Flymo EasiLife 800 Robotic Lawn Mower – Cuts Up to 800 sq m Ultra Quiet Mowing, Manicured Lawn, Bluetooth Application Control, Safety Sensors, Hose Washable, Lifestyle Functions, Frost Sensor
Flymo – The Lawn Care Experts
Flymo EasiLife 800 Robotic Lawn Mower
Day or night, rain or shine, the Flymo EasiLife 800 robotic lawnmower automatically cuts the grass for you so you don’t have to. It independently mows a lawn of up to 800m², cuts any garden shape and tackles slope gradients of up to 35%. Designed with quick installation in mind – simply install the hidden boundary wire to define the cutting area and off it goes.
- Pin Protection for your security.
- Tilt, Lift and Collision sensors for your safety.
- Hose washable for your convenience.
Features intuitive Assist-U interface for easy scheduling, monitoring and communication with the mower from the onboard keypad & LCD display or via the smartphone app. It also comes with LawnSense and FrostSense to automatically adapt cutting schedule based on weather and lawn growth conditions.
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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.
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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.
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Can it mow in the rain?
Adaptive mowing whatever the weather
Detecting grass growth, it automatically adjusts the schedule to suit conditions, ensuring an even cut and protects the lawn.
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Can it mow my irregular shaped lawn?
Mows every corner of the lawn
Perfect for imperfect lawns, the EasiLife robotic mower can navigate across lumps, bumps and inclines of up to 35% so you can have a perfect finish.
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How easy is it to install and program?
Intuitive controls and quick scheduling
Install the boundary wire to define the cutting area and program the mower in 3 easy steps.
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 you love…
What robot best suits me?
Assist-U LCD Screen | Interface | Push & GO |
35% | Slope Performance | 25% |
800m2 | Working Area | 150m2 |
16cm | Cutting Width | 16cm |
20-50mm | Cutting Height | 20-50mm |
| | Smartphone App | |
| | Lifestyle Features | |
Assist-U LCD Screen | Interface | Push & GO |
35% | Slope Performance | 25% |
800m2 | Working Area | 500m2 |
16cm | Cutting Width | 16cm |
20-50mm | Cutting Height | 20-50mm |
| | Smartphone App | |
| | Lifestyle Features | |
- Flymo Easilife GO 150
- Flymo Easilife GO 500
| Weight: | 11.4 kg |
| Size: | 800 m² Cutting Area |
| Dimensions: | 55 x 38 x 23 cm; 11.44 Kilograms |
| Model: | 9705132-01 |
| Colour: | Orange and Grey |
| Manufacture: | Husqvarna UK |
| Colour: | Orange and Grey |
| Size: | 800 m² Cutting Area |
Great garden gadget with Bluetooth app control, total overkill for my lawn but bought whilst on offer. Copes well with minor slopes and undulations buts it’s better to use topping sand or top soil to even out bumps. Best advice if you have a pooch is to bury the guide and perimeter cables half moon spade would be ideal to stop the hound scratching them up. Ideally home your bot (you will end up naming it) to protect it from the weather. I used 4×2 for frame log lap for sides and shiplap for roof all treated. Over a few weeks slowly reduce height of cut to your needs.
This product is worth every penny! I didn’t realise they were so affordable and we have a large garden so wasn’t really sure if it would work, it does brilliantly.
Next to the central heating this is the next best product we have ever bought. Saves us so much time, not just cutting the grass but taking it to the top. 5 stars all the way!!!
Lessons learnt, Bluetooth – connect the phone to the lawnmower first before opening the app. You’ll thank me later. We have dogs, so we run this between 20:00 – 22:30, enough time to poo pick, kids are out the way and it’s adult time. But It’s so quiet you don’t know it’s on and you become addicted to watching it. Would I buy again – yes, it’s small, quiet and other than not cutting the edges, does a good job.
Fitted it after a few hours of messing about. Had to alter it now and then over the next few weeks. That was two years ago. I just forget about my lawn. At one point I started to believe my lawn had stopped growing. I agonised over the purchase, because it is easy to buy a useless gimmic, and they are not cheap. Bought another for my elderly father for fathers day, but decided to give it to him early. His lawn was a mess, but the mower sorted that out. The only problem with his, is that he has alzheimers, and keeps ripping the base station out to protect the lawn underneath, despite us telling him not to. Can’t blame the mower for that.
Pretty good automation, but the cut radius is too small IMO. Often getting little tuffs of grass here and there it misses. A wider cut would help a great deal I think.
The spot but function is a great idea to handle the issue, but not perfect.
Comes out every morning rain or shine and keeps the lawn looking in tip-top condition despite a pretty uneven surface. Set to level 2 seems to be ideal for our garden. Did cut through the boundary wire, but this was due to the initial set-up when one of the wheels slipped over the lawn edge and it couldn’t continue, but it was easily repairable using the genuine cable connectors and when reconnected carried on using the same set-up when power was restored. Seems to charge up OK for 2 hours each day. Awkward corners and some edges do still need strimming to preserve uniformity, but this is a small price to pay for all weather lawn maintenance. Read the instructions and it’s reasonably easy to set up and test in 1-2 hours, but you do need the app. for timing. Only time will tell how long the battery life lasts.
I have a large garden with many flower beds and islands. I first used it on a third and an awkward area and was very impressed. It took on this easily and the next third after I expanded the boundary. I then increased the boundary to the whole garden, and even then, cutting back the hours of usage. I had some problems, but only because I did not always follow the clearance measurements! On two occasions, having to solve extra cable to allow the clearance. This was because the mower’s wheel or wheels were caught in the edge of the flower bed and unable to pull itself out. The cable does tend to hide in the grass, but can be buried. Do this after the lawn is very damp making it much easier to trench. I used a grass edge cutter then pegged as necessary. You can be generous with the clearance, as the mower has an adjustable overrun setting. Use this first if you have flowerbed sticking (as above). I’ve had it October to May so far. You will need to clear fallen twigs from trees. Also take into consideration fallen apples etc. Something I have yet to experience. You will never have a roller type manicured lawn, but you will only have to use your normal mower around the boundary, where the robot has not reached. I am saving two hours a week. If it should break, I will fix/replace it. It works for me!
It is very easy to use as it can be programmed to mow via Bluetooth App. Be sure to follow the instructions for the guide wires and bury them .But if for any reason you want to stop and restart that’s not a problem.Wheels can get clogged and cause it to falter ,no problem just clear them and restart via 4 number code( you will have set whilst installing)
Set up was a PITA as the software needed updating and it uses an old fashioned cable.
Once that was done it is pretty straight forward, peg out the boundary of the lawn, find a corner for the base and off it goes. Start off with the lawn short and it will keep on top of it. App is easy to use.
It has got stuck a few times but that is due to a large hole in the ground and now I’ve filled it in no probs.
Apart from the set up I did drop the height too quickly which caused it to cut the boundary wire but that was also more to me not having it pegged down all around and so something to be aware of
It took 4 hours to fit the wire’s, and a couple of attempts to get it to calibrate and it was trundling around the garden. My dog and kittens just ignore it and move out of the way when needed. It moves slowly enough to prevent any accidents.
From the house it can’t be heard at all, I let it run over night without issue, or sound, (I live in a bungalow with bedroom at back) and woke to a nicely mown lawn. It was first cut of year and long and thick in places, I thought it might need one last cut from gardener, I was wrong, this little bot coped with it brilliantly.
As lawn is so bumpy, I had to put the pegs in very close together in some places, which meant that the 150 supplied weren’t enough and had to buy more. Thats the only downside I have so far.
My big tip is, set it at highest cut to start, and you shouldn’t have any issues if have laid the wire tight and level to ground.
If your still on the fence, trust me this little robot really is as good as the reviews suggest.
1 cable goes out from the back of the base, around the edge of your grass and the reconnects so you have a loop, 1 more cable goes straight out from base to furthest point and joins to the loop around the grass you just made. That’s it.
Leaving 6 inches at furtherest point a little loose and not pinned will let you join the cable at the furthest point. Base needs constant power supply if you want the mower to work automatically. Once you receive the mower look at the electric connectors and then buy a few extra for repairs if the outer loop gets damaged, I say after so the you can familiarise yourself and buy them as general connectors and not under manufactures name so much cheaper.
BUT the app is a another story. Initially the app was rather basic but functional. Couldn’t alter many settings – meaning getting on hands and knees to do it manually – rather defeating the object of an app!
