ECOVACS Goat A3000 LiDAR Robot Lawn Mower, Dual-LiDAR Navigation,Suitable for 3/4 Acre, 13” Cutting Width, 45min Fast Charging, Precise Edge Mowing, Smart Lawn Mower for Large Garden

After mowing my own lawn for 20 years, I'm finally taking a break. This mower is not just plug in and run. It takes some setup but this mower does a great job as long as you take the time to set it up correctly. I've run this mower 4x in my backyard and am pretty happy with it overall. SETUP So there is a little bit of setup and planning required to set up this mower. The app will walk you through setup step-by-step which makes it easy. Essentially you leave this mower docked outside all the time. There are some screws to secure the dock to the yard, or you could dock it on concrete if it can drive easily to the yard or there is a small ramp. After that the satellite sensor needs to be plugged in and run to the halfway point in the yard. At first I was worried about the mower running over the cable but there are hooks to secure it low to the ground and out of the way so the mower can go over it in the yard without any issues. I made the decision to put the sensor up when I'm not using it, but that is a personal preference. SETUP IMPORTANT NOTES I had a few issues that I had to go back and fix before it mowed without missing spots. Map well, ensure the satellite sensor is not leaning, and my personal recommendation: Set the mower speed to Delicate, not Quick). Also, it isn't going to tear through really tall grass, so make sure it is at a reasonable height before expecting it to keep your yard looking great. Since there is only one sessor I haven't tried running it in my front yard too, but I suspect you would need to map the front and back all at once then split it into sections. MAPPING TAKE YOUR TIME MAPPING. I used the manual mapping (although there is an auto-map function) and ended up doing it again after rushing it the first time. It recommends leaving space between the fence when mapping, but I've found that staying right up against the edge of the yard works best. You don't have to have it right next to the yard since you can drive it to the starting point when mapping but it will need a clear path from the dock to the yard. I have some holes in my yard it got stuck in and was able to add "no-go" areas after the mapping was complete. You can either mark it directly on the map through the app, or even drive the mower to the no-go area manually. You can also split the yard into sections, mark sidewalks, etc. which will help with mowing large areas, certain sections, or generally scheduling mowing. MOWING After fixing the issues mentioned above it did a fantastic job mowing my yard. I didn't turn it over until the 4th run of mowing my backyard and realized the blades are small but VERY sharp, so be careful. This makes the mower extremely quiet to the point where I wasn't sure if the blades were running until I saw the mowed grass behind the robot. You still need a weed-eater for edges against the fence and stuff like that (which is to be expected since you do that with a normal mower too.) I expected to have some issues with wet grass, but it did a surprisingly good job, although I don't plan to run it right after rain. There is a setting to delay running until 3 hours after rain which is nice for scheduled tasks. APP The app is helpful for setup, seeing the areas that have been mowed, etc. There are not a ton of settings, but there are some helpful things like auto-resume, obstacle avoidance sensitivity (flat ground, normal, high grass) and mowing direction. You can set it to mow along exact boundaries or edge mowing if you don't map exactly it will get closer to edges (do not recommend it if you don't have a fence separating your neighbors yard). There are also sensors for rain and pets that will automatically stop it. There are some extra settings that I don't use but are nice to have like an anti-theft alarm and adding the location to Google maps. Overall this is a great little lawnmower compared to others that are 2x or 3x the price. It isn't perfect and takes some time to set up but is worth it once it is up and running!

We had been considering getting a robot mower for a while now. We have 4 children that are on the spectrum and have adhd. Getting down to each other is like going due to medical issues of myself and my husband. It is hard for us to do the yardwork. I already have had to pay an exorbitant amount to have to do the front yard and I cannot afford to pay double that to add the backyard to it. So we were considering in getting a robotic mower just to do the backyard but now we can do the front yard. Most of our front is not within the 17” incline. The small portion that is, is the ditch and my husband said he could handle it with a weed eater since the robotic mower can do the rest. Which would save us more money in the long run. Part of our issues are our kids have sensory issues. We have an electric mower because gas mowers are too loud for the kids and the smell as well. While we do have a relatively quieter electric mower than others do. They find it too loud. This brand, Ecovac has a good reputation to begin with. So I thought would start with this. It took about 20 minutes to initially set it up and that did include Unpacking everything getting an all put together instead of outside. Also included downloading, updating and installing firmware. Surprisingly, the mower came with a 57% battery. It was essentially basically like a plug-in play robotic mower. The instructions as far as putting it together were very clear. Installing the app was easy in the instructions as far as setting up the pin code and then going from the pin code and adding it to the Wi-Fi Was really just very user-friendly. And then when you went out and then set it up as far as putting everything together and getting it going and installing the firmware, it was just really you followed the prompts and that was it. The same went when you were following the mapping you just followed it step-by-step. Then it took about 10 minutes trying to figure out how to learn the mapping. I have muscle twitches and so I was having a hard time Handling the “joystick “on the app so my movements were jerky so I was having the mower spinning and going in quirky movements. So I’m gonna have my husband redo the mapping of the backyard for me but all that considering it did really well it understood what I was telling it to do surprisingly. So it is definitely easy to maneuver just takes a slight learning curve! It understood the commands that I was giving in even with my twitches and reacted very quickly we had high patches of grass in certain areas. I should’ve chosen a higher setting, giving how high the grass was so that the mower would never work as hard as it did. But it actually did cut through the grass and did not stall. In one of my photos you’ll be able to see the huge difference between the basically 6-7 inch grass and the cut that it did because I had said it for it in 2 inches when I should’ve had it 4 inches that way I could just do a second pass. The mower itself basically is at a home as far as a noise. It is very very quiet. It does not bother my children at all. The dogs are actually louder. The cutting is actually very quiet. I would say that the quietest weed eater is 50 times louder. It has really good traction even with our super dry dirt at the moment. It had zero issues moving around. It’s a really well built machine. It’s super heavy, quality made and very we’ll constructed. Definitely made for the outdoors. It’s made to get the work done. It’s meticulous in its work buts not slow it moves quickly and gets the job done well. It does have an animal lockout. Which you can turn off if you want and it does do things if it notices something. I do like that. It has the pin code so that you can have an avoidance if somebody decides to steal it then they’re locked out. Also, I like the fact that you can schedule it so that way, even if you’re gone, you can schedule it for your away and have we can just have it mowed for whenever we want and not have to worry about it which will make it so much easier for us in the long run. I don’t have to worry about my kids. I can manage allergies so much easier now. And it’s one less thing that’s knocked off my budget and one less thing that’s knocked off our scheduling. Not to mention the fact that unlike some other brands, it actually has a rain sensor on it, which was something that I don’t know how but I completely missed when I read all about it and so if it just even senses that it’s gonna be a heavy rain, it will automatically stop and not run. It’ll resume after I think like three hours or so after the rain stops. Which means I don’t have to be so paranoid about it if it happens to rain and we have stepped out. I was exceedingly surprised with this.