My autonomous lawn mower thread/blog

My local gaa club have a robomower!

This. Our soccer club installed two last summer and the grass cover improved after a few months. Areas that were thin on grass thickened out.

From what I've read (can't speak from personal experience, because I don't have a robo yet) : the ride on doesn't care about overhanging branches and will cut up to a metre under a hedge regardless of real or imaginar obstructions ; the cutting deck flattens every molehill in its way and cuts the grass all around ; collects huge quantities of cut grass to use as hot compost for warming the soil from January onwards, and helping fend off late frosts ; is generally happy to chop its way through grass up to about 65 centimetres high not millimetres.

But the main thing holding me back is the sheer amount of hands-on intervention that you guys have reported. If I spend thousands of euros on a robot, I expect it to work non-stop in all the same conditions as the ride-on, and to do so without any intervention or supervision on my part for at least two months at a time. Yeah, that's asking a lot … but I'm old school in that regard. The molehill is my baseline test and I haven't yet seen a single video of any robo mower dealing with them. When I've finished mowing the grass, there are none left (well … for the next five or ten minutes anyhow) which is what I expect of any robot.

Hi,

Main garden is 692m square, 2 smaller ones- 58m square and 63m square. Main garden is slightly mossy/spongy in a few areas and my Lidl robot lawnmower gets stuck sometimes, even on the highest setting

I bought the Lidl robot maybe 3 years ago. I'm finding it crap atm and planning on replacing it with a branded one. I replaced the blades with generic ones, not sure if they rotate/spin as freely/quickly as they should, but that would hardly excuse the Lidl one- it gets stuck in patches sometimes, doesn't cut anywhere near the full garden, not even close to half.

What's the recommendations, €1,5000 max ideaally but will go more if needed.

I would like to be able to program from the app the areas to cut & what to avoid (goals, trampoline), lift it from main garden to smaller sections and it then cut those.

Thanks in advnace.

You're reading a thread dedicated solely to robot mower discussion. … Robot mower is far lower cost ,much lower maintenance and genuinely will absolutely knock the socks off in terms of finished result when compared with the ride on.

I'm following this thread because I wanted to get a realistic impression of how such a machine would handle my garden, and what range of technical issues might arise over the course of time. As I said earlier, my current re-landscaping works take account of a possible future purchase. But just about everything I've read indicates that there is no model yet available that can give an acceptable finished result comparable to what I get with a ride-on, mainly because their "obstacle avoidance" seems to prioritise the obstacle over the grass.

Perhaps that's an inaccurate impression - is there a model that can be told to mow over whatever the feck is in the way, so that all the grass gets cut, no excuses?

How many hours per week would you need to be using the ride on?

My robot does Id guess 95% or more of the lawns and all I'm left with is 30mins with a strimmer to get tight to a few walls and some edging,which i had to do anyway with ride on/mower previously.

Ive had the Navimow about 2 months and I would be disgusted if I ever had to go back to mower/ride on.