Flymo EasiLife 150 GO Robotic Lawn Mower – Cuts Up to 150 sq m, Ultra Quiet Mowing, Manicured Lawn, Bluetooth Application Control, Safety Sensors, Hose Washable, Lifestyle Functions
Flymo EasiLife 150 GO Robotic Lawn Mower – Cuts Up to 150 sq m, Ultra Quiet Mowing, Manicured Lawn, Bluetooth Application Control, Safety Sensors, Hose Washable, Lifestyle Functions, Orange and Grey
Flymo – The Lawn Care Experts
Flymo EasiLife GO 150 Robotic Lawn Mower
Our smallest robotic lawnmower yet with a simple Push & Go interface and advanced smartphone control. Designed for gardens up to 150m2 the Flymo EasiLife Go 150 is a fully automatic robotic lawnmower that gives you a tidy lawn with zero effort. Set a schedule in seconds and it automatically cuts the lawn returning to the charge station when needed.
- Streamlined Push & Go interface for instant scheduling & control
- Tilt, Lift and Collision sensors for your safety.
- Hose washable for your convenience.
No screen or complex programming. LED indicators guide you for quick and easy control
Where do the grass clippings go?
A Healthier, Greener Lawn
No need to empty a grassbox or dispose of grass clippings, its regular cutting technique returns fine grass clippings back into the lawn which acts as a natural fertilizer and improves grass quality.
Does it have extra functions?
Extra Mowing Flexibility
It’s functions are designed to fit around your life: Spot Cut, Override, Park or Second Area – which can all be controlled from your EasiLife App!
Why Choose a Robotic Lawn Mower?
Why Flymo?
Finding the right robotic mower for your lawn can be daunting, and it’s important for you to find a lawn mower that fits your lifestyle. Robotic lawn mowers are ideal for those of us that want to spend less time mowing our lawn, and more time relaxing and doing the things we love…
What robot best suits me?
Push & GO | Interface | Assist-U LCD Screen |
25% | Slope Performance | 35% |
150m2 | Working Area | 800m2 |
16cm | Cutting Width | 16cm |
20-50mm | Cutting Height | 20-50mm |
Smartphone App | ||
Lifestyle Features |
Push & GO | Interface | Push & GO |
25% | Slope Performance | 25% |
150m2 | Working Area | 500m2 |
16cm | Cutting Width | 16cm |
20-50mm | Cutting Height | 20-50mm |
Smartphone App | ||
Lifestyle Features |
- Flymo Easilife 800
- Flymo Easilife GO 500
| Weight: | 6.1 kg |
| Size: | 150 m² Cutting Area |
| Dimensions: | 51.8 x 33.7 x 21.5 cm; 6.1 Kilograms |
| Model: | 9704785-01 |
| Part: | 9704785-01 |
| Colour: | Orange and Grey |
| Pack Quantity: | 1 |
| Batteries Required: | No |
| Manufacture: | Husqvarna UK |
| Dimensions: | 51.8 x 33.7 x 21.5 cm; 6.1 Kilograms |
| Quantity: | 1 |
| Size: | 150 m² Cutting Area |
All I do, is replace the three blades (cost 50p) every three months.
My lawn is always perfect and, because it mulches the grass, which helps the lawn, there is no green bin issue.
I recommend this wonderful machine.
Brian J Garside
I’m now into my fifth year with this Brilliant mower. It is still superb. Glad I bought it when I did for about 550. Clearly it’s catching on as it now costs almost 800. It remains great value for money. My lawn always looks great. All I do is replace the blades every three months. Cost around 50p. I think Flymo should employ me as one of their salesmen. I can honestly sell this to anyone who simply doesn’t like mowing lawns, or is elderly and can’t deal with a heavy mower.
Full marks to Flymo.
Had this robotic lawn mower for some time now it works great ! easy to setup cuts even in the rain.i have had No problems at all.
I have it set to cut the lawn every other day ,it only cuts a tiny bit each day but the lawn always looks good.
I don’t think I would ever go back to mowing the lawn.
Runs for 90mins then automatically goes back to the base station, and continues to mow. Great value for money, only catch is setting out wires to mark boundaries.
One of our best buys ever. ‘Mo’ has been mowing the garden since the day after we bought it, and has put in over 150 hours of mowing. It is out there rain or shine, keeping the lawn perfect.
We only have a very small garden (typical new build) but that meant that the effort involved in getting the old Flymo out, cleaning it and putting it away was disproportionate to the actual mowing time.
It was a bit of a pain to set up by putting the wore around the garden (we chose to bury it) and you should allow rather more time than they suggest.
We have programmed ‘Mo’ to mow every other day during hot weather, but daily if the grass is growing quickly.
Now we don’t have to think about the weekend weather, and we don’t have to put aside time to mow the lawn. It just happens!
Price: when I first set eyes on it a year ago it cost 999. By Christmas it was down to 600. In March when I bought it, it was 487.50. Then it went up again. So if price is an issue for you, keep checking back until it reaches a level you’re happy with.
Setup: You can learn a lot by reading these reviews and the Q&As. You can also download the manual from the Flymo website before you buy to help understand the installation process. A key question is where you are going to position the base station and how you are going to get power to the base station. It comes with a power supply which you plug into a socket at one end and at the other end you either plug it straight into the base station, or into a 10m low voltage cable that is supplied (3m or 20m cable can also be purchased) which in turn plugs into the base station. I didn’t want to plug the power supply in inside the house and then run the low voltage cable out to the base station, as I didn’t think that would be safe. So I had to pay an electrician to put in an outdoor socket for me. (I got him to do two sockets while he was at it. They are very handy.) This meant the outdoor sockets were right by where i wanted to put my base station. So I didn’t need the low voltage cable.
However, the power supply must be kept dry at all times. My solution to this, which I had decided on anyway, was a robot mower garage. There are some very snazzy Swiss ones but they cost more than the mower! I found a wooden one online that came flat-packed and didn’t break the bank. It protects the mower from sun and rain, and it keeps the power supply dry (the power supply sits on top of an old hummus pot to keep it off the dew).
You have to choose whether to bury the boundary wire, or just peg it down using the pegs provided. I went for pegging because it’s less work and if there was a break in the circuit I wanted to be able to see it. It took several hours to lay the boundary wire and the guide wire. If you have a small or medium size garden then the pegs provided should be plenty. I have a big garden and the ground is quite uneven which means you need more pegs to keep it flat, so I ended up buying more. If you’re in a hurry to get the mowbot going, buy extra pegs in advance.
Once this was done I only had a couple of false starts, in both cases because I hadn’t followed instructions closely enough and in both cases I was able to identify the problem quickly using the troubleshooting guide.
Coverage: my garden is 400 sq m which is the upper limit of what the mowbot is said to cover. In fact it manages this quite easily and I think it probably could handle 500 sq m, maybe even if you ran it 7 days a week.
