. They've proven time and time again to rush and miss corners. Lucky for him, I had the Segaway Navimow Series robot lawn mower in for testing.
The Segway Navimow i110N has a 7-inch disc blade that's a third of the size of the 21-inch blade on his beloved electric Ryobi mower. As expected, he didn't have much faith in a robot lawn mower. But for a guy who is disgustingly particular about his lawn, the I-Series impressed him with its accuracy and depth of environmental awareness. This man was straight-up giddy at points during the first cut—blown away by how it navigated back to touch up missed spots. Here's what we liked and didn't about the newest Navimow.
What I like
Easy to setup and use
The Navimow's setup process is painless: I had it up and running in under 10 minutes. All you have to do is drop its compact dock into a corner of your yard, stick the included antenna into the ground nearby, and run the power cable to your outdoor receptacle. The Navimow app makes it easy to find the mower over Bluetooth and then connects it to your Wi-Fi network once you enter its password. From here, you just need to create a map by driving the mower around your yard's boundary like a drone with touchscreen controls.
Sharp accuracy with thorough cuts
I was most impressed by how accurately the GPS and camera sensor worked together to keep the mower riding along the edges of curbs and flower beds without falling over. It trimmed up to the border so well that we didn't need to fish out a weed whacker to get edges that even humans miss. Once the bot works around the perimeter, it cuts the large interior portions downward in a diagonal row pattern for clean, defined strips. Grass is cut up incredibly fine without leaving any clumps on the lawn—something my uncle's usual Ryobi mulching blade struggles with.
It took two hours to cut 150 square meters, which is far from fast. But in terms of performance, the Navimow i110N is no slouch. It ripped through the grass without getting caught up and returned to get the slightly longer stragglers. Best of all, it operates damn near silently. The loudest it got was when it sounded like tearing paper when running over rougher spots like a patch of crabgrass. The difference between the 40-volt push mower and the Navimow was night and day—about as drastic of a difference between a gas-powered lawn mower and an electric mower.
Intelligent obstacle avoidance
Our test yard had two difficult areas to work around but the Navimow handled them easily. First up was a bird bath that creates a small dip in the lawn and is surrounded by little rocks, which you can see above. As the robot lawn mower worked its way over to this obstacle, it cut within 4 inches of it (a weed whacker's length away) but never crossed into its pit of rocks or bumped into the fixture itself. The Navimow instead curved around the sides while cutting its rows but did stop short when the bath was in the center of its path. It just went on creating the rows around it. Initially, I feared it would simply skip the section on the other side of the fixture, but it simply cut across to the untouched section to take care of the remaining strip.
Once the stragglers were taken care of, it jumped over to the other side of the yard with a large tree. The Navimow made micro adjustments to push forward and backward on the fly to get a close shave while maneuvering around this sizable obstacle. Its smaller and more nimble movements were more efficient than swinging itself wide and making multiple passes radius. The result was a much tighter cut around the tree bed without a single strand to complain about.
Extensive battery life
The bot arrived with its battery at 50%. This lasted the two hours of the initial run without any major fluctuations when working on a slight upward slope or fighting through clovers and crabgrass. It returned to base with just 1% of the job left because the battery had dropped to 15%. At that rate, a full charge nets us an impressive well over 300 square meters of coverage per charge.
With the ability to map out individual zones and its automatic return-to-base charging you can leave this guy running and confidently head out for work. The Navimow charges quickly, increasing a percent every minute while on the charging base.
What I don't like
Cuts across its freshly trimmed rows
There were three different occasions where the Navimow cut across its neat rows from the side. The first two times were due to missing strips and returning to them once it made its way over to the edge of the perimeter. After such a fantastic cut, my jaw dropped to see the Navimow cut horizontally across the lawn's fresh diagonal strips to return to its docking station. In a perfect world it would recognize and travel with the pattern instead of flattening the grass.
Doesn't shred leaves
We're getting picky here, but it was disappointing to see that the blade was unable to break up individual leaves. Even when lowering the blade height it simply ran them over. Ideally, it should mulch leaves up like grass clippings so you don't see different colors popping out from the lawn.
Verdict
At $1,299 the Navimow i110N definitely isn't cheap. With that said, its cutting performance and scheduling features are worth the price if you're considering buying a robot lawn mower. You can buy cheaper models but they won't cut for as long and I question their accuracy compared to this GPS-based system.
My uncle came in a skeptic and vouches for the thing every day. Seriously, go through my iMessage threads and you'll easily find about two gigabytes worth of video of this thing going back and forth across his lawn. That's some seriously high praise from a man who accepts nothing short of perfection regarding his property.
