6 months with my Lymow One
It's been 6 months (120 mow hours) since my Lymow One arrived so I thought I might do a review of my experience with it, especially since a lot of reviews on robot mowers seem to be from influencers that have them sent to them by the company for a week before it's sent back for the next reviewer. It's probably a little irrelevant since the One is no longer sold, but here's my experience anyway.
My property is 2000 sq m and when I first moved in a couple years ago I knew I didn't want to spend money getting a ride on mower when my ultimate goal was to get a robot mower but at that time, there really wasn't anything that I felt would suit the property as it's a new build house sitting in what was previously a sheep paddock that has undulations, stones/rocks and scraggly grass and weeds - landscaping is a work in progress still. I also wanted a mower that would still be able to handle the mow if its schedule had to be skipped because of the weather, so I didn't want a mower with razer blades. While I waited for that robot to hit the market I hired a contractor to take care of it. A year in I started getting targeted advertising for the Lymow kickstarter on the social media platforms and while it looked exactly like what I was looking for, I'm dubious of kickstarters so figured I'd wait and see if it made it out. When it did a year later, I ordered late October 2025 and it arrived early Jan 2026, in the middle of the summer here in New Zealand
I guess I ended up ordering at the right time as my One came after they made the change to spot welding the wheel hubs to prevent the hub separating like I had seen with the early versions on the groups while I waited for mine. There were probably a few other improvements that my later build had that the earlier buyers had helped resolve, which I'm thankful for.
Summer this year was rather wet and mild which meant the grass was growing very fast, so it kinda showed up at the right time as the contractors fortnightly schedule just wasn't keeping up. I was sending it out twice a week to keep up with the growth and I was very impressed with its capability. There were also times where it was wet for an entire week and by the time it was dry enough to mow, the grass was double the height I would otherwise mow it at but it lived up to my expectations I previously mentioned and handled it without issue. Exceeding my expectations kind of sums up my experience with the One. Every time I've sent it out to mow, it has done so and I haven't had to go out and help it, rescue it or really think about it while it's mowing but I do find myself getting stuck at the window watching it. Over the summer and autumn it also turned my scraggly lawn into looking somewhat respectable (as long as you don't look too closely and notice the weeds).
When it comes to navigation, I'll admit, my property is super easy for an RTK mower as it's a new development so there's no established tree cover and all the houses are single level with big open areas between them. So I've never had navigation issues, its accuracy has always been .01m. I've never had issues with it being weird after updates either, even though I've never bothered to unplug the battery for a period after an update.
The caveat to that is that the One's Achilles heal is that the charging contacts are on the bottom. My lawn seems to be particularly juicy during the summer months (even though it's dry to the touch) and all that juice would dry onto the contacts, so I would have to go out and clean them every other charge. Lymow did send me some brushes but I never bothered to install them as they're unable to get the dried juice off - only a wet rag would work. Modifying the charging contacts to be top mounted was tempting but I didn't want to create warranty issues if I ever needed to fall back on that. Thankfully, the 3D printed sliding contacts that Denis Picard designed have worked very well and since I installed them in April I have not had to clean the contacts once. Solving the charging contact issue transformed my One into a fully hands off robot mower and I can now honestly say I have zero involvement. It's now everything I wanted from a robot mower and Lymow should take notice of this solution and provide an official version, with compensation of some kind for Denis.
The other improvements I'd like to see are mostly software related. The big one would be perimeter logic. While it's doing a perimeter run, if the bumper is triggered it will swing outward away from the permitter, travel forward and then swing in hard and usually tap against the fence again, repeating the process. I think this could be mostly fixed if the ultrasonics were being used so it would better be able to follow a fence line while avoiding the posts. Smart detection also needs improving so that it doesn't detect long grass/weeds as obstacles to avoid. Low priority for me would be adjusting the way it gets back to an area it thinks it missed as it is a little funny that it makes those really nice lines but then ruins them by traversing across them to get to a small slither it missed at the other end of the zone.
It is still a mower so there is some hands on maintenance involved with cleaning it but I'm not overly obsessive about that. Every now and then I'll use a car trim pry tool and pry off the dried on grass from the deck but I'm not restoring it to factory conditions each time. Sometimes I'll use a wet dish brush and a low pressure hose during the juicy months but I think anything more is over the top. I also solved the issue of grass build up on the track wheels by 3D printing a basic wheel scraper which has worked so well that I haven't had to clean them since. I also haven't treated it to any kind of enclosure yet so it sits outside against the north wall of my house so it's generally protected from direct rain as that generally blows in from the south. NZ winters are pretty mild, even here in the south so it rarely gets below 0 over night and never during the day so I haven't brought it inside for the winter, mostly because the grass still grows here over the winter and it's still mowing every other week.
When it comes to the question of whether I would recommend a Lymow, if we're talking about the One, absolutely. It's exceeded my expectations and genuinely saved me time and eventually, money. Its capabilities and results have been noticed and regularly commented on by my neighbours. However, Lymow no longer sells the One and at the moment with the Plus and its various deck issues (mostly the over heating motor controller and loosening deck bolts) that becomes tricker. The summer sun here in the Southern Hemisphere is more intense than the Northern Hemisphere so the Plus in the summer here will be rough. I would expect the Plus to get a mid-cycle revision like the One had to resolve these hardware issues but I would want to wait until that solution has been implemented. I do believe in Lymow, I know they can get a product to market that works great and is better than the other available options but they just need to take more time with the future models to have them at that stage for launch.