CUTTING EDGE
Take the hassle out of mowing the lawn this summer with a handy robot that will do it for you, writes
Is cutting the grass one of your dreaded outdoor chores? Or do you just have lots of lawn, but little time to care for it? If your answer is “yes” to either of those questions, then a robotic mower could make life a lot easier.
However, before you can retire your manual machine for good, you’re going to need to prepare your garden, as most robot lawnmowers require a little assistance of a boundary wire to define the area to be mowed.
Deciding where to place the wire and docking station will determine the autonomy of the machine, so this
is an important consideration when choosing which to buy. Installing the machine should be as straightforward as possible with clear instructions.
During testing, we looked at whether we needed to re-lay the boundary because the mower couldn’t detect it for some reason and how deftly it dealt with obstacles that it came across while working. We also considered how straightforward it was to bury or peg the wire, as well as connect it to the base station.
Optimum navigation is an important character trait, after all, you don’t want the machine constantly roaming your lawn (especially in the summer months), instead, you need it to get the job done efficiently and make intelligent turns each time it hits the wire.
We let all the mowers loose on a stretch that featured trees, some rough patches, paths and gradients, to see how efficiently and cleanly the blades dealt with the grass and how neatly they managed to cut around the footprints of obstacles and leave a tidy finish.
Of course, every garden is unique and some have narrow paths connecting different areas of lawn, so we needed the sensors of our chosen mowers to be sophisticated enough to ensure that the machine could cope with tricky passages and work happily on autopilot while we were away, so we wouldn’t come home to a grounded machine.
The best robot lawnmowers need zero input once you’ve set them up. These were the machines that left us with a carpet quality lawn, offering the best hands-off mowing experiences.
You can trust our independent reviews. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections, which are formed from real-world testing and expert advice. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
WORX landroid M500: £698.00, B&Q
This is a superb machine for a medium sized garden (the manufacturer suggests a 500m2 area) and proved to be a real workhorse. The robust cutting tool dealt with all our obstacles with ease, intuitively cutting around footprints where other mowers would just keep bashing blindly into them.
The boundary wire kit came with clear instructions and allowed for a hassle-free self-install with very little adjustment needed, largely thanks to an excellent setup and control app which was really intuitive. Best of all, it took over the scheduling of the cut, fine tuning how often it sent itself out according to how quick the grass was growing. The machine produced a very high cut quality with offset blades meaning that it could reach edges that were beyond the reach of some other mowers.
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Husqvarna 305: £1099.00, Husqvarna
With 600m2 of coverage, this is designed for small to medium gardens and has an effortless self-install. Needing very little user input, it wasn’t undone by a tricky kids’ swing set and garden bench and instead clipped cleanly and concisely around both. Its climbing and cutting ability on slopes was particularly impressive and its constant traction on inclines ensured consistent cutting without any drop in cut quality. Navigation around the lawn, and even down a narrow passage, was a joy to watch. The finish was perfect too, as the grass was cut precisely and evenly, leaving behind minutely mulched cuttings that actually seemed to leave the lawn looking even more lush.
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Stihl imow RMI 422 PC: £1099.00, Robo Expert
Stihl says that this model can manage over a third of an acre, and it gave us no reason to doubt such a claim, as the small, agile machine punches well above its weight. The controlling app was excellent and you can use it to monitor the mowing duration and plan, as well as giving it more precise directions – sending it back to the docking station, for example. We also really liked the nifty navigation feature that will see the machine vary how it gets back to the docking station, so you don’t end up with a well-worn path after a
summer’s worth of use.
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Flymo easilife 200: £649.82, Amazon
This is an entry-level model, designed for lawns up to 200m2, which gave a beautiful cut and operated intelligently. We just pegged in the boundary wire (with the provided pegs) rather than burying it, but didn’t encounter any problems with the mower cutting the wire, which is the common gripe with pegging. Configuration was straightforward, meaning it was soon off cutting without any false starts. It works with a random path programming pattern, which proved effective, both on traditionally shaped lawns and even on one with a very irregular pattern. Manoeuvrability was excellent around obstacles and the machine rolled over sticks and twigs without getting stuck, which we found was a problem with some of the other mowers we tested in the lower price bracket.
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Robomow RX12U: £499.00, John Lewis & Partners
If you’ve got a smaller area to keep on top of (without too many obstacles) you won’t want to invest too much in an auto mower. This is a good purchase for smaller gardens, with a range of up to 150m2, as long as you’re quite painstaking with the 70m of perimeter wire and pegs. One of the standout features was the
excellent mulching capabilities of the blade and we rarely noticed any clumping of the clippings, so we knew that the blade was doing its job well and returning the goodness back into the thatch. After just a week of operation, we noticed a real difference in the lawn, which looked healthier and neater than it ever had.
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Ambrogio L60 deluxe greenline: £899.00, Garden Lines
What sets this model apart from many on the market is that it doesn’t require any boundary wire or selfinstall, instead you just place it on any lawn up to 200m2 and away you go. The machine’s sensors did a great job of detecting when it had run out of grass, turning around and tracking in another random direction. Another sensor detects when it’s travelling over an area that has already been cut, to reduce scalping and bald patches. This meant we ended up with a nice measured cut. If you have lots of separated lawn areas, the fact that it’s an unbox-and-go machine could be an attractive option as it will save you a lot of time on your hands and knees laying or pegging wire.
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McCulloch rob S600: £587.47, Amazon
Designed for small to medium gardens (no more than 600m2), this mower made life easy with some excellent quick-start instructions for the guidewire installation and connection to the base station. Time,
date, security settings and a cutting plan were all completed in a few minutes so that we were off and running in just over an hour. Cutting randomly, the machine’s navigation around the garden was excellent and it never looked like it was going to get snagged or snared on obstacles. It also never failed to find its way back to the base station for charging.
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Gardena sileno city 250: £599.00, My Robot Centre
This user-friendly model is ideal for smaller gardens with plenty of immovable obstacles, or gardens that include passageways of grass, because its sensor set-up will see it through the trickiest twists and turns without missing a blade of grass on the way. An intuitive programming assistant takes the headache out of the set-up process and we had no problems laying the guidewire while the mower was on its initial charge. The lawn was cut without leaving any evidence of the mower’s tracks and thanks to the fine layer of cuttings that it left behind the lawn looked healthy and well cared for. Maintenance was also straightforward as the mower can be cleaned through with a garden hose.
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Honda miimo hrm 310: £1835.00, Power Outlet
The extra mowing capacity of this 1500m2 machine is reflected in the price tag, but it was impressive,
performing smooth turns as it approached the wire – rather than stopping and backing up. One feature that impressed us was the way it dealt with clumps of grass, spiralling over the patch until they’re cut rather than getting stuck. There’s also a very handy lawn planner on the Honda website that finds your lawn on Google maps and then simulates how your Miimo will work over a week of cutting. It’s also a fully waterproofed machine so you won’t have to retire it if the British summer fails to deliver.
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The verdict
If you’re after headache-free lawn maintenance then the WORX landroid M 500 is a real workhorse with excellent agility around obstacles and an intelligent operating system that will completely take over the job for you. We were also very impressed with the Husqvarna 305, which is packed with features and gave us a nice cut. The app was intuitive and it had the quietest cutting mechanism on when tested.