WORX WR130E S300 Landroid Robotic Mower 300m²

It will not be used until next April.
It appears to be good value and competitive with rivals. I have had very good service from Worx equipment dating back over 10 years without problem. I was drawn especially to the long warranty on the motor and the ability to update the software. The installation, Bluetooth set-up and manual operation all went as per the instructions. A trial run drew attention to some minor adjustments needed to the boundary wire to ensure the drive wheels kept out of the borders.

Unfortunately it will not see serious use until the grass starts to grow again, but I’m looking forward with confidence to it being a good buy!

Works well
Initially there is some setting up to do but after a week or two and some YouTube videos it can basically be left alone to cut the grass. Very pleased with i

Just love this
I did a lot of research before buying this and I am really happy with it. It copes with my bumpy lawn and does a great job. I followed advice of other reviews to make sure the wire is just under the surface by scoring a channel. Lawn is looking really good already.

Tricky to set up but a great machine
Once up and working, this lawnmower is amazing. However it is tricky to get set up and sync to WiFi. It’s takes time and you really have to read the instructions. I found out that the firmware on the lawnmower wasn’t upto date so I couldn’t get it to work or sync with WiFi. As it was a weekend tech support didn’t respond straight away. When you have put aside a full day to get it all working, that’s an issue. However, I went on reddit forum and put a post in the the landriod sub reddit and someone said check the firm ware. So after checking it, I found out that it was out of date and not the latest version, so it wouldn’t sync with the app. I got a USB downloaded the new firmware onto it, then at the back of the machine there is a USB slot, I plugged it in and followed the instructions online on how to ingrate the firmware…..and it worked, the robot lawnmower syned over WiFi and it started to cut the grass. Then I could add a schedule for cutting on the app and just leave it to cut for 1 hour every day. Its not a simple plug and play machine, but if you are prepared to to a few hours getting it set up, then it’s amazing. To control your lawn mower from your smart phone is a game changer and I no longer have to mow my lawn. I would say if you aren’t tech savvie and not confident with smart phones or upgrading software on things, then this could stump you out. But if you are confident with tech it’s not an issue. I bought this on a 25% off sale.

Simply amazing!
Awesome little product and worth every penny! It’s does take a little time to set up but once that is complete all you do is sit back and relax. I haven’t cut my lawn since purchasing and the grass looks amazing, well maintained, luscious and green. Would highly recommend!

Worth the money 👍🏻 👍🏻
I love it!
Easy to set up and after a few tweaks with the boundary wire you have nothing more to do other to watch your little robot cut your lawn.
If you like a perfectly cut lawn look (without lines) then this is the machine for you. All you have to do is strim a few hard to get to areas, the rest of the time you just sit back…. nice

Brilliant Mower not so great instructions
This is an excellent robotic lawn mower and we have not been disappointed. The physical set up is straight forward and just takes some time and care. What is then a bit puzzling is getting the thing to do it’s stuff via the app. Set to auto it languished in the garden not moving for days on end. I can easily tell it to mow but it is supposed to think for itself and do it. It does occasionally tootle out and mow for about an hour. The. It parks its self for a few days. Clearly a setting not right. And this is the only issue I have with Worx not the mower. Do some descent instructions and a cheats guid to setting up on auto please!I have emailed them. They emailed back saying wrong department (instead of just forwarding it to the right one!). So when told it is a joy to watch the lawn being mowed whilst I am doing something else. I just wish the how to use instructions had have been better. I would still but it again though as the mower copes really well with our slopes and undulations cutting right up to the edge. So good mower not so good instructions but you can figure most of it out yourself – apart from auto!

What a cracking piece of kit!
After much consideration, I finally decided to purchase the Worx WR 130 E S, which ideally suited my needs for my small, odd shaped, fairly bumpy lawn area. I did consider the edge trimming model but that was 250 more so decided that for just a bit of strimming at the edges, the smaller model would be fine.
Installation, following the Worx instructions, was quite straightforward, although I was a little concerned that you just laid the wire into the grass, but carried out the procedure as described in the instructions. I decided that it would be ideal to dig in, in places where footfall over to the grass may cause problems of tripping on the wire. I am retired and getting on in years so installation was a slower process than would normally be, but I completed the complete installation in an afternoon.
Running the mower for the first time was straightforward, although linking up to the Wi-Fi was a little problematic, even though I had a very strong signal at the charging point. The message came up on the mower readout that the connection was successful but the phone would not link up. So I consequently started the mower manually and away it went.
Later that day I tried connecting with the phone and, this time, connection was successful.
As instructions said it would be best not to dig initially on see that the mower was going exactly where you want it proved to be good. I found that their distance of 26 cm was a little bit wide and after fine-tuning found that 18 to 19 cm from the Borders was just right.
We do have problems with foxes in our area and they had tended to dig up and chew the wire in places which had to be repaired, but after fine-tuning I decided I would dig the wiring a centimetre or two into the soil, just pressing the spade blade in to the soil a fraction, wagging it side to side, then pushing the wire in and closing the gap.
I did have a problem when I was notified that firmware update was needed. I downloaded the update onto USB stick and followed the instructions, only to find that the mower went completely dead and would not restart. I tried reinstalling again and again, but still to no avail. I contacted Worx via email to which they responded very quickly (within an hour or so), explaining that they had come across this problem a few times before and attached the software required to reset the mower and install an updated firmware. Installing the new firmware went reasonably well although it didn’t follow exactly the procedure the instructions said, starting the mower manually and away it went. Since then I’ve had no problems whatsoever.
I must say that my lawn has never looked so good. I’ve now had the mower for a couple of months and I can, at will, change the settings, times, mowing, etc any time I want from my phone.
And a great bonus is, that if foxes decide to transcend the lawn, I just call Robert up and tell him to get mowing – they soon clear off! So mower that acts as a Fox deterrent. FANTASTIC!
To say that I’m pleased with this fantastic little machine is just an understatement. I encourage anyone thinking of buying one that this is the make to get.

