Unless you’re Hank Hill, mowing the lawn might be one task we can all agree we’re happy to see outsourced to a robot. That’s especially true when the robot in question is the sort of unassumingly cute little ‘bot that you actually enjoy watching trundle quietly around your garden. I had the opportunity to try out the Eufy E15 robot lawn mower on my wildly uneven, weirdly-spaced back yard. Here’s how the little fella coped.
Eufy E15 Robot Lawn Mower
Specifications
- Dimensions: 23.7 inches long x 15.5 inches wide x 12.5 inches high.
- Weight: 27 pounds.
- Cutting height: 1-3 inches.
- Maximum slope: 18 degrees.
- Noise level: 56 decibels (comparable to the sound of a running refrigerator).
- Waterproof rating: IPX6.
- Mowing time on one full charge: 90-110 minutes.
- Charging time: 90-110 minutes.
- Maximum mapping size: 8,700 square feet.
- Price: $1,799.99.
Pros
- Maps out your yard with practically no assistance required.
- Fairly easy to get up and running.
- Quiet, compact, and reliable.
- Automatically returns to base when it rains or gets dark.
- Kind of adorable.
Cons
- Doesn’t collect grass clippings.
- Requires a new base station for every distinct part of your lawn.
- Takes a long time to mow larger yards.
The Unboxing
The Eufy E15 robot lawn mower arrived in a honking great cardboard box, which contained everything I needed to get started.
The box contained:
- Eufy E15 robot lawn mower.
- Base station.
- Garage (i.e., base station roof).
- Extension cable.
- Power adaptor.
- 8 screws for installing the base station.
- 4 screws for installing the garage.
- 9 spare blades.
- 9 spare blade screws.
- Lens cloth.
- Grease.
- Hex key.
- Instructions.
Everything in this press sample arrived in perfect condition, neatly packed, with no scrapes or missing pieces. Off to a good start!
The Design
The E15 is a compact, approachable-looking device, with smooth contours and a big, friendly-looking red button, which you can use to stop the device in an emergency. It’s not exactly flashy, but it looks highly functional without being clunky. With its little robot eyes up top, it could possibly be the vehicle mode for some kind of Transformer, albeit perhaps one that works in the Autobot accounts department, trying to foil Megatron’s latest tax evasion scheme.
The base station is less attractive, but rugged and, again, highly functional, while the ability to add a rain cover (the “garage,” as it’s listed) makes it extra useful.
The Set-Up
To use the E15, you first have to install the base station, which means screwing it into the ground with the provided screws. This was perfectly straightforward, as was adding the garage. Next up, you plug the base station in, and roll the E15 inside to charge. Once it’s ready to go, it’s time to turn to the app.
As with most new device apps, there’s a slight learning curve in figuring out how it works, and a few minutes of frustration getting everything to recognize the various wi-fi, bluetooth, etc. signals that it needs to connect with the device, but when that’s done, you’re up and running.
Once everything is working, it’s time to map the lawn, which — and this is one of the E15’s biggest selling points versus earlier robo-mower models — it does with virtually no assistance from you. There’s no laying down guide wires or any of that: The E15 utilizes onboard cameras and full self-driving technology to determine the dimensions of your lawn, avoiding obstacles and exploring diligently until it’s figured out the exact lay of the land.
This part was truly impressive to watch come together. I’d expected it to roughly figure out the shape of my back yard, and require the occasional hauling out of a bush or flowerbed. Instead, over the course of a couple of hours, it mapped every last edge, curve, and tree stump in incredible detail.
The Experience
Once the mapping was complete, it was time to mow. After you start it, the E15 reverses out of its base station and gets to work. It does this quietly (it’s genuinely surprising how little noise it makes) and efficiently, studiously trekking back and forth over the map to make sure every little section has been tackled, despite, in the case of my own yard, the seriously uneven and often bumpy terrain. Again, there’s a sort of inadvertent cute factor at play — the little robot tirelessly hacking away at the comparably large yard makes you root for it, in a weird way. (My kids immediately christened it “Mow-Mow” and squealed in delight every time they saw it going to work all by itself.)
There is a down side to the E15’s cute proportions, though. I don’t have a huge yard — exactly 1,157.2 square feet, according to the mower itself — but it took the E15 four and a quarter hours to mow the whole thing. That’s not including the break it took in the middle to recharge, which added another hour or so. Now, if the mower’s just doing its own thing while, say, you’re at work, then that’s not a problem. If, though, you need the lawn trimmed quickly in advance of an afternoon barbecue, you’d better be prepared to start it off early. On a related note, the E15 doesn’t pick up after itself, so you’ll need to grab the rake and tidy up the grass clippings it leaves, which may well be a deal-breaker for some.
The biggest issue, though, is the lack of ability to program multiple maps. Due to the weird layout of my outdoor space — thank you, nearly 100-year-old New Jersey house on a steep hill — the yard is actually split into four or five distinct sections (front, back, both sides, etc.) I only had the mower work on the main part of the back yard, since, from my understanding of the instructions, each distinct part of the yard would require its own base station.
Multi-zone management is possible if each section of the lawn is easily traversable by the mower (say, a back yard split into various sections by a flat path), but there are standalone sections of my own yard that would require lifting the mower over a low curb, or similar. This, sadly, makes the E15 impractical for me for regular use. It also means that you couldn’t simply loan it to a friend or neighbor without reinstalling the base station and starting the mapping again from scratch when it’s returned.
All of that said, if you have a more straightforward yard, and don’t mind it taking its sweet time, the E15 could well be exactly what you’re looking for. As well as being quiet, efficient, and hassle-free, it has a bunch of extra features that make it a winner, including a built-in anti-theft system and GPS. Perhaps my favorite bonus feature is the ability to look through the E15’s “eyes” on the app, getting a mower’s-eye view as it plods gently around, walloping daisies and scaring the bejesus out of the odd squirrel. This mode also allows you to remote control it via the app, which could certainly be a highly practical option, but is also just downright fun.
The Maintenance
The E15 will automatically roll back into its base station when it needs to charge. It also tucks itself away in there if it senses rain, or if you’re within 30 minutes of sunset. Maintenance, then, mostly takes the form of ensuring its blades are sharp and lubricated, both of which are made easier by the spare blades and tube of grease supplied in the box.
Eufy E15 Robot Lawn Mower
The End Result
Although it’s designed for yards up to 8,700 square feet, I found that the E15 took the better part of an afternoon to finish mowing a space that’s considerably smaller. That said, it did mow it, neatly and evenly — it just took a while. The lack of ability to tackle my various lawn areas without multiple base stations means that the E15 doesn’t work for me specifically, but anyone with a more normal outdoor space (and a little patience) will honestly be delighted with this machine. If you’re looking for something quiet, convenient, smart, and more than a little loveable, I’d recommend giving it a try.
