The 6 Best Robotic Lawn Mowers The Spruce Has Tested

The Ecovacs Goat A3000 completely took over mowing duties in our 5,000-square-foot yard, navigating around trees, fences, retaining walls, patio areas, and gentle inclines while delivering a consistently even cut. This mower combines simple setup, advanced navigation, clean mowing performance, a full suite of safety features, and an app that doesn’t get in the way.

Like other robot mowers, it’s limited to cutting grass that’s, at most, 4 inches tall, so don’t expect it to knock down an overgrown yard. You can set it to cut growth between 1.2 and 3.6 inches.

Setup is especially quick and easy with this mower—about 10 minutes to get it connected to the app, then it maps automatically over the course of an hour. There’s nothing else needed from you after the initial pairing.

Instead of relying just on cameras, this mower uses a fisheye camera, lidar, and AI to plot its course and avoid obstacles. It’s capable of identifying over 200 specific obstacles that are likely to end up in your yard—think garden hoses, flower beds, power cords, etc.

If you crave professional-looking lines in your lawn, you’ll love the clean cut. The Goat leaves tight, straight lines that will leave your neighbors asking for your landscaper’s number.

_{Cutting Width: 12.99 inches | Weight: 36.16 pounds | Cutting Options: None | Yard Size: 0.75 acres | Cutting Heights: 1.2-3.6 inches}

If you have a yard the size of a postage stamp, there’s no reason to pay extra for a robotic lawn mower that can mow a football field. Our favorite robotic mower for small yards is the Mammotion Yuka Mini H—a compact, lightweight, easy-to-use option that keeps our 400-square-foot lawn neat and trim while we relax.

This mower is about 13 pounds lighter than our overall best pick, costs $2,000 less, and provides the same easy setup and operation.

It uses camera-based AI instead of lidar like our best overall, but the mowing performance and obstacle detection are both excellent. It has a light for mowing after dark to get around, one of the big drawbacks of camera-based mowers.

We enjoy watching this little mower dodge around a trampoline and avoid flower beds and a patio while neatly trimming the grass. The lawn is a little lumpy, but the mower trucks over the bumps without any issues, and even slices through slightly overgrown grass and weeds under the trampoline.

We’ve noticed some stalling in damp soil, which is a common issue with robotic mowers, but it never requires manual intervention—it just works until it gets free.

It doesn’t mow in neat lines like our best overall—it’s more meandering, but it keeps our grass neat and trimmed without the need for manual cleanup or an edge trimmer.

_{Cutting Width: 7.5 inches | Weight: 23 pounds | Cutting Options: None | Yard Size: 0.15 acres | Cutting Heights: 2-3.5 inches}

With a big battery and wide cutting swath, the Hookii Neomow X Pro is our favorite robotic lawn mower for big yards. It keeps our 0.75-acre yard in great shape, and it’s capable of handling even bigger lawns (up to 1.5 acres).

One of our favorite things about this mower is that it doesn’t meander around the yard like some. The mowing lines are tight and clean, almost like a professional job, even on a large lawn. With this robot at work, our yard has way more curb appeal than we can give it with our riding mower.

Our yard has varying terrain, and the Neomow handles gentle slopes fine. Hookii says it handles 24-degree slopes, but in our experience, our best for slopes pick does a better job on hilly terrain.

The Neomow can get stuck on patches of bare soil or beyond the bounds of your grass, but we set up barrier zones and kept it from entering those problem areas.

It detects obstacles like dog toys flawlessly, though, maneuvering around and continuing to mow straight. If it were to come into contact with an obstacle, the big bumper helps detect and redirect without any danger from the blades.

One caution to anyone who hasn’t used a robotic lawn mower before is to temper your expectations regarding how much these mowers can handle on one charge. We wish this mower could trim our entire yard at once, but it does have to return to its charging station to power up once or twice to finish our 0.75-acre yard.