I've fallen in love with my robot (sounds like a title of a book!)
I purchased the L1000 from a well know diy store because it was 35% off! Huge saving! (Bought it this year because of the price!) And after a week I’ve fallen in love with it!

Recognise now, it isn’t a 5 minute setup and it works. If you think this then reset your expectations now. Its not even a set it up in a day and it works. Think about getting a pet, you have to spend time to settle it in and train it. Then it will be comfortable and do things which make you happy; but equally you need to invest time to make it happy.

So there’s some key things to consider…

Phase 1 lay the boundary wire.
I have a garden which is 40m x 12m so it is large. It took a couple of hours to lay the boundary wire.
There are some good tips and tricks videos on this. (American and German)
My advice is as follows
Plan, and check the plan before you start.
Start with the base make sure it is level
Going around the boundary, make sure the area for the boundary is level and without pot holes (I’ll come to this later)
After setup I found a good video which gave a great tip which is good for larger spaces.
1. Use a garden spray marker to mark the line (useful but not essential)
2. Use an edge trimer turned on its side to make a trench for the cable so it is very slightly buried

Phase 2 test the boundary
Because the mower is now ready to go. Get it to run the boundary line.
Now what you may spot is places the mower struggles with. Either fill the holes with a little topsoil so it is level OR move the boundary wire slightly.
I had to do this quite a bit. Also note this may need to be done over several days once things are running.

Phase 3 sit back and relax as you cut the grass.
Grab a beer or wine or gin or whatever, and enjoy it as you cut the grass from your sun lounger!!!
Your first cut you will be mesmerised and nervous about what will happen… a bit like when you let your cat or dog out the first time. A little apprehension and a lot of happiness! (and that’s the end of the pet analogy!)

Phase 4 fix the problems
Actually you need to watch it well keep checking it for the first week.
Why??? Because sometimes it gets stuck.
This isn’t a fault with the mower, it is a reaction to how it deals with problems! I have a divot in the ground near the end (return to home) of the boundary wire. If I hit this divot at the wrong angle, the hunt for the boundary wire causes it to go too far away and it then looses itself and reports a fault. BUT once the divot was filled, it never had this problem. (note hitting a divot elsewhere didn’t produce the problem and it found the boundary wire, it was just because it couldn’t do the hunt for wire in the short distance back to the home base)
There are other little problems you will spot and the mower’s logic doesn’t always deal with it the best, so rather than let the mower deal with problems in your garden, just fix the underlying problem which is usually a dip or a bump or being too close to a fixed object.

General comments
After 12 days, (12 charging cycles) it has travelled 44Km and been cutting for 41 hours.
Each day it works for about 3.5 hours.
Ive set the mower to cut every day in the time window of 6 hours ie cut till you get a flat battery.

So I didn’t think it was doing much, especially in this heat. BUT when I compared to the grass in an excluded area, I can see there has been about 4 inches of growth elsewhere. So the mower takes a tiny amount off every day and you don’t notice it. This is much better for the grass. Remember because it cuts each day, keep the grass cut high! Don’t think like a normal mower where you cut once a week and take loads off let the grass be a little longer but it will maintain that same height. Longer blades of grass means more photosynthesis, means more healthier grass. Trust me this will be better!

Do you need all the other attachments??? Well this is about choice.
I think some modules are useful I have wifi which covers my garden, but many people don’t if you want to use the app, you need wifi or the radio link box.
The two interesting ones are
Off limits virtual fence this allows you to put down a magnetic strip (this isn’t clear in the documentation) which creates a boundary around objects in the middle of the garden, or temporary things. Personally I have a different solution which requires some electrical knowledge and an understanding of how the boundary wire works! There is a video on this topic which you can look at if you are interested. BUT this is idiot proof and quick and simple just expensive!
ACS (anti collision system) this is an ultra sonic detector (common in robots) that detects something in its path. And so it will redirect itself to go around the object. I might get this next season as it means items such as footballs left on the grass can be avoided and I can then be super lazy and not clear the garden at night!

