Ever since we were kids at school, there have been differing opinions about brands and which are best. In my day, there was the Nintendo vs Sega battle with the SNES and the Megadrive head to head, and clothing brands like Nike and Reebok separating opinion. Of course, everyone gravitates towards what they have, as that’s the choice they made.

When it comes to automatic lawn mowers, the same applies. If you go to the nerdier corners of the internet, you’ll find people quoting all sorts of facts and figures relating to battery life and power of motors, along with things like the range of operation. When the average person is asking about the best robot lawn mowers to buy, though, they’re probably not particularly bothered about the real depths of detail. For some, they’ll barely even fully understand what a robot mower is and does, so the shallow detail of a beginners’ guide is all that’s needed.

What’s important to most of us is that the garden gets a nice neat lawn that’s mowed regularly, and the device is easy to set up and reasonably good value for money. That’s why sites like https://www.robotlawnmowers.org/ (here) are so popular – they break that information down into plain English and give a recommendation that will suit most average households. You’ll see them talk about the likes of well known brands like Flymo as great choices, and it’s about a lot more than wifi channels and replacement blade quality. It talks about the brand being recognisable to most people – giving the confidence that you’re buying a reliable product and if things go wrong, support is available.

While other sites talk about more specialist brands like Robomow, that’s at the other end of the spectrum, regardless of how big and successful they are. When you’re unfamiliar with a type of product, you’re going to be most keen on avoiding spending hundreds of pounds on a bad product, rather than choosing the best possible make and model based on what a well groomed salesman earns the most commission selling. That’s exactly why the Flymo model (the 1200R) is so popular, it gives the instant brand recognition people need to gain confidence, and that doesn’t necessarily mean you are (or aren’t) getting every last feature that you may do elsewhere. That said, sometime simple is best – after all you’re looking for a machine to mow the lawn for you – it’s not something that needs a lot of bells and whistles, although I’m sure in time that will inevitably come.

So, in summary, the answer to finding the best robot lawn mower brand is probably going to come down to nothing more than confidence and familiarity, two elements that you’ll find crop up time and time again whatever you’re buying, not just to cut the grass!

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Robot mowers, or to give them their full name, robotic lawnmowers, are the next step towards smart homes.

They’re designed and marketed at the moments to simply prevent you from having to go out into the garden and mow the lawn yourself. That drastically reduces the time required to be spent on lawn care in general, leaving only sprinkling a bit of seed and pulling up the odd weed as required.

The idea is that once they’re un-boxed and away, they’re pretty much autonomous in their duties, doing their thing from Spring to Autumn, and possibly even through winter if required, although that’s probably not necessary in the UK.

Massive breakthroughs in battery technology has overcome some of the issues facing early automatic mowers, which struggled to complete large lawns in one sweep. Instead they used to remember where they ran low on power, returned to charge on their base plate and then continued later to finish the job.

Now though, they’re benefiting from much more powerful cells, coupled with more efficient power management to achieve more and more before needing to recharge.

That means they’re now able to handle almost any garden and lawn, big or small. Very few home-owners will find that their plots are beyond the scope of modern mowers, even if they do still need to divide and conquer to complete the task at hand. After all, who really cares if it’s not you doing it yourself?

As we said earlier, this is a road towards the smart home getting ever smarter. It’s already available, but more and more commonly home-owners are able to track their mower from their phone via apps. Of course, that means that just like the heating (and doorbell), the features of the device can be controlled from anywhere in the world (assuming you have wifi or mobile signal).

No doubt the technology that the brands create will continue to grow and evolve, and who knows what else will be added. Perhaps we’ll get to the point where lawns can be kept hydrated by sprinkling water as they mow, or perhaps doing the weeding and feeding at the same time. One thing is for sure, it’s the biggest step forward in home mowing and lawn care in decades.

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Robot mowers are a relatively new technology and McDowell Robotics are here to help you unravel the mystery. With a little effort in understanding these whirring, self driving devices, you can soon be set up and ready to go with your very own robot carrying out your mundane lawn care routine.

Unlike people, robotic mowers aren’t put off by a bit of hard work, meaning that there’s not a lot that can get in the way of scheduled mowing, apart from a few obstacles like garden gnomes, drain covers and flower beds. All of these can be overcome with your new mowers’ sensors meaning that once it’s underway with its regular task, there’s very little for you to do!

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