Slope: the mowbot is said to be able to handle 1 in 4 slopes, but the manual says not to lay the boundary wire on more than a 1 in 6 slope. Eh? My lawn has the same slope at the boundary as it does everywhere else. So I just laid it anyway down my 1 in 5 slope lawn. It hasn’t been a problem. (You can measure the slope of your lawn using Google Daft Logic tools to measure length of a line, and height above sea level at either end of the line.)
Mowing times: It’s important to understand that it doesn’t run all the time. It has a built in down time of 12 hours per day, so you can only run it for 12 hours per day. Within those 12 hours it will spend 6 hours recharging, so the most it will do is 6 hours mowing per day. The manual gives some figures for coverage to help you calculate how many hours you need, but I found it impossible to make sense of these figures so I just used trial and error. In any case I’m not there all the time, and I don’t like to leave it out when I’m away for security reasons, so I just run it to the maximum possible when I am there. This works for me.
Security: this was an issue for me as my garden backs onto allotments and anyone could walk in. I don’t worry about the allotment users but people do sometimes break into the allotments at night looking for things to steal. The mowbot comes with a pin code and you can’t use it without that, and it comes with a sticker that says so to put on the machine, but I’m not sure thieves would necessarily see that in the dark or believe it if they did. They would probably only find out later that it has no re-sale value, but I doubt if they’d bring it back. So I keep it on the highest security setting which means it screeches if you lift it and you need to enter the pin code to make it stop. This means I can leave it out overnight when I’m home knowing I’ll hear if anyone tries to move it. But when I’m away I leave it indoors.
Improvements: the mowbot works very well as is but I think it could be improved with a bit of smart technology. It would be nice if error messages to say it’s stuck or it’s been lifted could be sent to my smartphone. It would also be nice if I could tell it from my smartphone not to mow today if I can see it’s going to pour with rain. (It does work in the rain but it’s not ideal). No doubt future versions will have these features. But if I didn’t have one now would I buy one now or wait until it’s perfect? Get one now, no question.
I recommend you lay boundary wire on surface first to make sure all is well. After few weeks bury in lawn (which turns out to be good exercise).
The thing that surprised me most about the mower is how quiet it is…
In the manual it explains setting up the schedule. It mentioned something like setting a time range from 7am to 5pm or something like that.
I was thinking “If I put my mower on at 7am, my neighbour will kill me!”
I spent the afternoon setting up the guide lines etc and started up the mower. It was moving around the lawn but it basically not making any noise… I thought maybe it was just driving around, but not mowing…. I watched it for half an hour or so and it was clearly cutting the grass, it’s just that it’s super quiet.
Later on, I turned the device over and noticed that I doesn’t have one bit blade like other lawn mowers, it has a few tiny little blades. I guess this is why it’s so quiet?
In terms of features, this is just a basic mower with a schedule. No mobile app integration etc. But if that’s not important for you, then I can confidently recommend this device.
Cuts grass neatly.a lot of setting up of boundary wire
Setting out the boundary wire is a bit of a faff, but not difficult. The pegs supplied for this are very irritating, they are far too thick for the very light job and bend easily, making the task twice as long as it needs to be. I think it would be easier to cut a slit in the lawn with a knife and push the wire into the hole.
I wish only if the battery life was little longer..
This just works. I have it cutting quite a large lawn, the results are impressive.
It much better value for money than many of these robot mowers which are more expensive
The mower cut through its perimeter cable once, and got stuck on two low bricks.
There will always be teething troubles to start with.
The bumper at the front detects obstacles, such as trees, raised beds, really well.
I recommend this
Got it for my 50th birthday, decided I was too old to cut grass! Wish I had bought it sooner. Spend a couple of hours putting out the boundary and hide wires and never cut grass again!
Works best with a low border that the mower can runover slightly and ct right to the edge. Otherwise need to strim the edge periodically but a small price to pay. Lawn looks neat and tidy.
If you are thinking about it, just get it.
Why didn’t I get one of these years ago!! love it..
In the past 30 years, I have used many other traditional mowing methods but none with the superb results that I have now.
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The 1220R has rejuvenated my lawn in a few weeks and I am very pleased.
The key to this result is the Flymo Robotic philosophy of “cutting often but little” and that the cuttings are mulched (refetilisation).
The 1200R requires careful setting up, although it is easy. The manual is very thorough. Once you have done a proper set up, there will be little else to do but a bit of tweaking of the boundary wire.
I would advise any user to read the manual thoroughly. The videos supplied by the product and also available online at fly.com, give additional assistance.
It is very important to keep the spinning cutting disc clean and to ensure that the cutting blades are spinning freely. It can best be done with a dish brush , wearing gloves as the cutting blades are very sharp.
This must also be an excellent product for persons suffering from hay fever or back problems.
I bought what they call a robotic lawnmower garage roof for mine and I think it should house under some protection when recharging/resting although the manufacturers do not say too.
But here is the ‘biggy’ I can’t encourage everyone enough to bury the boundary wire in the dirt and do not run on top of the grass just using the pegs, the lawnmower kept cutting the wire in various places even though we pulled the wire tight and pegged it right down, this caused me so much hassle in the beginning, I almost gave up on it, and every time it was because it cut the wire.
I had to call the manufacturers to send me new wire connecters as there were only a couple in the pack and even then I had to buy more from ebay, I decided to put the effort in and bury the wire, it is simple, I literally used a large kitchen knife, cut into the ground about an inch, wiggled it side to side a bit and kept slicing though unil I finished, then open the cut grass and push the wire in just so its level with the dirt and not above it – since doing this about a month ago I have not had this problem again and love my garden and mower. If you found this review helpful please give it a like
It is a pleasure to watch the Flymo doing his work.Hope it keeps on working for many years.
Took me ages to set up as I didn’t realise the guide wire was from the boundary wire. Also, the blooming dog kept pulling out the pegs and broke the wire in two places. I went to the hardware shop and bought some butt connectors which fixed the wire. After the teething problems, I love it. It’s so quiet and can’t hear it so can be used at night. I have it set to go off every other day for 3 hours and my lawn is great. I really like it. I’ve bought some grass shears to do the edges as it doesn’t cut the grass by the wall. Amazing produc
We have a 500 sqm lawn, separated in 2 sections by a stone chip path. I thought it would only be able to do one of the sections… but no, copes with going across the path without batting an eyelid. When I say eyelid, my kids have laminated a set of eyes and added them to give it the “human” look – and he is now called “mo!” – and is a real character
The grass cutting is great, no visible mulch on the grass, ours has been going for 2 months trouble-free, it is near silent, and you could run it 24 hours without annoying the neighbours. The lawn quality looks very good as the cuttings sink into the lawn. You won’t get stripes, but everyday the lawn looks well cut and tidy……
I am a busy dad, commute to London in the week and my time at the weekends is at a premium – so when it saves 90-120 mins a week, at 500, an absolute bargain. Once in a while I strim and edge (have near buried the boundary wire) and it looks great. I left the cut height just under the full height and it is more than short enough.
