I'll admit, I was won over by their rather aggressive advertising on social media. If you've shown any remote interest in a robot mower over the last couple years, you've probably seen the Lymow ads on the likes of Instagram, Facebook etc. I was never brave (silly?) enough to back it when it was just a kickstarter project, but the actual specs of the mower ticked all of the boxes that I had been looking for that up until now, I felt other robot mowers had been missing. Namely:
- No boundary wire
- Able to handle a property that isn't a pristine lawn
- Big battery for a larger section
- Real mower blades rather than a disk of razer blades
At the moment, my "lawn" is a rather rough larger section (2000m²) which we haven't really done much with yet since building the house on it. At the moment, the ground is rather rocky and uneven. I'm not sure what breed it's called, but the grass is also that tougher kind that you're more likely to find in a paddock. Not having a mower already, I was paying a local guy to do it while I figured out what I wanted. Due to the size of the property, it was going to either be a ride on or a robot, both of which are around the same price.
Anyway, backstory aside, the Lymow left Kickstarter earlier this year and was available for general orders. After watching a few videos on YouTube and reading through some reviews it seemed like the real deal, with some teething issues that you'd expect from a brand new product. I ended up ordering one at the end of October for around $4k with shipping and it arrived last week.
The whole setup process was pretty straight forward, with the trickiest parts being finding a spot outside with access to power and a good location for the RTK antenna. Once that's done, mapping is done by controlling the mower from the app and walking it around the perimeter which creates a zone. You can create as many zones as you want (I think?) and each zone can have its own custom mowing settings.
Once I was finally able to get it out mowing, I was pretty impressed. It has had no issues with the conditions of the ground at all and the quality of the mow has been great! I was curious how well the GPS accuracy would be at keeping it away from some new Kowhai hedges I've planted but it's been bang on within the borders I created during the mapping process. There are some areas that I will likely always actively supervise it, like the berm against the road/foot path just to make sure it doesn't somehow end up on the road.
The main downside of it is the location of where they decided to put the charging contacts. They're on the bottom of the robot, and when the grass is particularly juicy, the contacts can get fully coated in dried on grass juice which prevents it from being able to charge and I've had to go clean the contacts with a wet rag a of couple times now. I see they've now released an updated version that has the contacts on the top of the mowing deck which should solve this issue, but I hope they come up with some kind of retrofit option for those with the original.
One thing that has surprised me is how opinionated people are about mowing! I've had a few friends and neighbours ask me why I would want to miss out on the enjoyment of mowing the lawn myself. I personally don't see the appeal of taking up a few hours every weekend to sit out in the heat of the sun going back and forwards, but if that's something you do enjoy then that's probably the only reason I wouldn't recommend buying one.