Last few days, a much needed update to the app appeared. Many more setting options available. I was pleased. Only to discover that the Bluetooth pairing is not remembered between app restarts. So every single time you want to use the app, you have to get on hands and knees again to do the pairing, re-enter all the info, only for it to be promptly forgotten as soon as the app is closed!! Useless.
So if you want a properly featured app, you will need to avoid this mower until some future date, assuming the app is updated and fixed.
But as a manually set auto mower it works well.
I love my robot lawn mower. It’s a bit of a faff to install the boundary wire (buried), but once done, you can just sit back and watch it mow. The only downside it that you have to take it and the base station inside during the winter, but it’s not a big deal. It does a great job of cutting the lawn, and saves the issue of having lots of grass cutting to deal with.
I’ve used this now for 2 seasons (summer/autumn 2019 and spring/summer/autumn 2020) and I’m not regretting the decision at all.
In general it’s a great bit of kit and once you’ve gone through the initial pain points of setting it up it really is a very low maintenance worker, considering it goes out (in our garden) 3 times a week.
A few points to note are:
1. the initial setup
Putting a guide wire around the area you want cutting takes a little while (a good afternoon’s work). We decided to just peg it in rather than dig a trench and have had no problems with the guide wire being cut. We started out with the cutting blade on it’s maximum height and slowly reduced it over the course of a month. The guide wire is now barely visible at all. In most places it’s completely invisible.
The manual recommends putting the base station out in the open, but I ignored this and shoved it in a corner. This doesn’t seem to be much of an issue, except that the mowbot can’t get to the spots in and around the base station to cut them. I just break out the strimmer once in a while to take care of this.
2. Including a separate garden area.
This is a little tracker to do, but not impossible. We have a very small front garden which needs mowing, didn’t want to have to buy a mower just for this, so instead we ran the guide wire from the back garden, through the garage and into the front garden. Looped the guide wire around the front garden and then back through the garage to the base station. This ensures the guide wire is one continuous loop. There’s a few places where the guide wire is plainly visible, but I’m willing to accept this as a compromise.
To cut the front garden I have to carry the mowbot through the garage, place it on the front garden and switch it to a ‘manual’ mode. It then bounces around the front garden until it’s battery runs out. Occasionally a passer by will stop to take pictures of it, it’s become quite the celebrity…
3 general maintenance
The main thing to do is to replace the cutting blades now and again. I’m particularly lazy with this and have used 2 sets of cutting blades per season. I think the manual advises to change them more often, but I’ve not had any issues yet. You get some spare blades in the box, but there are plenty of extra blades on amazon for a good price. I don’t think I’ve used all the original blades yet, but I have bought an extra pack (not flymo originals) which I haven’t opened.
The wheels sometimes get a bit muddy, especially during autumn months, so you might find you need to scrape mud off the wheel treads to make sure it doesn’t stop the wheels slipping or rotating. You could always stop it from mowing until it’s sunny again.
Otherwise, there’s very little to worry about. It’s very easy to get caught up watching it working to be honest. I’ve spent far too long staring at the thing.
4. Husqvarna
Husqvarna seem to be the industry standard and leader in robotic mowers. It’s interesting to note that some of the parts of the Flymo 1200 R are branded Husqvarna – I think this particular model is an older Husqvarna model rebranded with the flymo badge, which gives some confidence in build quality. (This is just my speculation, I’ve not researched this!)
In Summary there’s some pro’s and con’s to this mower;
Pro’s
– Never needing to mow your lawn again
– No clippings to take care of as the they are so small they’re basically invisible
– It lives outside so no storage space required inside until the winter months, but then it doesn’t take up much room.
– Seems to run pretty smoothly with very little maintenance required
– Works any hour of the day you want it to – rain or shine!
Con’s
– Initial setup takes some time
– If you have a separate front garden that you also want mowing, it’s a bit of a faff (but not impossible)
– It occasionally gets stuck either when it’s cutting blade is blocked (rogue palm leaves that it can’t cut through are a pain in our garden) or if it goes over a nasty pothole (we have a regular fox that visits our garden who digs holes for a laugh)
– It’s minimum operating temperature is 4 degrees (i think?) so it has to be put away for the winter (I also clean it off and shove it back in it’s box for the winter months.. this can take an hour or two)
– Doesn’t do the edges very well – especially where the edge of the lawn comes up against a wall or fence and it can’t get right up against the edge to cut. You may need to break out a strimmer or edging tool now and again.
I’ve used this now for 2 seasons (summer/autumn 2019 and spring/summer/autumn 2020) and I’m not regretting the decision at all.
In general it’s a great bit of kit and once you’ve gone through the initial pain points of setting it up it really is a very low maintenance worker, considering it goes out (in our garden) 3 times a week.
A few points to note are:
1. the initial setup
Putting a guide wire around the area you want cutting takes a little while (a good afternoon’s work). We decided to just peg it in rather than dig a trench and have had no problems with the guide wire being cut. We started out with the cutting blade on it’s maximum height and slowly reduced it over the course of a month. The guide wire is now barely visible at all. In most places it’s completely invisible.
The manual recommends putting the base station out in the open, but I ignored this and shoved it in a corner. This doesn’t seem to be much of an issue, except that the mowbot can’t get to the spots in and around the base station to cut them. I just break out the strimmer once in a while to take care of this.
2. Including a separate garden area.
This is a little tracker to do, but not impossible. We have a very small front garden which needs mowing, didn’t want to have to buy a mower just for this, so instead we ran the guide wire from the back garden, through the garage and into the front garden. Looped the guide wire around the front garden and then back through the garage to the base station. This ensures the guide wire is one continuous loop. There’s a few places where the guide wire is plainly visible, but I’m willing to accept this as a compromise.
To cut the front garden I have to carry the mowbot through the garage, place it on the front garden and switch it to a ‘manual’ mode. It then bounces around the front garden until it’s battery runs out. Occasionally a passer by will stop to take pictures of it, it’s become quite the celebrity…
3 general maintenance
The main thing to do is to replace the cutting blades now and again. I’m particularly lazy with this and have used 2 sets of cutting blades per season. I think the manual advises to change them more often, but I’ve not had any issues yet. You get some spare blades in the box, but there are plenty of extra blades on amazon for a good price. I don’t think I’ve used all the original blades yet, but I have bought an extra pack (not flymo originals) which I haven’t opened.
The wheels sometimes get a bit muddy, especially during autumn months, so you might find you need to scrape mud off the wheel treads to make sure it doesn’t stop the wheels slipping or rotating. You could always stop it from mowing until it’s sunny again.
Otherwise, there’s very little to worry about. It’s very easy to get caught up watching it working to be honest. I’ve spent far too long staring at the thing.
4. Husqvarna
Husqvarna seem to be the industry standard and leader in robotic mowers. It’s interesting to note that some of the parts of the Flymo 1200 R are branded Husqvarna – I think this particular model is an older Husqvarna model rebranded with the flymo badge, which gives some confidence in build quality. (This is just my speculation, I’ve not researched this!)
In Summary there’s some pro’s and con’s to this mower;
Pro’s
– Never needing to mow your lawn again
– No clippings to take care of as the they are so small they’re basically invisible
– It lives outside so no storage space required inside until the winter months, but then it doesn’t take up much room.
– Seems to run pretty smoothly with very little maintenance required
– Works any hour of the day you want it to – rain or shine!
Con’s
– Initial setup takes some time
– If you have a separate front garden that you also want mowing, it’s a bit of a faff (but not impossible)
– It occasionally gets stuck either when it’s cutting blade is blocked (rogue palm leaves that it can’t cut through are a pain in our garden) or if it goes over a nasty pothole (we have a regular fox that visits our garden who digs holes for a laugh)
– It’s minimum operating temperature is 4 degrees (i think?) so it has to be put away for the winter (I also clean it off and shove it back in it’s box for the winter months.. this can take an hour or two)
– Doesn’t do the edges very well – especially where the edge of the lawn comes up against a wall or fence and it can’t get right up against the edge to cut. You may need to break out a strimmer or edging tool now and again.
Takes a while to install the cabling, I elected to bury it to avoid having pegs everywhere. Took over an hour and I only have a small lawn, far to small for an automatic mower you’d think, but all I can say is no lawn is too small.
Once installed its switch on and forget it and admire your perfectly trimmed lawn all year.
Probably only saves me half an hour a week but its far more thorough than I am and keeps it at the perfect height all the time.
