r/roboticLawnmowers

I’m currently using a Goat O1000. Big fan, but it’s struggling with my hill, and isn’t really doing the best job.

I see people consistently saying the x430 doesn’t have a great quality cut. The amazon reviews are ripping it to shreds. And I think stepping down from Lidar to RTK in 2026 feels bad.

It still calls to me though, but I feel like it’s a mistake to spend twice the money on something that’s not doing well in the reviews.

I live east of Tampa Florida and with the drought my country lawn isn't the greatest and the soil is sandy. The A3 pro that I have had for 3 plus days is not working out. Over 87 degrees and Lidar gets hot so that means no cutting from 11-5 pm.

The absolute worst part is that when it turns in my soil it will burrow so far down that it gets stuck. Another thing is that it gets lost (yes clean lenses).

I spent a lot of time rescuing it. From climbing fences, concrete steps , driving into mulch piles and just not following my mapping. The only good things were bluetooth range, battery life and self docking oh and cut seemed good.

I did a lot of research b4 buying this and I cannot recommend it. Maybe I'll try a Segway X450 but I worry about my trees.

Hello,

I'm looking at various robot mowers but don't find many reviews with thick St Augustine. Is anyone using one of these around Houston and have a positive review/recommendation? I like the idea of having one to help me during the week/heat/kids events so I'm not having to cut so much down at once.

Thank you

I’m thinking about getting my dad a robot mower during Prime Day and am looking at Navimow X430. He’s not very patient with apps or smart home stuff. I can help with the initial setup, but the daily adjustments would be on him. If something needs constant tweaking, he’ll probably give up and go back to his old mower. His yard is about 0.7 acres, pretty flat, with one pond and a few trees.

For anyone who has bought one for themselves or a parent, how much daily app checking is needed after the first setup? Things like adjusting the map or schedule, are those simple?

In this video you will actually see the robot cutting thick grass and it does a very good job.

I wanted to post my positive and negative points having lived with the 3 acre version for a week now and used it intensively. I hope these comments are useful to potential purchasers and users. I’m happy to answer further questions - fire away.

My summary is that this device is awesome and I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone with a large area of grass to look after. Yes, there is a long list of feedback but take this as enthusiastic input about this product to improve it still further. 

For clarity: I’ve not even bothered to set up the local antenna. NRTK seems to be working fine.

Positives:

• It was a breeze to set up and get operational
• The app is excellent for a new user
• Mapping is dead easy
• The cut is excellent
• The batteries are user-replaceable - fantastic!!
• The slope performance is nothing less than amazing. I will try to post some footage. We have slopes that are at least 40 degrees and it was a little hesitant at first, thinking they might be obstacles. Now it has ‘learned’ the slopes the performance is nothing less than spectacular

Feedback, gaps and thoughts:

• Movement of the steering axles sounds wrong. I know how that sounds but it is disconcerting. It doesn’t sound ‘solid’ or reliable, it sounds plasticky and about to break.
• It has a blindspot for low walls with jutting out coping stones on top. I have 2 parallel scratches in my nice orange livery because it incorrectly assumed that the wall position was the same from bottom to top - not good!
• I don’t like subscription models and this was one reason I almost didn’t purchase it. I appreciate that in the grand scheme of things, £40GBP / year is not a large sum compared to the initial investment but I like the way that Kress builds it into the purchase price. I would have purchased Kress but the model I wanted was not available.
• I can’t find any regular care or maintenance that I should be doing to the device. 
• In the app it’s difficult to see when an object is selected (generally the mapping is more problematic). I am constantly seeing ‘Please select an element to edit’.
• Getting rid of error messages is not possible with a tap - they have to time out to disappear
• Edge mowing seems to turn itself off. I had to post about this. Subsequently I have created a new zone and just checked. Mow along boundary is switched off after the mower has completed an initial cut (and has most definitely cut around the boundary).
• It doesn’t seem possible to add a second base station to an installation. This would be really useful in my situation where there is a road bisecting our land. It has taken 4 charges to complete a first cut of the land across the road and escorting it across and back is tedious.
• Battery performance is disappointing (and presumably will only degrade from here). You won’t notice it if your mower can just go and get itself some more juice but in my position, 2-3 hours of work before a charge (and an escort from me) is needed is a pain
• Why on earth can you not remote control the device with <20% power left? See my other post about the problems this caused
• It would be really useful to see the position of the device when you are editing the map (to help position edges etc)
• I would like to be able to install the app on a laptop to help with drawing accurate lines on the map boundaries

My assumption (given the money this device is) is that it will be hard-working and hard-wearing and should last a long time. I will see if I feel this positive about the device in 6 months, 1 year, 2 year etc...

so I impulse purchased a m5 from ANTHBOT, it delivers in a few days. the more I read the more I think I should just return without trying it.

it has a 30 day return window so I could try it but I am almost convinced I won’t like it and should go with the Navimow H210 or i215.

