I want one - to add to my staff (the robot vacuum, and the Alexa robot).

A robot mower can cut any grass just as well as traditional one …. Just as long as it has equal powered motor/engine. They work great in open areas with no obstructions.

They do not do edging. They are not good when the situation of your yard changes (your kids shoes or toys are left in the yard, dropped palm fronds etc etc).

If you have a large area to mow, and don’t mind picking up the shoes, toys, branches before starting the robot mower it will work well, Then while it works, you mow around the edges and difficult parts.

If you just want the robot mower to do it all while you are away, you will most likely not be satisfied.

I looked into them, but not for very long. After the high cost, having to bury the wire, and how much I would have to move it around (back to front, two area in front), just decided to buy a battery powered mower and do it myself. I agree, the lawn care services around here are pretty bad/inconsistent. And if you are a part-timer, you will at some point get calls from your neighbors about how they aren't mowing it. But of course, still sending you the bill.

Not something I recommend, but saw a YouTube video where the homeowner tied a rope to a tree, and the other end to his self-propelled mower. He strapped down the dead man switch and let it go. It went in a progressively shrinking circle, mowing the grass as the rope wrapped around the tree.

If nothing else, you would be the talk of your neighborhood for a few weeks.

robot website
 

See robotreviews.com for info on robot mowers. Not sure but Husqvarna may dominate the US market. Issue with these is need to install wire boundary markers in the lawn while some models may have more sensors to avoid that need. Capacity varies, size of area to cover, priced accordingly. These devices only clip a little off the top, lacking a large debris bin, and are designed to be run frequently as a result.

Good idea.
Do they edge, weed wack, and blow?

Auto Mower
 

We have the Husqvarna mower. The first one we got was a smaller because we had zoysia grass and it is very low thin grass. Mower worked great. You lay a wire about 4" from the curb and walkways and about 4" deep. At first our mower would end up outside the curb and neighbors would let us know he was "stuck" in the gutter. Mower will stop if it is too far over the wire. That is when we realized that you can adjust how far the mower goes over the wire. We made the adjustment.

It has a GPS and alarm if picked up without putting in your code. We had it for about 4 years, worked great. Then we switched to St. Augustine grass and got the same model just a larger one to cut thicker grass. You can put layers bricks or such decor to prevent having to "trim" a lot. Wife does most of the trimming. However, lawn guys have offered to do just a trim job whenever they are doing the lawns in the area. Reasonable price, but spouse likes that part of the yard work. Wire is laid wherever you don't want it to cross. We only find it necessary to loop around the yard. You can run the wire across the drive, like a little pathway and mower will cross over to do the other side of the drive. We did that at first and then decided mower spent too much time crossing our large drive. We cut out that part of the loop.

Now we just carry mower over to that area when we want it mowed. Mower works in any weather. We run it from around 6 pm to 7am. Remember it takes time-out to recharge the battery during those runs. It is an auto so we just set him to run when sprinkler are off and at night. Mower runs until it is time to recharge and it goes back to its charge station and renews its power and back out it goes again. It has a start time and when to be finished. You can decide where you want the charging station to be. It is a about 3 feet square space to take up. Depending on the size mower you get. When we got our first one we had. to call to get a code to set it up. We now have been using an auto mower for about eight or nine years and it has saved a lot of money and cross contamination from other lawns dropped seeds. That is probably the best advantage of having an auto-mower; you do not get the insect and weed contamination from other lawns that the mower services carry on their mowers.

browser for robotreviews
 

Robotreviews.com may not work in Firefox, but use Edge or Chrome. Hosting undergoing revision by manager.

Does any mower?

Don’t forget your robot spouse 🤣

Gotta do something about the exhaust fumes from mine.

maybe the lawn Roombas have a high-frequency sound that warns dogs away?

Yes, I do.

Given all the cost & effort detailed above, it makes little sense. It would take me 42 months just break even, and I would still have to trim and blow the clippings.

I did the grass this morning, 21” Greenworks pro 80v self propelled, mulches, took 25 minutes. Average designer sized lot. I had to wait for the dew this morning to dry up a bit. I have St Augustine at the back and zoysia at the front. The St Augustine grows twice as fast for some reason. The professional mowers started before me and are still out there after 3 hours but they are doing 4 houses or more. And they are carefully edging and blowing wondering why I am not golfing instead. I did that yesterday.