This week I bought a cordless EGO (as in E GO) Power Plus 49cm battery electric lawn mower. 

I had been using a corded lawn mower, but it can't mulch and emptying the grass bag frequently when / if the grass grew quickly (and it rained) could take literally hours when mowing my 2023sqm section.....never mind the mowing part.

So I needed a mulcher. The last two petrol-powered mulching mowers I bought were about $800.....but both of them became frustrating to start. The attraction of an electric lawn mower is there are never any starting issues. It just goes. Every time. Instantly. Plus they make a lot less noise....and it costs about 64 cents in electricity (assuming 3.25 kWh) to mow the lawn.

The battery for the EGO is 4.0 Amp hours. The mower is 56volt, so has good torque. No problem mulcing dry kikuyu grass. If it's wet, like it was today, I just mowed half-widths and it was fine. 

The battery is supposed to last 45 minutes, but in the 15cm very damp grass I was cutting today, the battery would be in the last 20% in about 30 minutes. I was ready for that and had bought a second battery AND a rapid charger that can fill it up in 30 minutes, as it happens. 

So today I was finishing the 40% of the lawn I ran out of time cutting last week with the old mower...(hence a NEW MOWER).....and I was swapping the batteries every 30 minutes and as I would run low and pull the battery out, the one on the (optional extra) rapid charger was *just* finishing charging....and I only had to wait a minute at most if at all.  It went really smoothly.  

I had been concerned the batteries or the charger would get hot with repeated charging.....but no. Barely warm. The mower also came with a slow charger. That one takes 80 minutes, so when I was nearly done I ran one battery down half way to finish the job...and the other empty one had been on the slow charger for half an hour and was half full. That way I finished up with both batteries on 50%, optimal for storage. I had to think about for about 30 seconds, then actually doing it was no trouble. 

I'm impressed. The mower is relatively light. It folds up small. It's quieter than a petrol mower...and it mulched the kikuyu grass up so finely you'd have to get on your hands and knees to see the cut grass left in the lawn. Plus you can fold the mower up and stand it on one end to store it. Tidy as.

I paid about $1250 (Mitre 10) all up for the mower / battery / charger / a spare battery / optional rapid charger. That's a lot compared to the cheaper petrol mowers......but, as above, they end up being an unreliable pain in the arse in a variety of ways and ultimately poor value.

My previous electric mower was $279 plus a 30m extension cable.....was only ever intended to be temperary....and lasted 6 months until I got tired of emptying the grass catcher every 30 metres. I couldn't just let it throw everything out the back as that put it all right onto my shins.....and there are stones about. Plus I;d have had to find a way to lock the back hatch open. 

Anyone else got one of these?