ECOFLOW BLADE High-Performance 36V Automatic Electric Robotic Lawn Mower W/ Charging Dock (92538615)

BLUF: Good mower, Quiet, but I would buy again.I saw this in a CES youtube video and had to get one. Something about getting a lawn mown autonomously without having to lay boundary wire was really appealing. I bought when available, received and unpacked it, other reviewers have pictures of the unboxing, and set it up. These are my thoughts. Expense: price is a tough pill, but the Husqvarna 435x $3,999, their 315x is $1769, and the gardena Sileno City 250 is $799. All good to great mowers with similar functionality, but the Blade doesn't need a boundary wire and is in the middle of the price field. I felt the price was reasonably justified. Set-up: Easy out of the box and putting together. I Had it put together, wires run and antenna / base in their temporary positions. Advice, don't fix anything in place until you have the app and are going through the set-up on your phone. The ground screws are plastic and while putting only 2 screws in the base, I took them out and put them in three times before I had it in the right place. I had to move it again before I could make a map, but I'll get in to that below. App: Download, create/sign-in to your account, link the Blade to your account, and then the work starts. GPS Antenna - Find a place with 50 feet (ish) of the base station, Ideally no overhead cover with a direct line of sight to the sky, southern sky is ideal. I found a spot off my deck that worked. I have seen through FB and youtube that this is not always easy. My app gave me numbers to 0-100% and as I moved the antenna around to maximize the percentage, I found the app seemed to freeze a bit and I had to hit the refresh button to get an updated signal strength reading. Later, the app constantly updated signal strength. It took 10 or so minutes for this. The app will not let you advance through set-up with out the numbers being within range. Base Station: THe app has you set-up the antenna first. Keep in mind your base station has to be about 50 feet from the outlet and antenna. It has to be line of sight to the antenna and to the sky. I picked a spot and the signal strength was a passable 71% that dropped to a non passable 67% and I moved it 3 times. I cut some limbs of the blocking tree and repositioned it twice more and the app let me advance. I did **** the base down and unscrewed it, moved it, screwed it down probably twice before I figured I should stop. I am going to replace the plastic screws with metal yard ****/spike of similar size, just in case. the plastic screws won't hold as well in tornados, not that the house really would either, but just saying. Once the base is set and the robot is in, you can make a map. This step was about 10 minutes. Map Creation: the robot has to have access to the sky also, or the robot won't move to make the map. Where I placed it, the base was btw 78% and 84%, and the robot was at 31%. I had to move the base 2 more times. It was not a huge deal as I was expecting something like that. I was notified of an update, 6 minutes as it was not on my network yet. Once all robot lights were blue and I started to map. I waked behind it and traced out my yard. Manual control of the robot was fine, easy learning curve, and I walked around it and once complete I cut my yard. This step was about 25 minutes, mainly waiting for the blue lights to allow me to create the map. To note: cut your grass without the robot before you map as the object detection is... sensitive... as of this writing. I had my yard cut over the weekend, but I read one person experienced their mower stopping for a dandelion flower. I tested the rain sensor with my sprinklers and it stopped and returned to base as expected. I noticed when I first mowed the robot would turn within 12-18 inches of the boundary, leaving a huge section of uncut grass. The picture attached to this review is taken during on of these boundary turns. I went into the app and found "edge work mode" under automation and that seems to have fixed it. I set my grass height at 1.5, 2.6 and 3.1 inches very smooth transition. I plan on updating this over time. See how long it lasts, blade changing, other issues and resolutions. I hope this helps-

Had this for a week and truly felt it wasn't ready yet. Couldn't complete my full lawn and coordinating with company was challenging. It has great potential so I'll give it a year and buy again. I really love the look!

Not ready for prime time just yet it still has a bunch of bugs on the software side for sure. When it works it does a fairly good job but needs a lot of babysitting always have to do some sort of reset or re-map when I get home from work. And the simplest things like changing the direction of cutting are still not an option yet the Luba has this already and AWD so it does not get stuck as easy as the Blade. I would hold off on this version of Blade until next spring they might have most of these bugs fixed.

