My uncle was in a bit of a quandary recently, as he was unable to mow the lawn due to knee surgery and his son was unable to go back to school to help As a former landscaper, my uncle couldn't stand paying the local lawn mowing company $60 a week Time and time again they proved to be rushing and dropping corners Lucky for me, I had a Segaway Navimow series robotic lawn mower to test

The Segaway Navimow i110N has a 7-inch disc blade, one-third the size of the 21-inch blade on his favorite Ryobi electric mower Predictably, he didn't have much faith in the robotic mower But for a man who is sick and tired of his lawn, the I-Series impressed him with its precision and environmental awareness The man was awed by the way the navigation system returned to rework the mistakes he made during the first mowing Below are some of the good and bad points of the latest Navimow

Navimow's setup process is easy: It took less than 10 minutes to set up Simply place the compact dock in a corner of the yard, stick the included antenna in the ground nearby, and plug the power cable into an outdoor outlet; the Navimow app makes it easy to locate the mower via Bluetooth, enter the password, and you are connected to the Wi-Fi network From here, I simply use the touch screen controls to drive the mower like a drone around the boundaries of my yard to create a map

What I was most impressed with was how accurately the GPS and camera sensors worked together to drive the mower along the edges of curbs and flower beds without tipping over It mowed so well to the perimeter that I did not have to take the mower out to the edge, where even a human would have missed it Once the outer perimeter was mowed, the bot mowed the wider inner areas at an angle downward, creating a clean, clear stripe line It can mow the grass incredibly finely without leaving clumps in the lawn

It took two hours to mow 150 square meters, which is hardly fast In terms of performance, however, the Navimow i110N is not to be outdone It cut through the grass without snagging and returned to pick up a few longer stragglers Best of all, it operates almost silently The loudest noise was when we drove through a rough area with crabgrass and it sounded like tearing paper; the difference between the 40-volt push mower and the Navimow was as dramatic as the difference between a gas-powered mower and an electric lawnmower, day or night

There were two areas in our test yard that were difficult to work in, and the Navimow handled them with ease The first was a birdbath, a small indentation in the lawn surrounded by small stones When the robotic mower headed for this obstacle, it cut within four inches (the length of the mower's cut), but it did not go into the rock pit or hit the fixture itself Instead, Navimow curved around the side while cutting the ridge, but stopped short when the bathtub came to the center of its path Navimow continued to make ridges around it Initially, I feared that Navimow would skip the section on the other side of the apparatus, but Navimow only crossed the untouched section and handled the rest of the strip

Once the straggling section was dealt with, we hopped over to the other side of the yard where there was a large tree Navimow made fine adjustments to move forward and backward on the fly to avoid this large obstacle and bring it into close combat His small, nimble movements were more efficient than swinging himself wide and making multiple passes through the radius The result was a tighter cut through the tree bed without a single streak to complain about

The bot arrived with the battery at 50% Working slightly uphill and struggling with clover and crabgrass did not cause any significant fluctuations, and this held for the first two hours With the battery down to 15%, we returned to base with only 1% of the work remaining At this rate, one full charge would cover more than 300 square meters

The ability to map individual zones and the automatic charging back to base allows me to confidently go to work with the Navimow running, and it recharges quickly, increasing by 1% per minute while on the charging base

There were three occasions when Navimow crossed its neat rows from side to side The first two times were due to missing the strip, and he pulled to the edge of the perimeter before returning to the strip After those great cuts, my jaw dropped as I watched Navimow cross horizontally across the fresh diagonal rows of grass back to the docking station In a perfect world, Navimow would recognize patterns and move on, rather than flatten the lawn

I'm going to get picky here, but it was unfortunate that the blade could not crush individual leaves Even when the height of the blade was lowered, it simply ran over the leaves Ideally, the leaves would be mulched like clippings so that different colors would not pop out of the lawn

At $1,299, the Navimow i110N is definitely not cheap Nevertheless, its cutting performance and scheduling capabilities are worth the price if you are considering purchasing a robotic lawn mower You can buy cheaper models, but they won't cut as long and their accuracy is questionable compared to this GPS-based system

My uncle came to me semi-confident and vouches for this every day Seriously, if you look at my iMessage threads, you can easily find about 2 gigabytes worth of videos of him going back and forth across his lawn This is pretty high praise from a man who will accept nothing less than perfection when it comes to his possessions