Don’t delay, buy this awesome little chap, he’ll pay you back in time, entertainment and a pretty decent cut lawn……
One point of caution on size of lawn, if you think, like I did, that you’re over the maximum lawn size of 400m^2 but you’ll cope with that by leaving it out longer that the recommended 12 hours per day, you can’t. The mower has a built in ‘downtime’ of 12 hours per day, which can’t be changed. This gives a maximum ‘active’ time of 12 hours (including charging). thereby defining the maximum lawn size. My lawn is at the upper end of the max and keep the lawn perfect with about 8 hours per day.
Setup was very straight forward, lay out the wire and peg it down using the pegs and the guide to keep it away from the edge, if you take your time and read the book it’s a piece of cake to setup.
Although it is weather proof I built a “kennel” for it to protect the electrics and to keep out of prying eyes.
Pros.
It works very well, the garden looks well, I haven’t lowered the cutting height less than 3.5cm but I’m happy with it.
It cuts sun, mon, wed and fri from 6-10pm rain or shine
Cons
When I set it up we we had a lot of heavy rain, as a result it turned the corners of the garden into a mud hole.
Also, in front of the charging station is all muddy where it turns to back into its station, this is because it’s rear wheel only goes one direction
Future recommendations
An app so you can see errors and be alerted if it gets stuck because after a while the novelty wares off and you hardly look at it and if something happens you won’t notice for days
A moving caster wheel on the back, it might stop some of mudding when turns
I do still have some trouble with moss, but that’s a local issue. The grass is greener and healthier than its ever been before.
It’s so relaxing to drive home from work, pull into the drive, and see Trimmy working away, so I don’t have to!! The little computer tells me he has done 550 hours of cutting so far. I reckon his random nature means he takes about 3x longer to cut the grass than me (but then I’ve got all that emptying and setup/pack away to do too) so I estimate he has saved me between 150-200 hours of grass cutting since bought. Now the time can be spent tidying the rest of the garden, and the green bin can be filled with weeds and leaves instead of grass cuttings.
Just a great little machine!
Now I have the measure of the machine I will probably fine tune it by moving the boundary wire in sections where it does not fully cut the edge of the lawn and yet not run into the fence. There will always be a small strip along the boundary were the lawnmower will not reach if it is to operate without bumping into fencing, walls or reaching flower beds etc. I bought a cordless strimmer and just whip around the boundary in no time at all and with little effort.
My wife won’t let us leave the lawnmower running unless we are in the house. Although it has a PIN to activate and an alarm if it leaves the boundary wire area some people will steal anything regardless of whether it has any utility. Plus we have an exposed rear garden open to the public. When we are in it has been set to automatic and we let it run itself until we go to bed at night and bring it in, its not heavy. Over several hours it will mow the lawn in a random fashion until the battery is nearly exhausted, it then makes its way back to the charging station were it docks and charges for typically an hour and a half before setting off again for more random mowing. I believes the manual states it will cover roughly 33 sq metres per mow, so our lawn on the average needs about 3 mowings. We let it rn roughly every other day or when one of us is at home or when we get home from work.
It’s a real pleasure to sit at home on the sofa and know the lawn is getting a good mow with no effort from me. It operates rain or shine, day or night. I wish I had bought one earlier. This is one of my favourite tools and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Plus as the fine grass cuttings just mulch into the lawn I have noticed the lawn looks better than it has ever done before.
B A R G A I N :-)))
If you want the workout and prefer not to relax with a beer… get a push mower!
Fantastic bit of kit. Installation is a little laborious but once it is done you can breathe easy.
Randomly drives around cutting your grass to whatever length you decide.
I didn’t even keep it stored during the winter and it fired up nice in Spring.
Top piece of kit.
So far so good. It took around 90 minutes to unbox and set up (I was listening to the football).
The grass looks really good after just 2 days. I’ll update as the year goes on.
We have grown a fond attachment to “Boris” he is now part of the family. Wish we got him a long long time ago. I had been contemplating getting him for so long, shouldn’t have dragged my feet. Our garden isn’t massive but it’s quite long… I always liked to cut the grass but just never got round to it, only when it was too long and just never looked like… now it’s kept perfectly just have to trim the edges now and then, but had to do that with the lawn mower anyway. So nice having a perfect garden and we have a dog so it encourages us to keep up with picking up his mess. Neighbours are so jealous… if you are thinking about getting one…. GET IT!!
For the money these are amazing!
I have a sloped garden so it cant do it all but that is well documented in the design spec. and I knew that when I ordered. It prob could cut some of the steeper slopes but has a tilt switch so simply stops rather than digs a hole with it wheels.
Once set up, it just runs and runs. Grass looks perfect always. I have grass on the upper end or the limits in the spec but it handles it well and with easy.
Worked in all weather and on wet grass. don’t think you need the higher spec models that track weather and rain or wifi control.
The battery life and charge timing is a lot better than in the spec, I assume battery technology has improved since launch.
Its made by the leading company in the robot lawnmower field. in fact the wire included is worth half the cost of the whole unit if brought separately.
Simply the best thing I have ever bought.
The only thing I would say, is to get the best finish ensure you have a run off on each side. I have now laid edging bricks to the lawn to enable ‘Freddy’ the mower to have a run off enabling a cut right to the edge, other wise you end up with a strip it can’t reach. Meaning you have to strim or do it manually with a mower.
Still trying to program it correctly , but think that’s me not the product, cut grass fine , and was fun watching it , knowing I would not have a back ack and the grass is kept short still playing to get it set up correctly , think I’ll have to get grandson over to help..
Excellent machine and does exactly what you hope it will. Seems to be largely built by Husqvarna, which represent extremely good value considering the equivalent price.
We have a 425mt2 garden in a large U shape and he seems to be coping very well with it so far, quite surprised that he hasn’t got stuck even once, and always finds his way home (unlike me) hence the name. Despite having 5 trees, many bushes, two cats, a fox, paths and kerbs to drop off into gravel etc he just got to work flawlessly, straight away! The set us is no problem, I actually enjoyed it as I couldn’t wait to see him working. Quick tip; cut the lawn quite short before you set it up, then when laying the boundary wire just run two fingers either side of the wire to help the grass lift higher than it and follow the destructions and you will be fine. Great fun to be had with the guests and neighbors, you can make up any story you like to tell them how it knows where to go and when to come home!
Great buy, highly recommended!
Best thing I have ever brought, my grass is better then eve
The set up is a bit of a pain especially if you have multiple bits of lawn across the garden – we have a two tier garden at the rear and two separate bits of lawn at the front of the house. It connected fine but needed to trail the boundary wire across both gardens and accepted that I need to use the manual mode for the areas that the mower can’t return to the docking station and auto charge.
