Robomow RC302: the cyborg gardener goes out to the lawn

It used to be fashionable to plant potatoes, put up a greenhouse for cucumbers and transplant strawberries at the cottage. But now it’s different. People want to lie on a deck chair in the middle of a soft, green lawn and relax. The only pity is that even the most beautiful lawn turns into an impassable jungle without care. Experts recommend to cut the grass once in 5-8 days, t.e., roughly speaking, once a week. It is exciting at first, but over time it gets tiresome. Let me rejoice! It can be automated, buying for the countryside analog of a robot vacuum cleaner – a robotic lawnmower. The principle is almost the same, except for a couple of differences.

It took me quite a while to choose the model. To begin with, I carefully studied several reviews on the Internet, which helped me decide on the brand. The Robomow was the company that not only made the very first robotic lawnmower, but has been in the lawnmower business for over 20 years already. One look at the knives in the store was enough: they are just some fantastic shuriken! My competitors finally fell away and I got the Robomow RC302, an automatic mower, in my garden. Other solutions RC304, RC306 and RC312 are available on the RC3XX platform, they’re even more serious and interesting, but they’re not in the budget anymore.

How it looks

Surely many are familiar with robotic vacuum cleaners. It’s a “box” that rolls around your house, pulls in dust and returns to the base station to recharge from time to time. Robomow mower is, in fact, the same thing, but it does not move on the carpet, but on the grass and the ground.

It has big wheels and paddles that make it easier to get around obstacles. The robot can push the grass up under itself thanks to its considerable weight a little over 10 kg , and its dimensions are larger than those of a vacuum cleaner. It takes a lot of power to spin a large blade and, as a consequence, a solid built-in battery.

But the robotic mower does have one important difference. If a vacuum cleaner works in a confined space and is guided by the walls, the outdoor unit goes into the open field. The Robomow RC302 has a special wire that comes with the stakes, so you can mark your lawn.

You only need to do it once, afterwards the wire will grow into the ground and you will not have to remember it. By the way, you do not have to mow the lawn edges manually, they are very flat – there is even special technology for this.

How it works

If we talk specifically about the model RC302, it is sold without the base station. It’s handy when you want to save money. However, over time, I preferred to buy an additional base, and did not regret – with it no need to monitor the state of the batteries, because the robot itself returns to the station to recharge, and then returns to work.

The mower can be controlled directly from your smartphone – just download the special app from the App Store for iPhone or Google Play for Android devices. You can use the RC302 program to send the robot out to cut the grass automatically, or you can remember your childhood and even use the virtual joystick to “control” the robot. Here you can also program the mower and set the schedule: say, make the lawn trimmed once every three days, exactly at 12-00.

Impressions

The most important thing is that you save time and get a nice, smooth lawn. I used to use a manual trimmer, but I got tired and the results were not satisfactory. You have to cut the grass up to 2/3 of its length, which is not what a trimmer is supposed to do. The height of the blade on the RC302 can be adjusted to your taste, according to the height of the lawn. By the way, it uses a three-blade metal blade, which is not always the case with robotic mowers. This directly affects the quality of mowing.

The issue of safety is also important. No question here: you can walk around your lawn comfortably while the RC302 rode around. Even so, it maneuvers around trees and overcomes holes and bumps with ease: gradients of up to 36 degrees will not be an obstacle.

The recommended lawn area for RC302 is 200 square meters, but there is nothing wrong if your area is a little larger. I have just such a case. There were some small holes in the ground at first, but after a few excursions there was no trace of them left.

You just need to make the robot work more often in the first week: every day or every couple of days. Although more than 2 times the recommended area should not be exceeded.

I also liked the ease of use. Robomow RC302 is a really “smart” thing, which does not require almost any adjustment. The hardest thing to do after you buy it is to run the perimeter wire. From there, the mower takes care of everything.

The gadget is able to detect when it starts to rain outside: a special built-in sensor helps it do this. If you mark in the mobile app, that the mower automatically returns to the base, when the weather turns bad, you don’t have to worry about it.

After testing I have only one question, and that is addressed to the developers of software: friends, tell me why the program does not have the ability to automatically send the robot to fight with the growing lawn every day? The minimum interval is every other day.

Summary

Of course, a good robotic mower is not cheap. Robomow RC302, for example, costs about 48,000 Dollars. It’s a lot, but the device lives up to all expectations. About how to hold the trimmer, I have long forgotten, and the kids are happy to run barefoot on a soft and evenly mowed lawn. That’s probably the most important thing. And everyone will decide for himself whether to pay one thousand dollars for this pleasure or not.