WORX Landroid M500+ WR165E Robot Lawn Mower for medium
WORX Landroid M500+ WR165E Robot Lawn Mower for medium gardens up to 500m2/Cut to edge Automatic robotic lawn mower with app control, wifi
The gift of sight
Gone are the days when automatic lawn mowers would rebound off trees and onto other obstacles. Landroid’s Anti Collision System (ACS) module option features ultrasonic obstacle recognition to dodge tree trunks, furniture and objects left on the lawn with ease.
Simplify installation and reworks
New trampoline? Freshly planted flower bed? This would require you to surround the new features with wire connected to the powered perimeter cable. With the Off-Limits module option on board, just drop the invisible fence around your lawn’s existing and future features.
Boundless connectivity
Landroid relies on cloud computing to get weather information and software updates, but home Wi-Fi networks normally only cover a fraction of the garden area. The RadioLink module option establishes a peer-to-peer dedicated radio connection between your Wi-Fi router and the robot, and stretches as far as 500m metres.
Protect your investment from theft
Put any security concerns to rest with the Find My Landroid module option. It allows you stop the Landroid from operating, and even track it down if someone decides to nab it from your garden. An additional perk, the module connects Landroid to the internet even if you lack Wi-Fi.
| Weight: | 16.9 kg |
| Size: | WR165E 500m2 |
| Dimensions: | 55.8 x 40.4 x 20.5 cm; 16.88 Kilograms |
| Model: | WR165E |
| Part: | WR165E |
| Colour: | Orange |
| Pack Quantity: | 1 |
| Batteries Required: | Yes |
| Batteries Included: | Lithium Ion |
| Manufacture: | WORX |
| Dimensions: | 55.8 x 40.4 x 20.5 cm; 16.88 Kilograms |
| Quantity: | 1 |
| Size: | WR165E 500m2 |
We’ve had two of these for two months now, one is the basic unit and one with the added GPS unit (Find my Landlord). I’m really impressed with the job that they do: with seemingly random movements, they manage to cover pretty much everywhere – and we have quite a complicated garden with a lot of obstacles.
As other reviews have said, it is important to take your time laying the boundary cable to avoid problems, but if you find that it’s getting stuck somewhere it’s easy enough in the first few weeks to move the cable.
Customer service is also brilliant: we had a few difficulties at first with connection to the app, but each time they replied within hours and sorted it out.
All in all, really pleased with these, and they’re half the price of comparable ones by other makers. It used to take 5 hours to cut the grass, but now it’s just a half hour strim around the edges.
Firstly, the battery supplied ideally needs to be upgraded to higher capacity or the unit will spend much time charging and not cutting. I would also recommend a garage to prevent overheating in the sun and additional protection from rain.
If you have a single piece of lawn to be cut, this mower will be ideal, it gets a little tricky if you have multiple areas/zones that need to be cut that don’t have easy access for the unit to cross from one zone to the other. The requirements are for you to be able to provide a pathway from one zone to the next with at least a 5cm gap between the perimeter cables.
In my case, I do not have this, I have four zones all completely independent of each other although I am able to lay the perimeter wire around all four zones as per the instructions. I have to manually move the unit between zones and start the cutting manually in each zone except in the zone where the charging unit is located. Now I have a further problem where I am not able to get the mower to cut the perimeter (known as an Edge Routine) of other zones other than where the charging unit is located. You also have to calculate the area of each zone, rather than the grand total of all areas.
I also have a dog which means I am restricted to starting the cutting manually and not using the automatic cutting mode, as I need to be sure the area is clean prior to cutting.
In summary, I am fairly happy with the mower so far (I have had it for a couple of months now). I think some of the limitations could be easily addressed to make it more user-friendly but I would be happy to recommend it.
Ours is a sizable garden with plenty of obstructions for it, mounds of grass by edges of paths etc and it was getting stuck always in the same areas. The spikes for the wheels to airate the lawn are quite the investment. They really help it gain purchase and now it can manage the tumps better and hasn’t been getting stuck at all.