The boundary wire needs to be laid on pretty short grass otherwise the mower will cut the wires which can be a bit of a pain to fix, you can dig a trench to sit the wire in but having tried this for about 5 metres, I gave up!
I was also worried about someone randomly walking off with the mower but it’s alarmed and you need a pin number to turn it on etc.
Overall the cut and finish is pretty good but you’ll still need a strimmer to finish off the edges, especially if you have grass that is next to a wall or a fence.
My wife swears by it! All the hard work of mowing the lawn now undertaken by a friendly “robot”!
Top tips:
1. Buy extra pegs so that you don’t have to worry about whether you’re spacing them out sufficiently.
2. Buy extra connectors because not many are included and if you need to change the layout of the wires you will need them.
3. If the mower says the loop wire is broken, check all the connectors before you check the wire.
Our experience is that it can handle slighter steeper hills and slightly narrower paths than the instructions indicate.
Our garden is awkward and we had a few teething problems laying out the wire so that she didn’t get stuck, but the small hassle that this entailed was worth it and ‘bobette’ manages just fine now.
The issues with this mower are actually quite numerous. You can’t have it start off in a corner of the lawn – it has to start with at least 1.5M either side of it, which means you end up putting it’s base unit somewhere really visible rather than somewhere nicely hidden away. You’re also not supposed to leave it in direct sunshine, and of course it needs permanent power (via quite a long low-voltage cable), which again limits where you can put it. Not only do you need a boundary wire all the way around your garden, but you also have to have a guide wire intersect your garden somewhere to connect the base unit to the boundary somewhere so the mower can find its way home again. Consider using an edging spade to make a sort of groove in the turf to push the cable into, because having it accidentally cut the cable is a hassle to figure out and to resolve.
Almost anything can turn into an obstruction – things like twigs and branches can stop it, although hopefully it’ll move them a little each time so will eventually get to the grass underneath them. I’m finding apples are a significant issue too – sometimes it happily goes over the top and chews them up a bit, but often it’ll sort of ride up on one and then think it’s upside down (how!?) and immediately stop (needing human intervention to make it resume). I suspect that when our beech tree drops vast swathes of leaves in the autumn it’ll also struggle, although so far it’s cruising over the beech nuts quite well. It hasn’t yet mowed any kids toys – it would probably kick a fly-away football around, but a proper weight one would probably be an obstruction. Small toys will probably succumb to the blades though (bad news if they’re metal toy cars or whatever).
In terms of coverage, it uses a random pattern to get around the garden, so may miss the odd tuft of grass for a couple of days, but will eventually get to everything. That more or less means you do need it to run daily, or else you’ll start to see the bits it misses if the grass is growing quickly. It seems to do a decent job of mowing around trampoline legs and whatnot that aren’t specifically marked by the boundary wire. It can’t cope with long grass, so it’ll need a decent manual mow if it’s got long because it got stuck for a few days or it’s a first use of the season or whatever. If it’s set to any grass height above about half way, you’ll see lots of track marks in the grass where the mower’s been tootling about on it.
Whilst I have to go and check on it more or less daily right now (mostly to get the apples off the grass), the lawn is looking pretty nice. The majority is getting cut, the edges don’t take long to take care of, and there are no obvious ‘clumps’ of cuttings anywhere. It’s so quiet that if I hadn’t heard it starting the blades up after moving about a bit, I’d have wondered if it was mowing at all. That’s great because it really, genuinely won’t annoy the neighbours if it’s running late at night. When it runs right, it’ll probably keep your lawn in a better state than you can do yourself, and definitely saves a lot of time and clippings disposal.
Brilliant mo has been working on his own since April Couldn’t be mor pleased
I purchased it to stop me having to cut the grass so often but it’s had the added bonus of making the grass look better than it ever has. As the cuttings fall back into the grass it acts as a fertiliser. The grass looks better now than when I used the purchased product designed to feed it.
I’d have no issue recommending this product, and would replace it, if I ever needed, to with the same item.
A few hiccups to begin with,soon sorted and now we have a lovely lawn.brilliant for the ageing gardener!! No more back ache.
Like many people who’ve reviewed it we named ours – he’s called Freddie – so I feel the need to get that out of the way first. Laying the wire was simple enough and I’ve since learnt I was a bit too anal with the whole 20cm and depth thing in the beginning. Near the edge and reasonably flat works fine, after a few weeks you won’t even see it – except you’ll probably be pulling it up to move it because you didn’t get it right.
It is a bit trial and error with the wire, but it is far less laborious than it looks and once you do have it right it’s fine. I ended up re-edging my lawn and laying stones to compensate for the fact Freddie couldn’t get to the edges and I wasn’t about to have a robot lawnmower and then have to keep strimming every week! This meant one time I managed to cut the perimeter wire once, but it’s a simple fix and they give you loads of wire, pegs and joiners.
Operation is simple, turn him on and let him go, just be aware if you manually send him home, he stays there until you put him back into auto – it’s a mistake I made a couple of times before realising.
Every morning I get up and look out the window and there is Freddie, chugging around the lawn. He must go out at least three or four times a day, but for me he seems to do more in the morning than the afternoon/evening, although you can manually set windows of time to suit. It is so quiet you almost have to bend down next to him to check if the blades are turning or not, you won’t hear anything from more than a few feet away — it’s nothing like a traditional mower in that respect.
He has occasionally got stuck so it is worth just checking you don’t have tables or chairs or things with low bars he can get stuck on. He’s fine (yes I know I’m anthropomorphising a lawnmower, but he’s been Freddie for 3 months now, it’s like he’s a pet) with large items, say a rotary line or a BBQ, he’ll just bump into them and turn around, but something small like a tennis ball or a blanket will either get chewed up or cause him to stop (or both). It does mean if you have children you have to be a bit more diligent in getting things up after play, but you can just turn him off the for the day if you’re having a party or something.
He works fine come rain or shine (sometimes we feel bad for him when it’s lashing it down and he’s out there working, but what can you do?), but in my garden where the soil is just awful rocky clay, he can churn up the ground where there is no sunlight and leave you with bare patches when it gets very wet.
So, that aside, he’s a great addition to the family, but how is Freddie as a lawnmower? Well, fabulous! The grass is always at the desired length all over and there is none of the long clippings left on the ground I got with my old manual lawnmower. And I have to say my grass has never looked better as a result. I started with a patchy, weed filled mess and now I have a thick, slightly less weed filled, lawn.
The grass seems to have grown much better, it looks much lusher and it even feels better underfoot. I’m still working on the weeds, but that is slightly beyond Freddie’s remit – he’s done the best he can with them!
I hate mowing the lawn and my wife didn’t do it regularly enough so I’d lusted after a robotic lawnmower for a long time and now we have him, we would be without Freddie. He’s brilliant even though he ignores me when I tell him not to come my way when I’m doing something.
