I've finally tested a robot lawnmower that hasn't annoyed me
Design and setup
If anything screams don't judge a book by its cover, it's the Eufy E15. This thing is kind of ugly. It gives Robot Wars more than Tesla Bot. It's chunky and awkward with a grey and black body that looks like a toy tank. There's a handle on the front for lifting it, a small LED display and a few physical buttons on the top as well as that big emergency stop button.
I love that its charging base is like a little garage with a roof, so your lawnmower is protected from the rain (it is waterproof, IPX6 rated), and sun, which is bad for batteries in general.
But while it won't be winning any design awards anytime soon, the Eufy E15 is by far and away the easiest robot lawnmower I've ever set up.
You don't have to lay a perimeter wire around the garden, and there's no GPS RTK satellite antenna to faff around with. Some robot lawnmowers have such tall antenna, that it looked like I was trying to communicate with aliens.
The bit that probably took the longest was securing the charging station to the ground. It comes with some chunky screws and an Allen key, and you just need to push them through the holes to keep the base in place. It's simple enough. Once that's all done, you turn the robot on using the switch underneath, and continue setup in the app. The robot needs access to wifi, so hopefully you've got a router close to your garden (or a wifi extender). If you're out of coverage, the Eufy E15 also comes fitted with a 4G SIM, but you have to pay an extra fee to activate it.
I recommend placing the charging base on a solid surface like concrete or paving, mainly because it can't mow underneath itself. Leave it on the lawn like I did and you'll end up with a scruffy patch of grass growing up around it. That said, the included screws are meant for soil, so you can't fix it in the usual way. If you're placing it on concrete, you could either drill in some anchors or screw it into a bit of treated wood or decking first, though I doubt it would not budge if you just propped it up with some bricks.
Once it's all turned on, you just tap the auto map button in the Eufy app and watch as the E15 use its camera system to scan the lawn and figure out what's grass and what's not, driving around your lawn like a controlled car. It generates a map exactly like a robot vacuum cleaner, all without ugly antennae or perimeter wires. It's the most seamless setup process I've ever experienced. It felt like a relief after testing such time-consuming models.
Performance and features
Before you get going, ensure your lawn is freshly-mown first. After that and it's all set up, the Eufy E15 will just roll out of its dock, do its job and head back home when it's done. It's fitted with a rain sensor, so if it starts raining at any point, it'll abandon the job and return home automatically. You can set a delay in the app so it waits a few hours before heading back out.
Most of the controls live inside the app. You can adjust the cutting height (from 25mm to 75mm), tweak how close it gets to the edges, set the overlap between each pass and even change the mowing direction by rotating the angle on the map. There's also a setting for travel speed and blade speed. It's much more detail than most people will ever need, but great if you like to tinker with how your lawn looks and want total control.
As a lazy person who still wants the lawn to look good, I set mine to 8cm path spacing, -15cm edge spacing and 25mm cutting height. The tighter path spacing means it overlaps more with each pass, so there's less chance of missing patches. The –15cm edge setting helps it get closer to borders, and the lowest cutting height keeps everything looking trim for longer. Basically, I wanted to do as little as possible if I ever had to get the big boy lawnmower out – I wanted the robot to do most of the hard yards.
In terms of cut quality, I've been really impressed. It moves in straight, clean lines, never lost signal and never spun in confused circles like some others I've tested. It often looks like someone's professionally mown your lawn, with faint wheel stripes that make it look super neat. The mulching blades also chop the grass finely enough that there's nothing left to collect.
But while the general cutting quality is good, it misses patches. One thing I would say is that even with the edge setting pushed to the max, it still doesn't do a great job at trimming some of the sides of the garden. There are huge patches of grass that it hasn't touched, despite not being super close to a fence.
While, sure, it doesn't happily bounce off skirting boards like a robot vacuum, the Eufy E15 just misses patches near the fence entirely. That means I still have to go around with a strimmer to tidy up the areas it misses, such as near the patio door and the fence. It also seems deathly afraid of long grass, so it won't go near the patches it keeps on missing.
Mowing aside, there are lots of features inside the app. You can also set up no-go zones by drawing squares or lines directly on the map, great if you want it to avoid specific flowerbeds or kids toys. Scheduling is equally straightforward. You just pick the days and times you want it to run, and once that's locked in, the mower handles the rest, rolling out, trimming the lawn and going back to sleep in its garage without needing any help.
It's also nearly silent. There's a low hum at most, so it didn't annoy the neighbours. It's even got a satisfying blade-cutting noise, so you can actually hear it working.
The app includes a remote control mode that lets you steer the mower around like an RC car, complete with a live camera feed. Annoyingly though, you can't actually control it while it's mid-mow, so if you spot a patch it's missed, you can't just drive it over there. The remote's really just for helping it out of tight spots, though mine never got stuck once, so I just ended up playing with it like a toy.
Also, big props to Eufy for including some really decent anti-theft technology in its mower, too. The mower is linked to your Eufy account, so if someone tries to nick it, they won't be able to pair it with a new device or app. It also locks itself and can sound a loud alarm if it's taken outside its mapped area. There's built-in GPS tracking, and if you activate the optional 4G SIM (which requires a subscription), you'll still be able to locate it even if it's out of range. Sure, someone can still pick it up and take it away from your garden, but it'll turn into a brick if they try and use it.
The other that lets it down slightly is zone management. Unlike robot vacuums that let you save maps for different floors, the E15 can't create multiple lawn maps. If you want to mow both your front and back garden, you'll need to buy a second charging dock, and I couldn't find an obvious way to do that through the app or on Eufy's website. For the price, it feels like users should be given that flexibility.
Because it relies on cameras to navigate, it can't mow in the dark. I don't think that's a deal-breaker. Personally, I'd rather only be able to mow in daylight than have to line my garden with boundary wire or bolt a huge antenna to the top of the thing. Plus, in summer, when it's light until 9pm, it's barely an issue. I wouldn't be surprised if Eufy adds a headlight in a future update, but for now, daylight mowing is the trade-off.
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