I have a pond which I’ve buried the guide wire around, it was a bit heart in mouth the first few hundred times it approached the water and stopped just before falling in, but I’ve come to trust it now.
I was a bit worried about leaving a 500 mover in my garden but apparently thieves dont go for them as they’re unusable without knowing the PIN number. I just hope I dont get any stupid thieves, I have built a little brick garage type thing for it to hide in but being bright orange it does stand out a bit.
All in all, if your thinking about buying one, dont hesitate, you won’t regret not having to get the mower out every week no matter how small a lawn you have.
I needed help from a neighbour to set up the boundary wire etc. but after it was installed I never looked back. I love this robot mower it is brilliant and it is so easy to use. It mows the lawn and there are no clippings as they go back into the soil. When it needs recharged it goes back to the charging station itself. My neighbour has one and his lawn is amazing and looks like a carpet. Hopefully mine will look like his in a while.
My initial review is below – here’s an update. For the last six months I’ve had nothing but problems with the boundary wire/base unit. The base says the boundary wire is in Eco mode and the mower won’t work, or says the boundary loop is not detected etc. First time I tried suggestions to find a possible break, replaced some cable (without finding a break) and it seemed to fix it. A few weeks later same issue, this time found that turning power on/off fixed it. A week pr so and it happened again. Reported fault to Amazon as it was approaching end of 2 yr guarantee, they put me onto Flymo. They had nobody available to help me, said the guy was off work. I tired connecting a new (unburied) loop of wire and it did not fix it, despite the loop being complete. Phoned Amazon again, Flymo phoned me, could not help, still nobody available. A day later a new version of the app was available, downloaded it and it worked ok. At least for a few months. Keeps doing the same, saying no boundary loop detected, then a day or two later it is ok. Now won’t work at all, same error. Tried connecting a new loop again and still saying no loop detected. Piece of shi*. Please do not buy this model.
Initial review: Read lots of reviews before buying, chose to go for mid-range price (this was on offer at time so less than 500). Installation looked simple enough, choose suitable place for charging point, then lay guide cable around the edge of the lawn. This, and quite a few other robot mowers, has an extra cable laid for returning to its charger. It took a couple of hours. Next is setting the mower up, this took a little longer. It didn’t like that I want the charging point off the lawn. I ended up setting up a temporary home near the off-lawn location, got the mower to understand this, then moved the charge point off the lawn as I wanted! The mower is excellent, lawn is 150 square metres and it keeps it trimmed really well in around 3 hours per day – the mower or app works this out. The app it comes with is ok, it is bluetooth only so you have to be nearby to make changes. Had one mis-hap when one of the edge cables was cut by the mower. I decided not to bury the cable, the grass was beginning to grow over it, but we have a visiting hedgehog who thought it was a worm and pulled the cable above the grass! Realised this when I spotted similar happenings the next morning. Easy repair completed using spare jointing blocks. After a few weeks 90% of cable cannot be seen.
What do I like about this mower? Lawn is kept short, even after rainy days. Weeds are disappearing – I remove the odd dandelion flower but prior to the robot mower it was a mess. No grass cuttings to dispose of.
What could be improved? Control via wi-fi. A more random return to base as you can generally see the tracks left with daily cuttings. Easier set-up allowing the charging point to be placed off the lawn.
What you should know before buying – you are told to unplug the charger and edge cables if there is a thunderstorm!
Would I buy this one again if I had to replace it? NO I CERTAINLY WOULD NOT. NOW THINKING OF JUST DIGGING UP LAWN AND DOING WITHOUT GRASS.
What do I like about this mower? Lawn is kept short, even after rainy days. Weeds are disappearing – I remove the odd dandelion flower but prior to the robot mower it was a mess. No grass cuttings to dispose of.
What could be improved? Control via wi-fi. A more random return to base as you can generally see the tracks left with daily cuttings. Easier set-up allowing the charging point to be placed off the lawn.
What you should know before buying – you are told to unplug the charger and edge cables if there is a thunderstorm!
Would I buy this one again if I had to replace it? Yes, unless I had the money to go for a top-end mower!
Come on Amazon, what did i use this product for, really? Its a lawn mower.
My lawnmower currently deputises for most of the cast of the Royal Shakespeare company. Of course, due to COVID his chances of treading the boards are limited.
When he is not touring the country he can be found trimming my lawn in the back garden.
He’s been running about a month now with only a few mishaps, once he was beached due to a hole my dog dug in the lawn. Not his fault to be fair. But, twice he has botched his parking and become stuck, at least thats what i think has happened, it maybe he hit a wire turned and became beached on his own hub. Wither way not great.
When he is working properly things are great. Its a little annoying to have to cut the edges but great to watch him trundle around doing his thing. Presumably practicing his lines for his big break in Hamlet.
A note about delivery, my first one of these went missing in the post. To their credit Amazon sorted it, but it did take a few days. It did amuse me the lady in the contact centre did say have i looked wverywhere for it? It might be in a bush. For the record it comes in a pretty substantial box which has areas in bright orange.
There is no denying that this is fiddly to get installed. Getting the wires in the right place and connecting up the guide wire will take you some time. Once it is in situ though, it will do you proud. The app isn’t particularly in depth, but it does what you would want it to in setting up a schedule and sending the mower out or bringing it in.
When setting up, it’s a really good idea to plan out exactly what you are going to do with the wire. Lay out the wire and adjust it. Only cut the wire when absolutely ready and don’t be tempted to do a small test area first and then expand it (from experience I can tell you that makes it worse!) The connection where the guide wire joins the perimeter has been a bit temperamental for us, with the wire ‘falling out’ of the connector on a regular basis. When we get round to burying the wire, we will twist the ends of the three wires together to make the connection and seal them together. The connectors are not necessarily needed, but are merely there to make things simpler… we just found them fiddly.
I’ll definitely be continuing to use these in the future and as and when this one needs replacing, will be getting the next model up probably just to have those extra few settings. For now this does exactly what we need it to do.
Once it’s set up it’s so relaxing to watch with a beer knowing you don’t have to walk backwards and forwards anymore with a lawnmower. Love it.
(Had to make it a house)
Having broken at least 3 lawnmowers on long grass over the years I decided to invest a little more and purchase a robot mower. My choices were the Flymo easilife or the Worx at the same price point. I decided on the Flymo as it is owned by Husqvarna who make several lawnmower makes including Gardena and McCulloch. The Flymo appears to be exactly the same as the Gardena with a different colour and significant cheaper. Hence parts will be easier to come by. The setup is a little time consuming. This requires a perimeter wire being laid down aswell as a guidewire for returning to base. Several videos YouTube avaliable to help with the procedure. These wires can be buried or tacked down which is what I have done however I will be burying the wire when time permits as the wire can become pronounced when grass grows. Mower itself is very good, sturdy, weather resistant and quiet. I’ve scheduled a daily cut so the grass is maintained and the very small cuttings are mulched and absorbed into the soil. Cutting height is manually adjusted by control on the mower. Schedule can be adjusted by using the menu on the mower or via the app. Note the app is quite basic i.e. change schedule, check error messages, check status of mower and connects via Bluetooth. Therefore you can only adjust settings for the mower when in close proximity of the mower so no WiFi access without some kind of bridge. The limited Bluetooth app and the onerous manual setup is the reason I’ve given 4 stars. Overall very happy as I don’t need to mow the lawn anymore.
I already knew set up would be time consuming, so I did ask for help with that.
However, once we were up and running, it was sheer delight. The bug putters around the lawn quietly shaving it, and I don’t have to do a thing. Not even empty a grass box. And there is no noise to disturb anyone.
My tips for new buyers:
1 – You don’t HAVE to sink the boundary and guide wire. You can just peg it down. We had to do that, as the ground was rock hard.
Just peg it firmly down to the ground, and maybe use more pegs than suggested. We didn’t experience any problems.
2- Pay attention to the recommended wire distances from paths, gravel and borders. There is a guide ruler in the box – we didn’t find it till the end, because it is embedded in the box itself (gah).
3 – Raise the cutting height up to max to start with, to help prevent issues with wire cutting or overlong grass
4- Don’t lose the Allen key, or you will kick yourself. Also make sure you have decent pliers. I had to adjust the wiring after my helper had left, so you can guess I learned this the hard way.
Special note: It is assumed that you will run the mower automatically on a timer, but you don’t have to do this. You can run it on an ad hoc basis. Set the mower to MAN (manual) and it will not operate until you start it. Be aware that there is a timer which is factory set to run from 7am if it is on AUTO, unless you instruct differently.
