Eufy Lawnbot E18 evaluation: An excellent robotic mower for smaller yards

Greatest Costs In the present day: Eufy Lawnbot E18

Analysis and improvement efforts aren’t low cost. Outsourcing is without doubt one of the methods producers can extra affordably develop their product choices, and a few sensible house manufacturers—together with Anker’s Eufy sensible house division—have taken this strategy relatively than growing their very own merchandise in-house. On this case, we’re speaking about robotic garden mowers.

The Eufy Lawnbot E-series robotic garden mowers that Anker debuted at CES final January are literally rebranded TerraMow fashions which have been obtainable in Europe since mid-2024. Aside from battery measurement, the 2 Lawnbot E-series mowers are an identical, with the mannequin E15 able to dealing with as much as 0.2 acres, whereas the mannequin E18 reviewed right here is appropriate for as much as 0.3 acres.

Specs

Each Lawnbot E-series mowers may appear small in comparison with a lot of the competitors—suburban and rural American yards are usually very massive—however you don’t must personal an acre or extra of turf to understand a robotic garden mower.

Ed Oswald/Foundry

These are smallish, rear-wheel drive mowers, however don’t let their measurement idiot you: Each machines are filled with smarts. The GPS navigation that so many different fashionable mowers use, nonetheless, is just not certainly one of their options. These mowers map your yard utilizing pc imaginative and prescient alone.

The mower maps your yard fully by itself: you solely direct it to the parts of the yard you need it to map after which draw pathways between these areas. I had the Lawnbot E18 up and operating in my yard in lower than half-hour.

Whereas it’s thrilling to see a mower that doesn’t rely upon GPS satellites or require a posh set up involving antennas on tripods and the like, I definitely had my doubts a few mower that depends solely on imaginative and prescient, however these have largely dispersed—not less than concerning Eufy’s (and TerraMow’s) bots.

Setup

Ed Oswald/Foundry

The preliminary setup of the Eufy Lawnbot E18 includes discovering an acceptable location for the mower’s base station, plugging it in, after which turning your consideration to the mower itself. Whereas the mower comes with sufficient cost to finish setup, we charged it to one hundred pc, which took lower than half an hour (Eufy says a drained battery ought to attain a full cost inside 90 to 110 minutes).

After that, you can begin mapping from throughout the app. Place the E18 anyplace inside a grassy space (the app will information you) and permit it to calibrate. The mower will spin in a circle, using its cameras to find out its location on the planet.

Watching a robotic doing donuts in your yard will appear odd, however that’s how this mower determines its exact location with out the help of GPS. As soon as that orientation course of is profitable, the mower will proceed to map the whole space of grass.

I’ve a posh yard, so I set the Lawnbot E18 free on the simplest patches of grass first. It dealt with these spectacularly, needing lower than 10 minutes to map the 400 sq. toes. The mower struggled within the sloped parts of my yard, nonetheless, typically making an attempt to map areas that had been too steep for it to navigate. This required me to set no-go zones and limits throughout the app to stop it from getting caught. All-wheel drive would have helped with this, however the E-series mowers solely drive their rear wheels.

Ed Oswald/Foundry

The mower additionally insisted on returning to its base station after every zone was mapped, which I discovered irritating. When it got here to mowing areas removed from the bottom station, this added a substantial period of time to the mapping course of. This conduct is likely to be necessitated by the Lawnbot E18’s reliance on pc imaginative and prescient for navigation.

Aside from that, the Lawnbot E18 was surprisingly easy at mapping, even in areas with view obstructions or obstacles. You gained’t spend a lot time establishing a extra fundamental yard; certainly, transferring from unboxing to mowing occurred extra rapidly with the Lawnbot E18 than another mower I’ve evaluated so far.

Efficiency

The Lawnbot E18 is underpowered in comparison with a lot of the rear-wheel drive mowers I’ve examined on this value vary, and it could climb slopes of solely 18 levels or much less. When you have something greater than gradual rises in your yard, you’ll seemingly run into bother with this mower.

