Cordless Landscaping Tools Reviews

First, let me say that I am elated to have my rl800. I bought it in 2003 and it has worked great for me, since I am not able to mow my own lawn.

Second, my reason for writing this note: The last couple of days I kept getting the you-need-to-recharge-your-mower message, even though it had been hooked up to the recharger.

After doing what it said, with no success, I bought some size C batteries for turning on the hook-up. That still didn't help. I looked inside where the battery contact is made. It was off line.

The message: "Please Remove battery before lifting!" had inadvertantly led to the damage of the interior connectivity. The battery is very heavy. The point of connectivity is very fragile, at least in comparison to the battery. My point, the constant removal of the battery will damage your connectivity. Rather than removing the battery and having to reinsert it, (risking damaging your product) shove the mower with your foot when it gets stuck, if not strong enough to lift the mower, battery and all. This will prevent damaging your mower's interior and save you repair bills or replacement cost.

I've now used my RL800 for two full seasons, and I'm still pleased with it. It does a decent job, and it has advantages, but it isn't perfect.

Some of this has been said in other reviews, but I'll add my two cents. The pros:
- it mows while you relax, out of the heat
- it only takes a couple of minutes of your time to start it mowing, and another couple to put it away afterward
- it mows in multiple directions, a tip recommended by many lawn care advocates
- it doesn't get tired; you can mow your entire lawn two or three times a week if you want
- it is very quiet compared to a gas mower; about as loud as a cordless string trimmer

The cons:
- pricey
- expensive for consumables (battery pack every 3-5 years, a $25-$40 expense per year, not including the cost of electricity to recharge, and new blades periodically, maybe every 2 or 3 years, another $20-$30 per year)
- very slow compared to a gas mower - expect 2 hours to mow what you could easily do in half an hour yourself
- misses spots on a single session (but more frequent mowing makes up for this)
- recharge with included trickle charger can take more than 24 hours (about 13 hours per hour of use in my experience)
- won't mow yards over 5,000 sq ft on a single charge
- yards over 5,000 sq ft must be split up into zones
- can take multiple days to mow your entire yard
- perimeter wire layout is time consuming and tedious, especially if you have to wire around many obstacles
- the supplied wire and stakes aren't enough for any but there very smallest yards
- it can't handle especially small sections (narrower than 5')
- it doesn't mow close to obstacles or walls
- you'll still want a standard push mower (much as you would if you had a riding mower)
- it sometimes gets stuck or stops spontaneously (in my experience this happens one time in 15, so not too frequent)
- it's not suitable for rough or especially steep lawns
- blades need frequent cleaning for maximum performance (they gut gummed up), I'd recommend once every three-to-five session

I've rated this a four because I expected most of the above, and within it's limitations the Robomower performs as expected. But bottom line, unless you have some special reason you'll probably be better served spending your money on an inexpensive lawn tractor.

First of all, you need to understand the limitations of the Robomower and determine if your yard is right for it or not. I've had my RL800 for 3 seasons now and while I still fuss at it every time it cuts the grass, I don't know what I'd do without it...Except get another smelly gas mower and grind it out like before Robomower.

It doesn't do hills well. Think about how you divide up your yard into zones before installation. Keep the battery continuously charging. And "supervise" it while it's cutting the grass. If you're yard is relatively flat and you send Robomower out every week during the summer, you should be pleased with the results, mechanical/warranty problems aside.

Our entire front, sides and back yards are all 1 zone. As such, after completing the perimeter cut, Robomower usually leaves the front yard before it's completely cut and sneaks into the back yard. While this can be frustrating, it's how it's supposed to work if everything is 1 zone...I simply walk it back up into the front yard and let it start zig-zagging back and forth again. If it looks like rain or I'm in a hurry, I'll manually touch up any missed patches before walking it to another part of the yard...Otherwise I just let it run and run and run and it usually gets just about every spot (eventually). I got an extra new battery that I switch out mid-week so both stay charged.