In summary: if you’re thinking of buying it, stop thinking and click buy now. If you have a higher budget you might enjoy one with app connectivity, but if you want your lawn mown with no effort and a non stratospheric cost, this one is perfect.
Have fun.
The install as detailed in other reviews is a faff yes but it needs to be done.
I buried my wire all round the garden using a half moon edge cutter and just making a gap big enough for the wire then pressing the gap back together.
You will end up naming it, it’s just something that has to be done, I called ours Harry, because it potters round the garden.
The googly eyes I put on because, well it entertains me immensely.
It’s hypnotic to watch whilst having a beer and sitting back, couple this with a cordless strimmer and it’s effortless gardening.
Highly recommend if you love gadgets and have mowing the lawn.
I must admit that I was a little skeptical when a friend gave this product rave reviews one night at a dinner party. He just would not stop talking about it, but his lawn looked like a professionally kept cricket pitch so I thought I would give it ago. I have been using it for 6 months now and am quite literally stunned by the results. My lawn looks like it is professionally kept. It always looks like it was just mowed. Which it was! The robot covers every inch of my large back garden and never, ever, misses even one inch of it. I thought it would leave cuttings everywhere, but they are literally invisible because it is cutting every day and is therefore only taking off a minute amount. I watch the robot happily working come rain or shine (works perfectly even in downpours), and it is always a talking point when anyone comes to our house for the first time. They are not super cheap, but when you weigh it up against the hours and hours you’ll spend mowing, the many days your lawn does not look mowed in between times, the hauling of grass cuttings, and the overall boredom of constantly having to do this job, this thing pays for itself in no time! If you have any reservations about whether this robot works, stop wasting your time reading and start buying – you will not be disappointed!
I love this product.
I took a long time to read over reviews and different models and even debated buying this for over a year. BUT WHY!!! Yes, it’s a bit fiddly to bury the wire as it took me a few hours but once it’s down it works a charm. I initially pegged it on top so I could see anywhere I needed to adjust which was worth it.
My garden is really uneven and there are the few odd areas that I have filled holes it but had this nearly a month and so impressed that all I have had to do is reach for the strimmer.
Yes there are more complicated models but it’s not needed. I have an array of gadgets and smart home stuff and just wish I bought this sooner. Saves me a couple of hours a week and that’s what it’s all about. Job done.
I was a bit sceptical initially about the cost of a robot lawnmower, that has dispelled now we have it in the house.
Set up is relatively easy, there is a reel of wire to lay out around your garden with the supplied pegs. This makes sure that the mower slows a little before bumping into things. If it does bump into something (like a sleeping dog) it does realise that and moves away.
I would recommend NOT burying the cable until you are happy it is in the right position, then it’s just a matter of pushing a spade into the grass and sliding the wire in. The grass does grow around it quickly, so you may decide that it does not need to be buried.
The cut length is determined by a dial under the waterproof cover where all the time and date programming is done, set up is easy and quick.
Once the mower is set up it more or less does its own thing, it just needs an occasional clean (every month or so on a daily cut cycle). Blades are cheap and easily changed (about once every three months), there are plenty on of third party bits and pieces on Amazon.
The big benefit is the quality of the lawn, especially with this weather recently. If the mower is cutting every day its only removing one days growth which it leaves behind to mulch the grass. Our lawn has never looked as good. no more ‘scalped’ lawn look the day after mowing, then ‘unruly’ for a week until my husband gets round to cutting it!
When you weigh up, the quality of how the lawn looks. How much time (and space) you save by not owning a conventional mower. Set that against the cost of a new mower, then you have a great reason to invest in a robot lawn mower.
All you have to do then is sit back and watch it mow the lawn, oh, you will need to pick a name for it as well, it quickly becomes one of the family.
Easier instructions. Not keen on the design connecting at the back. Contacts seem precarious and are completely uncovered. I have a vacuum robot with a single cable at the back, contacts seem precarious. However, I burried the wire, worked first time, had to move it to give a smoother run up, still worked perfectly, wire is easy to cut.
Do include the loop in the boundry wire, as the base may need to be moved, as mine did ( the angle had to be changed, taking the three contact wires in the back with it). Distance In front of base is necessary for robot to back up and turn. Hard work for me to place in the ground, a flower bed edge may have been a lot easier.
Mows everyday.
Easier instructions. Not keen on the design connecting at the back. Contacts seem precarious and are completely uncovered. I have a vacuum robot with a single cable at the back, contacts seem precarious. However, I burried the wire, worked first time, had to move it to give a smoother run up, still worked perfectly, wire is easy to cut.
Do include the loop in the boundry wire, as the base may need to be moved, as mine did ( the angle had to be changed, taking the three contact wires in the back with it). Distance In front of base is necessary for robot to back up and turn. Hard work for me to place in the ground, a flower bed edge may have been a lot easier.
Mows everyday.
The different sizes (200, 350, 500) are exactly the same hardware. The only difference is the length of boundary wire (you can buy more from their parties that works perfectly) and the software. The software difference is how long the robot will operate each day. So unless you want him cutting for 12 hours every day there is no point going for the top model.
Set up is time consuming. The cable to the base is only 8m, which restricts where you put that somewhat depending on your plug socket availability. You need to install a boundary wire & a guide wire. They can be buried or pegged above the ground. I have pegged initially to allow for adjustments but will probably bury bits further down the line. It comes with good instructions and a ruler to help with this.
You can only install one guidewire. However this can be up to 500m long! You can set up to three zones. This is done by setting how far along the guidewire it starts mowing. You can then dictate how much time it spends in each zone. I have a “U” shape garden so have zone 1 at 0m for 66% of the tine, zone two at the top for 25%, and zone three at the other side for 9%. The guidewire also helps him go home to recharge.
The App is very basic. It works via Bluetooth so you have to be in close proximity (works through the window though!) and allows you to start or stop him. Most programming is done in the machine which is easy enough, but really the App could be improved a lot relatively easily.
So far he is cutting at his tallest level and mostly scarrifying all the moss out. Which is great, I just pray grass will grow in its place. It should do, and I am hopeful that by the end of summer I will have a beautiful lawn.
The set up took 4 hours or so. But in the first day he had already cut my entire 210sq m garden, so it’s almost paid off already!
It’s good and does the job:- But be warned they have lowered the quality of the boundary wire and it snaps easily. Originally these wires were made of copper and there was no problem but ours keeps breaking. Also the connector plugs are poor quality and easily come out of the socket.
It wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve done. It took me nearly one day to wire the whole garden that I have. My garden is divided in three distinct sections and there are walls dividing it to these areas. After a careful plan and one day of hard work I managed to place the wire around all three areas. It took a bit of trial and error to get the robot to find its way back to the charger as well but after the setup was complete it now works perfectly fine and everyday the robot starts munching on the lawn like there’s no tomorrow. I was worried that it cannot climb some hills that I have. I was worried before purchasing it and measured the slope and I have some slope above 30deg and the product specifications stated that it can do 25deg. I’ve noticed that when the grass is short enough it can even climb the areas with 30 degrees angle easily.
The battery lasts around an hour to 90 minutes depending how tall the grass is.
The remaining of the grass that it cuts remains in and becomes a natural fertilizer which is handy. I thought it might turn the grass to yellow but because this robot cuts the grass too fine it’s not even visible and the lawn looks fluffy after a few days that the robot runs over it.
It has definitely made my life easier and one less ting to worry about and to work on when I’m at home.
Finally got round to reviewing this.
I purchased this on Prime day as it was listed on Deal of the day and got an absoulte bargain for it. Well worth waiting for when its on promotion if you can.
My experience as follows:
I read the instructions in detail to get to grips with the boundary wire. So basically this is just a green wire that you put around the area you want cut. I used the pegs to start with and thought why not give it a go and see what happens. Really interesting to see one work if are new to this type of tech. Within 2 minutes it had cut through the boundary wire so I did a proper job and sunk the boundary wire deep into the grass. This takes times but is well worth it.
So I have used the device now from July right up to around October. Overall it is great. My application is one area of grass that is a hassle to cut with a normal lawnmower. I set it to cut three times a week and it does the job. I come home to see it moving around and cutting the grass.
No problems with the clippings, they are so small you don’t notice them.
It always go backs to the charging station and it is quiet in its operation.