I am well aware that expecting the ANTHBOT to perform as well as a robot 3x the cost is silly. Am I being short sighted not to at least try it? Hate to waste growing season wish washing !

I do like the idea that the Navimow can go into the back yard via a petsafe gate and it’s a longer running name brand.

Bought the Ecovacs A3000 after a long time scoping the market. It was finally onsale during the Amazon Prime Week, and as a birthday present to myself I thought "Why now?".

So far it has been a frustrating week trying to get this thing to mow my yard even one time. Here are my current list of "grievances":

1. The app is super buggy. I constantly find myself having to switch to another app or back, quite and come back in, etc. to get it to respond. It's not a 1-star situation, but frustrating as hell when you are trying to joystick this robot around your not-so-straight yard and it keeps loosing connection.
2. The robot doesn't seem to "learn". It gets stuck in the same damn places. Over and over. And when it does, it likes to dig nice big tire marks into your turf. I now have many little dirt spots all over where I have had to repair these divots.
3. The robot doesn't seem to respect the settings at all. I will go into more details, but sufficit to say you set no-go zones and it still goes in them, you turn on the "no turn around in skinny areas" option and it still tries to u-turn in skinny areas. It's CONSTANTLY backing into my retaining wall. Like lil' bro, that wall has been there all 20 times you have tried to mow...stop running into it.
4. If the grass is even REMOTELY long-ish, or "thick", the robot just spins it's wheels and can't get through. Like I bought this thing so I wouldn't have to mow my lawn, but so far in the week I have had it I have mowed more times than I did in the entire month before I bought it!

Step-up was easy, but took forever. You essentially have to follow it around, using your phone as a joystick, to drive it around the perimeter. The problem is it's top speed only works when the virtual joystick is exactly straight. Any course correction makes it slow to a literal crawl. Once in a while it will loose connection or something, then literally cat-walk when it finally springs into action. I tried using the "auto-zone" feature, but it gives me an area about being within 20in of the yard edge that makes no sense.

The biggest issue is that the right side of my yard is very narrow and has a slight gully for drainage. It's not a deep gully by any means, barely deep enough that when it tries to u-turn in that area the bumper hits the other side of the mini-hill and it mower bails out completely. I even tried filling the gully with some fill dirt to level it out a bit, but now the mower sees the darker area and just tries to go around it. Then I tried adding a no-go zone on the other side, which is technically my neighbors yard, but it STILL tries to pop a u-ie. I have their "Narrow Path Adapt" option turned on, and even with that coupled with the no-go zone I have to save this thing every time it mows that side. Once I save it about 2 or 3 times per mow attempt it basically just gives up and says it's done, despite the largest portion of my lawn, the first part, not being done at all.

Next issue is it's traction. It has none. It keeps getting stuck in my lawn, where it proceeds to dig a bunch of wheel-shaped divots everywhere. Admittedly my lawn is pretty thick, but the strange thing is if I run it in manual mode it works perfectly fine. It's when it's in robot-mode it keeps trying to turn around or something. Again, just go in a straight line! I don't understand why it feels the need to keep rotating over an over again in the same spots, honestly. And keep in mind most of this is in my front yard, which is not only my largest area, but also the one it keeps skipping due to getting stuck on the side over and over and over. I have taken to trying to do an "Area Mow" because then the robot actually does what it's should do on the side and just goes straight and doesn't try to u-turn over and over, but then it gets to the front yard where it tried to u-turn over and over, thus getting stuck.

So far this has been more frustrating than it really should be. I am seriously thinking of boxing this thing up and sending it back. I really love the idea of having a large part of a shitty chore I hate doing weekly+ done for me, but I feel like it's become my full-time job doing search and rescues on this dumb thing.

We have a new Husqvarna automower 435X AWD NERA and almost right away the mower started to error all of the time. Our service technician contacted Husqvarna and they said the problem was due to the extreme heat we are having in northern Portugal. They suggested running the mower after 6 PM and before 10 AM during these really hot times. That did seem to solve our problem. I have our mower connected to our Home Automation software, Home Assistant, so I do have the capability to use that to return the mower to it's docking station and shut it down until the temperature cools down. My question is does anyone know what that magic temperature is that I should trigger this shutdown?

