While You Weed the Garden, Cook Dinner, or Enjoy a Cold Beverage, These Robot Lawnmowers Will Cut the Grass For You

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Do you dread your weekly summertime ritual of pushing a noisy lawn mower back and forth across your front and back yards? If a little voice in your head whispered, “yes,” you should consider handing off your grass-cutting chores to a lawn care robot. Robot lawn mowers are an increasingly popular luxury lawn care tool for homeowners who don’t want to put in the work to maintain a perfect yard, but also don’t want to spend a ton of money on landscapers.

These high-tech yard machines keep your grass neatly trimmed so you can kick back and relax with a glass of iced tea instead. Like a robot vacuum, you can program their schedules too with a smartphone app, so you don’t even need to be home.

Robot lawn mowers don’t come cheap–expect to spend somewhere around $1,000 to $5,000–but it’s an investment. When you compare it to the cost of a landscaping crew over multiple years, it may wind up paying for itself eventually. Regardless of the math, though, the best robot lawn mowers take all the work out of yard maintenance–turning a chore that takes all afternoon into a problem you can solve with the push of a button.

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The Best Robot Lawn Mowers

• Best Overall: Husqvarna Automower 415X Robot Lawn Mower

• Best Value: Gardena Sileno Minimo Robot Lawn Mower

• Best Wireless: Husqvarna Automower 450X EPOS Robot Lawn Mower

• Best for Complicated Yards: Sunseeker L22 PLus Robot Lawn Mower

• Best for Sloped Yards: Mammotion Luba 2 AWD 1000 Robot Lawn Mower

• Best with Sweeper Kit: EcoFlow Blade Robot Lawn Mower

• Most User-Friendly: Segway Navimow i105N Robot Lawn Mower

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The Experts

How a Robot Lawn Mower Works

A robot mower consists of a plastic chassis, on which are mounted mower heads, a battery, drive motors, and one or more circuit boards to assess ground speed, direction, tilt, and obstacles. Most require you (or the dealer) to bury a wire in the lawn that forms a perimeter within which the robot mower will cut.

That wire leads to a charging station, which is plugged into a 120-volt exterior outlet. It also contains a generator that sends a low-power signal out on the wire. As the mower approaches the wire, it picks up the signal, stops, turns around, and heads off in another direction.

When its battery is nearly depleted, the mower heads to the station for recharging, which usually takes one to three hours. Some mowers have removable batteries, so you can swap fresh ones in to keep the mower going while you charge the dead ones separately.

The cutting action of a robot mower is different than the typical walk-behind mower, which spins a large steel blade designed to cut an inch or more of grass in a single pass. A robot mower’s action is closer to shaving the grass down than cutting it down.

The average robot mower (there are some exceptions) uses multiple small steel pieces, each about the size of a razor blade, to remove very small amounts of grass over many days and multiple passes. This style of gentle, low-impact mowing keeps your grass crisp and sharp all the time, but also means that the mower will be out there constantly shaving and re-shaving your lawn.

It’s also important to point out that, as it continuously roams and trims, your robot mower will likely bump into lawn features and other objects within its boundaries, then redirect around them. The easiest way to keep the robo-mower from toppling over a vase or garden chair is to move as many lawn features as possible outside the boundaries set by the ground wire.

More advanced robot lawn mowers have sensors that can detect obstacles and maneuver around them. Others, like the wireless Husqvarna 450X EPOS, allow you to set “no-go zones” to keep the mower out, as you would with a robot vacuum inside your home.

For the most part, robot mowers are best suited to simple yards that are relatively smooth and flat. Yards with more complex geometry require you to lay more ground wire. The more wire you lay, the more you increase the likelihood of a break from somebody digging in the yard or a tunneling rodent chomping through it.

Also, it doesn’t take much to stop one of these robots. A deep divot or a mushy zone can bog it down. Pine cones, fruits, nuts, and fallen branches can get caught underneath it.

There are some robot mowers designed for difficult turf conditions or more acreage: If you have a big yard or one with slopes and rough terrain, make sure you’re shopping for a mower specifically designed to handle it.

Finally, don’t get lulled into a sense of complacency with one of these machines and forget that you’ll have to periodically clean its undercarriage and sharpen or replace its lightweight steel blades. Still, none of this is any more than the attention that a gas-powered or electric lawn mower demands.

What to Consider in a Robot Lawn Mower

Most robotic mowers require a pretty hefty investment – and it might be your first time bringing home a robot – so there’s a lot to think about before making your choice and buying one.

We spoke to Jim Zwack, vice president of the Davey Institute, a nationwide horticultural firm that uses auto-mowers for a number of clients, about what to keep in mind when shopping for a robot lawn mower. Budget permitting, he believes most people will be thrilled with how good their yard looks after handing their lawn care responsibilities over to a machine.

How big is your yard?

“Robotic mowers are typically designed for smaller to medium-sized lawns,” says Zwack. If your lawn is too small, an auto-mower might be more trouble than it’s worth. And once you get above 2.5 acres, it’s pretty much impossible to find a residential robot mower that can handle that kind of area.

How complex is the mowing zone?