_{Cutting Width: 11 inches | Weight: 38.6 pounds | Cutting Options: None | Yard Size: 1.5 acres | Cutting Heights: 1.2-3.3 inches}

The Anthbot Genie 3000 handles steep inclines throughout our 0.3-acre yard without ever getting stuck, which is why we recommend it for slopes. Four cameras provide flawless obstacle detection, even on slopes, and a strong pivoting ability allows it to navigate hills and around tight corners without getting stuck.

This mower is designed for hills with a slope of up to 24 degrees, the same as our best for large yards pick, but it handles them much better in our experience. It never slides or loses traction on hills, and it moves over rough and bumpy terrain, too.

The obstacle detection has sensitivity settings that you can change depending on the sort of objects you expect the mower to encounter, and we found that medium sensitivity kept it from running into anything (even when going up and down slopes).

We’ve noticed a few missed spots from time to time, but it mows so fast and so regularly that it gets everything eventually. The app is easy to navigate and use for setting up schedules, checking the battery, and setting up no-go zones.

Manual mapping and initial dock placement can be frustrating, but they’re both one-time inconveniences. Once it’s set up, it avoids any no-go zones and automatically returns to the dock any time it needs a charge, when it gets dark, and when it starts to rain.

_{Cutting Width: 7.9 inches | Weight: 28.6 pounds | Cutting Options: None | Yard Size: 0.89 acres | Cutting Heights: 1.18-2.76 inches}

If you want a neat trim that doesn’t require a lot of manual edging, our recommendation is the Eufy Auto Robot Lawn Mower. This mower uses what Eufy calls ride-on-edge technology to mow right up to the edge of hardscape like paths and patios, so you don’t need to follow it around with an edger.

This mower moves slowly through our yard, mowing efficiently over time. Through three months of testing, it has maintained the lawn at a healthy height. We can enjoy the back patio while it’s running too, since it’s quiet enough that it doesn’t interrupt conversations (or bother the neighbors).

We love how hands-off this mower is, thanks to automatic mapping and scheduling. The app is a work in progress (it has improved over time, but it isn’t the easiest to use or understand), but the mapping process couldn’t be easier. After an initial failed attempt, we enjoyed watching it move around on its own, mapping the yard without any complicated setup process.

Like most of our favorite robotic mowers, the Eufy Auto Robot Lawn Mower uses GPS to navigate, with collision sensors that help it avoid obstacles in our yard. It can fail to see obstacles in tall grass, but our grass never gets tall with this mower keeping things neat and trim at all times.

_{Cutting Width: 8 inches | Weight: 27 pounds | Cutting Options: None | Yard Size: 0.2 acres | Cutting Heights: 1-3 inches} 

If your lawn has poorly defined edges or flower and planter beds that aren’t protected by hardscape or barriers, the Worx Landroid M solves this problem. We’ve tested similar models with boundary wires (found on most traditional robotic lawn mowers), and this one consistently remains within the boundary, providing reliable mowing week after week without going where it doesn’t belong.

Setup requires installation of the boundary wire, and the robot dutifully remains within those bounds while mowing your lawn. This mower takes care of our 500-square-foot yard in about an hour, and it’s capable of handling up to 0.25 acres. The yard includes a flower bed, and the Landroid avoids it every time.

The mowing pattern seems a bit random, and it could be more precise, but it keeps the lawn mowed reliably. Rain detection sends it to its covered dock, and it navigates automatically around obstacles.

It takes more time and effort to set up a robotic lawn mower like this due to the boundary wire, but it’s also priced lower than wire-free mowers that have similar capabilities. The list price is $600 less than our best for edging pick, which uses advanced sensors to mow right up to the edge of paths and other hardscape without a boundary wire.

_{Cutting Width: 8 inches | Weight: 24.25 pounds | Cutting Options: None | Yard Size: 0.25 acres | Cutting Heights: 1.5-3.5 inches}