My uncle recently found himself in a difficult situation, with knee surgery preventing him from mowing the lawn and his son back in school unable to help. As a former landscaper, he couldn’t bear the thought of paying a local crew $60 a week to mow his lawn. They’ve proven time and time again that they rush and miss turns. Luckily for him, I had the Segaway Navimow Series robotic lawn mower to test out.
The Segway Navimow i110N features a 7-inch disc blade, a third the size of the 21-inch blade on his beloved Ryobi electric mower. As expected, he wasn’t exactly confident in a robotic lawn mower. But for a man who is extremely meticulous about his lawn, the i-Series impressed him with its precision and environmental awareness. This guy was downright giddy at times during the first cut, blown away by how it went back to touch up missed spots. Here’s what we liked and didn’t like about the new Navimow.
What I like
Easy to install and use
The Navimow mower setup process is simple: I had it up and running in less than 10 minutes. Simply set its compact docking station in a corner of your yard, plant the included antenna in the ground nearby, and run the power cable to your outdoor outlet. The Navimow app makes it easy to find the mower via Bluetooth, then connect it to your Wi-Fi network once you enter its password. From there, you simply create a map by driving the mower around the boundaries of your yard like a drone with touchscreen controls.
Sharp precision with neat cuts
I was particularly impressed with how precisely the GPS and camera sensor work together to ensure the mower can hug the edges of borders and flowerbeds without falling over. It cuts so well right up to the edge that we didn’t need to get out a strimmer to trim the edges that even humans miss. Once the robot has worked its way around the perimeter, it cuts the large inner sections diagonally downwards to create neat, defined strips. The grass is cut incredibly finely without leaving clumps on the lawn, which is a problem for my uncle’s usual Ryobi mulching blade.
It took two hours to mow 150 square metres, which is far from fast. But in terms of performance, the Navimow i110N is no slouch. It powered through the grass without getting caught and came back to deal with the slightly longer blades of grass. Better still, it runs almost silently. The loudest part was when it made a ripping sound like paper when going over rougher areas like a patch of crabgrass. The difference between the 40-volt push mower and the Navimow was night and day, about as drastic as a difference between a petrol lawnmower and an electric one.
Intelligent obstacle avoidance
Our test yard had two tricky areas to navigate around, but the Navimow easily navigated them. First, there was a birdbath that creates a small dip in the lawn and is surrounded by small rocks, which you can see above. As the robot mower made its way toward this obstacle, it cut within 10cm of it (about the length of a strimmer) but never crossed its rock pit or hit the unit itself. Instead, the Navimow skirted around the sides as it cut its rows, but stopped dead when the bath was in the middle of its path. It simply continued to create the rows around it. At first, I was worried that it would simply skip the section on the other side of the unit, but it simply cut right back to the untouched section to take care of the remaining strip.
With the stragglers out of the way, the mower jumped to the other side of the yard with a large tree. The Navimow made micro-adjustments to move forward and backward on the fly to get a close shave while maneuvering around this sizable obstacle. Its smaller, more agile movements were more effective than swinging wide and making multiple passes around the radius. The result was a much tighter cut around the tree bed without a single strand to complain about.
Extended battery life
The robot arrived with 50% battery. This lasted the first two hours of operation without any major fluctuations when working on a slight upward slope or battling clover and couch grass. It returned to base with only 1% of work remaining as the battery had dropped to 15%. At this rate, a full charge allows us to cover an impressive area of over 300 square meters per charge.
With the ability to map individual areas and its automatic return to the charging base, you can leave this device running and go to work with confidence. The Navimow charges quickly, increasing by a percentage every minute it is on the charging base.
What I don't like
Cuts through its freshly cut rows
There were three separate occasions when the Navimow cut its rows cleanly from the side. The first two times were due to missing strips and reverting to them once it reached the edge of the perimeter. After such a fantastic cut, I was amazed to see the Navimow cut horizontally through the new diagonal strips of lawn to return to its docking station. In a perfect world, it would recognize and move with the pattern instead of flattening the grass.
Do not shred the leaves
We're getting picky here, but it was disappointing that the blade failed to break up individual leaves. Even lowering the blade height simply crushed them. Ideally, it should shred the leaves like grass clippings so you don't see different colors popping up from the lawn.
Verdict
At $1,299, the Navimow i110N certainly isn't cheap. That said, its cutting performance and scheduling features are worth the price if you're considering a robotic lawn mower. You can buy cheaper models, but they won't cut for as long, and I wonder about their accuracy compared to this GPS-based system.
My uncle came in skeptical and vouches for the thing every day. Seriously, scroll through my iMessage threads and you'll easily find about two gigabytes of video of this thing running back and forth across his lawn. That's pretty high praise from a man who accepts nothing less than perfection when it comes to his property.