Oh just because it cuts the grass, doesn’t mean you don’t need to do anything!
You still need to trim edges as it may not be cutting right to the boundary if you have uneven ground, or obstacles for it to go around.
AND you need to clean it once every two week (I suggest) and check the blades are still sharp. They will blunt if you cut in the wet; and it will get grubby!!!

Summary
Love it. It does what it said on the tin. Its not perfect, but then again I didn’t expect it to be. BUT with a little patience and consideration, it does what it should and cuts the grass for you.
Invest the time up front, don’t complain when it goes wrong, but try to work out the problem with the boundary and ground its only dealing with what its being ask to cut and so you can iron out those problems with a little thinking.
Keep watching it to understand what is happening I’ve gone from multiple problems per cut to multiple days without a problem; each time I have a problem I remove it and its no longer an issue. By the end of the month I should be cutting without an issue any more.

Oh and I didn’t say its really quiet, I mean you don’t hear it level of quiet! I have it start at 0700 but I would be happy to have it cut in the early hours. You just don’t hear it unless its beside you.

I would recommend this to people who don’t have the time or inclination to cut the lawn it’s a great timesaver BUT if they want stripes in the ground; sorry that’s a manual job with a mower.

Good at mowing but cloud software is unreliable
I have a 500sq.ft garden & the mower does a pretty good job of keeping it looking trim. The “cut to edge” feature works ok on path edges but not borders as it still can’t get close enough without the wheel falling over the edge.

Compared to my previous robot (a Flymo) it gets stuck more often (mostly around the dry dusty edges or if it runs over a pine cone) but at least it tells you when it’s stuck. Or it’s supposed to… And that is the biggest problem I’ve come across so far. The internet connection software and App are unreliable and badly written. It loses connection with the cloud for long periods of time and doesn’t remember anything that happens to it while it’s disconnected. So you get some alerts & not others and the activity log is incomplete. Oh and ignore the marketing hype about cloud-controlled amount of cutting – it only works properly if you set it up & optimise it manually. Which works well from the app as long as the machine is actually connected at the time!

Great for mowing if you're lazy person 😁
Got 450m2 lawn which drives me crazy when doesn’t look good. Had basic Husqvarna model (1200 paunds 2019 model) that supposed to be for garden up to 600m2, but never managed to do the whole lawn equally. After an year of using Husqvarna saw an YouTube video of Worx and decided to try it. So far (almost two months of use) I’m very happy with. No uncut patches and and lawn looks beautiful. WiFi connection is very useful for me. Cut to age function is also a plus. The only cons for now is that if you stop it or it blocks while mowing you need to take it back to the charging station to restart (or at least haven’t find a way to do it without take it back to the station). Definitely will recommend. Especially for the price.

7 Thumbs up
Excellent product – real time saver and does a superb job

Great little bot!
Why would you get a robotic lawn mower – doesn’t that make you lazy? I don’t think so – I’m not lazy by nature, so whilst this does its thing I can be doing other things, and during busy weeks, or time spent with family it’s nice to know that the lawn is one less thing to fit in between that schedule

I love this bot – it takes some work to get set up; laying the wire was whole days job on what is a complex large lawn (a square small lawn will be quick and easy IMO). You wire it up to a base, and off he goes – every day for 1.5 hours randomly cutting the grass. It’s quite a thing to watch!

For the first week, I had some concerns. I didn’t like the random nature of bot thinking that it may cause abnormal patterns on the grass, and to me, it seemed to be an uneconomical way of doing things. However, it is so light and the cut is so regular that no patterns are visible after the first week. I also think the irregular patterns enables the grass to be cut better. A couple of weeks and I was thrilled

In what is an irregular-shaped lawn I had to do some zoning. Some more info for this would be appreciated, but was fairly simple to set up and works efficiently with the bot concentrating on larger areas more than the smaller areas, and can confirm that it is happy with a large lawn despite the irregular shape

It does get stuck – more so on the first couple of weeks and I needed to tweak the wire in places. Besides that once a week I may need to free it from a corner or dislodge a twig from its wheels – for this reason I prefer it to be running when I am here, and see this as a required job for any mower bot, as it’s impossible to know what it will encounter. However, saying that it handles really well on an incline and does free itself on boggy ground.

I didn’t opt for the anti-collision attachment but have found it is not required for my lawn as the bumper detects my trees and the bird table – it does give them a good bump though, so any non-static objects on the lawn and you may want to look into that anti-collision attachment

So I am thrilled. I do have one niggle – this thing is pretty stupid when it wants to go home. To explain; the perimeter wire acts a guide, so the bot will find the wire and follow it to home. This is fine, but as it goes clockwise every time, it can sometimes seem very silly. For example, if it finds the wire only 1m from home, it will then go the opposite way all the way around the garden and then dock home – on my garden that is 150m it looks rather silly to see him going the long way round. However, it doesn’t run it’s blades when doing so and monitoring the battery, it doesn’t seem to drain, so whilst it looks silly it doesn’t affect its performance

Couldn’t recommend highly enough!