The one PSA I will give is if you watch the DVD that comes with the 1200R, it appears you are supposed to watch your lawnmower toil from afar with a beer or glass of wine in hand, but I can confirm it works fine with or without you drinking alcohol at the same time!
I have had some problems though. I have an issue with foxes in my garden and they have chewed the perimeter cable on a regular basis, I also have a lawn that is not level and far from perfect so the robot has also managed to chew the perimeter cable which I have had to repair. This is a bit of an irritation and can be fixed by burying the cable which I will be forced to do when I have time. The edges also have to be strimmed as it cannot cut right to the edge but that would have to be done anyway.It also does not cut in straight lines so if this is important then this is not for you.
All in all I still regard it as an excellent purchase at an excellent price as I bought it on Amazon Prime day !
You need to keep it at its highest setting at first otherwise it cuts it’s boundary wire…. As I’ve found out. I’ll be burying the wire this weekend. No issues. Really safe.
Best gadget purchase made in years…. I’ve had this product for more than a month now and it is quite simply the gift that keeps on giving. Yes, there is a bit of setup required but once done it works like a dream. In fact “Rolo” is almost considered an additional family pet, and that is some status. Great product that doesn’t oversell and does what it says on the tin.
Absolutely brilliant. Took a while to set up the guide wire around the garden, but once its up this little machine does a fantastic job. Could be a little smarter, once so far I found it trapped in an area but other than that Im extremely happy.
After being stored in the garage over winter it was released back into the garden just a couple of week’s ago (when the spring flowers had finished). It does a great job in a very varied garden – the area cut by the mower is approx 300m2 with a perimeter of circa 170m. This includes lawns and parts of former field/orchard (that is now a ‘lawn’).
The signal wire is very easy to install – simply peg on the surface (with small black plastic ‘tent peg’ style pegs) – it took me about 2 to 3 hours. But you need many more pegs and much more cable than comes with the package. I bought a 100m reel of 1.5mm conduit cable (about sixteen pounds) from an online retailer plus a couple of hundred extra pegs (from an Amazon retailer) and a bag of 100 crimp style wire connectors (very useful when the cable is inadvertently cut when digging!). The signal in the cable is a radio signal (like AM radio) and is very low voltage.
Its not a cheap device but it means that every day I can look out and enjoy the garden rather than heading to the mower shed (for that bit of the garden anyway!)
This robotic lawnmower is amazing. I spent a few hours setting it all up and then hey presto, it worked. It’s fantastic and makes life a whole lot easier.
Setting up the perimeter wire is a bit of a faff but once you’ve got that right and set the programme there is literally nothing else to do.
My lawn has never looked better.
Brilliant, I wish I had brought one years ago. Very quiet and just gets on with the job.
Have only had this bad boy working for a few hours and im so impressed,my gardens on a slope it seems to be coping well,had to re-start a couple of times but have moved boundry wire and its working a trea
SInce then I have bought a second one, and set it to work on an even bigger area – 40m by 80 or EIGHT times the recommended area. It seems to work fine; always manages to get back to the charging station, and doesn’t mind that at it’s furthest it is 20m from the boundary wire (max is supposed to be 15m. This one has only worked in summer and autumn, so it remains to be seen how well it copes in a fast growing period of spring.
There’s a lot to take in when you first read the manual, so here are the essentials summarised. The mower comes with 150m of cable, which is green, multi-strand and fairly thick. This same cable is used as the boundary loop, and for the ‘guide wire’ which needs to run from the charging station across the loop and connect to it at some point. The mower must never be further than 15m from the boundary loop, so the maximum width of the mowed area is 30m, which is pretty good. The length of cable supplied is much more than you need for the specified area, because it is assumed that you will create islands around treees and beds, and these need quite a lot of cable to feed to and from. In my case I was able to loop around 40 by 20m, with another 20m across the middle as guide wire, and around 10m spare which I looped around a flower bed. I bought a 150m reel of recommended cable extra (same as Husqvana uses) plus extra connectors, but haven’t used these so far. The mower comes with two types of connector – 3 push-on ones (plus two spares) for connecting to the charger, plus a three-way sealed joining connector for connecting the boundary wire to the loop (plus two spares which can be used to repair a broken cable or to extend it). The cable from the charger to its power supply (which must be in a dry place) is a 10m long, thin twin cable carrying 28V DC, and there are warnings that this must not be extended or cut (maybe it’s resistance forms part of the charging circuit design), though you can buy a 20m version of this cable.
When laying out the wire, it should be 30cm in from obstacles, like raised slabs, or drops, but can be 5cm or even closer from level edges, patios etc, to allow the mower to ride onto the slabs, useful for avoiding the need for edge trimming. I have now discovered 250mm wire border edging fence in green plastic coated wire (11 for 10m) that just pushes into the ground, and find that this is ideal for surrounding bushes and plants – the mower bounces off it. I plan to use this around daffodil areas in spring as temporary protection. (later note – constant bumping is loosening the fences in the ground until they lean inwards and then the mower rides up on them if it hits obliquely. It’s only done this a couple of times, and it always turns off – the sensing of wheel spin and blade stalling works excellently.)
COMMON FAULT: Both mowers have developed the same fault, which I note several others here are reporting. After a brief power cut the mower stops and refuses to start up again whatever you do. Switching off the mains for an hour and then on again makes no difference. The light on the charging station flashes two colours (don’t ask me what colours – I have odd colour vision). Unplug the DC cable though, either at the power supply or the charging station with the mains on, and plug it straight back in again. Hey presto – solid light, and after pressing go and closing the lid off it goes; so long as it’s charged. Oddly though, it often isn’t charged even though it’s been sitting for hours switched on, so there is a delay before it goes off. I’m guessing from this that something is failing in the power supply, such that it is unable any longer to come up to voltage at switch-on when connected to the charging station without current limiting and cutting out. Plugging into the charging station when up to full voltage enables it to cope with the initial surge. Another fault is a tendency under some circumstances to fail to start each morning on the timer; though raising the lid and pressing start results in it going straight to work when the lid is lowered. Selecting manual and then auto seems to reset it, so that it then starts up each morning again, but finding out these things takes a lot of effort. This is not satisfactory, and technical support is non-existent (‘sorry, our only technical man has left the firm; try a local dealer’). Nevertheless, I am persevering for now with the work-arounds, as I like the mowers in other respects and they are good value. I like the fact that the blades are loosely mounted so that they fly out when rotating. This means that they can retract if they hit solid objects, minimising damage to the blades and disc.