Editing review. OMG!!! Customer service is great; they are reviewing our reviews and making changes to make it easier to use blade mower. I received my replacement mower yesterday. Yes, unfortunately, it had to be replaced but customer service responds very quickly. The delay was with shipping coming from California to Florida. Also, while setting it up, it had step by step instructions in the app. You had to go through each step which was VERY easy before it starts mowing. It also tells me what each icon is for instead of guessing. The icing on the cake is that my mower wasn't on the charging base this morning. So, when I looked at my phone; I noticed a notification that it was trapped. My sister purchased the competition Luba mower. It does offer 10 areas to map but she has to send emails to communicate with customer service. Since I only mapped one area yesterday, I have to check if I still have the 5 or more mapping areas that ECO Flow gave me on the first mower. ALL of my concerns have been resolved in such a short time.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I've had the blade mower almost a month. After playing around the app, it's easy to set up the zones. In addition, customer service must have read my first review and added a total of 3 additional mapping areas; I now have 5 areas that I can map. This is surprising and great since I thought companies never read reviews. I updated my firmware and mapped the other areas. Also, I had to contact customer service to get assistance because I had an error message and it instructed to restart blade. After the representative informed me how to restart the blade, I felt rather "dumb". To restart blade is shutting down the mower by holding down the power button and pushing same button to turn it back on. Nevertheless, The representative was very patient with me and it felt like he wasn't rushing me off the phone. Here are some helpful advice. Put a ground flag or rock to mark the starting point when mapping your areas. The start point will be the ending point in where you need to end the mapping. I like that after a recharge, it would go back where it stopped and begin mowing. But if it doesn't finish that day, it reset itself and starts from the beginning the next day. Also, once it detects rain, it will go back to charging pad. Once no rain is detected, it goes back to where it stopped mowing. Also, after I setup my first mapping zone; I moved the charging pad a foot over while Blade was out mowing. The mower kept going around in a circle to find the charging pad in its new location. I had to put mower on the charging pad and remap it because I couldn't put it back in the exact first spot. Wish list for a way to receive an alert/text message when battery is not charging or blade is trapped. If you're doing other things or napping, have to go back into the app just to see that battery isn't charging or it's stalled in the yard.

Early adopter issues aside, this mower did exactly as needed. I have a fairly complex lawn with a separated front and back. The mower needs to travel from the backyard through a gate, down a concrete walk, and across the driveway to get to the front yard (from the back). It is capable without intervention. No more manual mowing! So it is good enough today, and I imagine will only get better as the product matures through app and firmware updates.

I just love the freedom of having the mower do the work and no wires to repair

Update: Changed from 1 star to 3, due to the customer service. After troubleshooting to try to correct the issue, the company offered for me to return the mower for a full refund. The process of the return was easy and relatively quick. Would recommend anyone who decides to try the mower to retain the box until they are sure it is working for them.I was excited to see a robotic lawnmower that did not require a perimeter wire. The cut looks great, however the overlap needs help. I have strips between rows that never get cut. The mower only cuts in one direction. The mower also does not mow to the perimeter that you establish. I would not buy again and most definitely would not recommend to anyone.

In terms of hardware and design of this unit, I would give it a 5 Star rating. The problem is that the Software and APP to manage mowing areas still needs to improve significantly. If you setup the mower to mow away from all edges of your lawn (1-2 feet buffer) and your lawn is almost perfectly flat, you will love this thing. My current issues come from setting up a map (which takes 30-40 minutes at least), and then finding ONE place where you would like to make some adjustments, and your only option is to start all over. There are other SW bugs as well, including not being able to reconnect via bluetooth at times and the setting for wifi don't seem to keep. There is a FB page and it seems like someone from EchoFlow is monitoring the input and promising SW upgrades in the coming months, so hopefully the product improves greatly.