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Currently going with 5-stars, but like most robot mowers you have to work around the issues that allow them to work best in your lawn.
Starting with Cons -
* Not yet selling an extra perimeter switch, making setup with fences between yards a bit harder. (They do sell another docking station for ~$110 which to be fair is not far off from the price of just a "perimeter switch" from other companies)
* Not enough stakes included in the box for our yard size (11,000 sqft plus - to be fair our yard is on the upper end of what this mower was made for, zoning has made that better) EDIT: Local big box stores have metal stakes ($9.00 for 75) that work well enough, this helped me complete what I needed.
* Does not always drive in a straight line, almost like it follows gravity or uneven terrain causes it to slightly turn if one wheel only hits that bump. I am still watching this trying to figure out what the cause is, might be a combo of the two. Not sure this is truly a bother, as it still gets the job done.
* Complicated yard setups with lots of fences or features does prove problematic for when it needs to return for charging. Right now we have one spot where if it decides it needs to charge, it will try and follow the line under a fence and not give up.
a. I can either move the charging station to this spot or b. add a relay and switch to control the boundary wire allowing me to effectively have a switch track control.
EDIT: Fixed this by simply adding a new wire that returns from the other side. If you have a corner post, and the two wires, it will follow the wires around the corner post instead of trying to go straight on the wire that runs under the fence. This helped me create a zone out on the side yard. For the front yard I simply hinged a few of the fence boards and it will push that open to get to the front. It returns to the back yard through another hinged spot on the opposite side. Works rather well, and with the zoning feature makes it easy.
* Rain timer seems to have a bug - the mower went off to mow shortly after the morning sprinklers got it wet. Going to email their tech support on this.
Now for the good things.
* My yard looks really good, even the tall grass it was able to handle after a few days work and I did not have to get the big mower out like I had thought. Just give it a few days and it will be under control and maintained.
* My yard has never been cleaner! Since I had to find all the rocks, twigs and such before letting it wander off to work.
* Handles the carpet grass fine, the Bermuda grass is fine, and the few spots of turffalo (short Buffalo grass) all get cut well.
* Nothing prepares you for how silent this thing is - you hear it actually cutting things over any motor noise. Walk around in the dark and you might be surprised by it.
EDIT: Needed extra wire, ended up using yellow pet fence wire from the local big box store (500 feet for $25). After a few days I could not see the wire and it spliced in just fine with no errors or confusion from the mower, works fine even when buried.
Setup was not all that bad, did take me a few hours as I had to get rocks up and out of the ground and do some tree work. I did make my own set of measuring jigs as I was not all that impressed by the cardboard measuring tools that they give you. So I just cut two sticks out of some spare PVC, one to 14", the other to 2.5' as this really helped me speed along while setting the wire and pins.
I did update the firmware before turning on the mower, this was a rather painless process as long as you are comfortable with a screwdriver and USB memory stick.
I am glad it now has "Zones", as that was one thing I did not like about this model when reading other reviews in the past.
It has been stuck a few times, so in those spots I just level out the dirt or make an incline a bit smoother.
Programming is easy enough, and with the Texas sun I programmed it to run well into the night. I did not like that the starter program would have it mowing in the morning dew, I wish they would think about changing that.
Runtime seems pretty good so far, and as the batteries get a few more cycles on them I can see three hours being doable.
I will update this review as time goes on, we do plan to make a barn for it with some sort of auto door as my wife fears some jealous neighbor might try and swipe it. It is pretty hard to see at night, so I do not think it will get much attention from anyone passing by.
So far we are much happier with this mower than our lawn crew, or doing it ourselves with allergies and the heat. Plus our lawn looks better than it ever has, so that was an unexpected bonus. I do want to try the Bosch mower blades to see if they make any difference to how much it cuts on one pass, or to how long the blades might last.
Payoff is around six to eight months, depending on how many times the lawn care company was doing things.
