Kudos: No boundary wire! Auto-mapping and app edits simple to perform; mostly fulfills the promise of autonomous mowing; X430 is a beast!
Concerns: Should include owner’s manual in the box; doesn’t pick up debris and you’ll likely still need to edge; i2 takes a long time to mow
“Why is there a robot lawn mower review in Residential Systems?!”
This is a category that has been around for decades, but has seen explosive growth over the past several years as technology for autonomous mapping and navigation and battery charging have improved and costs have dropped. And each year there seems to be a new crop of companies displaying at CES. (The same can be said for pool maintenance robots.) At this year’s show, 10 manufacturers showed models, but there are over 30 companies making robotic lawn mowers. (One word of caution: Look at one robot mower ad on Facebook and your feed will likely be filled with more mower manufacturers than you can imagine!)
So, why cover robot lawn mowers here? Your customers likely expect you to be their technology expert, with an understanding of all things tech-related. At some point, one of them is likely to ask what you know about robot lawn mowers, and when that day comes, you’ll be ready to give an informed answer. Or maybe you own a house and have a yard and have thought about getting a robot for yourself. Also, Navimow says it is actively seeking new dealers, so you can inquire about selling these on their website as an added service to your customers.
Also, they’re just frickin’ cool. I’ve owned a robot mower for more than 10 years, so I am very familiar with the category. I was also really interested to see how the tech had evolved and improved in that time.
Navimow, a division of Segway — yes, the same Segway company that made Paul Blart’s preferred means of mall transport — seemed like a great company to start with. The company’s roots are in robotics and AI, and they started the Navimow robot lawn mower division back in 2016, with its first mowers released in 2021. The company has now sold more than 1 million mowers. For 2026, the company introduced three new series, which include the two new models reviewed here: the X430 (designed specifically for the U.S. market) and the i2 LiDAR. At $2500 and $1600, respectively, these offer a good representation of the high- and mid-end of the robot mower market, as well as highlighting different mapping and navigation technologies.
My History of Lawn Mowing
Growing up, mowing the lawn was one of my big chores. This was a classic push mower, front and back yards, twice a week. I resented it greatly.
When I got my own house, it came with a riding mower and a fair-sized lawn. I mowed it for years, but between getting the mower ready, maintaining it, pulling it out, mowing and dumping the grass, then cleaning up the mower and myself, it could easily turn into a two-plus-hour ordeal. I found a guy who would mow it for $30 every two weeks and decided my time was worth that much. Then he stopped coming.
Then along came MowBot, officially known as the Husqvarna AutoMower 450X. While Husqvarna had been selling robo-mowers in Europe for over two decades, they were making a big push to come into the States, and I was offered a review sample. At the time, this was one of their premier offerings and it sold for around $3500.
I loved MowBot and had very few problems with the mower itself. The biggest issue I had was with the thin wire used to mark its mowing boundaries. All told, it was over 500 feet of wire marking out all the edges and boundaries of where the mower could and couldn’t travel. One break or nick in this wire and the mower wouldn’t run. I spent hundreds of hours tracking down breaks — literally crawling along my yard on hands and knees with a toner looking for the issue — and repairing them and then trenching the wire back into place. (I’m convinced rodents bit the wire, but couldn’t find a way to stop it.) It got to the point where I was filled with agita when it came time to see if the mower would work or not, knowing a flashing blue light meant that it wouldn’t work and that I had untold hours of troubleshooting ahead of me.
Then I started having some issues with the mower itself. First, the cell module went out so the app and remote access stopped working. Then the mower bumped into something and lost a sensor, so it didn’t recognize when it was docked. Then the ultrasonic sensor stopped working so it couldn’t find its way back to the charging station. Then the power supply died and it would no longer charge up.
So, I bought an electric mower off Facebook Marketplace and went back to mowing the old-fashioned way, but MowBot just sat there — too expensive to abandon, but costly in time and money to get back running.
Then I heard from Navimow. Could this be the ultimate mowing solution I’d been looking for…?
What to Know About Choosing a Mower
When choosing a robot lawn mower, one of the biggest considerations is how much lawn you have to mow. The i2 is rated for up to 0.37 acres while the X430 can do up to one acre. (Navimow states that the map storage can hold up to 1.2 times the recommended mowing area, meaning 1.2 acres for the X430 and 0.444 for the i2.) So, if your yard requires mowing more than about half an acre, the i2 isn’t the right choice for you.
