Everybody loves a freshly-cut lawn. Spending your weekend mowing the lawn, however, is an entirely different. If you’re not a fan of all the maintenance work that goes into keeping your grass looking pristine, it might be time to let the robots do all those chores by getting a robot lawn mower.
Designed to cut your grass all on its own, a robot mower can automatically activate and move through your property, cutting grass over every area it passes over and mulching it, so it can easily decompose into the ground. On top of that, it will avoid obstacles, stay within defined boundaries, and even drive itself back to its charging dock once it’s done, leaving you with, pretty much, nothing to do after the initial set-up. Suffice to say, robot lawn mowers offer an effective way to automate your lawn care.
These are the best robot lawn mowers available today.
Gardena Sileno City 250
Designed for smaller lawns up to 2,700 square feet, this compact robotic lawn mower arguably offers the best bang for the buck in the category. The quiet motor produces just 57db of noise, all while cutting and mulching grass very capably. It can handle slopes up to 19 degrees, too, all while being able to drive through passages as narrow as 24 inches wide, allowing it to cut grass in every nook and cranny of your yard. While many robot mowers in this price range don’t come with an app, that’s not the case here, as it comes with a companion app for adjusting settings and triggering manual operations, although it only connects via Bluetooth (no Wi-Fi). It also offers a spot mode that you cut a patch of grass in short order –simply select it in the app (or the control panel) and the mower will start cutting once set down in a circular motion. The only real downside here is the lack of a rain sensor, so it will continue cutting grass even when it’s raining, which might not turn out the best results for your lawn.
MowRo RM24
This affordably-priced robot mower can cut a 9.5-inch wide patch of grass in each pass, all while being able to operate on up to a quarter-acre of land. It uses a three-blade design to efficiently cut and mulch grass across yards with inclines of up to 20 degrees, with onboard sensors ensuring it avoids running through planters, decorations, or random pets lying in the grass. Do note, there’s no companion app. Instead, it has a cutting schedule set at 48-hour intervals, so you simply set the time you want it to start and the cutting height using the control panel. You can also have it cut on-demand, in case you want it to mow off-schedule. It’s not the most feature-packed mower in the category and it doesn’t offer the smoothest operation, but it gets the job done. Just be aware that you’ll need to occasionally manually intervene (sometimes, it just gets stuck).
Worx Landroid S 20V Robotic Lawn Mower (WR165)
This lawn care machine uses a floating blade disc that raises and lowers automatically to accommodate uneven terrain, so it never gets stuck or trapped in bumpier parts of the ground, all while being able to pass through narrow paths with ease, so it can squeeze through planters, flower beds, and whatever else you have in the lawn. Heck, it can even mow two grassy areas separated by a fence, provided you clear a path for it to pass. It offers cutting adjustments between 1.5 to 3.5 inches, so you can get the exact kind of grass you want, while built-in sensors allow it to detect rain, at which point it returns to its dock and resumes operation only once the grass has dried.
Like other mowers, it requires you to define its operating area using boundary wires, so there is some amount of work to do during set up. You can set the mowing schedule, as well as adjust any setting directly from the companion app, where you can also check on the mower’s status at any time. Do note, this is the base model designed for smaller properties (1/8-acre coverage), which should be ideal for most suburban homes. They also offer similar robot mowers with bigger coverage at slightly higher prices if that’s what you need.
Robomow RK4000
This robo-mower can handle up an acre of grassy land, allowing you to keep the grass trimmed all across a pretty large property. It has staggered blades on a pendulum-suspended mower deck that adjusts its position based on the terrain, so it can cut grass evenly all around, all while cutting across inclines up to 24 degrees. This is a big mower with a 16.5-inch wide cutting rack, so it can cover a wide patch of lawn with each pass, while the onboard battery can run for around two hours. Features include a wide range of cutting heights (0.75 to four inches), anti-theft features, up to two main zones and four secondary zones (via the companion app), and even a cellular connection, so you can easily check its status anywhere you are.
Husqvarna Automower 415X
Now, this is one tech-heavy mower. Not only can it follow your boundary lines when operating, you can also define specific zones and have it operate differently in them via the companion app (e.g. set different cutting heights in different zones), giving you a lot more room to personalize your lawn care. It uses a floating deck that raises and lowers depending on the terrain, while the 2,300 RPM cuts fast enough to cover up to 700 square feet per hour while producing just 58 db of noise. The companion app offers plenty of features, allowing you to create complicated schedules, adjust settings, monitor real-time status, and even track its location via GPS, all while being compatible with both Google Home and Alexa, so you can operate it via voice commands. It has bright LED lights that allow it to safely operate at night (you won’t trip on it accidentally), too, which you will probably need to do if you have a particularly large lawn. Other features include spiral cutting (it moves in a spiral direction when it finds longer patches of grass), spot cutting (you can set it down and have it clear a small area), and a frost guard technology that adjusts the cutting schedule based on temperature to avoid dealing with wet and icy grass.
