Robot Mower Review

What we’ve done here is to give you a robot mower review of the robotzoo Wombat.

We have taken a sample of a review done by PCmag for another mower, and adapt it to describing the Wombat.

Yes, we have written this review ourselves, but that should take care of the acknowledgements & attributions.

If you’ve been looking for an independent robotzoo Wombat Mower Review, see here.

If you need seven smart reasons to choose a robotzoo mower, look here.

Why consider a robot mower?

Are you tired of paying a landscaper to cut your lawn

Do you want to avoid pushing a mower in the hot sun?

…Then let a robot do it for you. The robotzoo Wombat is a feature packed mowing device that cuts it when it comes to Australian lawns.Our mission at robotzoo is to gather together in one place a family of user-friendly devices that will do the household chores.

The robotzoo Wombat comes from of a species of devices that were originally developed in 2004. It is designed for larger lawns of up to 2,600 sqm (28,000 square feet). The Wombat Joey is a smaller, even smarter, newer generation mower.

Key Statististics

Every robot mower review should contain a summary of key features and measurements:

The Larger Wombats are sizable, measuring 60 cm (24 in.) long by 46 cm (18 in.) wide by 48cm (11 in.) high.
They are also heavy, weighing in at 18kg (51 lb.).
They have a plastic cover which acts as a safety device and bumper.
There are sensors which will stop the blades spinning if it senses downward pressure.
And others which make the mower change direction when it comes in contact with obstacles (or the boundary wire).
The mower uses a gyro compass to keep it going straight when on a slope.
And it and can navigate slopes of up to 30 degrees.
It will cut off at 45 degrees to prevent from tipping over.

Cutting to the chase

Some other mowers have a fixed rotor spinning at high RPM.

That design which will chop through anything,

which we think is a safety issue.

Importantly, with the RobotZoo Wombat and Wombat Joey mowers, the cutting blades are small non-fixed pivoted blades that freely spin on the circumference of the central rotor disk (check the pictures).

This means that when they hit an object they will bounce back rather than chop through it. Also, there is a skirting guard underneath the mower to prevent probing objects from getting to the blades.

These safety features are what impress us most about the RobotZoo Wombat and Wombat Joey mowers. The blades cleanly cut the tops of the grass clippings into very fine pieces.

This means you don’t have to bag your grass trimmings! They become mulch that will eventually work its way back into the soil. The blades are easy to install and replace, and can be cheaply sourced from eBay and elsewhere.

For the Control Freaks

The top of the mower has a control panel with a monochrome LCD that displays key settings. These include the date, time, battery status (charging or fully charged), mowing schedule status (on or off), and the next scheduled operation time.

There’s a Go button used to begin manual operation and to select menu options. There are arrow buttons for navigating the menus, and a Return button that takes you back to the previous menu page.

Importantly, there’s a safety kill switch.

There’s also a carry handle that shuts down the mower when you pull it. And a panel that pops open to reveal a mowing height adjustment knob with a height indicator.

Yes, there is a smartphone app

The menu structure consists of Area Options and Mower Options pages. Area Options pages are where you go to set up Schedules, Operations (Intensity and Intervals), and Areas.

The settings let you determine how many operations it will take to cover your lawn size and the Interval level lets you select mowing days. You can adjust settings depending on lawn growth rates during different times of the year.

If your lawn is one big area without fences, sidewalks, or other obstacles that will impede the mower, then you’ll only need one zone with one perimeter wire.

Otherwise you can create sub-areas and separated areas. A sub-area is an area the mower can access directly from the main area and is connected to the main perimeter wire, while a separated area requires its own perimeter wire.

For example, a median strip between the street and footpath in front of your house can be covered by laying wire across the footpath (say in an expansion joint), and around the perimeter of the median strip.

In this case, the mower may need to be carried over the footpath to the median strip, but it will happily work in that area.

What’s in the box?

The mower comes with a base station for charging the battery, a power adapter with a 4 metre DC extension cable, 100 metres of perimeter wire, wire joiners. 100 plastic perimeter wire pegs, four stainless steel base station pegs, and an owner’s manual.

There is no remote, it’s been replaced by the smartphone WiFi app to guide the mower to wherever it needs to go.

Mower Options include a password feature that locks the control panel buttons, an Anti-Theft feature that sounds an alarm if the mower is unintentionally removed from its base, and a Rain Sensor that will halt operation on rainy days.

So how clever is it, really?

The Wombat doesn’t use mapping technology like the Roomba and Neato robotic vacuums.

Its mowing pattern is random within the perimeter, and coverage is based on the area size and the mowing intensity level.

Because there are so many options, programming the Wombat can be a bit time consuming.

But the WiFi app makes this task much easier than using the control panel on the mower.

Programming

Like a lot of home care robots, the Wombat program is to be active at specific times and days. Some mowers have you program times and days when they will not be active using the Inactive Times setting.

The mower starts cutting grass during active hours, returning to the base whenever it needs to be recharged (after up to 3-4 hours). Once the battery is fully charged, it will resume cutting, if necessary.

For very large lawns, a single cycle may take several days depending on weather and allowable active hours. The idea is to let the mower handle the workload based on things like battery life, weather conditions, watering schedules, and grass height.