Better than the Robomow
Had a Robomow for 3 years and loved it moved house bigger garden needed to upgrade.
However everything about the Landroid WR153E is better. The app connects over wifi rather than bluetooth so you can get a live update whilst at work and you can control it from work or your house from the app. You can program the Landroid with more detail like rain delays, garden size and frequency.
The Landroid itself is lighter which is important as the Robomow would get on wet grass as it was over 13kg the equivalent Robomow for this size garden is 22kg the Landroid is only 10kg. The blades are miles cheaper and don’t disintegrate plastic toys left in the garden as they fold in on resistance. Also bought the ACS for extra safety which works really well. Also another big plus when the battery reaches end of life i can use it on my other Worx Tools which need less power and buy a new one for 50 Robomow batteries cost 100’s and need to be dealer fitted for you warranty i loved the Robomow but this is far more advanced and over 500 less for the equivalent model.

Job done!
This has taken away 99% of the work of cutting the lawn. All i have to It cuts the grass around the very edge which now takes minutes.
If you have a fast growing lawn that you have to cut every 7-14 days and it takes you an hour or more and dont like the task, this is for you!
It even has multiple zone support so I can take it out of the back and put it on the front lawn, press go and away it goes cutting until the batty dies then you just put it back on the dock. Brilliant!

Excellent robotic mower but check if it's for you firs
Having never used a robotic lawnmower, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I opened the box. My first impression was the size of the thing, it’s not a small item by any means, though it is comparable to a standard mower, albeit chunkier and without handles. Unsurprisingly, it is pretty heavy, not so much that it’s too heavy to lift, but certainly it feels like a solid item. Inside the box, alongside the mower, you’ll find a battery, charger, charging station, perimeter cable and various other fixtures and tools to set the mower up.

Essentially the mower will follow a random path over your lawn, within an area denoted by a guide wire, occasionally returning to its homebase to recharge.

Setting up isn’t straightforward however, to begin with there is only a short, pictorial quick start guide in the box and the PDF, available online isn’t pretty short too. There are two main considerations: siting the base station and placing the guide wire. On the first point, you will need to take a few things into consideration, you need an external power point to begin with, something the majority of us won’t have and then you will need to site the station in a level, shaded place that is conveniently close to the lawn. This may work well in a more modern build, but ours is a very old place and as such finding a suitable place was difficult. As for the second point, fitting the guide wire is pretty simple, just really time consuming and involves a lot of trial and error. The wire needs to be flush with the ground, otherwise you run the risk of the cable being snagged by the mower, which has happened once to us.

Worx say that this is to be used only on lawns that are fairly level – less than 30 degrees incline – and are well established. Ours meets these criteria, though it is slightly sunken and is bordered by a dwarf wall. This wall has proven a little difficult for the mower, as the radius of some of the curves is too tight for it to turn and it has occasionally got caught on top of the wall.

When it works it does so very, very well; it’s like having a goat, continually nibbling away at the grass, so that it never gets long at all. Now, our lawn isn’t particularly large and I’d say that this mower is, perhaps, a bit of overkill, given that it is intended for lawns up to 700 square metres.

In summary, you’ll need to have a fairly even, large lawn, that isn’t bounded by any sort of barrier and is within easy access of an external power source in a shaded, level location. You’l need to give up a whole day to set the thing up, but that’s one day’s effort for never having to mow the lawn again (or until the mower breaks down). If you have a small, irregular lawn and you can’t get a permanent power source outside in a suitable position, then this isn’t for you.

Set-up is easy. Spend time to do it accurately. Then just let the machine take the strain.
Quite brilliant! Does what is says on the tin. Buy with confidence. Well engineered, capable software and logic. You may need to help with the edges from time to time depending on your layout.

Not straight-forward - but worth the effort.
I have been thinking about buying a robot mower for some time. Eventually I chose this one because:

(1) It has fairly good reviews, although they are all from people who have been given free machines to review.

(2) It claims to be able to handle 1,500 square meters of grass.

(3) The battery is easy to replace and is said to be readily available.

(4) It wasn’t cheap and you (often) get what you pay for.

(5) It can be programmed and controlled from an app on your ‘phone. (More on this later).

The thing arrived quickly from Amazon Prime, as stuff always does, and in the box I found: the mower, the psu, battery, charging station, 200 meters of wire, plastic pegs and various bits of hardware.

The documentation ran to:

(1) A pictorial Get Started guide

(2) Safety Rules / CE declaration / Warranty declaration / Helpline

(3) Safety instruction / Charging Procedure / CE declaration

As others have indicated, the documentation is woefully inadequate, you really do need to get the installation and user manuals from the internet and print them out (skipping the colourful outer pages).