Negative points:
If the lawn is slightly wet it really struggles and just stops which can be a pain. I think it would be good if it had a rain sensor to tell it to revert back to the charging station when it rains.
It needs more traction, slight gradients are ok but again if the grass is slightly wet it gets stuck.
Conclusion
Overall – great. Yes it could do with some improvements but I love it. This is my first Robot device and I am sure it will not be the last. For much larger areas of lawn I would go for a different brand but for smaller areas this is both on budget and will do the job.
Deal of the day
Product arrived next day, and the following weekend I set about placing the boundary wire, guide wire and recharging station. Picked an absolutely foul weekend to do this, heavy rain etc, but I was excited!
Having read other reviews and advice, I decided to go straight for burying the cables, rather than pegging them to the surface. I used an edging tool to cut a slot and then pushed the cable into that, to about 1-2 inch depth. Took quite a while due to the miserable weather conditions, and the fact that our garden size is at the upper end of the range for this mower, with various ‘island’ trees to consider.
Got it done eventually and had the mower on charge as suggested while I was doing this. Once set up, and after a final cut with our old mower as the lawn was quite shaggy, I set the robot to work.
Now, the nominal cutting width of the blades is 175mm so very narrow and our garden is quite large and an odd shape. I had been worried due to the random cutting pattern used by this mower, that there would be odd little triangles of tufty uncut grass all over the place. I neednt have worried however, this mower is fantastic. I set it to cut between 7am and 7pm every day initially – which it does by cutting for about an hour, then returning to base for an hour or so to recharge, then cutting for another hour and so on, until 7pm. So approximately half the time in fact is spent cutting.
Initially there was the odd high spot where it might go aground (tree stumps that I’d cut close to the ground but not close enough to pass over or high enough to bump into and turn round, but I then removed these altogether. So the first week or so was really fine tuning. I started with the mower on the highest cut setting (50mm) and then gradually wound it down to about 30mm as the days passed. I have never known my lawn to look anywhere near as good. It is short, uniform, and looks a beautiful healthy green. There is no trace of any clippings. Because the mower cuts every day, the amount cut is only a few mm at a time so the clippings are tiny and just mulch straight back into the lawn. And after the preliminary set up, it really did just get on with it with no intervention from me. Kept it going until the first frosts came in early november, which is much later than I’d normally cut the grass if I were having to get the old mower out and cut it myself – but this one just trundles out as programmed come rain or shine and does a fantastic job. It has now been put away in the shed along with its base for the winter. The wires mercifully can stay put all year round.
There are slight long patches right around the perimeter where it doesn’t cut, but if you set the boundary wire up correctly, these should be minimal and can easily be taken care of with 10 mins of strimming every couple of weeks.
It does require a bit of thought and planning before setting up and I would urge you to do this and read the manual carefully as it will pay dividends.
But really this has become one of the best purchases I have ever made.
Not sure how the longevity the battery will be, but if that ends up being 100 quid every couple of years for a new one, it will more than be paid for by personal time freed up and petrol saved.
Do it!
– This mower does my 700 m2 metres meters square lawn quite easily. It cut all the fairly high grass down to a low height in only 2.5 days. In my opinion this mower would easily cut 1,000 m2 meters square plus as it can be set to run all 7 days of the week. One review on here suggests this mower will cut 4,000 m2. I can quite believe that because much larger areas offer long clean runs without continual stopping and turning, where as smaller lawns mean the mower is spending lots of time inefficiently stopping and turning.
– I paid 400 for the mower delivered from Amazon and bought an extra kit on ebay containing 150 metres perimeter wire, 300 pegs & connectors for the larger lawn. This extra kit cost 33. So total cost all in was 433 delivered.
– The total length of the supplied perimeter wire (150 metres) plus the additional perimeter wire I added on for the larger 700 m2 meters square lawn is 210 metres.
– The join in the perimeter wire for the return to base wire and the join for the extra perimeter wire do not affect the performance of the mower detecting the edge of the lawn. Edge detection works flawlessly on all of the perimeter.
– I installed this on Friday morning. It took the whole morning to install. It did 3 cuts and charge cycles on Friday before I realised that I had to press AUTO to get it working as much as it will (it will only cut 12 hrs a day because of Flymo imposed firmware limitations).
– After I had installed the RTB wire I did the initial “can it follow the RTB wire” test. On the menu it’s called the “Calibration”. This checks that it can follow the RTB wire all the way to the end. It does this then starts cutting. I thought that the mower was all automatic after that. It’s not. It does return to base, after this initial test then when it gets back you must press AUTO and start while it is charging. It will then cut automatically on the timer. You must also set the timers for the amount of cutting time & respective days you desire.
– This mower is a wholly HUSQVARNA mower. Husqvarna bought Flymo. The mower is badged Husqvarna all over. This is a quality mower. Husqvarna are the market leader and were building auto mowers decades(?) (a long time in any case) before anyone else.
Limitations / to do list :
– This mower is limited by the firmware on board to only cutting 12 hrs per day. Even if you set it to cut from 00:00 to 23:59 it will only cut for 12 hours in each day. You can set it to cut every day if you want. The literature does not list how many hours it will actually cut as a maximum per day if you set it to cut 00:00 to 23-59, only lists maximum operating time, which is charging time plus mowing time.
– The danger of power cuts. The mower uses the powered edge wire to know where the grass boundary is.
If like me you have a grass boundary which is a flat surface, and which is connected without barrier to another property owners land and the public highway then a potential power cut is a problem. Because in the eventuality of a power cut the mower would not be able to detect the edge wire – because the edge wire would no longer be powered – and the mower would potentially go off off my land into someone else’s. This obviously could bring mower into contact with children or animals and be a dangerous situation. For this reason I only operate the mower while I am in the house so I can be here in the event there is a power cut.
this problem can be resolved with a battery operated current detection system that will send a radio signal to the mower in the event it detects a lack of current in the edge wire, the more I would have a similar simple radio connected to a battery that would then activate the stop switch. this is actually a simple circuit to implement, but it is a question of when I get the time to do it.
– The mower is currently limited by it’s own firmware to being able to charge and cut for only 12 hours per day. This limitation can be circumvented through some combination of resetting the mower and reprogramming it on the fly while it is mowing (avoid on the fly reset while it is charging). This could be done through use of an additional pre-programmed chip, placed on top of or inside the mower, connected to the mower internal chip pin out. Or for more convenient control – even more work – through the use of simple radios as mentioned previously (NRF24 or RFM69C).
– additionally, the use of a GPS with an internal map would alleviate the problem that can potentially be caused by a power outage on the boundary wire, and a rogue mower going off to where it should not, and would also allow the mower to be directed to spend equal amounts of time in all areas. This is future work which I could do but simply have not the time to implement.
– Once an open source project is developed that provides a board with on board (i) control chip, (ii) firmware ie re-programmable software that is baked into a chip (iii) gps (iv) wi-fi (v) remote sophisticated app for our phones all we will need to do is disconnect the current control board and place in a new one. This cannot come fast enough. I am sure the Ardumower project will develop into this.
I will update this review after a few months
Works ok for me, the only drawback is you have to get the strimmer out to cut the perimeter of the lawn where the robot can’t get too. Its a small penalty to pay as it does a cracking job of the rest of the lawn. Just be conscientious with setting the boundary wire up and making the connections.
EDIT April 2021. Put the machine out early April.
It worked on one occasion and then lost all power, technically its still in warranty, Flymo tech support extremely difficult to contact. Its only worked for two seasons.
Edit June 2021, An electrician resolved the earlier problem above. It worked for a few weeks but has broken down again. As usual customer support not contactable, I have only a few days left on the warranty, I will be buying all future big purchases on the high street where I can take them back to the seller. No more big stuff off Amazon, go to B&Q you know where they are
The wire placement is a faff, but I actually enjoyed adjusting the placement after a few months so that I could fine tune the perimeter and now take great satisfaction at the mm-perfect approach to the wall.
I have lost the odd day of mowing a fair few times where he has managed to get lost or stuck or fallen down a hole, but to be honest, most of those are explicable by the challenging terrain (the massive hole for example).
The lawn looks fantastic.
Do I feel guilty about spending so much on a lawnmower – still yes. Would I buy a new one tomorrow if it broke, even after only 14 months – still yes!
