Are robot lawn mowers worth it?

I’ve reviewed a lot of robot lawn mowers for Expert Reviews and have a keen sense of their benefits and drawbacks. As with most home automatons, they aren’t quite the utopian labour-saving devices that their manufacturers might have us believe.

On the positive side, once properly set up, most robot lawn mowers can do an exceptional job of cutting 95% of your lawn. On the downside, that remaining 5%, which will most likely be around the edge, is still going to have to be cut manually.

Here I’ll take a look at these pros and cons, take into account robot running costs and answer the question of whether a robot lawn mower is really worth it.

Will a robot lawn mower save time?

If there’s one thing that a robot mower will do for you, it’s giving you back some time. It sounds obvious, but each time the mower goes out and cuts your lawn for you, that’s a mow that you don’t have to do with a manual mower. That’s a definite and measurable time saver. The larger your lawn, the longer it would take you to mow it and the more time a robot will save you.

Can I throw away my manual lawn mower?

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean you can throw out your manual mower with your grass clippings. Firstly you’ll probably find that your first mow of the season still needs to be done with a manual mower. Robots aren’t good in long grass, and need a shortish base to start from. That usually involves a quick once-over with a manual mower to eliminate tricky tufts that may have sprung up while your robot’s been in hibernation.

The other thing that most robots aren’t great at is going around the edges. Whether you have a classic robot that stays within the confines of a wire you’ve laid around the edge of your lawn or a clever satellite-navigated system with millimetre precision, there will always be uncut strips around the edge.

Most gardeners will want to keep these trimmed manually with a lawn mower or a grass strimmer. The good news is that this isn’t going to take very long, and is certainly a far quicker job than cutting the whole lawn, even if you have to get your manual mower out to do it.

One alternative might be to let the edge grow – sprinkle some meadow seeds into it and have a wilder border. I haven’t received permission from my head gardener to try that out, however, and she demands an edge cut every couple of weeks. Still, the time saved with not having to mow the whole lawn every week through the summer months remains truly significant.

Are robot lawn mowers expensive to run?

Although they can cost a lot of money up front, robot lawn mowers are very cheap to run. Prices will vary from robot to robot, depending on the size of your garden and the fluctuating price of electricity, but let’s look at a typical example.

I reviewed the Yard Force EasyMow 260B in 2023 and it remains one of the most affordable models. It uses a random path to cover the whole lawn, so essentially goes out and mows for as long as its battery will let it, before heading back to recharge. Most users will probably set this to happen a couple of times a day, which should be more than enough to keep a garden of up to 260m² trimmed and neat all over. 

It uses a battery with a capacity of 2Ah and a voltage of 20V. That means a full charge uses 40Wh (calculated by multiplying the capacity by the voltage: 2Ah x 20V = 40Wh). Electricity costs tend to be measured in kWh, so a full charge would use 0.04kWh. Multiplied by two for its two outings takes us to 0.08kWh per day.

At the time of writing, in April 2025, Ofgem has capped energy prices at 27.03p per kWh, so sending a Yard Force EasyMow 260B out from a full charge, then recharging it again afterwards, will cost around 1.08p.

Assuming that this is happening twice a day, and the mowing season lasts from 1 March to 31 October (which is probably on the generous side), then we’re looking at 244 days. That means that running the mower should only cost about £5 in electricity for the entire year.

If the mower is rated to cover a larger area, it may have a battery with a greater capacity, or it may cut the lawn more intelligently. The Worx Vision AI L1600 (the big brother of the Worx Landroid Vision M600 WR206E), for example, can cover 1,600m² but uses a 4Ah/20V battery to do it. It can go twice as far on each charge, but the cost of that charge is doubled.

The Husqvarana Automower 305E NERA has a less powerful 2.2Ah battery, but can be set to cut in either a regular or a random pattern. It’s rated to cover 600m² in random mode or 900m² in a regular pattern. Either way, Husqvarana’s specs tell us that a month of mowing will use 7kWh, so using the same eight month March to October season would cost just over £15.

Electricity isn’t the only cost, there will also be some servicing that needs doing. After a busy year of mowing it’s worth swapping out the blades on the cutting disc of your mower. Searching online for replacements suitable for the EasyMow 206B, we found spare blades cost around £9 for a pack of three. You’ll need all of these for a full blade refresh. So while these are far from expensive, owners of smaller gardens may end up spending as much per year on refreshing the blades as they spend on charging.

Is a robot lawn mower worth it?

It depends on how much you like looking after your lawn. A fastidious gardener looking for regimented clipping and neat stripes will get a better-looking lawn from a manual mower with a built-in roller. Some robots leave stripes of sorts, but you won’t get perfect results without the roller. For this type of lawn owner, a robot mower is not worth it.

Manual mowing takes time, though, and getting the mower out at least once a week through the summer months is a chore. Robot mowers definitely help here. They aren’t perfect and you’ll still need to mow or strim the edges. However, if the bulk of your lawn is trimmed and neat, you may not feel the need to go out and do this on a weekly basis. When you do, it’s a much smaller job than a full lawn mow.

While that might not quite match the promise of entirely labour-free lawn maintenance, robot lawn mowers still save an extraordinary amount of time. If your time is precious, especially if you’d rather be spending it doing anything but chores, then a robot lawn mower is definitely worth it.

Written by

Andy Shaw

Andy Shaw has been a professional reviewer for 30 years, starting his career critiquing PC games and rapidly expanding his horizons into all types of computer hardware and software. Since then he’s worked for a broad selection of print magazines and websites, as a writer and editor, both on staff and as a freelancer. Nowadays he applies his well-honed critical eye to reviewing a wide range of products, from vacuum cleaners to printers.

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