I have it set to take off about 1/3 of the grass with each weekly cut and our Bermuda has never looked better. It truly is a "sea of green" once Robomower is finished and the blades have been clipped from every direction. It looks as good or better than the $150/visit professional landscaping crew does across the street. We have four 20" x 20" recessed drainage holes throughout the yard that can be a problem. Most of the time Robomower goes down and comes back out OK...Sometimes it just sits and spins the wheels trying to climb out. Hence, the supervision part of the job. Keeping an eye on Robomower and intervening when needed is still much better than the old blood and sweat that I see falling off the neighbors when they go out and cut their grass the old-fashioned way.

Next to the PC and HDTV, Robomower gets my vote for best "life made easier" invention of the past 20 years. It's not perfect, but neither are you when you cut the grass. It's just much more convenient watching the grass be cut by Robomower. Understand it's limitations, plan your yard zones like you want it to operate and you should be equally pleased with the results, provided you don't get the inevitable lemon. I have extra tires and extra blades, but haven't needed to replace them after 3 seasons of weekly mowings. Great product!!

We absolutely love our robomower. If you are one of those people who ONLY get exercise by doing yard work, this isn't for you.

Before you can use it, there is plenty of set up that needs to be done. I recommend you start charging your battery before doing anything else. If you are as impatient as we are, you will want to use it as soon as you can. Even in an enclosed yard, you must use the perimeter wire so the mower knows where to go. Our mower came with 500 feet of perimeter wire and a package of pegs to hold it down. If you have ever used one of those underground dog fences, this works the same way. You run the wire around your yard, holding it down with pegs. The grass quickly overgrows the wires, so don't worry about it being unsightly.

The ends of the wire plug into a (battery powered) perimeter switch, which you turn on when you are ready to mow. Our yard is grass, surrounded by a brick border, and rocks. We had to move the wire once after running it originally - the wire was too close in one area and the mower bumped into the border, and too far away in another area, leaving several inches of unmowed grass. I would assume this setup would actually be less of a hassle in a yard that is all grass surrounded by a fence. Obstacles are pretty straightforward. Either they are large enough that the mower will bump into them and move on, small enough to move, or if small and stationary, you encircle them with the perimeter wire.

Running the mower is a breeze. First, pick up your yard. You don't want to find that a dog toy has been mulched up, or that a doggy land mine is now stuck to your mower tires. Push the button on the perimeter switch, use the attached remote controller to drive the mower into the yard, turn it in the right direction, and follow the prompts on the screen. When you first see it running, you are sure it's going to miss most of your yard. But when it's job is complete, and that job takes about twice as long as a human would, it's surprisingly thorough.

You will have to edge the yard yourself. The mower can't get close enough to borders and fences to bump them, or it will back off.

It mulches the grass, which saves time on raking and bagging. This doesn't work so well in the summer, when the grass is super thick and grows very tall, but that is easy to remedy by running the mower more often.

If you have a "bumpy" yard (as we do - one of our dogs is a digger), you won't be able to set the mower to it's lowest setting, or the wheels will get stuck. We are happy with the height of our grass, but it took a bit of getting used to, as we used to mow it very short. I recommend you get the knobby tires, which don't come standard on this older model, for bumpy yards as well. It really improved the traction greatly.

Only buy from a dealer Friendly Robotics recommends (AND check out their customer service ratings), or the warranty is useless, as we found out the hard way when our battery died. When attempting to contact Friendly Robotics, they referred us to local dealers, and that's about as far as we got with the company itself. The local dealers were uninterested in assisting us, and seemed to know very little about the mower. We ended up shipping it (at our cost) to a dealer several states away, who told us he would repair under warranty. After several weeks, he told us the warranty was invalid, and insisted the issue was very severe and wanted to charge us several hundred dollars to fix it.