Here was the first glitch. Every machine has two names. Mine is the L1500 but there is no manual for the L1500, I needed the manuals for the WR153E. Come on chaps, make your minds up, give the thing one name and stick to it.

Setting up the base is fairly simple: put the PSU in an outhouse or shed, it has to be within about 5 feet of a power socket, and the low-voltage cable then runs outside to the base: it’s about 30 feet long. If you are drilling a hole for the wire, it needs to be about one inch in diameter to accept the low-voltage connector.

The wire is a pain to install. I think this is common to all of these units. Being 200 lb of muscle and testosterone, I decided to push the pegs in by hand (I live in Lancashire, the ground is nearly always soft). Halfway round my garden, on my hands and knees, I wondered why my thumb was so sore. Learn from my mistake and use a mallet.

It is surprising how undulant apparently flat ground can be. It is important to make sure that the wire is closely pressed to ground everywhere, because when the robot trundles around the perimeter, it seems to want to have the guide wire at its centre. There is a real risk of the mower cutting the wire and grinding to a halt. The different manuals give mildly conflicting advice on the spacing of the pegs 700 to 800 mm seems about right.

Now, a circle with a circumference of 200 m will encapsulate an area of over 3,000 square meters. A square 50 x 50 m would have an area of 2,500 sq. meters. I thought that my 200 meter roll of wire would be plenty – but it isn’t. My garden is a very odd shape and the loops that one invaginates from the main circuit to isolate flower beds, ponds and the like use up a fair length of wire. I’ve managed to get about half of the back lawn wired up and have ordered another 150 m of wire and some waterproof connectors: I’ll have all the joy of “extending your system” to contend with later in the week. Can I extend the perimeter to 350m or 400m ? Again, there is conflicting advice.

The app was a sad disappointment. I downloaded it from Google Play (I’m on Android) and took the mower to the end of the lawn with good WiFi coverage. Eventually, it managed to take a picture of the QR code on the mower and then talked me through setting the mower’s WiFi up. The mower said that it had all been hunky dory. The app disagreed and said that the mower couldn’t connect. After a couple of tries, the app started telling me that my “SIM number” was invalid – even when I typed it in manually (And, is that leading 2019 part of the serial number? Are the spaces supposed to put in or left out? Who knows).

The app suggested that I could find the serial number on the “Quick Start Guide”. There is no such document. There is a “Get started” leaflet – but my serial number was on the back of the Safety instruction / Charging Procedure / CE declaration. Anyway, the app shows no indication of having registered my mower; it refuses to connect to it, and so far, I do not have a way of programming the device from my telephone. Not at all impressive.

The machine seems to be made in China for a German company. One should not indulge in cheap stereotypes, but I can quite imagine one group saying: “Put the optimistic numbers in – they sound better, we’ll sell more” and the other group saying: “We shall quote the proven specifications”. It would account for just about every technical detail having two different answers.

My advice to the distributors would be to unify the documentation, include it in the box, eliminate the contradictions, get the app working properly.

The machine itself seems to be doing well enough: my lawn is not a bowling green and the mower does seem to able to go round it without (so far) getting stuck. I’m expecting to have to buy quite a lot of sand when it starts to explore the more irregular terrain that I have.

The charging base makes me a little uneasy. Two spring-loaded metal plates stick out and the mower simply bumps in to them when it wants a charge. The instructions say it’s not to be used or charged in the wet… but there is no cover over the base and this is Lancashire. I shouldn’t be surprised if corrosion sets in to the charging connexions and smearing them with petroleum gel is going to stop them from working entirely. I think an induction system would have been better, but no-one asked me at the design stage.

Overall:
Good in parts.
The app doesn’t work.
The documentation needs to be fixed.
I’ll need to make a roof for the charging base.
I’ll edit this review at a later date with long-term results .

First Update: While I was typing this, the little orange robot has been trundling about, mowing grass. I went out to follow it around and see what it was up to. It’s quite an endearing thing, but incredibly stupid. It got to the point of having a low battery and said that it was going home. It got home, but only one of its connectors connected (I think that the base has to be very flat and very level with an easy approach: I have some levelling to do) – did the robot go back and try again? No. It decided to look for the base station by going the long way round, and of course it didn’t have enough energy left to travel 200 yards so it stopped and had to be carried back. I hope that the AI behind driverless cars is more sophisticated than this!

Second up-date 02/07/2019
The thing remains endearing and I’ve finally ironed out some of the glitches: I’ve increased my rating to four stars.

The manufacturer did respond quickly when I asked them about the WiFi issues. The advice that they offered was already in the manual and didn’t address the problem, but they do seem to be communicative and appear to want to be helpful, that has to be a Good Thing. Eventually I carried the mower and my Android tablet to another wireless access point. After half a dozen tries the app connected to the mower and I could programme its schedule. That’s a lot better than trying to use the little LCD screen and push buttons on the robot.