SAFETY: From my reading I tended to assume that these mowers were fairly safe – cutting off power automatically if lifted off the ground, backing away from objects on contact, and with the blades well inset. After a few tests I’d say they are far from safe, and predict that more stringent safety requirements will come in as robot mowers become used a lot more and accidents occur. The instructions say that where the boundary wire is not looped round an object like a flower bed, or where the mower might escape onto the street or fall into a pond, a barrier must be provided which should be 150mm high minimum. This seemed a lot. Surely a row of paving blocks would do the trick, given that the front of the mower only looks about 25mm off the grass. So I place a paving block (50mm thick) in front of it. The mower rode up over it immediately and I just pushed it back in time! Then a paving block on it’s side (100mm). It pushed it over, rode up over it, and the sound of blades hitting concrete was alarming! Even a solid 100mm step is barely enough to stop it reliably – it takes some pressure before the body senses an object, and the rear wheel goes down into the grass while the front goes up, giving it a remarkable ability to climb over objects. This has serious implications ! Stand in front of the mower with your back to it and it will bounce off you, but stand in sandals in front of it and it will ride over them for sure and make a nasty mess of your toes and feet before your ankles stop it !! Fortunately I didn’t try this, but I am now much more wary, and would not let children play around it, innocuous though it looks as it slowly trundles along. Some of the bigger machines talk of automatic mowing of parks, but I can see some nasty accidents occurring unless future designs incorporate some sort of touch-free sensing with laser beams, ultrasound or whatever rather than bumper pressure sensing. I don’t even want to stand on the grass in sandals now as the mower is quiet enough to creep up on me while I am talking or not paying attention and take my toes off! Another issue is inability to remove the battery easily. I don’t work on my chainsaw without taking out the battery as recommended, and I don’t work on electrical circuits without proper isolation, which is different from just switching off (isolators have to meet high standards). So I’m not entirely happy changing the blades in this mower with the battery in. The manual says “the motor cannot operate with the switch (underneath the rear of the mower) off” but I don’t trust this – the switch could fail or be knocked on. Does the switch actually disconnect the power. As an electronics engineer I doubt it, because the timer and electronics keep going, so maybe it just turns off the motor via solid state switches (power MOSFETS). This is not good enough to rely on when changing razor sharp blades. The manual says, “wear gloves”, but doesn’t say what sort of gloves. Thick leather ones might help, but then you can’t put the screws in place that fix the blades. I really wish the battery popped out easily from the top (you have to take screws out to remove it from under the motor plate), not just for safety reasons, but to enable it to be easily changed. Another reviewer has written that he clamps the disc before replacing the blades and I think this is a very good idea.
I convinced my wife we should try one of these after a day of cutting the grass…she quickly agreed.
It took less than two hours (we were still cutting the grass – badly at the time as well) to get the cable laid and set up the machine. We’ve put it in a temporary position whilst we tidy more of the garden. It charged quickly, the boundary was easy to get sorted. One thing, don’t forget to put the guide line in!
Now, we have a robot cutting grass beautifully. The kids have named it. ‘Mo’ just does his job from 7am. The dogs don’t fuss, the rabbits don’t care, the kids have mild interest, but the garden grass is perfect.
Our front and back are gate separated, with dogs it’s a problem. The Flymo has been that good on the rear garden, we’ve agreed to buy another!
We used to have a gardener, he retired, and we couldn’t find someone else to cut the garden. At 25/week, this’ll pay for itself. Very good so far!
Once off and running, it’s worked really well. We lowered the cutting level to a 3 and its coped really well. The factory settings run the robot every day between 7am and 10pm. We’ve left it as that for the while.
Installation was pretty easy if you read the manual and watch the videos online. It comes with a DVD but we haven’t watched that. The hardest work was digging the lines for the boundary and guide wires.
It’s mesmeric, and you end up yelling at it to turn around when it’s clearly doing something that won’t help it out of a corner. I am sure this will wear off.
I’m delighted with how it’s going so far and I’d recommend it.
It comes with all the parts that are needed, and all you need to supply is a mallet.
I can recommend this lawnmower.
I am extremely impressed! We have a reasonable sized lawn of around 300 SqM with some tricky shapes and sections – I could not believe that this little mower would cover it all and I was not convinced about the cuttings mulching into the lawn. However the results are fantastic and all I need to do is occasionally deal with the edges.
It does take time to set up but done properly and carefully it is a good investment – the pack is a little stingey on pegs (used all of them) and cable clips (if you make mistakes) – I also tweaked the perimeter wire in a few places after a couple of weeks of cutting to pick up some missed patches – but well worth getting it right. Also took a while to set up with timer etc – TIP – always press start after re-setting anything, even if its only charging – yes its in the manual but I missed that and couldn’t work out at first why it wasn’t following the programme. Highly recommended.
In summary it is quite a difficult proposition: rough grass, bumpy surface, reasonable slope and plenty of obstacles in the form of trees, and its area is 400 square metres which is at the top end of this machine’s capability. Yet this little chap (and he’s definitely male) copes really well.
Installation: is straightforward. Read the instructions, then read them again to make sure you’ve understood all the concepts. In particular obey the minimum spacings recommended for the various cables, and if you need to route cable through a narrow gap I suggest that you peg it down first and try it out, as you may end up adjusting its location once you see how it is used. Note that it tracks a variable distance to the *side* of, not on, the homing wire (to the left as viewed going “home”) to avoid leaving marks, so you need to leave more space on that side than you might expect. As others have remarked once you’ve got the cable routes worked out you need to bury them, especially if your surface is rough. This is a time-consuming and messy job, but is simple enough.
Coverage: as I have remarked above I have plenty of obstacles in the form of trees, and this means that there is a fair bit of “bump into tree, stop, head off in a different direction” going on – it’s a sort of slow-motion pinball game effect. This works, and the random choice of a new direction works reasonably well, however there is no getting round the fact that an area of garden densely populated with obstacles will get more mowing attention than a more open area, and you should consider this when siting both the docking station and the intersection where the homing wire meets the loop of wire that goes around the boundary. The mower can be programmed to start mowing at the far end of the homing wire (at its intersection with the boundary wire) at various frequencies ranging from rarely through to always, and if you have both open and congested areas it will probably pay you to locate either the docking station or the intersection point in the open area, since this will give you some degree of control over the time it spends in these different areas.
Terrain: it copes surprisingly well with rough ground, but you will soon learn from observation if you have any localised holes that flummox it. Either they cause it to “nosedive” in, think it has hit an obstacle, stop and head off in a different direction; or in the worst case it simply gets stuck. The solution is simple enough, just fill in the hole; however if your lawn is at all rough be prepared to find it stuck a few times in the first weeks of operation until you have identified and filled in these hollows. Molehills present less of a problem since it just hits them, stops and moves away, and molehills can be a convenient source of earth for filling in the aforementioned hollows!
Rain: doesn’t seem to affect it much, although it does increase slightly the chances of it getting stuck in “difficult” areas where rough ground is combined with a confined space. This is fair enough, and you soon learn where these are and sort them out. So far as I can tell rain does not affect the quality of the cut, although it does increase slightly the chances of leaving wheelmarks in difficult regions where it has experienced some wheel-spin or has had skidded when turning.
