WORX Landroid L 20V Robotic Lawn Mower w/GPS 1/2 Acre / 21,780 Sq.Ft Power Share - WR153 (Battery & Charger Included)

- Prep/AnalysisI have ~7,500 sq ft of grass (mostly Kentucky Bluegrass) in my back yard (0.17 acre) that I usually mow weekly with an electric push mower. There's an in-ground trampoline and a couple of small trees. My front yard is separated from the back by a fence (on one side of the house) and a gravel RV pad with a gate (on the other side). I have no immediate plans to try to get the Landroid to mow the front.I had been contemplating this purchase for a while, so I spent plenty of time thinking about where I'd install the charging base and how I would route the perimeter wire. I determined the best location would be under my back porch steps, which would satisfy the recommendations in the manual (shady, away from sprinklers, close to an outlet, etc). The main downside was having to crouch under there to install it. It's mostly loose dirt, and I have noticed the Landroid's wheels slip a bit, but nothing too serious.- Setup/InstallI followed the instructions for laying the boundary wire to keep the mower off the trampoline, and figured it would be fine if the mower just bounced off the trees.Laying the boundary wire took me a couple of hours by myself. I ended up using ~450 ft of the included wire, and about 80% of the stakes. I used a rubber mallet to drive the stakes into the ground after my thumbs got sore from doing it by hand. I didn't clear the grass at all or bury the wire, just massaged the grass around it till it sunk in. This was a challenge because my grass is super thick. I didn't get it deep enough in a few spots, which led to problems later (see Troubleshooting/Operation below).Once the wire is in place, it's plug and play. The battery was 29% charged when I turned on the mower for the first time. I let it charge for a bit so I could take a break before sending it off for the first time.- Troubleshooting/OperationIt's immensely gratifying to turn it on for the first time and just watch it go. The mower is slow! It moves about 1mph and cuts a path about 7-8 inches wide (for the math folks that's about 60 sq ft per minute).I followed the instructions to connect the unit to my WiFi using the app. That worked fine. The app is functional but a little clunky. Better than using the buttons on the Landroid, though. I appreciate that I get notifications whenever the mower needs help.My first major concern was to make sure the mower could make it back to base without any trouble. What good is a robot lawn mower if I have to come rescue it every night? On its first attempt to "go home", I quickly identified some trouble spots.I had used the included 10.2" guide to keep my wire the appropriate distance from my concrete patio, but the grass beside it is deep due to some unevenness in the ground. The mower got stuck after several attempts to push through.The main issue is that the bottom of the mower has a sort of comb that lifts/straightens the incoming grass before cutting it. This prevents the mower from moving forward in thick grass, especially if you have a divot or hole or weird slope in the ground beneath. In the end, I moved the wire a few inches away from the patio so the mower wouldn't have to fight through that every time.I mentioned earlier that I didn't get the wire as deep as I should have in some places. More than once, the front wheel of the mower has rolled over the wire, caught on it, and pulled it up (likely when the mower was reversing or turning), resulting in an error ("outside perimeter wire"). Each time this happened, I added another stake to keep the wire nice and low. Once, the front wheel sunk into a deep spot enough for the blade to cut the wire (I got a notification: "error: missing wire"). This was annoying, but the provided wire joiners (2) don't require you to strip the wire, which is the most annoying part of repairing it. So it was a quick fix. I added another stake so it wouldn't happen there again.I have concrete curbing around two of my trees. I thought the Landroid would just bump into it and go on its merry way, but unfortunately there's enough slope that the mower rides up the curbing, gets high-centered, and throws an error ("mower lifted"). Instead of adjusting my boundary wire (which would have been a chore), I chose to surround my trees with some wire fencing that I had lying around.- PerformanceI don't how how its algorithm works, but the Landroid works very well at getting itself out of tight spots. My lawn has a number of uneven spots, tight corners, and random holes. It's fun to watch as the mower spins its wheels different ways and works itself out of them. WORX did a pretty good job with that. If all else fails, the mower will give up and send you a notification that it's trapped.The mower appears to mow in a straight line until it hits the wire (or an obstacle) then sets off again in a random direction. The pattern on the lawn starts to look like a bunch of crisscrossing contrails after a couple of sessions. It mows along the perimeter wire once or twice a week (depending on your settings) to minimize the amount of edging required. Since my grass goes all the way up next to my fence, it's impossible for the Landroid to cut all the way to the edge.The app automatically creates a schedule based on the lawn size you tell it. I told it to run every day, so it came up with a 15-minute run time per day. Considering the 60 sq ft per minute coverage, this amounts to the whole lawn getting mowed about once a week. I wanted smoother grass than that, so I doubled the time to 30 minutes daily. In my testing, I found that the mower can go 1.5-2 hours on a full charge before returning home (it goes back on its own when the battery is down to ~10%).