Hi everyone,

I’m looking to buy a new robotic lawn mower and I want to invest in the absolute best model available right now. Budget is not an issue. for home use

Which specific model currently holds the crown as the ultimate choice? Let me know your recommendations. Thanks!

My yard isn’t easy to setup for a robot mower. I’ve got a few shaded spots under trees, a wall along one side, and one small section that sits partly under the roof overhang. I’ve been looking at lidar models because I don’t want to deal with boundary wire, and I'm not sure how well RKT would behave around the covered/shaded parts of the yard. But I might also be overthinking it.

For anyone with trees, walls, or awkward covered corners, what setup did you end up using? I'm currently comparing a few lidar models, like Husqvarna, Goat, LUBA. Any thoughts?

Hi everyone,

I'm an electrical engineering student in Florida, and I've been thinking about developing an affordable remote-controlled residential lawn mower, and would appreciate your thoughts on whether that would help people who have to mow their lawns in Florida's summer sun, like me.

I looked on the web and saw that the available options are way too expensive (more than $1.5k), which is out of my budget, and I believe it is also out of budget for most homeowners. I was thinking about something cheaper, around 300 bucks, to help make this work easier.

I'd appreciate it if you guys could give me your thoughts about whether that would really help or if it would be a waste of money and time. I'd also appreciate any ideas to fight the heat while mowing your yard without having to spend more money to hire someone else.

Thank you very much.

I've been researching robot mowers lately, and one thing I'm still unsure about is how much manual work they actually eliminate.

From what I've read, they seem great for keeping the main lawn under control, but a lot of people still mention trimming along fences, flower beds, and other edges.

For those of you who own one:

- How often do you still use a string trimmer?

- Is edging just a quick touch-up, or is it still a regular chore?

- Has a robot mower reduced your lawn work by 50%, 80%, or almost completely?

I'd love to hear some real-world experiences before making a decision！

Location:Northern US

my yard:0.5 acre

Simple questions require simple answers.

I am asking this question because I currently have two lawn robots. The difference between what the two of them believe is a 3-in cutting height, is about 3/4 in.

My lawn tells me that the apps disagree by that much.

Traditional lawn mowers have a obvious way to measure their deck height before they start a lawn job.

How can I get the same data from my lawn robots? Serious question! 🤔

Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting tired of watching robot mower "reviews" where every mower somehow ends up being amazing, but the shit they're terrible at doesn’t make the final edit of the video.

A lot of (or most of) these videos are sponsored, and even the ones that say they aren't often feel like they're still holding back. It leaves me wondering what these mowers are actually like after a few weeks in a real yard.

I'm seriously considering buying three of the biggest competitors (probably financing them due to the fact that I don't have that kind of $ laying around for fucking mowers lol) and doing a completely unsponsored comparison.

NOT a 20-minute marketing video.

I want to test them in the same yard, under the same conditions, with things people actually deal with.

If one sucks, I'll say it. If one is incredible, I'll say that too. No affiliate links. No manufacturer bullshit script. Just the good and the bad. Project Farm style-ish.

Need it to be able to cut 3.5 inches

Probably AWD

If you could only pick THREE mowers to put head-to-head, which would they be?

Also, what tests do you wish reviewers would stop ignoring.

First year owning a robotic mower, and this summer heat is making me think about things I never worried about before.

I already built a small little shelter for it so it has some shade and protection, but I’m still wondering if that’s enough when temperatures get really high. Keeping the lawn alive during a heatwave is one thing, but I guess the mower itself needs some care too.

Where do you usually park yours in extreme heat? Full shade, garage, under a mower house, or just at the charging station?

Also curious if anyone has summer maintenance tips, like mowing schedule, blade checks, battery care, or anything else that helps during hot weather.

https://preview.redd.it/pujqxv6lf0bh1.png?width=394&format=png&auto=webp&s=070d4df9e77187643ef366af99967fb7cbf63d59

I was looking at maybe buying the 3000 but at least on their site the 2000 AWD seems to have the exact same specs with the exception of 0.5 acres instead of 0.75. but if the the battery size, cut width, run time, distance per charge, and everything is the same is there really any reason to pay for 3000 model? Could the difference really just be the ability to map a larger area? Also people who have tried either mower, how have they performed?

Edit: I am referring to the two AWD models not the single wheel drive model.