An AI-powered robot mower that surveys all that you own and cuts the grass for you? Interesting! Welcome to our WORX Landroid Vision Robot Lawn Mower test. Let’s get started on this Landroid review!
The great Aussie backyard may be a thing of the past as our housing plots get smaller. So we don’t have as much outdoor space to mow. But, in the same breath, Aussies are moving out of cities to regional centres in very interesting numbers. So perhaps swapping apartment life for a house in a regional town might see the Aussie backyard survive after all.
If you are lucky enough to have a backyard, then unless you make it into a stone and cactus garden, you are going to have to mow the grass, or at least pay someone to do it.
In summer, mowing a lawn can feel like rolling around on the surface of Mercury, unless you do it at the crack of dawn and totally annoy your neighbours with your goddamn mower noise.
But now, in this world of getting robots to do things that suck, there is an AI-powered robot lawn mower that claims it can mow for you. So, we were sent one, to try it out.
WORX Landroid Vision Robot Lawn Mower: The AI Mower
The robot mower we tried out was the Worx Landroid Vision. The promise is that you can unbox and send it on its way to mow.
This for us, wasn’t quite true. First of all, ours had to be pretty much fully charged before we could use it. This is because it needed an update, and to update it needed to be connected to the WiFi. Okay then. We followed all of the instructions and there was a glitch with the upgrade that cascaded into not being about to figure out what was wrong with it or why it wouldn’t work.
Long story short, we called a helpline, and eventually we got onto someone who tried to talk us through the fault. But they couldn’t get it to work either. So they offered to have someone come around and try to work it out. So, at least if you buy it and it goes wrong, there is help.
As it turns out, an IT-industry friend came over and found a workaround, so finally we got it up and running. If you aren’t technical and the mower glitches, you are going to need help to fix it, but luckily their customer service seems very willing to help.
WORX Landroid Vision Robot Lawn Mower: Mapping
The first thing the Landroid does is leave its charge port and it maps the area of lawn it needs to cut. More or less, using AI, it crawls across the yard and works out where the grass is.
You can give it boundaries by putting down some magnetic green strips that come with it.
When we put these green strips in place, it acknowledged the boundaries and turned around. All good.
Assuming that it now had the boundary in memory after mapping the yard, we took the green strips away. As soon as we did this the landroid escaped into the neighbour’s yard.
Not sure if we did something wrong or if it was a glitch, but we had to supervise it from then onwards. I can’t imagine wanting to put the green border strips down every time I wanted it to mow?
So there seems to be a bit more to “setting it up” than we initially thought.
Did it work?
The thing to know here is that you have to do a little prep before you just send it on its jolly way. While the product says you can just unbox it and go, that wasn’t our experience if you want it to work properly.
It works better with no overhanging leaves, as it will recognise them as something to avoid. Also if the weeds get too long (ours were embarrassingly awful) it will struggle to cut them. It will roll over them and flatten them, but not cut them.
So, the ideal scenario is to have your lawn maintained as normal, have the Landroid fully charged and connected to the WiFi, the charging port set up outside, then set the Landroid to do its thing. It will easily mow shorter grass, and it will mow if there aren’t branches or leaves hanging down. So do a clean up first and it will work as it says on the tin.
And it’s quiet. This thing could mow your lawn at 5am and no one would be mad at you for the noise.
Will it replace gardeners? Probably not, as there is more to garden care than mowing. Will it replace a home mower that you use yourself? Yes.
Was anything annoying?
The thing I found annoying wasn’t so much the Landroid’s fault. It is more about the way the house is laid out. We have a front yard and a back yard, and it is separated by a boat/RV driveway and a giant fence so no one would steal our boat/RV if we ever bought one. So the Landroid couldn’t travel from my front yard to my backyard in one session.
This meant that we had to move the charging port to switch the Worx Landroid from the front yard to the backyard. This was annoying. Ideally we would just have one place for the charging port to sit forever and never have to muck around with it.
Plug issues
The charging port has to be plugged into a wall for the Worx Landroid to work, so if you don’t have an external power point, this gets a little tricky. We managed to plug the base into a wall socket in the garage, but the garage door had to be open while the robot mower was doing its thing.
Two problems come with that. Because the house has no front fence, anyone driving by could steal the Landroid and the base, potentially. They could also steal anything we had in the garage, so you need to think about where your power points are and if you want to supervise the robot for the whole time it is doing its thing.
Secondly, we had to unplug the base and move it to the back of the house to use the Landroid in the backyard. We don’t have an external powerpoint in the back yard either, so this is something to consider. So if you have two separate spaces, this is a hassle. The idea that you can just let it do its work whenever it is needed, works on the understanding that you have one big connected space.
Landroid review: Would we buy one?
After this Worx Landroid review, despite the problems, yes, we would buy one, although it is expensive. But let’s factor in the cost of paying someone to mow. At the Gold Coast, if you hire a gardener to mow your lawn, it’s around $100 for 1.5 hours. If done every two weeks, this will cost you around $2,500 a year.
The fancy Landroid costs $3,799.00 and the simpler unit costs $2,999.00. If you pay to get your lawn mowed, then this might be a good alternative that will pay for itself in a couple of years. Like girl maths, this is lawn maths.
You may also have to factor in the cost of making it a “hutch” and getting an external power point put in.
If you mow yourself, and hate its guts, then you need to ask yourself if you are worth the price. We think it’s worth it. But…
Works Landroid review: Before you buy
This WORX Landroid Vision Robot Lawn Mower review needs you to think about a few things:
-You need a place to keep the port permanently where it can be out of the weather and plugged in. You might want to work that out before you order one.
-If you have a front yard and a backyard that don’t have good access to each other then moving the charge port will be annoying. Consider two charge ports and two units if you are cashed up and really hate mowing.
-If you have an open front yard then the Landroid might escape into the wild. Also, there is a risk of theft.
-You need to prepare your garden and you may have to put time into “training” the Landroid. In our opinion it isn’t as easy as “unbox and go”. But if you are prepared to put in the work, then it should be smooth sailing from there.