We declined, had it shipped back to us (again at our cost), and learned through trial and error, that the battery was not charging. After replacing it, the mower was back in tip-top shape. We have had to replace the batteries (there are two in the battery pack) about every year and a half. The experts have told us that these batteries should last at least two years, but we assume it's related to the fact that we live in an area where we a) grow grass year round and b) have VERY hot summers. Needless to say, this mower is parked outside when charging. The batteries are not cheap, but when considering the cost and hassle of buying gasoline for a standard mower, it isn't so bad.

Even with our not-so-great service we would buy another robomower in an instant. The time it saves us makes the mower invaluable. It is quiet enough to run at night, so no fun outside time has to be missed while the mower is running. The other benefit is that allergy sufferers can have a beautiful lawn without suffering through the weekly mowing that it requires.

I read through a lot of reviews prior to purchasing a Robomower and I already owned a Roomba robotic vaccuum cleaner, so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. That's probably the single most important piece of advice I can give any prospective purchaser of a Robomower - get a good idea of how it works before you decide whether or not to take the plunge.

A Robomower is not a fully automated lawn mower any more than a dishwasher is a fully automated dish cleaner. Just as there is a certain amount of preparatory work to be done in using a dishwasher, so there is in using a Robomower. Unlike the dishwasher, though, most of the Robomowers prep work is done once.

The Robomower and the Roomba are two automated devices with one purpose: to crawl over every open square inch of a two dimensional surface. Both meet that purpose in similar ways, by tracing around the perimeter of the area to be covered and by executing a varying pattern over the interior with a randomizing element thrown in to help insure overlaps between the various patterns. Roomba has an advantage because it can combine its bump-and-go obstacle sensors with a wall-hugging system to trace along walls. The Robomower must use a perimeter-defining wire that works on the same principle as an invisible dog fense.

And that's where the prep work comes in.

Before a Robomower can be used, the perimeter of the yard must be defined by laying a continuous circuit of wire over the ground.

The good news is that Friendly Robotics' method for laying this wire is vastly superior to the 'dig a slit in the sod' method most invisible dog fence products use. The Robomower's wire is laid over the grass and then held down using a peg/staple that gets driven over the wire, pressing the wire down into the grass. Done correctly, the wire is held down for the few weeks it takes for the grass to integrate the wire into the thatch.

The bad news is that laying the wire is time-consuming and requires a lot of bending and stooping as well as a good understanding of the operation of the Robomower. The video that comes with the Robomower does a good job of getting the idea across, but even so, some people will find the procedure a challenge.

Once I had the perimeter wire laid, the only drawback to the Robomower that I have found so far has been that I was misled by the guidelines for laying the perimeter wire. First, a long, narrow (but within the guidelines) strip of lawn on one side of my house is hard to find for the Robomower. This is relatively minor since I can direct the mower into the area and then let it work. Second, the description of laying a wire 'island' around permanent obstacles not on the perimeter implies that the spacing around the edge of the obstacle should be the same as the distance the wire is to be laid along the perimeter of the lawn. This isn't the case. Interior wire should be laid much closer to the edge since the Robomower gives wire-marked edges much more clearance once it gets past the edge-following part of its programming.

The only other caveat I would give to a prospective buyer would be a warning about the implication that the Robomower can be left to work alone, unattended. A fenced backyard with no pets or children might allow this but cutting an open front yard with a Robomower invites attention from passersby, including wandering children. It would be unconscionable to leave a 100 lb self-moving power tool with three whirring cutter blades underneath unattended if there is even the possibility of a curious child coming near.

After reading a lot of reviews for this product, I decided to adquire it. It has been 8 months after I got it, and it has worked perfectly. The only problem I have notieced is that if you have a new lawn, and the lawn is bumpy, the final cut won't look smooth.
I know if I level my yard, it will look better.
After wiring the perimeter, and you test the robot the first time, modify everything to cut as much you can from the border near the walls and obstacles. If you can buy the RL800 will be better, because it has a build in password, as I understood. So no body will be able to use it if it is stolen.