Nothing to dislike – he is marvellous – we have a difficult garden – large pond in the middle but he gets round it and keeps the grass looking O.K. it gives our gardener the extra time to actually garden for us. I think it would be a good idea for the wiring from plug to robot (the black and white wiring) to be longer as it limits where one can site it and we have to have the shed in sight because our outside plug is on the house wall. However, not much of a sacrifice.
This mower has been life changing. Took a whole weekend to set up but well worth it. Top tip – watch the videos on You Tube to help with the boundary wire set up. It’s saved us so much time this summer, cutting the lawn and trips to the tip with cuttings as this product does all that for you. I haven’t set timers on mine. I put it out when I’m home and just leave it run all day so I can keep an eye on it as it had a tendency to get stuck in places at the start. I’ve remedied that now. Wished I’d got one ages ago.
Calling this a ‘smart’ device is stretching the term smart to near breaking point. It has practically no sensors apart from collision detection, meaning it goes in a straight line until it hits something big enough to stop it (which does not included small dogs) then turns randomly and goes off again. You have to install boundary wire (provided) around each section of lawn you want to mow, to prevent it from going into flower beds, or over terrace edges. No drop sensors? Also, the detection of the boundary wire happens at the center of the mower, meaning if you haven’t spent a lot of effort partly burying the wire it’s liable to be cut by the mower before it’s detected. Also, it does handle gradients, but it doesn’t handle uneven ground very well. We had to fill in several minor depressions and level a few bumps before it could operate fully automatically. That’s the cons
Now for the pros – it actually does the job. You may have to monitor it the first few runs, but otherwise random straight lines actually do the job. I should also mention that it is perfectly safe. It’s bumped into my small dogs (dachshunds) and while it startled them, and didn’t stop, they weren’t hurt at all. It’s also bumped into me but I’m large enough to make it turn around. The other thing is that is *quiet*. We’ve set it to run early mornings and late evenings and it’s never woken us, nor after several weeks of automatic operation have the neighbours complained.
Great mower but need to place perimeter wire closer to edge otherwise you will need flat blade edge trimmers!! I have managed to put docking station on patio not on lawn, much neater although mower does play pin ball from time to time but finds its way back onto grass. Have to cut every two days or cuttings collect on lawn and looks a mess!!
If you are using with cats I would recommend making your own carport as the ones you buy have too much space at the side and cats will easily be able to get in there – mine was being used as a litter tray!!! Another reviewer suggested using a Samla box from ikea and it’s perfect. I covered mine with ivy fence roll and camo gorilla tape to make it look a little less intrusive (both available on amazon).
The instructions say don’t put the docking station in a corner – but I found that with a bit of trial and error I was able to find a set-up that works perfectly in the corner.
I can honestly say my lawn has never looked this good – and the trimmings truly are invisible. (I was skeptic al about this).
Would I buy one of these again? Absolutely YES.
The process is fairly straightforward, you have a single loop of wire that is installed around the edge of the lawn (boundary wire), the spacing from the wire to the edge depends on what the lawn finishes against so read the manual carefully). The loop starts and finishes at the charging station. Then the guide wire is installed, this runs from the charging station to the most remote edge of the boundary wire were it is connected to the boundary wire using one of the included connectors. Make sure you follow the guidance on which wires connect to which terminal on the charging station as the layout wasn’t what I would have considered logical!
Once all my wires were installed I added topsoil to provide a flat smooth surface for fresh new turf. This meant that my wires were buried and protected. After 2 weeks of growing the turf was ready for cutting (ahead of schedule). My initial attempts to initialise the robot ran into issues which i realised was due to the grass being too long (80mm)!!! So a quick final cut with the traditional mower got it back to manageable lengths. The robot is now fully initialised and starts cutting at midday everyday to the fascination of visiting children 🙂
Whilst i appreciate its brand new turf which helps, I’ve never had such a healthy looking lawn! Long may it continue.
Hi,
Well, I’ve been watching this on amazon (camel camel camel uk) for about 1 year. The price varies quite a bit, usually hovering around 550 – 600, but I got it for 399 on Prime Day, 2019.
I’m delighted with it. My garden is about 550sqm, and the flymo suggested limit is 400sqm, so I knew I would be pushing the limit with it.
It manages to get to all parts of the garden in about 5 days, so even at the moment (end of July in Ireland) when growth is at its maximum, it still manages to keep the grass nice and trimmed.
The lawn had about 4 weeks of summer growth on it when I got it setup, but it wasn’t a problem.
It comes with 150 meters of wire, but I needed to buy another 150m, which cost about 70. Other than that, I built it a little wooden house and it all works fine.
Setting up the boundary wire is a lot of work, took about 8-9 hours in total over a few days as I needed to wait for the extra boundary wire to be delivered, but once it was installed, it works great. Read the instructions, and other reviews for tips, as this will save you time when installing it.
A large part of my garden has a fence, so I just ran the wire along the top of the fence rather than pin it down or bury it. The mower just detects the fence, and chooses a different direction. I also ran the wire along the back of my trees around the edge of the garden, again along a fence. It just bounces off the tree and goes on its merry way. My kids have named it Wall-e.
I also put the boundary wire underneath my cobble at a few places and it still detects it.
Mine is set to the default time, 7am to 10pm. It doesn’t run this whole time. Its cuts for 45-50 mins, and then starts searching for the guide wire to bring it back to its docking station to recharge. It will cut for a max of 6 cycles per day, and 6 recharges per day, and then wont work again until 7am the following morning. 6 x 45 mins is a lot of cutting, 7 days a week. This is the max allowed by the mower. The manual says the battery life is 2 — 4 years. I assume running it to the max like this, 7 days a week with quicken the battery’s demise. You can buy a replacement battery when needed. I’m going to keep mine on max like this until the autumn.
Overall I am very happy and would highly recommend this. I purchased it, as due to my large garden, I takes about 90mins to cut the grass most weekends. Aa a result, I wouldn’t have the time or inclination to take on other garden/household tasks eg, painting, weeding, cleaning gutters, planting flowers, playing with the kids. Cutting the lawn just became a inefficient use of my time, when I can get a machine to do it instead.
Just like washing machines or a dishwashers, at some stage, they become cheap enough to justify their purchase.
I couldn’t register it with flymo, as they don’t have the facility to register mowers in Ireland.
Other than that, I love it.
I bought this 2 years ago through Amazon prime sale as we had just moved house and had a big back garden. I figured I could think of better things to do than mow the lawn. That summer I didn’t even get it out of the box but looked at the instructions with determination. Following spring after a strimmer of my lawn , started to lay the guide wire….disaster, ground dry and got drier last summer…wire kicked out by party revelers and kids in that glorious weather. Decided leave it it until ground easier…. finally this spring got round to it and despite my bf saying it would never work on my bumpy field type lawn …..it does !!!! Nowhere near as bad set up as the instructions make out. Watch a u tube video first . Lawn gas never looked so good. I keep it on long cut setting and run it every few weeks for a day ( it rests/ recharges alternate hours. Dog has stopped barking at it , my bf had to admit he was wrong . Just don’t worry ….worst bit is laying the wire, make sure ground properly soaked before pushing in all those pegs. Now, back to relaxing…
I have finally got around to using this after waiting for my garden work to be completed.
The wiring was pretty straight forward, the cable is hammered into the grass approx 5cm from the edging and away it goes! It is able to handle various garden ornaments without any hassle, just bumps and moves on, and handle our path without issues. I am also happy to report that is does not have any issues with dogs mess if it goes out before I have scooped the poop. It shreds it and mulches for fertiliser.
The programming for timings was pretty straight forward and it is fully customisable for timings and days.
Once again, cannot recommend enough.
Originally I installed the boundary wire using the pegs provided which initially seemed fine. However, I also ordered more pegs because our lawn in quite large and I wanted to make sure it was properly secured in all places so it would be avoided by the mower blades. Unfortunately the third party pegs I used cut the boundary wire in several places (which I didn’t notice until I’d used several). This meant I had to get spare connectors and repair the cables. I then decided to bury the cable which took around 3 hours but is worth doing to avoid future breaks.
I’ve primarily been using the mower on the auto setting which started mowing at 7am every day until the end of the day, recharging itself as required.
It’s also worth pointing out they the power cable has a box that whilst it can be mounted outside, must be kept out of persistent rain. Mount it under a covered area, or even inside an outbuilding, and then feed the cable through… there is plenty of length supplied.
