Thinking of getting one of these things for my parents. Given the layout of their garden, it would need to be able to do a flat, even surfaced lawn of around the size of a couple of tennis courts. Looking at it as a labour saving device for that piece of garden, to keep it nice and tidy.

Any recommendations/knowledge?

TIA.

This do? Says it’s for residential use.

Three sets of friends have Husqvarna (sp?) robo (auto?) mowers, two with lawns larger than your folks and one about the same. They all think they’re great and all got them through dealers who recommended the model to get and then did the full install.

IMO they do a lovely job on the lawn – you just have to get over not having stripes! Instead, they leave a lovely even carpet like finish with no wheel tracks showing.

My mower is a Honda gifted to me by my FiL, so not really able to move it on and neither is it likely to break down anytime soon, otherwise we’d head across that way ourselves!

https://www.husqvarna.com/uk/products/robotic-lawn-mowers/

Be prepared to feel some kind of attachment to them! Popping out every morning, diligently going about their work without complaint, until they take themselves to bed in their little house at night.

Meet Dad’s gardening mate – Bob.

https://www.husqvarna.com/uk/products/robotic-lawn-mowers/automower-430x/967852803/

Yeah, Husqvarna is the recommendation here. We do not have one (yet), but mother-in-law does and it keeps her lawn in decent shape.

Like people above, you will end up naming it… Hers is called ‘Rolle’ after her late husband. He has a small house and it is oddly relaxing to watch him trundle around the garden.

I keep seeing other that are cheaper in ICA or Granngården, but have been repeatedly told that we’ll only be buying a Husqvarna.

What about leaves – I’ve a couple Birch trees in the garden along with an apple and a pear – they drop a fair amount of leaves (esp this time of year). Would the robo-mower just chew them up and spit them out – is that ok for the lawn?

Cheers

Bob doesn’t like palm tree leaves; everything else he gobbles up.

around the size of a couple of tennis courts

#humblebrag

Damn it i dont need one….

HOWEVER having just got a ROBOVAC (Ecovacs Deebot 950), im a convert to all things automated. like the floor inside, my garden is fairly large too and whilst it would make my rather lovely Toro lawn mower redundant and no more stripes, i like the idea of a mower busily scurrying around every other day – and putting the nutrients back in the soil!!

But a good point about Autumn, what does it do about leaves – i get a lot of them, Oak, Birch, Ash (the worst) and other crap that lands in the garden – how do they deal with this?

Interesting. We’ve got a holiday place that’s one of 5 houses and we each pay about £300/year to have a guy come and cut the lawns (15 times/year). The lawns form one (950m2) rectangular area with just our bit at the end being separated with a post and rail fence – so it should be easy to cut.
Between us we could probably cover the cost of a robomower in less than 2 years !

Very interesting.

Edit: attached to the lawn is a further 1300m2 area of rough grass that could also be done but it’s little more challenging in terms of undulations, etc. At the moment it’s only cut 3 times a year costing a total of £400/year – not sure the extra it would cost for a robomower that could also deal with this bit also would be worth it.

Between us we could probably cover the cost of a robomower in less than 2 years !

I bet an “accident” might befall the robot mower if you tried that route. But I’m just cynical. 🙂

I once read a story on the Internet about somebody who had a robo vacuum cleaner in their beautifully carpeted house.
They also had a young puppy. The puppy laid a particularly soft dog egg in the hallway overnight.
By the morning there was very little of it left in the hallway due to a thin and even coating being spread throughout the whole ground-floor of the house.

couple of villas we’ve stayed at over the last few hols have had them, they fascinate me 😀

id love a cute one just for the novelty feature, but we dont have much grass (70m/sq?) and the price just isnt worth it for a ‘toy’.

great little things tho.

Thanks, folks. Will have a look at Husqvarna as a starting point.

I bet an “accident” might befall the robot mower if you tried that route.

You may have a point!

Can you teach it to drive around between front and back lawns?

Good thread, I’m close to trading the ride-on for a robo-mower.

Much as I’d love a Husky they’re a bit on the pricey side here. $3800 for the 315X which is the lowest-spec one I’d need. On the other hand I can get a Chinese version – Exgain – for $1900 (an over-specced version, allowing for a little creative licence in the marketing).

Huge here in Sweden. I hate them with a passion you can only dream of.   Hope that helps.

Nah for your parents they sound like a good option. My neighbour is constantly rescuing his after it has run out of power or flipped over or something, but it’s quite an old one i think. They periodically need updating with software apparently ( ! )  and take a bit of effort to set them up.    McCulloch get get reviews for being decent value.

edit: they cant handle leaves. they slide around on them when wet ( what tyre for robot wheels) and yeah the leaves , if large get in the way.

The Worx Landroid looks good to me. I’ve only got a smallish back garden and its a lot smaller than the Husqvarna and a hell of a lot cheaper. Should be fine for my garden. The biggest problem I’ve got in my back garden is Ants that build earth mounds so not sure how a robot mower would manage those.

Two Husqvarna here in large gardens. They just work. Even with dogs. Not cheap, but quality. We have them at work too. Recommended.

For our modest garden we have Adam. He is a real human who produced the most famous lawn of all.