Nothing like a cordless product. No oil changes, no mixing oil with gasoline,no cutting a electric extention cord, and no mess. So what if it isn't as powerful as a gas one, I'm not doing 7 lawns a day like a landscaping service. It's easy, fast, and simple. Love It.

I got this trimmer and the one on the pole when my commercial echos were in the shop for 3 weeks?......Great for trimming New Growth, "time rateing under estimated"......alittle heavy after a while,....much slower than a gas model......But what a Great Idea, virtually noise-less, no 2-stroke, blue smoke!......Get a few extra batties for larger jobs.

My husband really likes the hedge clipper we purchased from you. The delivery was great. Thanks.

Well, first off, my wife thought this was crazy. Sometime in the shopping process I did too. I mean, is it *that* hard to mow your own freakin' grass?

I grew up in Florida, where lawnmowing is an ugly chore, in 100% humidity, with sticky, hot grass all over your shoes, legs, etc.
Bad lawnmowing memories.
Now that I needed to buy a lawnmower of my own, I had always wanted to pick up one of those Freindly Robotics robomowers... When I saw Toro private-lable these things, give them a bigger battery, and then the prices kept falling, and then they had the refurbs even cheaper... I thought, heck, why not do it?

Report that I'm pretty pleased. I started the thing in the dusk, so I wouldn't be embarrassed by neighbors seeing this thing eat my flowerbeds, or small children if things went terribly wrong. Ended up with my wife and I with big silly grins as IMOW just ate our grass while we watched it (or tried not to watch it and look cool while the neighbors gawked and found excuses to come over and watch it - we're meeting a lot more neighbors now) The kids like IMOW ("Daddy, IMOW likes to mow ALL BY HIMSELF!") and so do I.
The down side is that there aren't quite enough pegs, especially if you have lots of obstacles that need the guide wire navigated around. The refurb didn't ship with a video or charger, I am assuming Toro will make good on parts if you didn't get everything in the 'open box specials' though.
If you have a relatively flat, square lawn free of lawn gnomes and junk, you are a prime hassle-free IMOW candidate.
Hey, go for it. It's a cool little mower.

I asked for this Imow as a Father's Day gift. Wife was skeptical at first but she went along. It took some time to install the wire boundary for the whole yard but the mower worked quite well. Wife is impressed enough to consider getting one for her dad - maybe next year Father's Day.

The whole box weighs around 100 lbs so be really sure that you want and can use it as shipping to you is free but returning freight won't be.

Before you buy, go get a copy of the user manual from the manufacturer .. and verify that your yard terrain is within specs. Then do some paper layouts of the mowing plots. The thing uses a zigzag pattern to cover the area. You want to avoid bottlenecks/strait-like areas to allow it to traverse the plot. I found it more efficient to break a large block into smaller plots as the zigzags overlap with shorter distance between boundaries. My yard totals about 10000 sq ft with 4 plots. The smallest takes about 40 min., the largest 100 mins. With those work durations, it fully recharges overnight.

It is kind of fun to watch as it follows the boundary wire during the edge mode (very precise turning). The mowing is a triangular zigzag. Not entirely random though, I noticed it seems to track obstacles that it bumps into and maneuvers to avoid that area later on (my firmware is rev 3.2...) In any case, the pattern looks inefficient compared to the path a person would do. Just let the thing work and with enough time the grass becomes even. A couple trial runs and you can determine the correct time for each plot.

On dry days with long enough grass, I let it loose on a plot as I return from work. It is very quiet and can hang out thru dusk and night time w/o risk of West Nile, Eastern Equine Encephalitis and other nice effects of mosquito bites. And holy cow, I get to do other things on the weekend!

Finally, automation gets to the yard! I guess my son will have to do part-time web authoring for spending money in the future...