It’s fascinating to watch too especially when it heads off to its port to put itself to bed! It’s actually a little character. Torments the dog while she’s resting in a nice sunny spot. It has a name even, we christened it Mowbot, and it’s a he for some reason Hubby wants me to heartily recommend
Cuts our 1300m2 lawn beautifully. The free Landroid App makes it easy to set a cutting schedule and monitor progress. Fixing the perimeter wire took two days but is a 1-off exercise. The 3 year guarantee gives me confidence that it will be reliable.
Although this model seems to have been discontinued, I think that you can still find my original review here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07KKYXZYW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Briefly, set-up was fairly time-consuming.
Once running, Hector kept the lawn in reasonable order for a couple of years.
Last year, 2022, the drive to first one wheel and then the other failed: metal splines chew up plastic sockets over time. I managed to bodge repairs with epoxy resin.
This year, 2023, Hector appears to have reached the end of his life. He’s certainly out of warranty.
The LCD screen is very faded and virtually illegible. The wire-sensing system appears to have malfunctioned and Hector will stop, at random, sending “Wire Missing” error messages to the app. When he does run, the blade motor makes a horrible grinding sound as if a bearing has failed.
I may be able to repair him, but I’m not confident and all the time the grass is growing longer… I felt that I had no option but to buy a replacement, hence the WR155E.
As far as I can see, the new model (2000 square meters) and the old one (1500 square meters) are absolutely identical except that the WR155E came with a 5AH battery and Hector had a 4AH lithium pack. I’m fairly sure that I could have saved hundreds of pounds by buying a “lesser” model and fitting it with a big after-market battery.
In short, do buy a robot mower, they save many hours of mowing time. But consider buying a less expensive model and a big battery, even if you have a huge lawn.
Update: Hector is back from the dead! I think he must have got a bit damp, spending Winter in an unheated shed. But, I went to see if I could repair him and found that most of the faults had resolved. The lcd screen is clear to read again, he can see the wire, his blade mower is still a bit noisy, but he’s trundling about, along with his new friend (Lysander) and he’s holding his own. I’m absolutely convinced that Hector (WR153E) is exactly the same machine as Lysander (WR155E) except that the later model comes with a bigger battery and has the grippy wheels.
One observation: the RF field dies when a Landroid is charging, so if one of them goes off for a charge, the other halts with a “Wire Missing” error. It’s not a problem when I’m around, I can quickly swap in a spare charged battery, and having both running simultaneously is really useful, right now, when I’m trying to get the length of the grass down, before it starts raining again. In the longer term, I think Hector will have his own station and patrol the side lawn, while Lysander looks after the main lawn.
Welcome back, Hector!
But once i set the perimeter wire the correct way
Wow hey presto it works awsome
No way this baby is going anywhere now
Must say its a joy to watch this mower do one chore i hated most
Now its time to sit back a pint of beer in one hand and enjoy life
This beast does a great job which a lot of people hate
Please always make sure you use an empty, FAT32 formatted, 2/4/8GB USB pen drive and follow the steps below:
1. Turn ON the mower and insert your PIN
2. Plug the USB drive into the USB port on the back of the mower – you will hear a beep
3. When you read USB on your Landroid’s display, remove the USB drive
4. Unplug the USB drive from the mower
5. In the USB drive you’ll find the LOG_xxxx.htm file
Hopefully that helps
Review below still stands but I’m knocking one star off because there is a problem I don’t like. I have had to cordon off a small are of my garden but I tell you this robot mower doesn’t accept no for an answer. When it comes up against an obstacle from an angle (not head on as that seems ok) it repeatedly tries to edge its way into the obstacle, not once, not twice, but 5 times but 7 or more times it repeatedly turns towards the obstacle trying to get past, churning up the ground as the wheel spins and damaging the paintwork of the robot and scratching along the obstacle as it doesn’t give up. This is a really annoying flaw in the software and needs to be fixed. Maybe try once or twice but at that point, TURN AWAY from the obstacle and get on with mowing please. When Worx fix this I’ll reinstate the 5 stars but for now I need to reseed the area of the grass that it’s messed up.