But maximum mowing coverage is really only a part of the story. At nearly twice the price, the X430 has a far more advanced four-wheel drive system with dual suspensions, making it better at navigating difficult or complex lawn layouts, can climb much steeper slopes (40 degrees versus 24), can pass over taller obstacles, offers a broader adjustment range of cutting heights, has more powerful motors, and can map more mowing zones, as well as a variety of other upgrades.
Another important difference is the technology used to navigate your yard. Robot lawn mowers come in two major categories: boundary-wire systems and wire-free. After suffering years of wire-fixing PTSD with MowBot, I wouldn’t use another boundary-wire system even if it were free.
As the name suggests, the i215 LiDAR uses a reliable solid-state EFLS (Exact Fusion Location System) LiDAR system, which scans approximately 200,000 points per second to build a precise view of your yard. It also uses a 140-degree RGB camera to assist in object detection and avoidance. It isn’t reliant on GPS or other signals to navigate, meaning it works well on lawns with heavy tree coverage, if the mower’s view of the open sky is otherwise blocked, or if there isn’t good satellite coverage.
The X430 uses NRTK (Network Real-Time Kinematic) plus VIO (Vision-Inertial Odometry) for location and navigation, and a 360-degree panoramic RGB camera, plus ToF (Time-of-Flight) depth sensor for object detection and avoidance. RTK positioning is a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) based technique that provides centimeter-level accuracy in real time by using correction data from a base station to eliminate satellite signal errors, and NRTK uses 4G cellular signals for stable network connectivity, along with triple-band, multi-mode GNSS that offers stronger resistance to interference and light tree cover than single-band systems.
There is an RTK coverage map on Navimow’s website so you can check specific coverage in your area. It covers a significant portion of the country, especially the eastern half. Also, you can check your actual satellite coverage and acquisition times in the app once the mower is installed. Navimow says access to the NRTK service is cost-free for life, with no subscription fees.
One question I had was, “Why no LiDAR on your flagship mower?”
This happens to be one of Navimow’s most asked questions, and their answer is, “Sensor selection isn’t about what sounds most impressive; it’s about what performs best in the environment the product actually lives in.” The X4 is designed for larger yards, and Navimow feels Network RTK plus 360° Vision is the superior choice for big acreage, which can often have wide open spaces where LiDAR has little to work with, and the cameras have a longer effective range than LiDAR
“The X4 is built around an RTK-first strategy. In the vast majority of mowing environments, Network RTK delivers all the precision and stability required. The 360° Vision system acts as a seamless backup for the rare scenarios where satellite signals are obstructed, not as a competitor to RTK. Adding LiDAR on top of this architecture would not improve positioning performance; it would only add cost and complexity.”
Optionally available from Navimow are “garage” housings to keep the mowers under cover from the elements, and a Mow Gate that allows the mower to automatically pass through an area that is normally blocked off, say a fence dividing sections of your yard.
Both mowers and charging stations feature IP66 weather ratings (IP67 for the power supplies) and include a fantastic three-year warranty (two years on the battery). They also include the first year of cellular service, renewed at $32.90/year after.
Before buying, it’s important to know robotic mowers’ limitations. In nearly all cases, robot mowers won’t pick up anything they cut. That means that if you have pine cones, branches, leaves, pine needles, or actual grass clippings, they will all stay on the yard. (One notable exception is the Yarbo Lawn Mower, which offers add-on modules like a trimmer, blower, and even a snow blower. However, the Yarbo system is quite expensive, and these modules often cost as much or more than the cost of other robot lawn mowers.)
There is a large magnolia tree in my front yard that drops a lot of big, thick leaves throughout the year. I mean, to the tune of like a 50-gallon trashcan worth every couple of weeks. Could the mower drive over these leaves? Sure. But the thick leaves would speed up the degradation of the cutting blades. There are also pine trees that drop needles and cones, so my pre-mowing routine always involves a pretty thorough yard rake.
Also, the mower’s cutting blades can only get so close to the edges of things — about two inches — so you’ll likely still need to occasionally mow around objects like mailboxes or fences. You’ll still need to edge the yard if you like that nice, sharp 90-degree cut on your borders. For me, I do a quick touch-up pass in these areas every few weeks.
Whichever mower you choose, I will say a robot mower is a great way to meet nearly everyone in your neighborhood as the robot mower will quickly become a star and talking point as people pass by watching it work.
Installation
The X430 arrived first, and right from the start it was obvious this thing was a beast and a significant technology step-up over my old Husqvarna. At 63.71 pounds, the X430 is a substantial piece of tech. It also looks so cool and rugged; kind of a combination between an F1 racer and the Batmobile Tumbler. The knobbed tires are all beefy and definitely look like they provide a ton of grip and traction, and the front wheels have enough room to freely spin for zero-degree turns. And the top, a 3.5-inch color LCD display is vibrant and easy to read with basic top-mounted controls for operation without using the app. This is the robot lawn mower Bruce Wayne would own.