Safety: I would say that it would be near impossible for a dog, child, chicken or anything else to get injured. It moves at a slow walking pace, detects any sort of contact via a very soft bump at which it stops immediately, and it also knows if it has been lifted up or toppled over and again stops itself immediately. Sorry to any personal injury ambulance-chasing lawyers reading this, you’ll have to look elsewhere for business.
Cut quality: I’ve only used it on the highest setting (it gives a range of 1cm to 5cm) since my ground is rough. Where is has made sufficient passes the grass looks as if it has been cut by a conventional rotary mower, ie short but no stripes. It does miss the odd tuft in the more open areas, but as I have remarked above I think this is a feature of the variable “obstacle density” in our orchard, which has clumps of trees in some areas and open expanses in others. The good news from my point of view is that it does lots of bumping into trees which, in turn, means it does lots of mowing *under* trees, which is exactly the bit I find difficult. I’m happy to whizz over the more open areas occasionally with the lawn tractor, and I think that a more conventional lawn would not suffer from this problem anyway.
Edges: our orchard is fenced, and I have buried the the perimeter wire about 8 inches (20cm in heathen units) in from the fence. Since the cutter is a rotating disk that is about half the width of the machine this means that you will inevitably end up with an uncut fringe of grass if your lawn is bordered by obstacles of any height and you need to be prepared to cut these manually. You’ll get the same fringe effect around any interior obstacles – but then you’d get pretty much the same effect with an ordinary mower, so it’s not really very different in that respect.
Timing: it has a built-in clock and can be programmed to mow within a set period. The default setting is 7am to 11pm, but despite our orchard being 400 square metres, the supposed maximum for this machine, I have cut its hours down to 9am to 8pm since it clearly did not need all that mowing time – and this is in warm wet Devon where grass grows like crazy. Perhaps this is because I have it on the highest height setting (5cm), but nevertheless I think it could easily cope with at least a 30% larger area in our conditions, and probably more in a dryer area with less grass growth.
Noise: as near silent as makes no difference. There is a whirr from the drive motors and another from the motor spinning the cutting disk, but the loudest noise is from the blades hitting the grass and you’d need good hearing to pick that up above ambient noise from more than 20 yards away. The beeps it makes when it stops after it thinks it might have hit someone are loud enough to be audible without being intrusive. While charging in its docking station it is absolutely silent.
Security: it has a PIN number that has to be typed in to re-activate it any time is it stopped manually, picked up or generally handled. This is the lowest level of security and you can go to higher levels which will sound alarms and things if it is picked up. We live 1/2 mile from the public road so I’m not too worried about thieves and use the lowest setting, but if you are going to use it in a very public area that doesn’t have someone nearby who would investigate noises promptly you will need to give this some thought. I suspect a thief would feel a bit embarrassed walking around with a bright orange terrapin shaped object under his arm that was shrieking its head off, but that might not stop him smashing it out of annoyance. Realistically I think this sort of technology is only suited to reasonably enclosed and secure areas which, to be fair, is probably a description of most large lawns.
Aesthetics: Flymo colour their products orange, bright orange. Yuk! Hopefully even the marketing folk will eventually twig that not everyone wants a bright orange thing burbling around their lawn, and produce it in different colours. In the meantime a judicious application of black silage tape works wonders…
Maintenance: I’ve found that the blades have got pretty blunt after about 6 weeks so that it barely cuts which – in theory – means removing and replacing both blades and screws, which is a two minute job requiring only a screwdriver. It uses three blades, and Flymo provide 9 spares + screws in the box with instructions to change the screws as well as the blades in case wear of the former leads to blades flying off. When I took mine apart a visual inspection showed that the screws were absolutely fine and the blades were just blunt, so after a bit of honing on a whetstone the original blades and screws have gone back on, and it is cutting beautifully again. Make up your own mind about whether to replace or sharpen, but I think inspection and common sense is the way to go. Otherwise I muck out compacted grass and mud from its underside about once a fortnight, or after very wet weather, and that’s it – no other maintenance has been required during the cutting season.
Problems: so far no significant ones. The setup needs tuning, and in particular I’ve had to learn where and why it gets stuck and adjust things accordingly. Given the variable congested / open nature of our orchard it is a bit frustrating not to have more control over where and how it cuts but you get what you pay for. I think I may in fact end up adding artificial obstacles to the more open areas as a way of forcing it to spend more time there, but then I’d still have to hand mow around them, so maybe it’s not worth it. Bigger wheels to give a better capability on rough ground would be useful for us, and in fact the bigger Husqvarna models have this … at a price.
Quality and performance: after three months I am increasingly impressed. The grass obviously likes the “little and often” treatment since it looks better now than it has ever done in the past. My wife thinks it looks better than when I cut it which – given how much I hated doing it – is a definite case of mixed emotions! Despite bumping into trees 100s of times a day the machine shows no obvious signs of wear and is still working perfectly.
In summary I’m impressed, in fact more impressed than I expected to be. It’s not perfect, and it’s a hideous colour, but I really hated mowing that orchard and now I don’t have to. In other words it does what it says on the tin, and does it better than I expected. If you are dithering because you are not sure whether it will do the job my experience is that it will, and I would recommend it.
[Update March 2016] I bought this in summer 2015 and after a winter’s hibernation it is back working again. When first reinstalled it simply would not work properly, detecting “false” collisions every few seconds and stopping repeatedly. Finally it showed a “rear sensor faulty, get it serviced message”.
Well, it has a 2 year guarantee so I could have sent it back, but instead I decided to attempt a bit of amateur fault-finding and solved the problem really easily. The instructions state that you should store it upright, and in fact I left if (one could say this is “upright”) on its nose all winter, which led to the four flexible rubber supports which connect the shell to the body become permanently bent forwards. This meant that the magnet attached to the shell was not central in the collision sensor slot on the body, hence the detection of false collisions. It was easily fixed by rotating two of the rubber mounts by 180 degrees, cancelling out the overall bending, and now it is absolutely fine and back working happily. So, with hindsight, my fault – but if you get one don’t store it “upright”, but rather “flat” on its wheels!
Also I was so impressed with it that I have bought a second one, which is now busily cutting a different area of lawn. That’s a pretty serious endorsement of how good these machines are.
One word of warning: these little machines will not cope with the long (eg 4+ inches) and dense wet grass that grows over a typical winter, so when you first install them in the spring you need to cut the grass manually. Cutting once a year is a small price to pay for relief from weekly slavery, but I’m afraid that you can’t throw away the conventional mower altogether.
[Update June 2016] Herbie I (orchard dweller) is fine; Herbie II, installed at the beginning of April, is doing well in his separate area of grass.
Herbie II’s domain is a much larger area, probably around 650 square metres (the 150m metre drum of cable that came in the box wasn’t enough to go round the perimeter, and I had to buy another reel) yet he is keeping it down without any trouble. This is a more garden-like area with flower-beds as well as shrubs, and it is roughly “U” shaped so I have his docking station in one leg of the U and the junction with the boundary wire going round the bend into the other leg. This is the solution given in the destruction manual, and configured to start remotely at the far end 50% of the time it seems to work well with even coverage in both legs of the U.
