The gardening season may be coming to a muddy close but there are still a few more weeks of grass cutting to go yet, not to mention setting up for next spring.
Once we get there, we will be back into the regular mowing schedule, where – in my experience at least – missing a session or two will lead to jungle-like growth in the garden that requires a lot of effort to sort out.
We all lead increasingly busy lives, though, so mowing the lawn usually falls down the list of priorities. Which is why it is not surprising that robot mowers are becoming an increasingly attractive option, at least around this house.
These mowers have their limitations though. They usually need guide wires in place to mark out the boundary of your lawn. That means a second lawn – in the front of the house, perhaps – would need its own guide wires. And all that automation comes at a price, which means they are often too much tech for those of use with smaller lawns.
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Meet Buddy, the answer to your lawn care. This appropriately named and handy robot mower doesn’t need space for a large home base, and it is suitable for lawns of up to 200sq m. The rechargeable battery is removable so it can be swapped out if needed.
The beauty of Buddy though is that you aren’t limited by guide wires. It uses sensors to recognise boundaries and out-of-bounds areas such as flower beds, paths and water.
You can just plonk him down anywhere and leave him to work – making sure, of course, that there is some sort of hard boundary that Buddy will recognise, such as a ditch, patch or wall. Failure to do that means Buddy could toddle off over the horizon.
It is very quick to set up too. All you have to do is charge the battery to full, use the adjustable dial to set the cutting height for the grass (between 20mm and 60mm), set Buddy down on the grass and let him go.
The beauty of Buddy though is that you aren’t limited by guide wires. It uses sensors to recognise boundaries and out-of-bounds areas such as flower beds, paths and water
After a few goes around the garden Buddy generally gets the lay of the land, but if you have items that move a bit – children’s outdoor play sets, for example – Buddy will navigate around them. And it even looks cute and non-threatening as it glides around almost silently.
There were some teething problems. For example, Buddy recognised paving down the centre of the garden as a boundary and refused to move beyond it. A win for the sensors that kept the robot on track maybe, but a loss for the half of the garden that lay beyond the path. It was easily solved though, because the robot is easy enough to pick up and bring to a different area.
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It managed to stay out of the flower beds too, which was surprising, and navigated its way around some raised beds and flower pots that were in its path.
Buddy meanders around the lawn in a seemingly random pattern until the entire garden has been covered, so if you like uniform lines cut into your lawn, this may not be the solution for your lawn care. But that is something that it has in common with most robot mowers out there.
In a similar vein, robot mowers don’t cut right to the edges where there is a shed, for example, or a raised border, so you will still need to crack out a strimmer to trim. And it doesn’t collect the grass cuttings, which I’m assured is actually a healthier approach to managing your grass.
Battery life may be an issue if you have a particularly large area to mow or a challenging lawn with slopes and different grass textures. Once everything has been gone over a few times, Buddy will perform better and get longer life from the battery.
Good
No guide wires to deal with make Buddy more flexible than the average robot mower. You can simply pick it up and put it on a different area of grass if needed, without having to lay any guide wires. It also cuts out some of the fancier technology, such as GPS tracking, so it lowers the price compared to other robot mowers.
The battery is big enough to deal with a regular-sized Irish lawn. It did a couple of passes on our back garden without needing a charge.
And it is quiet enough to run early in the morning or late into the evening without disturbing the neighbours.
Bad
You can’t set a schedule, so it still requires you to remember to run the mower. You also need to remember to charge the battery regularly – something that isn’t an issue with a mower that has a charging station.
Although Buddy will avoid obstacles in the garden – children’s toys, for example – it did get confused by a paved path, assuming it was a border, so it needed to be repositioned manually.
The rest
The battery doesn’t take too long to charge up – around two hours – so you shouldn’t have too much down time between mows for an average size garden. You can invest in an additional battery if you feel you need extra power.
It also has a rain sensor to stop Buddy from continuing to cut the grass in the rain, protecting your blades and other vital internal parts.
Verdict
In a world where tech is becoming increasingly complex, Buddy is a robot mower for the rest of us.