Just a short review to say that this robot mower is fantastic. Main points: Setting up is easy although laying the boundary wire takes time if you have lots of corners and obstacles etc. It took me quite a few hours to get it inch perfect. Bear in mind that there will be a couple of inches at the edge of a wall or obstacle that the mower won’t reach but a little manual trimming each week is a price worth paying for the convenience of not having to mow the main lawn. You’ll want to be sending the mower out pretty much every day so as to keep the lawn neat. Yes the mower mows randomly but honestly this isn’t a problem. The only thing is that occasionally it misses a clump of grass but tends to pick this up the next time it moves. The mower can definitely mow longer grass but you won’t want it to because the blades left behind sit on top of the grass. Instead, you’ll want the mower to be mowing once a day or every other day so that it cuts off tiny pieces which fall to the roots and mulch quickly. These little grass cuttings are not sticking to shoes or ending up in the house. Having no grass clippings to get rid of is brilliant! The best part about this mower is that you end up just sitting there watching it go about its routine, very therapeutic. Also the grass has never looked better, the weeds don’t appear to get a chance to pop up as they get hacked back every day. I did lay a new lawn with good quality seed so that probably helped but I’m convinced that this mower will keep it looking good. You do tend to get a wheel track line around the edge after it’s done its edge routine and you do get vague cross cross patterns in the grass where the wheels have been but actually it looks quite a nice effect. The app is really simple to use although if you pick the mower up and put it back on the station manually (happened a lot at the beginning when I was testing the wire placement) you get an annoying ‘wire missing’ error, and I recall it being a bit of a random fix to get rid of that message. The mower deals with slopes well and easily gets itself out of a sticky situation. Sometimes the wheels spin a little while turning on a slope but again it tends to sort itself out. After having the mower for a few weeks I would highly recommend getting one. Not sure what went wrong in my life to new get so excited about watching grass grow and then being cut by a plastic machine but there you go. 5 stars from me.
Next purchase will be a robot vacuum cleaner.
It just works. But you wont realise how much it is doing unless you have something to gauge it by. I wanted the ‘edge’ feature so although I have a small garden (74m sq) I went for the 500 model. Unless you have a bowling green of a lawn, I would get extra pegs for the cable. You will find that the cable will sometimes lift in places and it will need pegging down, although this is a now and again not every day.
The lawn always looks good, I will still have to walk around the very edge with a strimmer, but this is a 5 min job every couple of months not me having to mow the lawn every week. Also, I now longer have to deal with clippings, so no trips to the tip or paying for the garden waste bin.
The connection to the WIFI is a pain in the butt. Once you have it working, it just works, but expect to mess around with router and settings a bit unless you have a dedicate 2.4ghz band. (I have new bt fibre hub and I had to turn of 5ghz and do some port forwarding until it connected).
The wife is very happy with the grass, I have more spare time and I would buy again if needed. brilliant piece of kit, wish I had bought long ago.
I’d packed this up once to return to amazon but relented and tried one more time to see if it would work. I did speak to customer services, technical but found them to be pretty clueless. The guy was going to speak with his supervisor about my issues and call me back, but he never did.
I eventually got it to recognise the two distinct areas of lawn, i.e. front garden and rear garden. It doesn’t, as they claim, appear to learn the area. Instead I just set it off and hope it eventually covers all the area, which it sort of does, leaving just the odd patch, uncut.
It’s very quiet in operation and, when it does cover the whole area, does a nice job. Although you do need to trim around the edges where it can’t reach.
So far, I’m glad I persevered and kept the thing especially when I see my neighbours with their conventional lawnmowers. I can cut the grass while I put my feet up 🙂
However, problems with the ride on mower and health problems with a gardening contractor meant that the grass was getting too long and the field unusable. As we have a robot mower on a small lawn near the house, we looked at getting one for the field.
With rough measurements we worked out the lawn size so had to go for one that cut 2,000 square metres.