There are various “tight” areas and near cul-de-sacs in this patch of garden, and I have had to leave the tightest of these outside his working area to avoid his getting trapped in them. The manual suggests that 2 metres is the minimum width and, based on observation of his behaviour, this feels about right. We have one salient that is about 3m x 3m and when he goes in there he can end up doing a lot of toing and froing before he finally escapes again. Not only does this waste time and battery power, it also results in the ground becoming a bit trampled by the continuous turning.
I couldn’t be bothered to lay boundary wire around all the flower-beds, and anyway if you use a spade to tidy up the edges you could end up exposing or cutting the boundary wire if you forget exactly where it is. So instead we have been experimenting with different edging solutions, and at the moment the favourite is pieces of wood, about 8″ long x 1.5″ wide, wired together in a roll. (Available pretty cheaply from the nation’s most ubiquitous supermarket.) Held in position in the “precipice” around the edge of the bed by short bamboo canes these extend about 2″ or 3″ above grass level forming a low-level barrier which doesn’t look too bad. The arrangement has a little bit of give so Herbie hits gently, pushes it back slightly in the process before stopping, and so cuts pretty much up to the edge of the bed without leaving a fringe of longer grass. And where this doesn’t quite work you can strim up against the wood without damaging anything. It’s not a perfect solution, and I have been mulling over alternatives, but so far haven’t come up with anything better that is cost-effective.
He is currently working at the factory preset of 7am to 10pm, 7 days a week, and that was necessary in May when we had a flush of grass. However now that growth is slowing down I will cut his hours back a bit since he is coping easily with this area. Like our orchard it is ex-field, hence rye-grass which doesn’t look good if cut too short, so I have his height set to about 4.5 cm.
So, once again, I’m very pleased and the grass looks miles better than when I did it myself. I think this improvement in appearance is a feature of rye-grass and uneven ground: my tractor has a 42″ cut so, inevitably, grass on raised areas gets cut too short exposing the lighter-coloured base of the blades of grass. Herbie rides over the bumps and only cuts a swathe about 8″ wide, so he follows the contours of the ground more closely and gives a more even cut as a consequence.
[Update April 2017] After a winter’s hibernation (horizontal this time!) Herbies I and II are back out at work. The machines themselves seem to have survived the winter OK: I charged them fully before storing them last autumn, and also gave them another charge before setting them to work this spring. I also stored the docking stations and power supplies indoors over the winter, but reinstalling those is quick and easy.
I get the feeling that their battery capacity (as in time between recharges) is starting to degrade, but I haven’t made any quantitative measurements and after 2 years they clearly have enough oomph to continue doing the job for at least another year.
The grass was definitely too long for them by the time it was dry enough to turn them out to work, so I had to cut it manually, but once that was done they seem happy enough to get on with the job once more. (As I’ve remarked above this is warm, wet Devon where things grow like crazy; if you are somewhere drier you may not have this problem.)
Problems: only two, and both mole-related. Maybe the worms here have a high kryptonite content, but whatever the reason the moles managed to cut through the homing wire in one location, so I had to locate and fix that. Also excavation by said moles, plus digging by the dogs trying to catch the moles, mean that we have a new crop of bumps and hollows in which the Herbies can get stuck. So I have been busy shovelling earth from molehills to hollows, and then rolling, to try to flatten things out. I’m now down to about one “rescue from hole” operation a day, which is no great burden, and it is getting better all the time.
[Update September 2018] Herbies I and II have had another mostly successful year. I turned them off during the dry spell this summer because the grass had stopped growing and they were chewing up some edges a bit. I think the problem was that the way they turn is by skidding their single rear roller, and when the ground gets dry and the grass sparse this can ending up moving soil rather than skidding over the grass.
Our moles have also had a good year 🙁 and I have had to spend quite a lot of time filling in holes where their tunnels have collapsed in the dry weather, otherwise the Herbies get stuck. The moles can also lift the boundary wire to the surface when the grass cover is eroded, whereupon it can get cut through, so I have had to do some mending. I have found that the wire tends to get cut in similar locations, and to speed up the process of finding the break I now feed both ends into a short section of plastic pipe (say 6 inches long) which I drive vertically into the ground leaving the top and connector exposed. The connectors have 3 holes, and you only use two to fix a break, so you can put the terminal of a multi-meter into the 3rd hole which makes finding the broken section a *much* faster process.
They have done 3 and 2 years respectively and are still working well, with no obvious signs of reduced battery life, and are coping easily with the size of their working areas.
Problems: only one this year. After their winter hibernation I, like others, found that the connectors on the wires that attach to the back of the base unit fell apart, so I have replaced them with automotive spade terminals. This is easy and cheap to do, but begs the question of why Husqvarna saved fractions of a penny by using such grotty ones in the first place!
Like others I have had to replace the shoddy connectors to the base unit with automotive spade terminals, but that is a cheap and easy job.
After getting my robot replaced I can say that this is a very good product and recommend it. Recommend it so much that a relative now has one!
The Setup
The setup does take a long time (its not as quick as the videos suggest!). This is a new technology, so there are a few teething things, but the value it adds far out weighs the small improvements required.
No bags of grass!
I no longer have to sort out large bags of grass. The grass clippings a incredibly small and aren’t visible – nor do they get stuck to your feed / shoes (unless the grass was previously incredibly long). I have also noticed that the health of the grass has improved.
Tip and Crash Sensor
The tip and crash sensor works fine, most of the time, but sometimes its a bit sensitive and I have had a few occasions whereby the robot is “missing”. Its actually just stopped somewhere behind a tree because it “thinks” it has fallen over. This is probably once a week.
Battery Life and Return Home
The battery life of the cut is fine and it is more than happy to return home to charge (when it needs more juice).
Manual Cutting
There is an option to set this up and running on an area that doesn’t have the charge base – this is called “manual” cutting. I have this set up and it works fine. I just have to manually charge the device when it runs out of power. It has about an hour or cutting time in one charge.
Eating Things…
Ok, so this is a new technology and it has a few flaws. Eating things is one of them. If you leave ANYTHING on the grass (and it can get under the one inch gap at the front) it will probably eat it. Not been a problem for us, but be aware of stones, hose pipes and any small toys…
We have had it eat its only boundary wire twice. That is because it can fell into the garden bed and then the blades got low enough (when it was at an angle) to eat the wire. Easily fixed with the extra (included) clips though.
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Setup time is lengthy, but fairly straight forward. I personally didnt have any issues with the menu system either.
HOWEVER: The product arrived faulty with a constant ERROR 18; COLLISION SENSOR FAULT. I am currently awaiting a replacement.
After spending three hours setting it up, I am not pleased I have to spend about hour and a half pulling it all back out the ground and putting it back in the box.
I will update this review when the new one arrives…