This Robotic Lawn Mower Is a Good Choice for Small Yards.
Robotic lawn mower designs vary widely as they are optimized for different benefits, and each feature has its own disadvantages. Lightweight and fast robots are easy to roll over. Heavy robots are slow and stuck. It seems like every robotic lawnmower I test is designed differently, optimized for stability, sharp turns, durability or maneuverability, but never all of the above. So, robotic lawnmowers are very different from robotic vacuum cleaners: it’s less about which robot is better and more about which robot is best for your yard. The Segway Navimow i110n ($1,299, but the smaller model costs $979.99) is a useful little bot with an attractive design, tight turning radius, small size, and a relatively easy-to-use app. It struggles with uneven terrain and doesn’t get as close to obstacles as it should. However, if you’re willing to make small changes to your yard to make it work, the Navimow is a good choice for a mid-priced robotic lawnmower.
Easy to assemble
Navimow basically comes assembled right out of the box. Unlike Mammotion Luba 2 , it is not a low-level bot; it’s pretty boxy. Navimow has two large front wheels and then smaller wheels, similar to office chair wheels. The garage , an optional purchase I recommend (it protects your investment from both the elements and thieves), also came together quickly. The most confusing part was the navigation tower that could be mounted on the included pole. Alternatively, you can install it in your home, and the instructions were not helpful in distinguishing the home mount and pole parts from each other. The dock, lawnmower, garage and GPS tower are relatively lightweight.
Segway makes every effort in its app and docs to offer instructions for installing the tower and bot because, like many other bots, the tower and bot need to be in sight of each other at all times, and the tower also needs to have a clear view of the sky. If you have a front and back yard, you will likely need to mount a pole on the house to maintain a clear line of sight to the bot at all times, meaning the bot and the tower will be in two different locations. There are many cords available for this, but it is much easier to install them both in one place. Once there, I tried to connect Navimow to the app for about 30 minutes – the app just couldn’t find the robot – but it eventually did and the app has been stable ever since.
Prefers a flat lawn
Navimow sets boundaries the way I like them, like the Mammotion Luba 2. You “walk” around the robot using the app’s remote control to set the boundary. The lawnmower then begins to map everything within that boundary. You can set no-go zones, but in this yard the only no-go zones were raised beds that couldn’t be damaged by the lawnmower. You can follow the area Navimow maps in the app in real time, seeing its position and precise information about the area covered – a feature I really liked. However, almost immediately the Navimow became stuck in a hole in the lawn. It was not a ditch or a large hole, but rather a shallow depression, about two feet wide and several inches deep. “Lyuba-2” overcame significant ditches, but the design was completely different. Here the two large wheels and square shape worked against the bot. Over the next few braids, the bot avoided the area whenever it felt the depression was still there. The same thing happened with a small hill elsewhere in the yard. Again, it wasn’t a sharp rise, but a slight rise of over 18 inches, nothing more than a slight bump. But still, Navimow decided that this was a danger and dodged away from it, leaving a clearly not beveled ledge. We shaved the hill—no more than a spade’s scoop—and then carried that soil into the depression and leveled it. The mower then started mowing those areas on its next run, but I was surprised that they bothered it to begin with.
No lawn paths, but predictable mowing
Unlike other bots where you can set the mowing height in the app, you set it manually on top of the mow itself, meaning you’re less likely to adjust it once it’s set. The Navimow does a decent job of mowing, obediently moving back and forth in a predictable pattern after its first circuit of the area. Because of the lightness of the robot, I was never able to achieve the lawn lines that many people strive for, no matter how long the grass was beforehand or how short we cut it. Additionally, the finished lawn, although neatly trimmed, did not have the neat appearance that a heavier lawnmower like the Lyuba 2 gives. The lawn was always littered with missing pieces of grass here and there. And while the occasional piece of overgrown grass doesn’t make a big difference, it still has an impact on the final look.
Improves over time
For the first few weeks, I was underwhelmed by how much space Navimow gave these raised beds. The boxes were strong and made up of straight lines, I assumed the bot would bump into them and cut fairly close. Instead, Navimow avoided them altogether, leaving an eight to 10-inch wide path around them that required some string trimming. But over the next few weeks, Navimow began to get closer to those boxes, becoming more accurate. By the sixth week there was very little space left around the boxes.
Some functions are hidden
The Navimow app offers many of the same features as other lawn robots, including scheduling, reporting, anti-theft protection, and options for conditions that will cause the mower to fail: rain, darkness, etc. What it did worse than other robots , so this is help. create multi-zone maps. I have found that most lawns will require more than one zone. You’ll likely divide your front and back yards into two areas and connect them, or you might have a strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the street. Adding new zones is hidden in the application, outside of the map controls. I also had a hard time making connections between zones once I had them established. The mower also had difficulty when I asked it to mow multiple areas using these connections.
Reliable and trustworthy
Still, there was a lot to like about Navimow. It was consistent: when I asked him to mow one area, he did it reliably. After I fixed the gradation issue, the Navimow never got stuck while cutting a certain area, and I was able to send it out on planned runs without worrying about it during my six weeks of testing. During those six weeks we never had to mow by hand, although we did trim the edges with a trimmer.
Bottom line: good price for small spaces.
I ran this test at the same time as the Mammotion Luba 2, so it’s easy to compare the two. For example, “Lyuba” cannot cope with difficult terrain, and “Navimou” could not cope with the same obstacles as “Lyuba”. But Navimow can navigate much smaller spaces than Luba. In places where “Luba” could barely penetrate, “Navimou” zipped up, mowed down and got out without tearing it. While the Navimow doesn’t leave marks on the lawn due to its lightweight body, the wheels also don’t tear up the lawn when making tight turns like the Luba did in those places. The finished result doesn’t look as clean, but the lawn was mowed. Navimow is also half the price of Luba. If your lawn is less than ¼ acre, Navimow makes a lot of sense. For $1,300 or less, you take one chore off your to-do list, and that amortizes pretty quickly when you factor in the time it takes to get a haircut or the money you’ll pay for the service. I recommend the additional garage; At night, the lawn mower glows like a light tower, and the garage helps mask the light a bit. I also recommend installing a GPS tower near your home so that the robot always has a clear line of sight and that your lawn is nearly level. However, if you’re willing to do a little work up front, the Segway Navimow i110n will do all the work for you.