Whereas the Lawnbot E18 is smaller than most robotic garden mowers I’ve reviewed, its measurement—and the truth that its slicing blades are fairly near the sting of its deck—offers it not less than one essential benefit: Bulkier mowers can have problem maneuvering round obstacles, leaving unpleasant strips of uncut grass behind.

Ed Oswald/Foundry

That mentioned, the E18’s small slicing radius—8 inches—leads to longer mowing instances than many different robotic mowers. However I’m OK with that, supplied the mower does its job. And for probably the most half, the Lawnbot E18 does its job.

Whereas its imaginative and prescient navigation isn’t excellent, the mower carried out properly total, and the maps it created turned more and more extra exact with every run. This meant the E18 left fewer untouched patches of grass after just a few mowing periods. One other shock got here once I packed the mower away after which re-installed it later for a photoshoot. I put its base station in roughly the identical location, however I assumed the mower would want to create a completely new map; as an alternative, it acknowledged the yard and adjusted itself accordingly.

A few of the most vital navigation points I skilled had been solar blindness and incorrectly figuring out tall grass and weeds as obstructions. You possibly can change the route of its lower by zone; nonetheless, there is no such thing as a choice for alternating the route it mows to stop its wheels from leaving tracks in your garden. Segway’s E3-series mowers have this function, and it’s nice.

The Lawnbot E18 can’t function in the dead of night, both, despite the fact that it’s outfitted with an LED gentle that may be turned on whereas it’s in distant management mode. This implies you gained’t have the ability to mow your lawns at evening, as you possibly can with some competing mowers.

The Eufy app

Ed Oswald/Foundry

A few of the issues I encountered with the Lawnbot E18 can in all probability be chalked as much as software program/firmware points. Till June, the bottom station needed to be positioned inside a mow zone, or the bot wouldn’t have the ability to discover it. And you possibly can solely set the mow route in your total yard relatively than by zone. Additionally, an errant firmware replace in early June briefly prevented some Eufy mowers from working in any respect. These issues jogged my memory of what I handled throughout my Mammotion Yuka 1500 evaluation final 12 months.

In each instances, issues improved over time. Eufy’s Lawnbot app is now rather more steady than once I first examined the E18 in Could. It additionally bought higher at detecting transitions between grass and sidewalk. Walkway stones, alternatively, constantly tripped up the mower, as it might deal with them as a stable sidewalk.

If you happen to personal different Eufy sensible house units—whether or not it’s safety cameras, video doorbells, sensible lighting, vacuums, or mops—you’ll use the identical app to regulate the Lawnbot. It is going to seem below the Clear tab. The app is mostly simple to make use of, though a bug would typically trigger the mower to often disappear from the app’s House web page.

The app’s live-view function is mostly helpful, supplied you’ve good Wi-Fi protection in your yard, nevertheless it does take some getting used to. The mower’s actions are considerably jerky, so it could seem as if the machine is lurching in sudden instructions when it actually isn’t. I didn’t completely take a look at the app’s remote-control operate, nonetheless, as my Wi-Fi router doesn’t blanket my yard with protection.

Do you have to purchase the Eufy Lawnbot E18?

That the Eufy Lawnbot E18 is a rebranded TerraMow product doesn’t reduce its attraction—not less than for owners with smaller lawns. Its reliance on visible navigation is novel, however that function will get you as near plug-and-play as you’ll get with a robotic garden mower. It’s an awesome choice for people who really feel overwhelmed by fashionable know-how. And in case you personal different Eufy sensible house merchandise, you gained’t even must obtain one other app.

When you have a bigger or extra complicated yard, the Sunseeker Orion X7 AWD will in all probability be extra appropriate. Or in case you don’t wish to await a mower to be taught the form of your yard, you may take into account the Mowrator S1 4WD, which you management with a gaming console-like distant as an alternative of counting on the mower to navigate.

This evaluation is a part of TechHive’s in-depth protection of the most effective robotic garden mowers.