Robomow RS630 Robotic Lawn Mower - Install Kit Included

I took a chance also (after reading all the reviews) and have used it daily since February 15. Of course it is not perfect, and is expensive - but it has paid for itself in saving my time and not having to pay several hundred bucks a month to have someone cut our grass.Things to watch out for:-think about where you are going to mount the charging base. I put mine in the sun (arizona!) and the display is fading somewhat. I can still read it, but you should be smarter than me and have your lawnmower out of the sun while charging-I bought an extra base so I can do both my front and rear yard. I just have to carry it from one area to the other once a week, but it is a small price to pay for saving my time mowing.-You can buy a roll of green grounding wire at HD/Lowes if you run out of the wire supplied in the kit. No big deal - wire is wire if you match the wire gauge.-I bought some extra stakes on ebay for not very much money. They were for a Husquvarna system, but worked fine.If your time has a value to you, then don't wait and dont be scared - get one of these puppys!UPDATE after one year of usage. The display faded in the sun (my fault for not storing it in the shade as recommended) and I just had a drive motor failure. THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE ROCKS!! In both cases they sent me FREE replacement parts which were easy to install - they have lots of how to videos for repair issues. WOULD I BUY ANOTHER ONE? ABSOLUTELY!!!UPDATE after 3 years. Make sure to put a piece of plastic with duct tape over the display (like a flap) to keep the display from fading - mine is still ok. I just changed out the battery in my original unit and my unit IS STILL CUTTING MY GRASS like new! I love my unit and the customer service (David - thanks for everything!), IT IS ONE OF THE BEST PURCHASES I HAVE MADE!

Update: We used the Robomow last year from May through November and it worked well with no issues at all. We are into the first month of the 2018 season and it is working just fine. We are happy we bought it and the yard looks great.We have a lawn that is just under ¾ of an acre, fairly flat, with about 14 trees. After using the mower for a month now, it handles the mowing very well. All surprises have been positive ones and it is a well designed piece of equipment. I will try to update this review in a year or two and hopefully it will pass the test of time. Currently we are delighted with our purchase.Prior to Ordering: I would suggest that if you are contemplating buying this mower, go out on the web and download the operation manual. I read it several times through before I ordered and even sent a couple of questions off to the Robomow Support folks in Florida. They responded the same day or within a day and were very helpful. Using the manual, I focused primarily on the mower features, how it operated, and the Perimeter Wire Setup. I must say I was very skeptical at first, but with the manual and the feedback of the support staff, I was convinced this could actually work.Perimeter Wire Layout: As others have pointed out, this is a important step so think this through well before you place the wire. My yard has a large front lawn, a medium sized north side, a small back yard and a medium sized south side. According to the Robomow document, mine was defined as a “one main zone” yard. Because my back yard and south side grow slower than the rest of the yard, I wanted to define it as a Subzone. When I followed the manual's guidelines it worked just fine.I also had two large trees with exposed roots and a small flower bed so I made them each islands.In total I ended up using the 1200 feet of wire that came with the mower plus about 100 feet more that I ordered from Robomow. Initially I staked down the wire using the included pegs but once everything worked, I buried the wire. We had a fairly wet spring so using a $20 lawn edger from Farm and Fleet, I was able to easily make a small trench and it worked out well. I buried the wire an inch or two. I think it is important to do that when the ground is fairly soft after a rain.The Base Station: Although I found a fairly shady spot for the base, I later ordered a Robomow Home mainly to get the LCD display screen out of the sun. We get occasional hail so that will help there also.The Power Box: I located my power box in the basement (drilled a small hole through the window well) and that works well. One of the side benefits of having the box nearby is that you will find that occasionally you want your mower to ignore the predefined schedule and wait for your go ahead. The mower was intending to start mowing at noon today, but we are having a bit of a dry spell and the grass was fairly short already. I was able to push a button on the power box and have it pause its planned operation. Nice design.Mower settings: I found the settings to be reasonably straight forward. I set the mower to mow any day it liked, between the hours of 7:00 am and 11 pm. My main yard is about 20,000 square feet and it completes it in a bit under 11 hours (of mowing time). My subzone is 10,000 square feet completed in a bit over 5 hours. Then it takes a two day break. I noticed at first that the mower was going out more than it needed so I used the “mower extent hours %” setting to reduce it. This allows you to reduce or increase your mowing without changing your lawn size setting.The mower mows for about 2 hours and 15 minutes, and then charges for about 2 hours and out it goes again.I cut back “mower frequency” of medium (twice a week) to that of low (once a week) as the summer got a bit dryer with less growth.Robomow App: I have the app loaded on my Iphone. It works nicely to change a variety of settings and is very straight forward.Warranty: If you order from Amazon, which I did, you may be offered an extended warranty for an additional 4 years for $211.45. If you have a failure of a part after the original 1 year warranty, you contact the warranty company and they work with Robomow to have the part sent to you. So according to what I found, Robomow of Florida is in the loop to get you going again. I don’t usually buy extended warranties but to ensure working parts for 4 additional years this sounded good to me and I bought it.And finally, I called my insurance company to see if I could add a rider to my policy to cover the mower, and after a couple of hours of investigating a “robotic mower”, they said my home owner’s policy already covered it for theft, lightning strikes, hail, and other such things. Your insurance may be different but it is worth a check.We have reached the point where we can, say, go out to the coffee shop in the morning and be "ok" with the mower doing its thing. Once it is set up, it will mow when it thinks it should, all influenced by your settings. Nice.

After 1 year of owning it I am giving this 1 star. At first it was amazing! But as time went on everything broke and needed replaced. Both mower engines needed replaced every month after 6 months. A drive engine went out. I ended up replacing everything before the warranty was up including cables. Now that the warranty is up, it is far too expensive to maintain. $200+ for 1 mower engine. This is a novelty item and far too expensive at that. Use your money and either get a riding mower if you are disabled like me or hire a lawn care service. You will regret this expensive and short lived purchased, I promise you that!

If you read enough reviews for these machines, you already understand that the wire boundary setup is key and requires some effort. After doing that, it worked exactly as expected (which is as advertised). It is actually quite fun for "Robby" to be cruising around mowing while I am doing the edging. We make a good team and almost no passerby can restrain from stopping to comment and ask questions about it. However, because the mower covers the lawn by moving randomly, it can be frustrating to watch it continuously miss a patch that I am cheering for it to hit. But it eventually does get to it so it does the job exactly as expected, which is great. I look forward to the advancements that will replace random operation with something more efficient!A great product for the 6 weeks I've had and used it so far...