After a week, the results were fantastic.
So now the maintenance of the paddock is greener. No fossil fuels, just plugged in to the green electricity supply.
Warning:
The transformer for this mower is not waterproof (unlike other robot mowers). Due to the distance from our house to the Landroid station we had to purchase a waterproof box to house the transformer.
Setting Up:
Someone suggested connecting a small wire on the charging base to complete a circuit whilst you charge. That is not necessary.
We placed the charging station on a patio table as close to the Wi-Fi router as we could. Put the Landroid on the charging station and it charged OK.
Make sure that the Landroid is near to the Wi-Fi so that you can connect and download the Firmware update.
Wifi:
The Landroid uses Wi-Fi and the internet. This is used to allow you to monitor the Landroid. It will also report back to the App if there are problems. Unfortunately, our Wi-Fi does not cover the area to be cut. To get around this we also purchased the add on Find My Landroid. This uses mobile phone access to report back status and receive commands. It also acts as a burglar alarm.
Insurance:
It is difficult to get insurance on Robot Mowers. To be covered by insurance they must be kept in a locked shed. Hhhhhhmmmmmm. Find my Landroid is a sort of insurance policy. You can always trace it and set up a geo-fence. If it goes outside the area then it raises the alarm.
Steep slope slopes:
We did have one problem with a step slope that the Landroid has to navigate to get home. In damp conditions the Landroid got itself stuck. The work around was to be a special artificial grass for robot mowers (which did not seem to be available on Amazon). Search “hybrid grass square”.
We also set up a track by spacing U shaped pegs (example Landscape Staples, U Shaped Nail Pins | Galvanised Steel | Ideal for Weed Control Membrane, Netting ) . This creates something that the wheels can latch on to. Actually a lot cheaper than the grass.
It’s been a while since I did it, but I think you need to download the app 1 st before you get started on WI-FI linking.
Perimeter setting is very easy, just time consuming. Make sure you leave extra loops of wire at various intervals in case you expand your lawn.
My lawn is only 70m, it’s divided by a continuous concrete path, so I cut a groove with angle grinder for the perimeter wire at either end so mower will cross it. This is something I’d not even thought about and it’s lucky I have one, otherwise I don’t know what I’d have done.
Also make sure that all your lawn obstacles that will be permanent are where you want them to be. I was planning on moving the washing line pole, but I’ve not left enough slack in perimeter to do so. The quickest thing to do is cut the wire, move pole, and re join it with spare wire once the object is moved.
I’m not going to bother, to much effort!
Also you may need more pegs I ran out and I only have a small lawn. This was because its uneven and I was paranoid that the mower would cut the perimeter wire, It did!!! So make sure the wire is well laid close to ground.
Also I made a cover for it by bending some of cut of re-bar, works a treat, best of all its free.
The initial boundary wire setup took days, and the adjustments have since taken weeks and are still ongoing. If you have a complex garden like mine, you will need plenty of extra boundary wires to mark the long perimeter plus the perimeters of each garden feature. First thing to know is that the boundary wire works just as a long antenna, so you don’t need to buy them from Worx — any cheap unshielded wire from the local hardware store would work. In the manual it says that the length limit of the boundary wire is only 450m, but you can go theoretically go higher if you use wires with larger diameters and therefore lower resistance. In my case I used 1.5mm wires and easily went above 600m without issues.
Now, the mower would struggle with tall grass and uneven grounds. A small rabbit hole would often be enough to get the mower stuck, so expect to spend time keeping the ground even for the mower to function properly. On balance, however, the mower does save one time and keep the lawn in a better shape.
Now onto the modules — while I liked the idea of a modular design, and that the module hardware seems to be well-built, the software works so poorly that I would not recommend getting either the ACS or the Off-Limit module.
The ACS has two major problems:
1. it assumes every obstacle is a pole, so it could avoid a tree but would drive straight into a wall.