Curiously, I couldn’t get notifications or otherwise connect to the machine through the access point that covers (most of) the lawn at first. Then it started working for no obvious reason and I got a message to say that it was stuck. It was a good 20 yards from the house, so it must have been communicating through the access point that didn’t work for it originally. I don’t understand, but it is working and it seems to be in range over about half of the lawn. Good enough.

The mower does not like long grass or old grass clippings at all so I gave the lawn another “final” cut with the lawn tractor, rather shorter than I’d normally cut it, and went over it with a sweeper attachment. That has helped. There’s still a lot of trial-and-error: the mower gets stuck several times a day and when it does I have to work out why and then try to make that particular spot of ground Landroid-friendly. Fortunately I have some time off at the moment so it isn’t a huge problem. I only hope that I can get it running reliably by the time that I go back to work.

My extra wire, to extend its range over the rest of the grass, hasn’t arrived yet but I think that I’d better get the system running as it is and then extend it. There are enough glitches to contend with already. I have levelled the ground where the base sits and now the Landroid can (sometimes) find its base and recharge. It remains, however, unalterably stupid. Today it said that it was “going home”, it found the base, came to rest with its connectors touching the terminals of the recharging point, sat there for five seconds and then set off again “going home” with only 8% battery charge. Perhaps Worx will address this with a firmware update at some point?

So far, I’m pleased with it. If you have a large area of not-well manicured grass, as is my case, then I think that you find it is a a lot of effort to set up. I also hope that once the system is working properly it really will be reliable enough to run completely autonomously. I have some doubts. Still, it is undeniably more fun than running mindlessly up and down on a lawn tractor all day.

06/07/2019 – One Week In.
It is growing on me. I think my liking has risen to 4.5 stars out of 5. Now that I’ve ironed out some of the wrinkles it can go for a whole day without problems, dock at night and set off again in the morning without human intervention.

I’ve extended my wire and now it encompasses an area of about 1,500 square meters. Perhaps I should have bought the 2000 model, anyway: I now need to save up for (or try to build) another robot for the rest of the grass. I wish I could work out exactly how the RF guidance system works.

Here are a couple of problems that I’ve had and how I fixed them:

Firstly, an error that will not clear with “Reset – OK” probably means that the mower has detected a sequence that could mean it is being stolen and has gone into locked mode. To clear the error, take the machine to a spot which is (1) in WiFi range and (2) within the wire perimeter. Use the app to switch off lock mode, then the errors will clear as normal. When all is running smoothly, re-enable lock mode (again, using the app) as an anti-theft deterrent. The mower seems to be highly suspicious about being turned upside-down, especially if it detects that it’s outside of its RF loop.

Secondly: the manuals warn about earth-leak of the RF signal through faulty insulation. The system seems to be incredibly susceptible to moisture in its connectors. The solution is to dry the connexion, make sure that it is secure, then pot it up in a little plastic box packed with general purpose silicone goo. It’s an annoying fault because the wire still has continuity and so the base-station shows green on its LED, suggesting that all is well. If you have a “no wire” fault and yet the green light is lit, moisture in a connexion is probably to blame. Conversely, “no wire” and a red light suggests a break in the loop.

Thirdly: being somewhat impetuous, I didn’t pay close attention to the direction of the wire around excluded areas. This can give rise to an intermittent fault where the robot seems to run well but then stalls next to the excluded area, indicating that it is outside its mowing area. I think it means that it’s detected the perimeter wire, turned, and then met the inner loop with the RF signal travelling in the wrong direction. It thinks that something impossible has happened and stops. This is easily corrected by reversing the connexions to the aberrant loop. It also gave me a chance to research the susceptibility of wire joints to moisture (see above).

My advice to anyone thinking of getting one of these machines would be to do it but plan to set it up when you have at least a week off to find all of the problems in your set-up and correct them. It is not a one-day project. Be prepared, too, to have to buy extra things like sand, more wire, suitable connectors, more pegs, silicone and little plastic boxes. Sitting outside with a good book and a cold beer, while the little mower trundles up and down your lawn, I think you’ll agree that is worth all of the grief. Good luck.

06/08/2019
Another month on and no major problems. The mower gets stuck once a week: I’m still ironing out difficult-to-navigate areas, otherwise it simply gets on with the job. I have to say that in the twenty-odd years that I’ve lived here, the back lawn has never looked so good. As the memory of all the set-up difficulties fades, I’m tempted to uprate it to 5 stars. Certainly one of my better purchases.

24/06/2020 It’s been running for nearly a year now.
The app gives one the opportunity of naming the mower. “Hector” seemed appropriate (although he cannot quite manage an hectare) and now that I’ve named the thing, of course, I’ve grown even more fond of it and very forgiving.

I was wrong about the stainless steel charging connectors. They do work pretty well and show only minimal corrosion. I am building myself another robot to mow the dark side of the garden and I’m *not* going for induction charging, despite what I said last year.