The i2’s design is very reminiscent of my old Husqvarna, with two big treaded rear tires and two small, free-spinning front wheels hidden under the chassis. And at 32.4 pounds, it is almost half the weight of the X430. The i2 also has a 2.4-inch color LCD screen and top-mounted controls.
Flipping them over, you can see another major design difference. The X430 has two cutting discs with six blades each. These are offset where the blades will nearly touch in the center and reach to about 2 inches from the sides of the unit, providing a 17-inch cutting swath with each pass. The i2 has a single, centered cutting disc with six blades (double the amount of my Husqvarna), cutting 8.66 inches per pass. So, the X430 cuts twice as much on each pass. The X430 also has an anti-clogging cutting disc and a floating cut system to allow it to pass over uneven terrain without the dreaded scalping.
Both units come with a docking/charging station and screws for securing it to the ground, power supply and extension cord, ground pegs for securing the cables, and replacement cutting blades and bolts. The X430 comes with a GNSS antenna and full ground installation kit should you need it. (I did not.)
The i2 comes with a blade low-cutting kit. Out of the box, it is adjustable from 2-4 inches cutting height, but with the low-cutting kit installed, this goes from 0.8-2.8 inches. For my centipede grass, which has a recommended cutting height of 1.5-1.75 inches, I installed the kit, which is a simple 10-minute process. The X430 has an adjustable cutting height of 0.75-4 inches.
One disappointment: the included startup guide. This is written in many languages, but it mostly offers just a single sentence that isn’t very helpful. Fortunately, there’s a very thorough online guide, but at these prices, that owner’s manual should be included in the box as a customer resource.
Both mowers use the Navimow app for setup and operation, and once the mower is powered on, you use the app to connect to it via Bluetooth and activate it. Granted, it is probably pretty uncommon for people to have two robot mowers, but the app makes it really simple to switch between them. And, no, I never had them try to mow at the same time to see what would happen.
Out of the gate, both mowers had quite a few software and firmware updates to perform. (And a few more in the months since.) Since these presumably improve performance and operation, I let them all run and update before proceeding. In my many years with the Husqvarna, I don’t believe there was ever a single update sent to it, so I applaud that Navimow continues to evolve and improve over time.
There are a load of options and configurations you can make in the Navimow app. You can establish a mowing schedule so the mower will automatically mow on certain days and times, you can select from three different “work modes,” which determine how efficiently or slowly/precisely it will cut the lawn, you can set the global cutting height, choose whether to allow the mower to mow at night, turn traction control on/off, enable Alexa or Google voice control, select how close it will mow to a lawn’s edges/boundaries, get reports on how much it has mowed, see the time remaining on the blades and when the mower needs cleaning, set max and min battery charging limits, check the latest firmware versions, and more.
There are also weather-adaptive settings to determine what the mower will do if there is rain, snow, hot weather, frost, or strong winds, stopping or delaying a mow cycle until conditions improve. While the i2 uses internet weather updates for local weather, the X430 features a rain sensor to actually sense if and how hard it is raining.
Unique to the X430 is a satellite signal analyzer that shows how many satellites are visible to the RTK base station and mower and how reliable and stable that connection is.
With this bit of tech just sitting out in your yard, theft might be something you worry about, and fortunately both mowers also offer some nice anti-theft features. A 4-digit PIN code is required to unlock it (unless you approach with a Bluetooth-paired phone). There is a siren that goes off if the mower is lifted. But, honestly, it’s not that loud. You can also establish a geo-fence alarm around your property, and you can geo locate your mower to see its precise location (and remotely trigger the siren). For iOS users, you can also add the mowers to your “Find My” account, and their locations will show up along with your other devices. One thing that would be cool is if they would use their cameras to capture images if any alarms were triggered, but they currently can’t do that. (Navimow says the tech is in the mower to do this, but for privacy concerns they have not enabled this as a feature yet.)
Before you can mow for the first time — assuming the mower is sufficiently charged up — you need to map out your mowing areas, which is done under Map management in the app.
Starting out, you’ll want to create a Boundary, which defines the outer perimeter of the area you want to mow. To do this, you can choose Auto mapping (“ideal for defined and flat lawn edge”) or Manual mapping (“ideal for unclear or uneven lawn edge.”) The mower can’t know where your property ends and where your neighbor’s begins, so if you have a shared lawn area — or say your lawn was open out to a golf course or something — you’d want to go manual.