2. it avoids tall grass! This second problem means that during the period of rapid growth, sometimes the grass would grow enough between mowing sessions (remember that the mower doesn’t cover the whole lawn every time, and also cannot mow in the rain, so sometimes the same patch would not be mowed for days) such that the mower would start avoiding it.
Overall the mower works better without ACS.
If the ACS is less than helpful, the Off-Limit module is positively damaging:
1. The top problem is that it doesn’t always work. Sometimes the mower wouldn’t recognise the module and would behave as if the module isn’t installed, and other times the mower would recognise the module and still mow through the magnetic strips, destroying whatever the Off-Limit strips are meant to protect.
2. The other major problem is that even when the Off-Limit module functions, it always turns 180 degrees around when it hits a magnetic strip, instead of applying the randomised turn algorithm. That effectively leaves the area around any Off-Limit strip less mowed statistically, a problem that is further exacerbated if the strip is used near a hard-to-reach area.
So as some other reviews have pointed out, it is better to either rely on the boundary antenna wires or simple wooden planks, as they are both more reliable and do not screw up the mow algorithm. Another point I want to mention is that the manual says that the magnetic strips must form a loop, but that is just nonsense for anyone who understands physics (the weaker magnetic fields at the ends don’t justify the instruction either, especially when it is possible to cut a longer strip to farther remove the ends or just double up the strip). I cannot help but feel that the modules are developed to a far lower quality than the core unit.
There is, however, one useful undocumented function for the Off-Limit module — if you have an island larger than 6m x 6m, it is possible to add a short magnetic strip across the island boundary wire to break the loop, allowing the mower to not get stuck in the loop while trying to follow the boundary wire back home. It’s ironic that the only valuable use of the Off-Limit model is expressly forbidden by the manual instructions.
I hope that Worx would provide a firmware update that makes the modules more useful. A simple change to reuse the good random turn algorithm for both when the ACS detects an obstacle and when running into a Off-Limit magnetic strip would be enough to make the modules more useful than they are today. Until then, I would recommend the core unit but not the additional modules.
1, What’s the difference between the models when they all look like the same size unit cutting anything between 300 and 1500m2?
2, Can you increase the cutting area of the cheapest model by upgrading the battery?
And the answers are:
1, Not much it seems, the bigger models have a 4ah vs 2ah battery and come with more wire and pegs but that seems to be it in terms of capacity although a couple have extra features such as edge cutting and floating cutting decks
2, Yes. The eagle eyed amongst you might spot that the spec for the charger on the smaller model is 500ma va 1500ma on the bigger ones which suggests its going to take longer to charge a bigger battery. In fact, they all come with the 1500ma charger which charges the 4ah battery in under 3 hours and the additional weight over the main wheels probably improves traction a bit.
So, I bought a 4ah battery for 35 and 200m of wire for 62 (from this very boutique) and I’m now using the Landroid S 300 to cut 505m2.
Overall I found the installation much more straightforward than some of the reviews suggest, and was gearing up for a week or troubleshooting but in fact was up and running the next day. My tips are:
1, Use the Landroid app to calculate your area and lawn perimeter- not essential as the 200m roll of wire is best value but useful to confirm that you’re beating the system by far exceeding the stated capability of the S300.
2, Mow your lawn- sounds a bit odd but the Landroid is designed to continually maintain grass at a set length not do a weekly cut so will struggle taking off anything more than a couple of mm. Also, cutting it enables you to get the wire closer to the ground as well as clearing twigs and other debris if you have trees.
3, After choosing your base location, peg out your wire allowing a bit of slack and pegging every 1.5-2m not the 80cm recommended.
4, Take the blades off the mower, set it at the maximum height and let it follow the wire. I wanted to ensure it was as close to the edge as possible and was able to adjust the path where necessary without risking damage to the blades or wire.
5, Perimeter set, I then let Ted do his thing for a couple of hours and was expecting to have to fill and level the many ruts and undulations in my lawn as he struggled and got stuck but no, like small child taking unexpectedly quickly to riding a bike Ted was off and motored up and over them with no problems while I stood at a distance like the parent of said child, watching and feeling both happy and unneeded.