The firmware has been updated. Hector is now more intelligent (well, less stupid) about getting himself unstuck and he cuts closer to the edge than he did before. This is good, in that the lawn edges are now more neat; bad because he now slides down steep banks that previously he avoided. More spade work and wire-moving is needed.

I’m still very pleased with Hector. I repeat that my lawn has never looked so well. But do, for heaven’s sake, go into this with your eyes open. You are buying into a project, not a one-off solution.

Good luck

– and thank you, to the kind people who left comments.

A Superb Tool for Lazy Times in the Garde
My wife and I had a bit of a disagreement about this robot mower to be honest. I felt strongly that it was a retrograde step compared to my old faithful robot, ‘Isaac,’ but my wife having nursed it to life over a few weeks feels the complete opposite.

Let me explain.

If you look around, you will see that there are two main types of robot lawnmower under various names and with minor cosmetic differences. The older type has the bigger wheels at the front whilst the newer type has reversed this with the bigger driving wheels at the back and the small bogey wheel to the front.

This is an important choice for two reasons. One good and one bad for both designs.

Now, I have an old Flymo mower that I bought four years ago — also Husquavarna brand — with the big wheels at the front, so I can make a reasonable comparison. This design means that the mower is ‘dragged’ along and thus lawn imperfections are easier to travel over which, of course isn’t a problem if your lawn is perfectly flat, but mine isn’t thanks to the mining efforts of Mr. Mole and his chums. I have cleared the dastardly beasts and done my best to level the lawn, but there are still areas where the ground is less than ideal although, not terrible. With the old mower, this isn’t too much of an issue as it pulls itself over the uneven bit without too much of a problem.

That’s not the case with the new style mower. The rear wheels push the mower and because the bogey wheel is at the front — and is quite small — if it hits a divot or uneven patch, the wheel drops and then gets pushed down into the dip, stopping the robot. Now, there is a program that is designed to pull itself back out and this does work most of the time but not always.

So, from the point of view of ability to deal with a less than perfectly flat lawn, the new version with the small wheel at the front is less good than the old version.

But.and this is where my wife has stood up for Hal 9000 — is that once you have dealt with the worst offending problem areas the mower is better at cutting grass it seems, despite having the same kinds of blades that all these types use. It certainly can get close to the edge and this is where the design choice for reversing the position of the wheels comes in. It’s more manoeuvrable. Bit like a shopping trolley, having the control at the back allows near right angled turns, thus this mower can follow a border much more closely than the previous model. This is used to its advantage because when it returns to base to recharge, it follows the perimeter wire thus dealing with the edge better than the ‘big wheels at the front’ type robot.

There is also another difference over the previous model in that there is no ‘return to base wire’ which had to be laid out towards the middle of the lawn. Not that it makes a huge difference, but it’s there.

So, having got the design changes out of the way we can talk about the rest of the mower.

Number one on the list of ‘Good things,’ is the use of a standard battery for tools. Well, Worx tools anyway. It’s a simple job of opening the back of the mower to take out and change the battery if you need too which, is far simpler than my old Flymo which has an integrated battery pack. That being said, it’s still going strong after four years so not as big a downside as it might seem. The one thing I do notice is that this Worx robot using the exchangeable battery pack does seem to need far more regular charging up than my old Flymo. I assume the cells are a little smaller as they are designed for hand power tools.

The cutting disc — fitted with the very sharp disposable blades — is offset so that when doing the perimeter, it can get nice and close to the edge. This is a good thing, although it does not negate the need to occasionally take an old-fashioned grass cutter out and go around the edge to neaten it up. The offset perimeter wire naturally means there is a strip that does not get cut which can easily be done in one pass with a ‘normal’ mower.

Speaking of blades, these can be cheaply bought on Amazon from 3rd party suppliers. I’ve used original and the non-original and there is no difference apart from your wallet being better off.

The depth of cut can easily be adjusted by means of a large dial on the top of the mower. I’ve got mine set to ‘Somme’ mode so that it clears the craters made by the small furry destroyer of lawns. You can set it low as you need to deal with a billiard table smooth lawn if you have one. I might just have a small cry to myself at this point. If anyone out there is of a ‘certain’ age they may recall the superb Jasper Carrot ‘Mole’ skit. Believe me, it’s true.

There is an inevitable app which is used for setting up the mower which, thankfully my wife downloaded and used to set up the mower. I have almost become allergic to apps given that nearly every item you buy has an app to go with it. My old mower does not have one and it worked fine just out of the box and I’ve never changed anything. The next bit is from my wife who did the setting up and is far calmer than I am.

The app is easy to find and install from the Play Store but as I’m using an Android plat-form I can’t comment on the Apple availability. I assume it’s there and just as good.

There is a QR code for linking the machine but, my Sony phone is never too keen on doing this, so the easy alternative is to enter the serial number located under the lift-up cover.

