Cordless lawnmowers any good?

[Jameshow]

Are cordless lawnmowers any good? I have two lawns approx 50sqm each would a cordless do the job.

Our Bosch died end of last year after almost 10 years of abuse.

I have a petrol mower but it's a pain to manoeuvre and it leaves a rough finish.

 

[Fitzroy]

I have a push cylinder mower for a 8mx5m lawn, takes all of 20mins to cut, nice and quiet also. Learning to sharpen the blades by reverse lapping with grinding paste is key to a sharp blade and a snick-snick cut. I’d have to have a much larger lawn before I bothered with anything powered.

 

[Lazurus]

I have the Worx 40v is ok on a relatively smooth lawn, takes the same batteries as my Worx tools so win win

 

[RobinBHM]

They are fantastic.

I bought a sovereign cordless 5 years ago from Argos for £130 it’s fantastic and still going.

I have 3 small lawns adding up to 100 sq metres - when short it does it in one hit, when long and wet, I have to recharge battery.

Homebase do a sovereign cordless now, I bought one for my SILs lawn and it’s utter cr@p not the same thing at all.

 

[MarkAW]

I have one that runs on 2 batteries that are the same batteries most of my cordless power tools use. I like it. Much quieter than a petrol. No cord to constantly move

 

[baldkev]

Ive got a makita twin 18v, it's ok. It lacks sufficient power to cut the grass when it gets long, so ideally you need to keep on top of it. Ive probably got 80 to 100 sqm of grass and it doesnt use much of the batteries. Maybe a quarter of the 5ah. Its light and quiet, 18"ish cut

I would prefer a petrol.

 

[Tip Top]

I've just bought a Bosch cordless City Mower. Cost £250 including 4ah battery and charger. My lawn is about 40 square meters and it cuts the lot in about 5 minutes with plenty of juice left in the battery. It's my first cordless mower and it's made things much quicker and easier. I love it.

 

[robgul]

About 80m2 of lawn here - we bought a MOUNTFIELD Princess 34Li Freedom Cordless Lawn Mower [£259 in June 2021 from a dealer in Worcester - next day delivery] Superb machine, worth the slightly higher cost - it cuts the whole lawn on about a a third of a battery charge - and charging is fast. Recommended.

 

[MikeH]

I have a ride on for the main lawn, but got a small ryobi cordless a couple of years ago, the 33cm one. I got that as I can use my one plus batteries from the workshop in it. I use it for the smaller front lawn and the tricky bits on the very large back lawn. It is really light and easy to move around. It works well. I do sometimes need two batteries if I do the front lawn and lots of bits of the back as well but I have five of the ryobi batteries so no probs. You do need the higher power batteries, I use the 5AH ones. SWMBO was a bit sceptical at first but loves it now because it is so light compared to my third mower, a petrol self propelled "standard" mower.

 

[pe2dave]

OK, expensive, but oh so neat.
Had you considered a robot mower for small areas? Worx (OK I won it) works and has done for 18 months.
One 18v battery does the cut nicely. Amazon

 

[pauljhaigh58]

Have you thought about a robotic mower don’t have to collect/dispose of grass

 

[Stevebod]

Have you thought about a robotic mower don’t have to collect/dispose of grass

..would love one...but absolutely silly money IMHO...

 

[dickm]

..would love one...but absolutely silly money IMHO...

I got my Worx robot about 18 months ago (or was it 2.5 years - losing track of time with Covid) for about £200 secondhand and it's been marvellous. I've got about 400m2 of closely mown grass, plus an orchard with grass mown twice yearly, so need a petrol mower for that, which also comes into its own for the first cut of the year on the tidy part. Also useful if we have weeks of rain, which the robot doesn't like. Doing this year's first cut, did feel that a 21" Hayter is plenty heavy enough for an oldie!
But a couple of weeks ago, out of interest decided to look at newer robots, and have to agree the price is now eye-watering.

 

[BiffoBear]

I have an EGO 42cm which is excellent. It's very robust and I love the way the handle folds up and the mower can then be stood vertically so takes up much less floor space in the shed. I've also got an EGO strimmer which takes the same battery and I can easily mow and strim my medium size lawn on one charge of the supplied 2.5Ah battery.

 

[Blister]

I purchased a sthil triple pack , mower , strimmer and high reach hedge trimmer with 1 additional battery , All 3 do the job , can't comment on how long they last as I have only owned them for 5 months

 

[Spectric]

When we cut both our front lawns the mower uses about 0.75 litres of fuel, petrol has a calorific value of about 10kWh per litre so in theory a battery mower would need the same amount of power.

On the subject of garden machines, has anyone had unexpected problems using the new E10 unleaded fuel? My little Mantis rotovator has performed without any problems year after year, then filled with E10 and no issues that season but after leaving it over winter it just did not run properly. Got it looked at and the guy said your carburettor is shot, badly corroded. I could not see why this had just occured but it turns out that the new E10 fuel with a higher percentage of Ethanol should not be left in when the machine is not being used for any length of time, it absorbs moisture which causes corrosion. The solution is to use special fuel in certain machines to prevent this issue, this fuel is called Aspen Why is Ethanol in regular petrol bad for garden machinery

If you look into this subject you find that because Ethanol contains less energy, then using fuel with higher percentages of Ethanol will reduce fuel consumption but the corrosion issues effect fuel systems vented to atmosphere, ie carburetors more than fuel injection systems.

 

[MikeH]

I thought they specifically recommended against E10 in garden machinery and said to use E5 which is still readily available. I use E5 in my mowers and also use a fuel additive to help stabilise it, supposed to be able to leave it in the machine with no adverse effects, even over winter. It also makes the fuel last longer apparently, but I am no expert here so someone else may have better advice.

 

[hugov]

When we cut both our front lawns the mower uses about 0.75 litres of fuel, petrol has a calorific value of about 10kWh per litre so in theory a battery mower would need the same amount of power.

You're making a very big assumption there, namely that all the energy is going into useful work. Small engines are very inefficient, and moreover, machines designed around small engines are even more inefficient (the engines produce much more power than is needed and so they often just do things the easy way rather than the efficient way). Even the user experience, e.g. the fuel spent leaving the engine running while you empty the bag. Designing around battery/electric powertrain gives you a lot more options – think of a hydrostatic drivetrain on a ride-on mower versus just having a second electric motor and gearing dedicated and correctly proportioned to the propulsion, rather than one motor not very good at either cutting or propulsion.

As a point of comparison on efficiency per kWh, checkout this battery powered ride-on mower: ZT4201E-L Z6 Zero-turn Ride-on Mower (Kit) | EGO Power Plus
They claim it can cut 2.5 acres with six 12 Ahr 52V batteries. The 12 Ahr battery stores 672 watt-hours, for a total over the six batteries of ~4 kWh. Plenty of reviews say this runtime/coverage is fairly realistic. Using your calorific value, that'd be 400 mL of petrol. I challenge you to find a petrol ride on zero-turn mower that can do 2.5 acres on 400 mL.

 

[Lazurus]

HELL OF A PRICE TAG THOUGH.

 

[hugov]

HELL OF A PRICE TAG THOUGH.

Cheap you mean? Yeah it's cheaper than almost every competitive zero turn mower on the UK market as far as I can see (note: I'm not in the market for one and almost certainly never will be, I'm just referring to it as a point of comparison on electric vs petrol mower efficiency).