We needed a new lawn mower, so the decision was simple: buy a new lawn mower and spend an hour a week mowing the lawn or spend a bit more money (and more time setting it up) and then never having to mow the lawn again. Yes it takes a while (like most of a day) to get properly set up especially if you bury the cables (mine are half buried and half pegged). And you do need an outside power supply (luckily we already had one of these). When I finally connected everything up I was very glad to see no fault lights as that does look time-consuming. Occasionally ‘Mo’ (sigh) gets stuck but then our lawn is really uneven – maybe twice a week I have to go and find him and relocate him, but it’s a small price to pay. So far we’ve had him for just over a year and have had no problems at all. Fingers crossed.
One issue we did have was the power cable was temporarily going through the window and the mower did run over it as it ran across the the lawn a little…and it cut it to shreds. The repair was simple enough and we have now fitted an outside socket and ‘house’ to store the mower in (and the slack in the cable is tucked away inside it).
We have called the mower ‘Snip Dog’. Rejected names were Farrah, Shreddie and Sir Lawnsalot. Have sat and watched it do its thing for hours. We do wish it went a bit closer to the edge of solid objects, but strimming the edges is easy enough and very rewarding as the rest of the lawn is constantly perfect.
The resulting lawn has never looked so good, the results are fab even after 2 weeks. It is particularly good for the areas of the lawn that the petrol mower was a bit harsh on as the cutting is much less aggressive and the mower is really light. We even have a few edges that have been seeded and the mower is running over them without stopping the new growth or damaging the area. Will certainly not be going back to the petrol mower any time soon.
Really pleased, and despite the cost have no regrets at all.
My dad first bought a petrol Flymo in the seventies and then taught me to use it at thirteen years old! I have been cutting grass ever since. Here I am buying the new version n 2019 age 47!. Bought to mow my mum’s large garden. Set up has take me a good few hours because I have chosen to bury the boundary wire in the ground, using a half moon edger. I did this so I can mow in the autumn if necessary picking up leaves. Once I did this it was a simple set up and away it went. Have a good read of the instructions one evening before you start and it will be easy. Its early in its life yet but its doing just what I expected it would and very neatly with out fuss.
OMG this little grassbot is the business, keeps the grass cut perfectly all the time. I had it set up in 1 Day this was mostly time spent burying the cables. Next day (I let it charge overnight) off my little grassbot went and I’ve never had my bother except from the wife who complained that I was watching my new helper too much…..but it’s so therapeutic watching somebody else do my usual job while I enjoy the sun lol
This thing is so quiet it can cut the grass at night, pushes footballs out of its way but smaller items will cause problems so make sure you check the cutting area is clear before you let it loose, great invention!!
It now trundles around the lawn saving me time and still doing a great job. Also you can go closer to edge than the instructions advise, particularly if there’s little “drop” off. This will minimize the amount of growth that will be inevitable that you’ll need to strim to keep tidy.
I moved it way down the garden and got an after market 30m low voltage power supply cable from Amazon. It’s better quality than the 10m version supplied with the mower! It’s now much further away and out of sight. Bright orange does stand out! – so we built a shed for it to sit in. Stops my kids and their friends inadvertently damaging it and keeps it out of sight.
I have found 2 small issues though:
1. If you have leaves or other debris falling on your lawn that would normally be “hoovered” up by a regular mow, then these will just get left on the lawn. It looks unsightly and you’ll need to mow or blow/vacuum the lawn to clear away debris.
2. If your lawn is bumpy, or has depressions (i.e. in mine where a pond used to be, we filled it in but it’s settled into a small depression relative to the rest of the lawn) then the mower will create a “crater” outline of short cut grass (or soil areas!) where the mower isn’t able to run level/flat. You’ll then need to raise/lower such areas to remedy this. If you were hand mowing you’d be “careful” and avoid such issues – robomower doesn’t care.
So far so good. It’s a great little machine and mesmerising to watch. I had a lot of moss on one side of my garden and the grass grew over that side fast too, with only cutting once a week it was good for the moss but since having this little flymo coming on 3 times a week morning and evening it’s definitely improved. It’s quiet so can have it going overnight if you prefer but will set off motion lights. The only negative thing I can say is the day after mine arrived, Amazon had a spring sale where it was 100 cheaper! Gutted but I’d already set it up and I suppose that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I buried all my guide wire and to be honest it’s definitely worth doing. I just used an old handsaw and cut a line which I then pushed the wire into. If you are thinking about getting one and can afford it then go for i
We call him Murray. Given he is mowing my lawn, I looked out and saw him beetling about in the rain – and felt sorry for the bot. He carries on in the rain and the mowing works very well.
The dog took an interest in him for a few minutes, but it’s just part of the garden now and they ignore each other.
The boundary wire took some effort – probably because I wanted to bury two thirds of it near the patio. I shouldn’t have worried about a trip hazard as it disappears really quickly, so should have pegged the lot down.
Seeing him approach the charging station, back up and reverse into the station is cute. He hasn’t missed it once.
He got stuck three times. One on a branch I had cut down and twice on two holes I should have filled in (one was a brick I removed when digging in the boundary wire)… Most of the t8me, he surprises me by reversing or turning out of trouble.
Was this a waste of money? No way.
Does it give me time back? Certainly yes.
Do I have a nice lawn? I do now and I expect it will get much better as the lawn much helps feed the lawn.
This unit must be made by Husqvarna as the power supply has that name on it, so I feel this is great quality kit and at an OK price.
I did think I wanted a bit to create lawn stripes, but the result I have now is tidy, neat and better than the petrol mower I previously used.
Be prepared to have some attachment to the bot, as it very quietly sorts your lawn out. That said, he isn’t coming on holiday with us as he will be too busy mowing the lawn – and I have every confidence he will get on with it whilst we are away…
There are a couple of things to watch out for:
1) The original installation took a couple of hours for our 150 sq.m lawn, but once it’s done that’s it. We followed the instructions and laid ours on the grass, hammering the pegs down to the level of the soil. After a couple of weeks the grass had grown up around the wire and it’s now invisible. During this time, keep the cutting height high to avoid cutting the wire – again this is in the instructions;
2) Cutting frequency: For our lawn Flymo suggest 4 times a week with 10 hours of cutting time available, which left it looking trampled. Once I thought about it, I realised that a set once approach is never going to work: you wouldn’t stick to the same cutting frequency with a manual mower, so why with an auto? Also everyone’s lawns are in different conditions, so will grow at different rates. A more flexible approach is needed. What we worked out (by putting it on manual and leaving it till the battery ran out) is that one charge pretty much does the entire lawn once. So we’ve now reduced the cutting down to a couple of days a week and a couple of hours of cutting. As the season progresses and the grass grows faster we’ll up it. We’re also trying having it start mowing later in the day so that the morning moisture has gone. Yes, it’s designed to cut when it’s raining etc. but it just seems better to try to minimise wet cutting as much as possible.
3) Winter: I brought everything in: mower, base unit and power supply. Just disconnected the cables and put it all back in the box having given it a clean. Does mean you need somewhere to store the box, but it’s worth it.
4) Connectors / Wire: buy more connectors and leave plenty of spare cable. The wire is quite brittle, so has a tendency to break especially at the base unit. Then you need a new connector and will get through the supplied ones quite quickly. They’re inexpensive (<5 for 5), so worth ordering some more. Just search the internet.
5) Don't forget where you laid the guide wire: I did. Raked it up getting rid of some moss. Dohh. (that's why I used more connectors)
In summary, get one you won't regret it. Watch the pricing, it fluctuates wildly; buy at a price point you're happy with and don't look again! 🙂
I like gardens and don’t mind looking after flowerbeds and planting new plants. However, I find lawn maintenance tedious to say the least. I was thinking of getting AstroTurf installed but actually this robotic mower from Flymo was a cheaper option, and I prefer I natural lawn especially if it requires relatively little effort.
The biggest effort with this mower is setting it up. It’s worth reading the instructions carefully and looking at the DVD that comes with the mower. I guess it took me around three to four hours to set the mower up. I was concerned that I don’t have a power outlet by the lawn but the unit comes with a 10 metre long low voltage cable so in reality all you need is an external socket which I have.
The unit is fully programmable and its secret is frequent mowing, so there’s no need for a grass box as the short cuttings mulch down. The mower is not over loud in use and simply gets on with the job.
Overall no problems to date. Five stars.