Manual mapping, or adding a Bio-life boundary (no-mow area), is done by driving the mower around using the app kind of like an RC car. You just walk behind it while you drive and steer, and it creates a virtual boundary. You can also edit an existing mapped zone by drawing lines on the app.
The final step is choosing whether this will be a connected zone, where the mower can navigate freely from one zone to another, or an isolated zone, where the mower can’t get there on its own.
I was curious to see how the mowers would handle my lawn autonomously, so I let both mowers map in Auto mode. The X430 was more adventurous, driving pretty deep into a pine straw and tree waste area that is connected to my property but maintained by the community before getting back to the grass and eventually proceeding with driving around and mapping the border. There is also a pretty thick tree root that splits two sections of my yard, but both mowers discovered this obstacle and created maps that worked around it, albeit with different “solutions.” They both did a great job finding the lawn edges, getting right up to the driveway and the streets bordering my corner lot. I have a section with small, solar lights just off the yard, and it seemed that the i2 actually mapped a bit closer to these without disturbing them.
When you’ve finished mapping the border, you can either map other areas (or “zones”), edit the area if needed, or start mowing. The X430 can store up to 120 different zones, while the i2 can manage up to 20.
Really, you can be from unboxing to mapping to mowing in under an hour. Other than the fact that the i2 arrived with about 50% battery and needed a host of firmware updates, the setup process is quick and simple.
Performance
As I said at the outset, one of the biggest determiners of which mower is right for you is lawn size. This not only determines how long the mower will take to cut an area, but how many times it might need to charge its battery to finish the job. Navimow rates the X430 at 15 hours of working time to cut an acre, and the i2 at 16 hours to mow 0.37 acres.
Putting this into the real world, my main lawn area is a little over 0.16 acres (7000 square feet) in mowing area. Beyond just the sheer size of the lawn, its shape, how many turns the mower has to make, and how many obstacles it needs to avoid will also affect the time it takes.
The X430 was able to mow this entire area on a single charge in about 110 minutes. This is partly due to its double-width cutting area, significantly larger battery (12.8 Ah versus 7.65 Ah), more powerful mowing motors, and faster mowing speed. While the i2 is rated to do 0.37 acres, it takes the better part of an entire day to mow my yard, which is less than half that size. It mows for about three hours, where it covers about 40% of the yard, comes back and charges up to 100% for two hours, then repeats. So, completing the entire mowing process takes the i2 three mowing and two charging cycles that add up to around 12 hours. Do I really care what it’s doing out there for 12 hours while I’m doing literally anything else? Not really. But it would be nice to start mowing at 9:00 AM or later and know that it would finish before dark.
One solution would be to have the mower run overnight. The downside to this is that cutting isn’t as efficient on wet/dewy grass, and for safety reasons it doesn’t mow the borders after dark, and the obstacle avoidance isn’t as good. Also, if it got stuck, it would just stay there until morning. From a noise standpoint, it would be a total non-issue as you can barely hear either mower working. The i2 is rated at 59 dB(A) and the X430 at 68 dB(A), which a neighbor would be hard-pressed to hear, even if they were outside.
I found my actual mowing times and efficiency hewed pretty closely to Navimow’s stated numbers. The X430 takes 90 minutes to get to a full charge, versus 130 minutes for the i2, with 110 minutes of mow time for the X430 versus 160 minutes for the i2. The X430 can mow 0.12 acres per hour, and 0.22 acres per charge, while the i2 does 0.0395 acres an hour, and 0.105 acres per charge.
My yard has three “islands” of trees and bushes with pine straw ground cover interspersed on it. With the Husqvarna, each of these areas needed to be carefully boundary-wired off as no-go zones, but I let both Navimow mowers map without any initial customization to the auto-mapping. The X430 powered through my entire yard and never once got stuck. Now, this didn’t mean it didn’t try to drive places I didn’t want it to go, like deep into pine straw covered areas, but its far better all-wheel drive, independent front-wheel zero-turn steering, dynamic torque, and traction drive system let it just keep driving and figuring it out. It’s just cool watching the X430 drive around.
The i2, on the other hand, got stuck five times. The big rear wheels would just spin and spin in pine straw or soft dirt until it dug itself into a rut that it couldn’t get out of, or the small grocery-cart-style, non-powered front wheels wouldn’t be able to get purchase, and I’d get an app notification that it was stuck and I’d have to help it back into the yard.
