Advanced options
The robot mows little-and-often (daily trims, clippings mulched invisibly): lawns genuinely look better than weekly-cut, and the mulching feeds the grass (see our lawn feed page: it replaces a round or two). Running costs are small: ~GBP 5-15/yr electricity, blades GBP 15-20/yr. The honest catches: complex lawns (islands, narrow passages, steep banks) need the dearer models, boundary setup is an afternoon (wire) or a premium (wire-free GPS), and it trims EDGES badly: the strimmer stays.
What The Robot Mower Calculator Works Out
- Hours bought back: mows a year x minutes per mow. The fortnightly-to-weekly cut consumes about 20 hours a year on a typical suburban lawn.
- The 5-year view: the robot's price spread over five years, and that annual figure divided by the hours saved, which lands at GBP 6 to GBP 12 per reclaimed hour for a GBP 600 to GBP 1,500 machine. Running costs are small: GBP 5 to GBP 15 of electricity and GBP 15 to GBP 20 of blades a year.
- What the brochure skips: mowing is a chore to some and the week's only podcast interval to others, and the robot deletes both indiscriminately. Petrol mower servicing at GBP 60 a year and the mower's eventual replacement narrow the gap sticker shock opens.
- Years of life and installation (advanced): robots are generally good for 5 to 8 years with a battery change. Laying boundary wire is an afternoon's DIY or GBP 100 to GBP 200 for a pro install; wire-free GPS models charge the premium up front instead.
- Running costs (advanced): the GBP 25 a year default covers electricity and blades; add GBP 50 to GBP 100 if you expect a replacement battery within the life you entered.
- Current mower offsets (advanced): servicing and fuel for a petrol mower (GBP 60 to GBP 90 a year), plus the cost of replacing your existing mower spread over its life. These come off the robot's annual cost to give the net figure.
- Net cost per hour really saved (advanced): robots trim edges badly, so the strimmer and a monthly tidy survive. The default 30 minutes a month across an eight-month season is deducted from the hours saved before the net cost per hour is worked out.
- Your time, valued (advanced): the net hours saved x what an hour is worth to you, compared with the robot's net annual cost. If you leave the value blank the card shows the break-even hourly rate instead, which is the honest way to decide whether the Saturday cut was secretly the good bit.
- Gardener instead (advanced): what paying someone GBP 20 to GBP 35 a cut would cost for the same number of mows, which deletes the chore just as thoroughly and does the edges, at the price of someone else's schedule.