Initially I had a flashing blue light after installation of wiring this is not good as it indicates a fault in boundary wire or guide wire. I then reinstalled all my wires again and this time I got a solid green light. At that point I should have been ready to go but kept getting a loop fault. I decided I knew that I must have installed correctly but still got the loop faults when I had a solid green light. Trolled through YouTube Flymo DVD and manuals etc and basically green light means no issues. This was in a Friday so I decided to leave as is and contact Flymo on the Monday wasn’t straight forward for the tech person but eventually was advised I had to go into settings then security then create a new loop signal.
Once I did that every worked great.
Excellent cutting very quiet and highly recommended by me.
Then I powered up the circuit and let my mower go, now named ‘Herby 2’ after a dog I had as a kid. It got stuck in a couple of times in muddy holes in my rough lawn, which I easily filled with extra soil. It cut the wire a few times on mounds, so I cut the top of the mound off or buried the wire. But soon it was cutting away without any problems and chasing my dog around the garden. I had one concern at the start, it didn’t cut the full amount I had programmed, but after consulting the help desk I found it works like my Roomba, it estimates the size of your garden and stops once it thinks its cut it all.
As the summer progressed I lowered the cutting height and found the perfect grass length and have never looked back. The grass is greener and thicker and looks something akin to ‘Telly Tubby Land’ with its precisely mown undulations. Now I’m looking forward to opening up another 100m because it handles 400m easily on a 4 day week.
Finally, apart from cutting my lawn better than I could ever hope to with a normal mower, it is interesting to watch, travelling and bumping around my garden and hiding behind my shed so I think its disappeared. I would most certainly buy it again if I had the choice.
1. A very long real of cable. Peg this down around the boundary of the area you wish the lawnmower to be confined. Tip: save a decent length for the guide wire because it all comes off this 1 real. Don’t use it all up on the boundary.
2. A couple of bags of plastic pegs. Use these to peg the cables in to the grass. Smash them in deep so children, animals, the lawnmower and YOU cannot trip over them. Either that or bury the cable in the soil.
3. A large charging pad. Needs to be relatively close to the power outlet. Do not install the pad in direct sunlight. The mower will sit there and cook itself in the summer. Both ends of the boundary wire, the guide wire and the power supply all plug in to the sockets at the back of the charging pad.
4. A robot. This is the clever bit that cuts the grass. The cutting blades look quite pathetic at first glance, but don’t be fooled. Because the robot mower is cutting just the growing tips of the grass at regular intervals these little ‘razor’ blades do a good job. It doesn’t cut the grass like a good quality mower would do, but it’s good enough for a family lawn.
5. Power adapter. Steps down the 240v to 12v DC (I think). Either way it’s a sealed unit with a fairly long lead. Probably 5 metres.
After using the mower towards the end of last season I can visually notice the grass looks healthier. This is more than likely down to the mulching effect this mower has on the grass. I actually purchased three on these lawnmowers because I have several lawns. 2 I have yet to install as I wanted to see how 1 got on first. I’m happy enough with the first one so, come spring, I will be setting them all trundling across the gardens at midnight to take over mowing duties that would usually take me a weekend of manual mowing.
They are extremely quiet. You can hear the grass being cut over the noise of any motors inside!
They bounce off of objects, animals and people.
Be careful if you have overhanging trees. When dead wood drops to the ground this mower will typically run it over and whack it with the cutters for good measure. This will inevitably blunt the blades quicker than expected.
The theft alarm works well. I’ve set it off a few times. it cannot distinguish between a real theft attempt and the owner moving it.
It handles all terrains, that we have. Some mossy, more moist areas. Some barren areas. Some ares where, for reasons unknown to me, the grass grows 10 times quicker than anywhere else in the garden. We have inclines that could be described as small embankments I suppose. It cuts up and downhill as well as along the slopes.
In other words, the wheels are very gripful (I invented this word. It isn’t in the English dictionary yet but the more people use it the more likely it is to be included.)
You WILL name it. It’s natural for humans to name things that appear to have personality.
To summarise. I am a robot mower convert. I doubt I will never not own one again.
I had mine running twice a day (dawn and dusk), but that really was overkill. Its now been reduced to twice a week at 6AM and no visible mulch is left. I sleep through it mowing every day.
The mower is almost silent. If your grass is a bit long (first cut of the season) or there are leaves on the grass, you can hear this. Its not loud, but its audible. The motor whine driving the wheels makes more noise than the spinning disk.
The mower doesn’t go in straight lines, its not GPS or wifi controlled, just a timer and a random pattern.
The boundary wire is key. When setting this up, peg it out loosely where you want it to be and have enough slack cable. Its easier to cut wire off, than cut it on! Let the mower bounce around the lawn and try position the mower at different angles to the guide wire to check it doesn’t fall off (if you have a drop). The book says leave about 30 cm from the edge. I found I can get away with between 10 – 15cm YMMV I also turfed the area, so the cable was buried just underneath the turf without any issues
Top shell is a bumper, so it can operate forwards or backwards, so even if you mess the guide wire up (short of it falling off into a pond), it’ll bounce off something and probably take the heads off some flowers.
This is waterproof and will cut in the rain, but its always nice to make a little kennel for the device too. If you make it deep and short, its out of prying eyes and its fairly difficult to see as the orange is a bit shouty. As long as the return wire is straight for the last few meters, it will hide away nicely. Its fairly satisfying to see it reverse back into its kennel. Its even better not having to cut the lawn too.
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.
Having had my robotic flymo since 2 August 2018, I will say it is awesome. Those people who have posted negative reviews must either have had too much vino, or have been influenced to post such reviews.
I do accept that the instructions are all over the place and unessarily technical. They should focus more on the setting up of the perimeter wires and the basic digital controls.
But, once the mower is set up it is amazing! I set mine up on 2 August 2018 and have not touched my motor mower since! My refuse collectors are confused that there has been no green bin. This must save the Council a fortune.
Each morning, at 7:00am my mower starts and, after returning to charge itself every hour or so, continues to mow until 5:00pm. Amazing.
Definitely worth the 535 I paid.
It’s quite hypnotic watching it so it’s work when you are in your garden reading the newspaper or having a BBQ.
It has my maximum 5 star rating with no reservation.
Oh, and it’s fascinating to watch, is a real talking point for visitors and works in all weathers. VERY quiet too. Hardly sounds like it’s doing anything. Oh, and no, you don’t notice any grass cuttings (unless you leave it a very long time between cuts).
The shorter guide wire meant the mower took about 10 minutes to find its way back to the charging station. I decided to purchase extra guide wire, pegs and waterproof 3 way joints – this was about another 40 all in. After 2 days the lawn was perfectly mowed. Once the extra wire arrived the mowing process became much more efficient so I was able to set the mower to work every other day rather than daily.
The mower has been working for 2 months now, it’s got stuck 3 times over that period, normally manoeuvring close to a boundary. 2 minutes gets it moving again.
Overall highly recommended as I have not had my lawnmower in use at all this summer!
Robomow goes off every night (you can programme him) and cuts the lawn while we sleep – it is so quiet!
The lawn is in excellent condition.
We have him installed on a couple of paving slabs in the corner of the garden under a little garage that keeps him out of view for the most part.
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.
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.
After reading the manual over and over again and restarting over and over again I eventually lowered the cutting height as nothing else left to do.
Then I could see bits flying about. I had previously strimmed the lawn quite low. There doesn’t seem to be any indication as how low your cutting blade is. The next thing it cut through a boundary wire, so higher cutting blade and check for exposed boundary wire. Now have to connect wires, but with hope Louis will be great!
Very quiet – doesn’t disturb us or the neighbours, we can even set it off at night with no problems.
Efficient – easily cuts our grass in one charge
Easy to use – we use it manually (we move it to the grass ourselves when we want it cut). All you need to do is put in the pin, press start and close the hatch.
Negatives:
Setup – it was a pain to setup and to get our head around. But this only needs to be done and, once we understood it, the setup wasn’t that complicated.
The wire – there is no easy, neat solution to having the Flymo. As the base must be permanently connected to the wire and a power supply it leaves wires trailing unless you have an elaborate way of hiding the wires (perhaps under your paving/decking etc).
Perimeter/Fencing/Walls – You have to place the perimeter wire about 30cm away from fences (I’m not sure why so far as the Flymo reacts quite well to bumping into objects and then choosing an alternative path). This leaves a very large amount of grass which then needs to be cut manually – not quite meeting the objective of having a robotic lawnmower.
Overall, we are very happy with the purchase. It’s much cheaper than alternatives and does a great job.
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
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
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.
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!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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 !
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!)
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.
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.