Husqvarna Automower v Worx Landroid robot mowers

Autonomous robots can vacuum your carpet and mop your floor. How good are they at mowing your lawns?

Out with the blades! Husqvarna (grey) and Worx (orange) autonomous robot mowers go head-to-head.

Autonomous robots can vacuum your carpet and mop your floor. How good are they at mowing your lawns? I’ve tested the latest models by Husqvarna and Worx to find out. These two mowers went head-to-head. It was out with the blades.

Our lawns are facing a robot managed future. The weekends where a chorus of mowers in the suburbs droned away are starting to fade. In their place an increasing battalion of silent robotic mowers work 24/7. They can even cut your lawn in the middle of the night, as you sleep.

These mowers are different to a push or ride-on mower. While you’d normally mow once per week with your own mower, a robot runs more regularly to trim and maintain the lawn continually. The benefit is that the trimmings feed the lawn and you can live with a carpet-like appearance to your lawn that always stays the same length.

Robot mowers run any time day or night, and given they are electric, they’re almost entirely silent and self guided. Unlike traditional lawnmowers, robot variants have a deck with small razor-like blades which are lightweight, inexpensive and easy to replace. They are safer than fixed blades as they’ll retract if they impact solid objects in their routine.

They are not as intelligent as their robot vacuum friends inside the home. Robot vacuums use object detection to navigate with laser precision and they can follow a guided pattern. Robot mowers rely on a guide wire planted around the mowing perimeter to ensure they don’t move into your veggie garden or the street. They move randomly, changing direction like a pinball in a machine, without a pattern or intelligence. Eventually they mow the entire lawn.

Husqvarna Automower 315X

Husqvarna Automower 315X

Husqvarna have been in the lawnmower game since 1919 and their first attempt at a robot mower was in 1995. Their Automower range stretches across ten different models to handle lawn sizes up to 5000m2.

I installed the Automower 315X into the backyard to look after 700m2 with some trees and garden beds. The guide wire is placed far away enough from the border to avoid collision or getting stuck but close enough that it mows to the edge. Husqvarna provides a guide ruler to make this simple.

The guide wire can be pegged into the lawn or you can dig and lay the wire yourself. I learned from my mistakes where the guide wire was too close to a ditch and resulted in the mower getting stuck and needing to be rescued.

You can connect the Automower to your smart home via a companion app once the installation is complete. The app lets you control the operation of the mower, set schedules and use your preferred voice assistant.

We set our 315X to work five days per week from 11am until 10pm. I felt I lived in the future, looking outside in the evening and seeing the robot at work with the headlights on – a decorative measure. The Automower range kicks off at $1,739 RRP.

Worx Landroid WR139E

Worx Landroid WR139E

Worx’s garden power tool range has expanded to include a robot mower named Landroid. There are three models in the range with their biggest capable of 1500m2 coverage. I installed the WR139E to manage the front lawn.
The Landroid range is loaded with accessories. They include a theft alarm, an anti-collision system and a shelter. Installation of the Worx Landroid is very similar to the Husqvarna and given it was our second attempt we managed to complete it in less time.

The companion app for the Worx Landroid is feature rich. You can create automatic schedules based on the grass type, the amount of lawn and monitoring weather.

The Landroid uses a smaller mowing deck to the Husqvarna range so it cuts less at each pass. With that said, the side mounted deck appears to get closer to the edge of the lawn. The mower has a single jockey wheel at the front while the rear wheels have a very rugged tread pattern which is excellent for steering and grip.

However, the tread is so large that if the Landroid manoeuvred too close to the guide wire, it would not only pull and lift the wire, but also cut it with the blades. This happened on countless occasions with our lawn and we became experts at repairing and reinstalling guide wire.

Our advice is to install the guide wire into the ground and not simply rely on the pegs holding the wire on the lawn. The anti-collision system was retrofitted to the Landroid and meant that you could place a child on the lawn and the mower would go around them.

After a period of rain however, the anti-collision system was incorrectly seeing taller grass as an obstacle and avoiding patches entirely. Over time, those areas only grew taller and needed to be mowed with a traditional mower. The Landroid range starts from $1,359.15 without accessories.

The winner

While I loved the Worx’s technology and app, that love wasn’t enough to overcome the amount of time I spent helping the mower work each day. The time spent rescuing the Landroid or repairing guide wires far exceeded the time it would take to mow the lawn with the old push mower.

The Husqvarna has now been working for more than four months and once installation was completed, our only maintenance has been washing the mower to keep it looking classy in the yard. Saturday morning is now spent with the family instead of mowing lawns and I am convinced that robots are the future of lawn maintenance in Australia, and they’ll only get better.

Geoff Quattromani is the host of the Technology Uncorked podcast and contributor to The Australian. Continue the conversation with Geoff on Twitter at @GQuattromani.