How to Choose a Robot Lawn Mower

Nothing we sell needs a boundary wire

The old generation of robot mowers needed a perimeter wire pegged around the lawn, and around every flower bed inside it. Everything in our range navigates without one, which is why the buying decision has moved from installation to navigation.

Three builders, one rule: no wire. Beyond that they differ in how they move across ground and how they know where they are — and those two things decide whether a machine suits your garden more than the price does.

How it moves: tracks or wheels

  • Tracks

    Spread weight over a bigger contact patch, so they climb steeper slopes and cope with soft or uneven ground that stops a wheeled machine. Heavier, and they need more room to turn.

    Lymow and Yarbo run tracks.

  • Wheels

    Lighter, quieter, and gentler on a fine lawn. Better in tight, complicated gardens with narrow passages. Less happy on wet clay or a serious gradient.

    Sunseeker runs wheels.

  • Which one is you?

    If your lawn has a slope you would think twice about pushing a mower up, or it holds water, look at tracks. If it is flat, ornamental and full of obstacles, wheels will treat it better.

How it knows where it is

  • RTK satellite

    Centimetre-level positioning from satellites, corrected by a reference. Very accurate in the open. Its weakness is sky view — dense tree cover or a tall wall can interrupt the correction.

  • LiDAR

    The machine builds a map from what it can see around it, so it does not care about sky view. Works under trees and beside buildings, where satellite methods struggle most.

  • Vision and sensor fusion

    Cameras reading the scene, usually combined with one of the above. The practical benefit is obstacle handling — the hose, the dog, the garden chair someone left out.

How to read an acreage claim

A stated maximum area assumes close to ideal conditions: one open shape, few obstacles, dry grass, a full battery. Real gardens are none of those things.

A lawn split into three sections with a path between them, or one that slopes, or one mown in long wet grass, will take meaningfully longer and more charge cycles than the headline figure implies. If your plot is near the top of a machine's stated range, buy the next size up rather than the one that just fits on paper.

Our range covers roughly a third of an acre through to six acres across the three builders, so there is usually a machine one step up from the one that only just qualifies.

Where to start

  • Robotic lawn mower on a cut lawn beside a pool with a robotic pool cleaner working underwater

    Browse the full range

    Three builders, from a third of an acre to six. Every machine wire-free.

    Robot lawn mowers 
  • Yarbo Core with Lawn Mower module

    The modular one

    Yarbo is a single core machine that takes mower, snow blower and blower modules, so the same chassis works through the year rather than one season.

    View the Yarbo Core 
  • Sunseeker X9 Plus with the EdgeZero trimmer arm

    The largest single machine

    If the plot is genuinely big, the Sunseeker X9 Plus is the top of our range. Worth a conversation before ordering rather than a click.

    View the X9 Plus 

Frequently asked questions

Do any of these need a boundary wire?

No. Everything in our range maps its own area. That is the main practical reason to buy this generation rather than an older discounted one.

What about tree cover?

This is the question that should drive your choice. Heavy canopy interferes with satellite positioning, so a LiDAR-based machine is the safer buy under mature trees. Tell us what your garden looks like and we will say which method suits it.

How steep a slope can they manage?

It varies by machine and each one states its own limit. As a rule tracks handle more gradient than wheels. Check the specific model's figure rather than assuming the range shares one.

Will it work in the rain?

Most will run in light rain, but wet grass clumps and cuts less cleanly, and soft ground marks more easily. Many owners schedule around the forecast for the sake of the lawn rather than the machine.

Describe your garden

Size, slope, tree cover and whether it is one lawn or several. That is enough for us to tell you which navigation method suits it and which machine to skip.

Talk to usBrowse robot mowers