If you have a yard full of obstacles – think landscaped beds and ponds, fences, swing sets and lots of corners and angles – it’s going to be tough for even the best auto-mower to navigate.

If your lawn has “complex shapes and narrow passages,” says Zwack, “then your robotic mower should have advanced navigation and obstacle detection capabilities.”

Cutting height and grass type

Not all lawns are made equal. “Different grass types and seasons may require varying cutting heights,” says Zwack. “Look for a model that allows you to customize cutting height to suit your grass type.”

Most grasses, including fescue, ryegrass, bluegrass and bahia, remain healthy when regularly cut to between 2 and 3 inches. There are a few exceptions: Bermudagrass and zoysia, for instance, should be cut as low as 1 inch.

Safety features

If you have kids and pets who spend time in your yard, it’s important to keep everyone safe. “Look for models with features such as lift sensors that automatically stop the blades when the mower is lifted and obstacle detection sensors to avoid collisions,” Zwack says.

When it comes to protecting the mower itself, look for models that offer security alarms, PIN codes, or GPS tracking to prevent theft and ensure you can track the mower down if it does disappear.

How We Selected The Best Robot Lawn Mowers

Like most homeowners, we’ve spent many hours of our lives mowing the lawn. While we’ve used various walk-behind and riding lawn mowers, robot lawn mowers are newer to us. Since we haven’t had the chance to test drive these high tech yard care machines ourselves, we spoke to lawn care experts who know them well, like Zwack, and looked at previous testing data from the Popular Mechanics test team. Armed with that information, we spent hours researching these cutting edge yard care machines, comparing specs that are important to buyers while pouring through dozens of positive and negative customer reviews from major retailers like Amazon, Lowe’s, and The Home Depot.

Since yards vary in size, complexity and type of terrain, we’ve highlighted a variety of robot mowers for the many different types of lawns you may or may not have. There are great picks for large yards, small yards, flat yards and hilly yards. And, while all robot lawn mowers are expensive, we kept price in mind so you can find the best options within your budget.

Our Full Robot Lawn Mower Reviews

As the creator of the first robot lawn mower, Swedish manufacturer Husqvarna has more experience designing them than anybody else. The Automower 415X stands out as an attractive, versatile option for small and mid-size yards. It’s easy to install, and you can control it through an intuitive smartphone app (or with your voice using Amazon Alexa).

The Automower 415X mows close to 700 square feet per hour. It has three pivoting razor blades which flip back into the chassis if they hit something to prevent bent blades. Though a flat yard is always better for a robot mower, the 415X can handle up to a 40-percent incline. That said, it’s approximate hour-long battery runtime means that it will need to charge often, especially on larger properties.

Rather than roaming in a random pattern, as most auto-mowers do, the Automower 415X mows in a stripe or checkerboard pattern, which will make your lawn look like professional landscapers have cared for it.

If your yard is tiny and you have an equally small budget for robotic mowing, the Gardena Sileno Minimo is a small robot lawn mower that’s effective, so long as you limit it to a small space. The 13.4-pound robot features a single-disc cutting with three pivoting blades that can cut 2,700 square feet of grass with its hour-long battery. It can climb shallow slopes, up to 14 degrees (25-percent incline). That’s modest compared to our top pick, but still effective for a smaller yard.

The Sileno Minimo’s frost detection sensor means you can trust it to mow when the conditions are right, though you may not even notice when it’s out cutting the grass. At just 57 decibels, this little mower runs quietly enough to mow at night or during your neighbor’s BBQ without anyone raising an eyebrow.

Husqvarna’s newest top-of-the-line robot mower lets you ditch the guide wire in favor of a proprietary GPS system called EPOS (Exact Positioning Operating System) to control it and set virtual boundaries. More than that, EPOS constantly steers the mower to the most efficient route and automatically avoids obstacles or challenging terrain.

GPS-aside, it’s also a very powerful robot mower, capable of cutting more than two acres of grass on a single charge, thanks to its 210-minute battery life. And like Husqvarna’s other models, it can mow in stripe or checkerboard patterns.

Though you no longer need to dig up the ground to set up a wire, the EPOS still requires professional installation to set a reference station, which receives orders about boundaries, patterns, and no-mow zones from a satellite.

At nearly $6,000 for the mower and reference station, the cost is steep, but the benefits are clear. You’ll never need to worry about digging up a broken ground wire. It self-updates via satellite, and the GPS that directs the mower can also be used to track it if it’s stolen.

The Automower 450X EPOS has all the power and capability of Husqvarna’s commercial models in a convenient, home-friendly package, and the lack of wire adds a ton of convenience.

The Sunseeker L22 relies on ultrasonic technology and bumper sensors to weave around trees and avoid landscaping beds or other obstacles that might interrupt a rectangular mowing path. It even allows you to fine tune how close it gets to obstacles as it works its way around them, so you can give delicate landscaping features a wide berth. If it does bump into something, it also has a safety mechanism that will halt the mower in its tracks.

