ZDNET Key Takeaways
- THE Mammotion Luba2 3000H is available for $2,499.
- Built to handle rough terrain, the Luba 2 is an all-wheel drive (AWD) robot lawn mower with a GPS-powered perimeter that's surprisingly easy to set up.
- Despite its rather consistent performance, the Luba 2 left the board several times during testing. Additionally, the Mammotion app is not very user-friendly.
Mowing the lawn is one of my favorite tasks. This allows me to focus on an uninterrupted task that satisfies my OCD, with the added bonus of completing my exercise ring on my Apple Watch. But even though it's a chore that I enjoy, it still steals a few hours from my all-too-short weekend.
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This is where the Mammotion Luba2 Picture the scene: you walk the dog and come home to a perfectly mown lawn, even though it was a mess an hour before. While you were away, the robot lawn mower not only took care of the unruly grass, but also left a beautiful checkerboard pattern in its wake. I'm happy to say that this dream has come true with the Luba 2, and although it has its quirks, it handles the chore of mowing the lawn with efficiency and ease.
When I received the Mammotion Luba 2 for review, the only cordless GPS robot mower I had used before was the EcoFlow Blade. As you can read this examinstalling the Blade was horrendous, taking up hours of my Sunday afternoon, leading to arguments between my husband and I, and repeated explanations to the kids that no, we are not going to drive the robot into the court.
This time it fell to my husband to install the mower on a day when I was not home. I had planned to help him with the installation when I returned, but was pleasantly surprised to find that everything was complete when I returned. In fact, he had nothing but praise for the ease of installation of the Mammotion, as it was completed in less than two hours, from unboxing to commissioning on the job site.
In contrast, installing the old robot lawn mower, the EcoFlow Blade, was a tedious two-person job because it couldn't get a good enough signal no matter where we placed the GNSS antenna in our garden. For the Mammotion Luba 2, we didn't even have the antenna installed in the yard — it was still on the deck — and yet it was already connected to the mower and working fine.
The Mammotion Luba 2 had no problem supporting two weeks of growth.
Maria Diaz/ZDNET
We were very careful about where we placed the EcoFlow antenna due to signal issues during the installation process, and here the Luba 2's antenna connected itself seamlessly. transparent from a random position on the bridge. If that doesn't tell you that this is a more advanced RTK-GNSS system, I don't know what does. I will update my review of the Luba 2 once I have installed the pole permanently, add the Garage (available for pre-orders) and one month of testing.
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Mapping is simple and quite fun, as you simply walk behind it and direct it around your garden using your smartphone with the Mammotion app as a remote control. Once the mapping process is complete, the Luba 2 mows the route independently. The app also allows you to name the mower, so naturally I named it Andretti because it looks like a Formula 1 car (and also so I can ask my husband if Andretti did his shopping today) .
My current garden is battling decades of neglect, becoming a mix of clover and grass, but the Luba 2 cuts through everything smoothly.
Maria Diaz/ZDNET
We've had a lot of rain lately, which has caused the grass to grow at a breakneck pace. This rapid growth allowed Andretti's work to scale and helped me put together about 20 hours of testing spread across three different areas over the last two weeks.
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Through testing, I found the Mammotion Luba 2 capable of navigating rough terrain without affecting its map. For example, when other robot lawn mowers slide sideways down a slope, it often disrupts their mapping and, instead of correcting their position, they continue from an incorrect location. This results in missed patches and the mower ending up outside the coverage area. During my tests, the Luba 2 never suffered from this problem. Although he slipped several times, he always corrected his position and kept the same card.
The Mammotion Luba 2 navigates seamlessly over rough terrain.
Maria Diaz/ZDNET
Unfortunately, the Mammotion app isn't very intuitive; Changing settings will require menu searching and trial and error. However, it is packed with features. You can use the app to change the mowing pattern, from stripes to checkers and more, configure different zones, including no-go zones for pools or flowerbeds, arrange the order of paths and adjust the height of mowing.
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When mapping, the perimeter you cover with the Luba 2 is the same area that will be followed when the robot mows. It's a little difficult to walk and steer the robot in a perfectly straight line along the perimeter of your property. So I would like you to be able to straighten the boundary lines in the app after creating the map.
That said, I like that the Luba 2 was irreverently consistent when mowing along the perimeter. I can see the robot mowing along curved lines that I drew by mistake when mapping, but it does it almost every time.
The path borders the Mammotion Luba 2 created, as captured by my Blink Outdoor camera.
Maria Diaz/ZDNET
Even though the Mammotion Luba 2 looks like the Ferrari of mowers, it covers the lawn at its own pace. It's not slow compared to other robot lawn mowers, but don't expect it to live up to its looks and become a turbo lawn tamer.
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My Luba 2 drifted off course six times during testing. One of those times it ended up in my neighbor's yard, which is less than ideal because they are very picky about how they mow it, but that seems to have happened during positioning and not when the blades were engaged, fortunately. Another time it failed by going under the bridge and losing its signal. It was never supposed to go under the bridge, but I guess it was a shortcut to pole position (so sorry about that one).
You can also direct the robot in the app to manually mow difficult areas where you think it might stray – this is also a good feature for touching up areas that need it. The Mammotion app also features a first-person view (FPV), so you can check where your robot is at any time if it's stuck and you're not there to see it.
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I'm aware that these GPS-powered robots make mistakes, as this new technology is still being perfected for more accuracy, so it generally doesn't bother me. But I find the Mammotion Luba2 is much less error prone than the EcoFlow Blade. I can rely on Andretti so much to follow his map that I feel good about letting him mow the unfenced lawn, even on the difficult neighbors' side, something I would never let the Blade do.
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Finally, I like how quiet the Luba 2 is. One of the weirdest things about a robot lawn mower is that not only does it take care of the lawn all by itself, but it does it so quietly that it may escape your attention. Overall, I highly recommend the Mammotion Luba 2 to anyone who wants to recover a few hours on the lawn during their weekend.