6, Don’t worry about trees or other fixed obstructions, I’ve got 4 trees and a wooden combined swing and slide frame with 6 legs, Ted bumps into them gently, has a re-think then heads off in another direction. That said, if you prefer just use your extra wire to extend the perimeter to get your Landroid to avoid them.
7, While Ted was exploring the garden I pulled in the slack wire and I buried (I used a flat bladed spade but a lawn edger will do) in the areas where people walk or where its visible, at the back and far sides I fixed it on the ground with the supplied pegs, make sure you keep the wire tight. I used a big square woodworking mallet and where there were small lumps and bumps I gave the path of the wire a hammering just to make it flatten primarily to save on the pegs because they’re plastic , the wire has tough insulation so can’t be damaged by this but you might need to re-tension it. Where there were big dips I added extra pegs where needed.
And that was about it, its early days but Ted is set to auto schedule and just does his thing following about 4 hours effort by me over a couple of days. I plan to add my 200m2 front lawn and can see no reason why Ted won’t be able to cope with it. All I need to do now is get him to sort out the drainage in the lower field.
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!
After some rain one of the wire pegs must have risen slightly as the cable was cut by the mower. I had enough wire to replay the entire boundary so I did it all again from scratch following the previous wire but burying it. I used an edge cutter but a spade would suffice. This solution is better but the mower got stuck on an uneven bit of lawn, so I have levelled this to avoid the mower getting stuck and generating lifting errors.
Since then it has worked perfectly and I no longer have to mow the lawn other than strim the edges every so often.
Great purchase. Thoroughly recommend.
**** UPDATE 12 NOV 2020 ****
Winter has arrived so I have turned off the Charging Station (why waste power) and put my mower into my heated workshop to hibernate. I am still pleased I made this purchase. I will probably place my mower on the charging station every month just to top up the battery until Spring arrives. Not having to mow the garden or empty the grass clippings has made a huge difference from a time perspective.
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.
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!
Two things – first attempt just peg the wire out above the grass and set the mower to the highest cut (50mm) then place the mower near the base station but pointing away from it to the left, send it home and it will follow the wire the long way back so you can test your pegging distance is ok. You’ll probably need to make some adjustments for ditches, obstacles etc but once it can go back and dock you’re probably about halfway there. The other is the placement of the base station – it was important for us that it was tucked away and couldn’t be seen easily – we had one place where we could put it which was on the paving slabs but there wasn’t enough room to put a metre straight either side of the base (as is recommended). Fortunately the wire going in is fine, the one coming out comes out about 40/50cm before it immediately comes back on itself and into the garden. This works ok – the mower spends a minute realising there’s nowhere for it to go before it eventually turns the right way and off it goes.
I’ll be honest, i nearly sent this back as my first attempt (4 hours) wasn’t great. I gave it another go and it took me another 4/5 hours and got it all working. Just be prepared for it to take a day or two depending on how complicated your lawn is. The app is excellent, we get decent wifi coverage in the garden so it’s easy to keep an eye on it, it hasn’t had a problem yet (about 4/5 hours mowing so far). The app will give you an estimated mowing time (eg: start at 9am and mow for 40 mins) based on the value you put in as lawn size (or you can walk around it with the app and it’ll try and work it out). Personally i thought that was a bit low so for now i’ve set it to 2 hours each day, which i’ll reduce until i can see the difference.
In short, a great product but you need to be patient – whether you need one is another matter. Personally i don’t like seeing the grass grow longer and knowing i have to waste time cutting it at the weekend etc. We don’t have it cutting the front but if that’s something you need i think you need a 1 metre wide passage but check out some of the other reviews from people who have done that.
I’m so glad I did!
It works perfectly. It’s really, really good. Smart as well, rain sensors, upgradable extra modules, intuitive smartphone app, pin code and anti-theft lock options to mention but a few. It’s also whisper quiet. My lawn’s less than ten feet from my bedroom and I can barely hear it with the windows wide open.