The solution was to set up Bio-life boundary areas in the app that mark these as no-go zones and keep the mowers from entering areas that don’t even need mowing. I changed the i2’s mowing boundary so it wouldn’t go too close to a sloped drain in my yard where there is soft dirt.
Ultimately, I never worried about the X430 getting stuck or running into trouble it couldn’t get itself out of, but I’m not at the point where I trust the i2 the same way yet, and I wouldn’t have it mow if I wasn’t home in order to rescue it if need be.
Neither of the mowers has the intelligence to smartly charge themselves. Say that the mower had 1% of the yard left when it reached the minimum battery level set before returning to the charger. Instead of just charging up to like 20% to complete that task, both mowers will sit in the dock until they are fully charged before restarting. This could easily be fixed in a firmware update and would help speed up mowing times.
While you can set different directions for the mowers to cover your yard — helpful for avoiding mowing patterns into the grass — they both are programmed to start by mowing the yard’s perimeter in the same direction every mow cycle. And not just once; they make three perimeter laps before starting the rest of the yard. This also feels like something that could be addressed in a future update.
Another great thing about not requiring the boundary wire is being able to mow areas not directly connected to your main lawn. For example, I have a side yard that is separated by my driveway and a backyard surrounding my pool, which is fenced off. With the Husqvarna, I had to have the boundary wire running across my driveway, but I quickly gave up on that because the additional troubleshooting required to find breaks in that side yard, and I never even considered running boundary wire around the backyard.
But in the Navimow app, you can create a Channel for the mowers to pass between areas. So, I created a virtual pathway behind the cars in our driveway where the mowers can pass back-and-forth between two mowing zones. For my backyard, I just carried the i2 — a real benefit of its significantly lighter weight! — and plunked it onto the grass and told it to map an isolated zone. It mapped and knocked out the small backyard section (780 square feet), taking only 18% of the battery in under an hour. It also did a great job of avoiding my Six Five landscape light speakers, getting right up next to them, but never touching them or bothering the speaker wiring. Another huge added bonus? My electric mower tends to blow grass and dirt debris into my pool, creating another chore; the i2 kept all the clippings to itself.
Between the two, I think the i2 did a slightly better job of actually cutting the grass. Perhaps this was due to the fact that it drove/mowed more slowly, or made more passes over the lawn, but it would often cut everything, whereas sometimes the X430 would push down tall grasses and then drive over them without cutting. Also, the X430 seemed more prone to “seeing” tall stalks or weeds that would grow up and then avoiding them as obstacles.
The last thing to mention is obstacle avoidance. Navimow claims the mowers recognize 200-plus objects, so if you leave things in the yard, or have pets, the mower should avoid them. I found that they steered clear of a hose, sprinkler, mole trap, and raked pile of dirt/sticks. However, neither of the mowers recognized a pickleball as an obstacle. The i215 kind of pushed it around and out of the way, and the X430 drove right over the top of it and sliced it up.
These mowers come far closer to fulfilling the promise of true autonomous mowing, and not having the boundary wire is seriously game-changing. The app also makes it very simple to manage your maps, boundaries, and mowers. The X430 is a far better mower in virtually every metric, but that is what you should expect for nearly twice the price. The i2 LiDAR is certainly competent, and it’s a great choice for people with smaller and basic lawns that don’t care how long it takes to finish the job. However, if you have the means, go with the X430 — it is absolutely the yard boss!
833-913-1131 phone – navimow.com
Product Specs: X430
- Rated for lawns up to 1 acre
- Advanced four-wheel drive with dual suspensions capable of climbing slopes up to 40 degrees
- Dual-disc mowing (12 blades total) powered by two 180-watt motors for 17-inch cutting width
- Uses tri-frequency Network RTK and 360-degree RGB camera for centimeter-level accuracy and detection of 200+ obstacles
- 8 Ah battery with 90-minute recharge time
- 22 acres per charge; 0.12 acres per hour
- 3-year warranty (2 years on battery)
- Dimensions: 5 x 24 x 13.8 inches (LxWxH)
- Weight: 63.71 pounds
Product Specs: i215 LiDAR
- Rated for lawns up to 0.37 acres
- Two-rear-wheel drive capable of climbing slopes up to 24 degrees
- Single-disc mowing (6 blades total) with 8.66-inch cutting width
- Solid-state LiDAR and 140-degree RGB camera provide 0.4-inch accuracy detection of 200+ obstacles
- 65 Ah battery with 130-minute recharge time
- 105 acres per charge; 0.0395 acres per hour
- 3-year warranty (2 years on battery)
- Dimensions: 25 x 17.5 x 11.3 inches (LxWxH)
- Weight: 32.4 pounds