This is the only battery powered blower on the market since "Weedeater" and "Black & Decker" discontinued theirs. The description is a lie. It does not come with the 14.4V battery so you are out another $34 for that and if you don't have a charger, add $60 making it a pricey little gadget.

It works great. I use it everywhere: workshop, house, truck, yard. It produces a strong amount of air that can quickly clean out the workshop, or truck bed. The vacuum part works great also, but I mainly use it as a blower. A longer run time would be great, but I'm very satisfied with this tool.

This cordless trimmer will suffice for extremely small yards (think townhomes) without thick growth needing to be trimmed. This unit comes with two batteries, but both batteries need to be FULLY charged before starting a project. If you start a project, and place a charged battery in the trimmer, and a discharged battery in the charger, you will have about 20 minutes of runtime on the first battery, and will have at least another 45 minutes to wait before the second battery is ready for use.

This trimmer works like a charm. It is plenty good for trimming needs around the home. The automatic string feature is nice. I was always use to having to tap the trimmer on the ground to advance the string. This you don't have to do anything. You turn the handle which turns the head to edge the sidewalk. I bought this based on comments made on this website. I am am very happy with this purchase.

Great trimmer. No noise from a gas trimmer. No cord to lug around. Best to have two batteries ready. Charge on battery short on tough long weeds on grass. But the best trimmer I ever had, I would recommend this trimmer to my own mother.

I've had mine for several years, and the battery just gave out. It was even stored in the garage throughout our frigid New England winters, kept fully charged. This unit has worked well to kept weeds and grasses trimmed on our 1/4 acre parcel. It's nice to just pick it up, hit the switch, and go.

Have owned and used our Ryobi 150R cordless trimmer for over 4 years and other than adding new string it has worked flawlessly. This is a truely outstanding product.

I bought the Ryobi 150r in 1995 and I love it. It has worked great for the past 9 years. I use it weekly. I have never run out of battery power during a job. I have a medium size yard, so I'm not sure how it would do on a large yard. The original battery lasted 5yrs; my second battery lasted 4yrs. Bought the battery at Billiou's (1-877-245-5468) www.billious.com for $26.35 plus $6.50 shipping. Also found it at M and D Mowers (www.m-and-d.com) for $28.49 plus $5.95 shipping. Battery part number is MTD-791-181624

How clich� for a product to break shortly after the warranty period. Well that is what you have here with the Robomower. Of course the cost to ship and fix the mower is quite expensive. When I purchased this product the Friendly Robotics went on and on about how good it was. Well let me tell you that this is not the case. The product is not even close to worth what it costs. I am going to stick with conventional gas mowers from now on. We all need to protect ourselves from products that are costly with short warranty periods.

I got my RoboMower in June of 2005 and other than one breakdown it has performed perfectly for me.

I have 12,000 Sq Ft of very level lawn (newly landscaped and graded yard) with no obstructions. The RoboMower comes out every night at 5:00PM, mows for a few hours, and comes back without issue. It's the hit of the neighborhood.

Laying the perimeter wire was a pain. At first I just laid it out and used the stakes to keep it down. I figured there was a 50/50 chance I'd be returning the unit (low expectations!) and I didn't want to spend the time burying the wire. After a couple of weeks I decided the unit was a keeper and I buried the wire - which took all day.

Suggestion: keep the box in case you need to ship the unit back. If you have the box they'll pay for shipping. It's a pretty bulky shipment, so it'll be hard to find a box that can safely ship it back.

Bottom line: My yard looks like a golf course every day. The quality of the mow is excellent.

Even if the unit broke every three years, I'd keep buying them. Having a mowing service would cost me $1,200/year ($60/week, 5 months a year) and the lawn would start to look shaggy a few days after mowing. With the RoboMower it looks perfect every day. A riding lawnmower would have cost me more, would cost more to maintain, and would still require me to mow my lawn myself every week. For me, it's a no-brainer.

