Why mow your lawn ever again!
Mowing the lawn to some folks just down right sucks! We actually enjoy mowing the lawn. It is a calming activity that gives my brain time to decompress and think, plan, and coordinate other activities during my busy life. With that being said, we won’t mind if that “chore” gets taken care of. We have plenty of other activities where we can do the similar decompress and thinking. With the ever advancing battery technology, GPS, and computing tech, the futuristic Robotic lawn mower is here. There are a plethora of companies and models out there. We have had the luck of being able to review a few of these models and hope to bring you more as they are released. The latest model we reviewed with WORX Landroid WG794.
WORX WG794 28-volt Landroid Robotic Lawn Mower
WORX is a well-known company for having affordable homeowner grade lawn care products. WORX released their Landroid Robotic Mower and jumped into an incredible opportunity for their consumer. What could be better than a robot mowing your yard? Well, a cold beverage on your deck or patio watching your robotic mower mow your yard but that is a story for another blog. The concept for the Landroid is very simple, it is a small robotic mower that stays inside a boundary wire and mows your yard. The mower has a 1/4″ acre cutting capacity and it uses its razor blades to cut the blades of grass. The robotic mower has a wonderful interface to control the settings and get the unit setup. The user can set the amount of time by selecting the size yard you have. The unit will automatically adjust its mowing time per day/week to make sure it covers your entire area. You can also setup zones if there is a small entrance to a specific section of your yard. Let’s go into a bit more detail into these features.
User-friendly control panel
Anti-theft system using a pin
Excellent start-up instructions
Adjustable cutting height (1.6″-4″)
Landroid M Robotic Lawn Mower
500 feet of boundary wire
2 Boundary Wire Distance Gauges
This M model has a 1/4 acre cutting capacity. My entire lot is 1/4 acre but then you have to remove the hardscape like the house, driveway, sidewalks, and back patio. Well within the capacity of the Landroid. Obviously the larger your yard, the longer it will mow each day.
Did you say razor blades?
Yes! We sure did! The WORX Landroid uses razor blades that, that’s right, razor sharp! WORX recommends changing them every 3-4 months + or – a month depending on the type of grass, the thickness of grass, and frequency of mowing.
Robots don’t like rain. When the unit senses rain, it will head back to the charging station once it finds the boundary and goes back in a counter clockwise direction. This makes sense as the unit will have to work hard to mow wet grass. With the unit being battery powered, it will drain the battery fast and result in doing more charging than mowing.
WORX engineers have designed the Landroid to be upgraded as better software becomes available. This gives the consumer peace of mind when purchasing knowing the technology can get better and they don’t have to be stuck with old technology.
The Landroid works best in large open areas with fewer obstacles but it is designed to navigate small passageways to get to other parts of the yard. For instance, if you have landscaping that extends from the side of the house and gets close to the neighbor’s yard, as long as it has 3 feet in between the boundary wires, it will make it back there. But the engineers and designers of the WORX Landroid thought of a potential problem. The unit mows in a random pattern and this pattern could cause the unit not to find those tight passageways very often. They designed a way to add areas or zones to the unit and set a percentage of time to each zone. The unit does this by knowing how long to drive on the boundary wire before it hits the area/zone entrance and then it mows for the designated amount of time. Going back to our example, if you program a second zone for the front yard and the entrance is set right beyond the narrow passageway, the unit will mow the front yard for a specified amount of time. Once it completes the front, it will then hop back on the boundary line and go back to area/zone one.
Setting up and installing your WORX Landroid
The biggest decision when installing the system is where you are going to locate the charging/docking station. You need 6′ in front of the docking station and also 6′ behind it. This makes so the unit can smoothly dock itself and has enough time to line itself up. A source of power is another determining factor. You need to power the docking station. The good thing is the unit has a long power cord on it. WORX doesn’t want the docking station in the sun so pick a location (if possible) that isn’t in direct sunlight. We put ours along side the fence which casts a nice shadow on the docking station.
#gallery-0-9 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-9 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-9 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-9 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
The boundary wire is the gate keeper. Literally! It keeps the unit inside your yard. WORX includes two installation gauges to help set the wire back from your boundary the correct distance. From the perimeter where you want it to keep away from (fence), WORX wants the boundary wire 14″ away. This maybe 2″ more than need but you need to get out the string trimmer anyway so why not put a little cushion in there to avoid any issues. Places like the sidewalk or driveway, you can go 4″ away so it will mow right up to the concrete.
We have some experience installing these automatic mowers and we have come up with a nice solution. You can either bury the wire or peg it on the surface. We kinda do a hybrid method. We first use the measuring gauge and a can of marking spray paint to establish where the wire will be placed. We then use our string trimmer to trench a place for the wire. This clears the grass and makes it easier to place the wire. Put the wire in the trench and peg it every so often. With mounting the unit so close to the surface, you could have an issue with it being caught on something. We have had the dogs catch it right away when we were playing fetch.
After it was buried, we threw some grass seed and some black dirt in the trench and it will fill in nicely.
#gallery-0-10 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-10 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-10 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-10 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
Pry the easiest part of the entire installation process is setting up the schedule. Simply navigate the interface on the unit and follow the instructions. We suggest using the auto scheduling feature to make it simple. You can adjust it as you go and learn the unit. You tell the unit how large your yard is and it estimates the amount of time per day it needs to mow to completely cover your yard each week. Ours is set for 5 days a week at 5.4 hours per day. It goes out and mows until it runs out of juice, it finds the boundary wire and comes back and charges. When it is charged, it heads back out until it reaches the 5.4 hours per day.
We have a fence in our back yard. The boundary wire is placed 14″ away from the fence. No big deal. But the gates are the problem! They don’t allow enough room to get the required 3′ in between the two boundary wires. Our solution is to remove the front of the gates. We have a dog kennel so our dogs don’t get free access to the backyard anyway. The amount of time the mowing saves us is well worth the effort to get it to the front yard.
There are people out there that will cause us robotic mower owner lazy but we look at it as a tool. Take the washer and dryer for example. Why don’t you wash your cloths by hand and hang them up on the clothesline anymore? Because there is technology to make it an automated process. Just like the WORX Landroid, this technology will mow your grass for you. We enjoy mowing but we enjoy being with our family or in the woodworking shop building projects whether that is for fun or for work. The Landroid saves me time and time is money. Time is precious.
Total yard care time: 64 minutes
String trimming: 8-10 minutes
Front yard: 19 minutes (including BLVDS)
For argument sake, let’s say the BLVDS will take me 5 minutes. The WORX Landroid will save me approximately 49 minutes each week. We mow our yard every 4-5 days for our summer months of approximately 5 months. 5 months times 30 days is 150 days and we mow every 5 days. That is 30 times we mow in the summer. We live in North Dakota, that is most likely way lower than the national average. 30 mowing sessions x 49 minutes is 1,470 minutes/60 = 24.5 hours. My shop rate is $50 per hour. That unit will pay for itself in a little over one year. Hard to argue there!
WORX Landroid WG794 | Unmanned Robotic Lawnmower Why mow your lawn ever again! Mowing the lawn to some folks just down right sucks!