The only significant downside is that it does take a lot of work to install correctly – and if you want to take full advantage of this machine, at the serious geek level, then wi-fi coverage of your lawn will be required, well. at least to the charging station anyway.
But, before you go out and grab one for yourself right now, there are a few considerations to mull over first. Namely choosing which model will best suit your requirements/meet your expectations, and also a clear understanding of exactly what’s involved in setting up these Worx Landroids correctly – as cutting corners on the latter, no pun intended, will surely end in disappointment. So if the extent of works described in the procedure below seem a little too onerous for your tastes, then I’d suggest not buying one of these machines.
Before going into further detail regarding the setup side of things, it’s worth mentioning that whilst the WR130 s300 model will cut the lawn perimeter, being guided by the supplied guide wire (more on this later). The WR130 doesn’t have the ‘cut to edge’ function of the WR142e model. So if your garden is bordered by flagstones, bricks or any surface at the same height of your lawn, and is under 300 sq/m, then don’t bother with the much more expensive WR142e model and save yourself 300 as this far cheaper model will straddle the lawn and any adjacent same-height surface thus cutting the entire lawn border just fine.
If, however, your garden has walled perimeters, raised beds, or sunken beds of a dissimilar height to the lawn (i.e. more than 15mm), then the offset mowing deck of the WR142e, and its cut to edge function, is something you may want to consider opting for as the WR130e won’t cut closer than circa 50mm to any vertical or sunken lawn border.
Trying to get around this by setting the WR130’s guide wires closer to the edge than is recommended simply won’t work. If a close cut to the edge is of paramount importance, then you’ll have to shell out the extra cash for the WR142e
Now to the setup; it’s really important to take the time to do this bit properly as anything short of a precise installation will end in a repeatedly stuck mower, cut wires, or a very expensive orange football and lots of expletives.
First step, select suitable charging base location:
Install the charging station on flat and level ground, ideally in a place where you can easily supply power to the station (the lead’s quite long so you’ll have some flexibility in this), using the coarse lawn screw supplied to pin it down. It may seem ungainly at first, but bear in mind that the grass will grow through the grid of the charging base and eventually completely hide it from view.
Second step: marking out the perimeter.
This is important, if the distances set at this stage are incorrect, then things go wrong. I used a line marker spray to set out where I intended to lay the wires, but you could also temporarily and loosely peg out the wire on the lawn’s surface before to ensure you’re happy with this configuration before committing to a permanent installation as described in the next step. As a basic rule of thumb, you need to set the wire 260mm away from a raised or sunken border, and 100mm away from any border/edge level with your lawn.
For internal ninety degree angles, either make the wire follow a gentle curve with a minimum radius of 300mm, or turn it into two forty-five degree angles with a minimum length between each other of 300mm. External ninety degree angles are clearly illustrated in the book, but only necessary for a perimeter cut. In my case, I opted for a 300mm curve instead.
It’s worth pointing out that on the internal ninety degree corners, there’s always going to be a little tuft of grass at the apex which won’t be cut, no matter how diligently you set the wires.
Third step, securing the perimeter wires:
the instructions suggest clipping it on the lawn surface every 800mm with the pins provided – save yourself the heartache at this point and take the more difficult but ultimately worthwhile option of burying them – as well as pinning them. It doesn’t need to be much, just use a spade to open a slit in the lawn, push the wire down by 10mm or so, pin it every 800mm, and at the start, apex and end of any curve.
Fourth step; connection of perimeter wires, operatio,n and a well-earned gin & tonic:
I won’t go into too much detail here as the app is pretty much self-explanatory and related instructions unambiguous.
One final word of warning: when selecting the mowing height on the rotary dial, it’s the number that’s nearest to the ground which indicates the setting selected. I made the mistake of accidentally lowering the mower deck to 20mm instead of 50mm – and came back a few moments later to find some very interesting patterns in the lawn. Fortunately any evidence of my stupidity has long since grown out.
In conclusion, if you’re prepared to work hard in the short term, then these machines are a great way to be lazy in the long term.