Also, keep in mind that a lot of reviews are for older models. I have the 1000 version that automatically docks itself.

I actually have the RL800 model. As do all the above reviewers. I know this because this model, the RL1000 was only released in 2004 and the above reviews are all complaining about it being out of warrenty. That means they bought there mowers in 2003 or earlier. So please give this review as much weight as theirs. I also have an RL500 and that has been more difficult to maintain. If I guessed I'd bet most of the above problems were with that model.

As for the RL800, this is my second full year using it and its been no problem at all. I've played around with the barrier wires a little this year, but other than that and replacing the blades before the season started its preformed perfectly.

One note of common sense. Sure the mower will mow in the rain. Just like you could walk down the street with a sack of potatoes. But why would you strain yourself like that? Wet grass = heavy motor wear.

And just to be clear my RL500 is also 2 years old and running strong.

If you have a very light-duty trimming project, I'm sure this product will do fine. But I have a 10' laurel privacy hedge and it just wasn't up to the task.

I bought the NPT318 a week ago and I put it to the test this past weekend. The back of my parents yard is lined with Arborvitae 8-10' high and 4-5' wide. The cost of getting landscapers to trim them run $1500- $2000. It's a 2 day job. The last time I trimmed them I used an exta long electric hedge trimmer and a ladder. This year I used the B&D Pole Hedge Trimmer. Now the comments about the weight. The time I minded the weight a little was the second straight day I used it. Standing on the ground got most, but not all of the branches. On a few of the Arborvitae, I had to get on a ladder and extend across to get the tops. It seemed heavy at the time because I used the trimmer for at least 6 hr. straight the day before. But I liked the trimmer overall. It made it pretty darn easy to prune the sides and most of the top. There are a few suggestions made by others I read that I would suggest also for B&D.
1. Increase the voltage. The hedge trimmer did stop when it got to the heavy branches
2. Have the motor on the bottom with just the blade on the top.

Also I bought the B&D quick charger which came in handy. Having 2 batteries comes in handy. I had 3 batteries and worked the whole day keeping 2 batteries charging while using the other. I am glad I purchased it and I feel it was well worth the money.

I bought this Trimmer even after reading some of the negative reviews about it. Some folks complained their arms hurt quickly, well I will agree with another reviewer who said those folks may not have good upperbody strength. I use a wheelchair for daily life and I suppose my upperbody strength is better then most, I had no troubles with the weight of this trimmer even with using it for an hour.(Even after an hour the arms start to get sore). It's well balanced, easy enough to use, even to reach some pretty high places. The adjustable angle is a very nice feature and it came with a nifty blade cover and carrying bag. The length of time the charge on the battery lasted, was more then acceptable. Over all I am very pleased with this product.

This has got to be the worst invention by TORO ever made. I bought this to replace another battery powered weedeater a RYOBI, I should have just bought another one of them, which is What I will do after this one is returned. EVERYTHING that you read BAD about this in all the reviews is TRUE and then some. In the first 10 second of using this I realized I made a very very bad purchase. too HEAVY string BREAKS........... trigger is a hassle I could go on and on but won't Take my word for it DON'T BUY IT!!!!!!!!!

I'm in agreement with the others who are unhappy with this unit. It's heavy, the strap is inadequate, and the amount of hand power required to depress the trigger and safety is ridiculous. After 15 minutes of use, I can barely manage 30 seconds of on time (male, 36 years old, no degenerative skeletal or muscular problems.) The line does break frequently. It won't take down weeds with stems bigger than pencils. Since I own it already and my yard is small I'll probably disable the trigger safety and rewind the core with heavier line, warrantee be damned. Would not buy again, would not recommend.

Don't understand the reviews below. The "trigger" reqires very little force. It's a little heavy, but it's battery powered. My 5'0" tall 95lbs wife uses it and has no problems. I would highly recommend product.