- Safety/MaintenanceI've only owned my Landroid for a few days, so I haven't done any maintenance on the unit itself. The blades are held on with screws and look very easy to replace (the box came with two extra sets of replacements).I have three young kids at home. I appreciate that the blades stop on their own when the mower is lifted, so I don't have to worry much about them getting hurt.- OverallI pushed a mower all over my back yard for four summers to earn this. It took a day to set it all up, and a couple more to work out the trouble spots in my yard. I'd say it's worth the price. For $1,000, I've bought back an hour on every Saturday morning for the next few summers. If it continues to work out, I'll start contemplating ways to get my Landroid working in the front yard, too.-- Edits: 3 months later --A few things to point out:- My 15-minute run time per day was wildly insufficient for my lawn's growth rate. To get a "perfectly manicured" lawn, I had to bump up the daily run time to a couple of hours. When I had the time lower, I ended up with a few small, random patches that got missed.- The mower managed to cut the boundary wire a total of 4 times so far. It's annoying to fix, but highlights the downside of just laying the wire down on the grass without making any effort to bury it. At least trimming a tiny space with a string trimmer (turned sideways) would probably have prevented this. I also keep the mower on its second-to-lowest setting (2), which may make me more susceptible to this issue.- Occasionally, the mower gets stuck, but not enough to trigger a notification. It spins its wheels, making deep divots in the grass, and just goes and goes till the battery dies.- Occasionally, the mower drives over the boundary wire in just the wrong way and finds itself "outside" the boundary wire. I'll get a notification on my phone and have to come rescue it.- I have to rescue the mower at least once a week. That's annoying, for sure, but the amount of time spent rescuing is way less than the time I would spend mowing. And I don't get dirty and sweaty.- I still have to trim the edge with a string trimmer, since the mower can't get all the way up against the fence. I can usually get away with edging every other week, so I alternate edging the front and the back yards.

This was the second WORX Landroid I have bought. The first was for the back and this one was for the front. I went with the GPS model since it would be for the front yard. When I received it I immediately set it up in the front. It worked fine. I followed the instructions exactly and the last piece was setting up the GPS device. I plugged it in and started the activation. It hung. I gave it a day and then called support since I couldn't use the app since it was throwing a dialog error. Support said they activated it on their side and to give it 24 hours. After 2 days nothing happened, so I called back. The support guy said he needed to send a firmware update. He did that and the landroid bricked. He then had me send it in stating that it would be back in my hands in 7-10 business days. After 2 weeks and no landroid I called back in to get a status. The support guy said he would look and call me back. I got no response. I called back in the next week and got the same message. Finally I got an email response stating that they couldn't find my landroid and to describe the box I had sent it in. The email didn't have a responding email address so I called back in and described the box. I was told I would get an update. Nothing happened. After 2 more weeks of trying and threating to call the BBB ( they'd now had my mower for 2 months ) I finally got an email stating that they couldn't find my mower and that they would be sending me a new one.When I got my "New" one, it was not new at all. It was all scuffed up. The tires were well worn. I'd obviously gotten a used or demo model. Additionally they had not sent the GPS module. I complained about both, but all they did was send me a GPS module.I've now had the mower up and running for almost 2 months. It cuts the grass just fine, but it won't stay within the wire. Every morning that it cuts I have to go outside at least once and pull it out of the street. I've moved the wire back from the curb at least twice and now you could set the whole mower between the edge of the curb and the wire. Now it only occasionally goes outside the boundry. I'm guessing the sensor is bad.The worst part about the whole ordeal was the complete lack of communication. I understand that this has been a hard time for a lot of people, but that doesn't mean you can ignore people for months. When I looked at the BBB complaints, this wasn't even the first time. Now that their used mower is also having issues I have no desire to send it back in, at least not until after the season.I would not recommend this product to anyone right now. It's a buyer beware situation, however I will say that if you do purchase one and it has issues at all - Don't send it in, return it to Amazon if you're in the return period.So after a year, I'm changing my rating down to a 1*. With a robotic lawn robot, you want one that you don't have to mess with. This year I moved the wire back a few inches since the mower would continually go over the wire and fall into the street. So now I have about a foot of grass I still need to mow weekly. However the mower still gets stuck. It bypasses the wire and goes out into the driveway and then can't get back. There hasn't been a single day that I haven't had to restart it. I don't know if that is because of the fact that I got a refurbished one when I did the return, or if this is a general issue with the product. This will be my last purchase from WORX. Not because of the bad product, but because of the service I received from them.