To achieve that level of precision, the Sunseeker L22 comes with a perimeter sensor, so the installation takes some doing. Once up and mowing, though, the Sunseeker has a broad 8.7-inch cutting width, and runs for up to two hours, making it suitable for yards of just over half an acre. With the Sunseeker app, you can program mowing schedules. Plus, it supports multi-zone mowing, so you can schedule it to mow different parts of your lawn on different times and days.

Steep inclines are no match for Mammotion Luba 2 AWD 1000. As the name suggests, it features all-wheel drive, as well as knobby anti-slip tires that allow you to climb up hills you’d have difficulty walking up without getting on all fours. And since it doesn’t require perimeter wire, you won’t have to worry about running wire down any slopes to set boundaries.

The Luba 2 also has excellent obstacle avoidance thanks to a set of three detection systems–bumper sensors, sonar, and binocular vision. It’s also a great choice for large lawns, since you can schedule it to mow different parts of your property on different days or times. It’s even compatible with Amazon Alexa, so you can boss it around as it works from your lawn chair.

We’ve highlighted the Luba 2 1000, the smallest model in the line, because robot lawn mowers are expensive and picking a smaller model will keep the price down. With the capacity to cover up to 0.25 acres on a single charge, it’s ideal for front yards and relatively small properties. If you want to size up, there are three larger Luba 2 AWD models–3000, 5000, and 10000–which can cover larger properties up to 2.5 acres with the Luba 2 AWD 10000. Mammotion also makes a set of Luba 2 AWD Series-H models, which cut your grass a little taller–2.2-4.0 inches, versus the standard Luba 2’s 1-2.7 inches. We recommend all of these for sloping, hilly yards, so just pick the size and cutting height that works best for you.

Once you lay your guide wire and place the charging station, you can set up the Greenworks Optimow by simply downloading an app. The Greenworks Tools app allows you to control the mower's settings, security features, scheduling, and more right from your phone.

The mower takes the guesswork out of scheduling by using GPS and local weather information to monitor frost and rain conditions. If the conditions are less than ideal, the Optimow will skip a scheduled trim and stay in its charging station.

You can set the cut height with an easy-to-use manual adjustment knob on the top of the mower. There’s also a set of clear indicator lights for Wi-Fi connectivity or mechanical issues. It’s a pared-down robo-mower with all the essential features you need, without many bells and whistles. It’s a true set it and forget it kind of mower.

Most robot mowers keep the yard consistently trim by cutting a little grass every day, but if you have an especially small yard, it likely doesn’t need to be cut section-by-section. Redback’s MowRo RM24 is a perfect solution: You can schedule it to mow once every 48 hours rather than running continuously. It keeps your small lawn in tip-top shape without constantly roaming around the lawn. The mower and charging station have a small footprint, so they can keep out of sight when they aren’t working.

The MowRo also has tons of safety features, including a robust blade guard that blocks anything that isn’t grass, and sensors that trigger an automatic shut-off if it bumps into anything or comes off the ground. This way you don’t need to worry about your pets or kids sharing the yard with it.

What to Know Before You Mow: Q+A With Our Experts

Should I leave my robot mower outside all year long?

KM: You can generally leave your robot mower out so long as your lawn needs trimming, but you should put it away for the winter. When it gets cold enough, your grass will stop growing, so there’s no reason to leave the mower out.

On top of that, most mowers can handle a little rain, but aren’t made for severe downpours or frost and snow. Given that, you should store your robot mower inside for the winter and set it up again each spring.

That said, we also recommend using some kind of cover for the charging station, so you can keep the mower out of the rain during heavier storms and, even more importantly, protect it from UV damage and extreme heat while it’s charging.

How often should your robot mow the lawn?

KM: The ideal height for your grass and the amount of care your lawn needs will depend on what kind of grass you use.

“Cool-season grasses like Kentucky bluegrass and fescue grow faster in spring and fall, while warm-season grasses like Bermuda grass and Zoysia grass have their peak growth during the summer,” says Zwack. “Consider the growth rate of your grass type to determine the mowing frequency.”

Likewise, Different types of grass thrive at different heights, but there’s also a correct way to trim grass without damaging it and stunting its growth.

“Follow the "rule of thirds," suggests Zwack, “which suggests that you should never remove more than one-third of the grass blade length in a single mowing session.” This is easy to do when you have an auto-mower on your side. “Robotic mowers are typically programmed to mow frequently,” he adds, “taking off only a small portion of the grass blades each time.”

Ultimately, though, you can also just eyeball it: If your lawn’s getting scraggly, you should probably mow it more often.

Are there benefits to using a robot lawn mower, rather than having a person cut my grass?

KM: In addition to saving you untold hours and tons of energy, robot lawn mowers offer a precise, consistent mow all the time, so you never have to worry about things getting out of hand during a busy week, or over a vacation. Since they’re battery-powered, they’re also more environmentally friendly than powerful gas-power lawn mowers.

JZ: Additionally, the frequent mowing and grass cycling (mulching) capabilities of some models reduce the need for chemical fertilizers and contribute to eco-friendly lawn care practices. Plus, they are quieter, which is beneficial if you have noise restrictions in your neighborhood or prefer a quieter environment.

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