Once connected the menu is straight forward and logical and makes setting up the schedule far easier than trying to do it on the machine itself.

There are various configurations regarding the days to run, hours each day, which days to do the edges and whether to cut in the rain. I think the default is for it not to go out in the rain but, we live in England and if it didn’t go out in the rain, it would never cut the grass. It rained solidly yesterday, and he happily continued cutting the grass all day – a huge advantage over a conventional mower.

The app will also warn you of various problems. For instance, in my garden due to the lumpy edge thanks to Mr. Mole occasionally the mower will go ‘off piste’ – slightly over the guide wires – and need to be rescued. Sadly, the app doesn’t do this, and a physical rescue is needed. We also had in the very first few days, a warning ‘Wire missing.’ This was because the wire was still a little proud from the ground (and on a little bit of an incline) and the mower had sliced through it. It was quickly remedied using one of the cable connectors and he was off on his merry way again.

Some other things. You need to put a perimeter wire around the lawn and for this you have two options. Surface mount or bury. Frankly I surface mounted mine as I know from the other part of the garden where Isaac runs after a year or so the natural movement of soil will draw down/bury the cable. After three years it’s about 50mm below the surface. The only thing you need to be careful of is to make sure the wire is well pinned to the ground so that the blades won’t hit it when doing the perimeter run. These blades are more than sharp enough to cut the wire causing instant stoppage.

And that reminds me. Get some wire joiners as well. As careful as you are even if you bury the wire, there is always the chance of a wire break. In my case it’s the mole man digging around who has twice cut through it.

The build quality of the robot is pretty good. Nice tough plastics and if my other version is anything to go by should last a good few years as long as it’s not abused.

They are safe. As soon as you move, lift or disturb it the unit shuts down. This in theory makes sure that pets or children cannot be hurt by the blades. That being said, it’s a last line of defence and if you do have small crawling children around then I’d always turn it off when they are playing on the lawn.

Conclusion
Get one. Get this or any other type — they are all very similar and based upon the same model I suspect. Just be aware that your lawn needs to be fairly flat and lump/hole free for proper operation. Just look carefully at the overall design so that you understand which brand marketing version you are considering and then buy the cheapest.

Brilliant - it can cut isolated lawns even though the manual doesn't explain how!
I did a lot of research before forking out – this is a big expense for a non-essential item. in fact I’ve got the M500 but I wanted to write a review to help others considering a landroid.

Two key things mattered to me: ability to cut close to the edge and ability to be lifted up and put on an isolated piece of lawn as i have more than one. The landroid M500 and models upwards deliver on both – if you go for the m300 you’ll only get cutting to the edge of your lawn if it is surrounded by paving slabs flush with the level of the lawn that allow the mower to straddle a good 6-8 inches. My lawn is surrounded by flush 4 inch brick so i needed the edge feature of the M500. it works very well – although sharp internal corners are the one bit that will need periodic trimming.

This brings me on to the best feature – which is not even mentioned in the instruction manual! You can lift the landroid up and move it to an isolated lawn so it can do multiple lawns. The two catches are that you will need to lift it up manually to move it (unless there is a metre-wide channel to drive itself there – in which case it’s not isolated anyway) and you will need to move it back when it’s run out of battery so it can go and charge.

The only thing to make this possible is you need to run the continuous perimeter wire round both lawns. you can achieve this by having a section between the lawns where the perimeter wires (out and back) are run together – see picture. One thing to note – if you do this it is essential that the direction of the current in the perimeter wire is the same for the second lawn as it is for the first lawn – so the landroid can follow the direction of the wire and travel anti clockwise when cutting the edge.

I’m so pleased i took a chance on this being possible as I have three isolated lawns and the main benefit of having the automatic mower is that i don’t need to mow any of them myself now.

The app is very good and allows complete control – you can check up on it from anywhere. it’s also got a handy lawn size calculating using gps and your phone’s camera to measure the area of the lawn using the perimeter of your lawn if it is an irregular shape and then sets an automatic schedule for the time of operation that you can manually adjust for the days and times you want it to cut.

Mowers that say that they cut in the wet are actually telling you they don’t have function to not cut in the wet. it is a bad idea to cut wet grass as it does the grass no good so this rain sensor is excellent.

There are parts of my lawn that I’m going to need to fill in some holes dug by foxes as it struggles a bit with these but nothing that a bit of soil and a spade can’t sort. It’s very inventive when it gets stuck and does a good job of wriggling out if it gets struck. The main issue is that if the hole persists the landroid will end up digging up around it if it is continually getting stuck and backing itself out.

The landroid is a hard working little machine and the lawn looks very smart. I’m looking forward to an easy summer of having the best continuously neat looking lawn I’ve ever had!

Perfect!
I picked this mower up at the launch in a retailer. Very simple to install and set up, perfect for my small garden and now runs about cutting my lawn 24/7. I like the options of building up the mower with additional accessories to make it more clever, will have to save up for those.