Robot lawnmowers have long intrigued me, but I never really wanted one. After a few weeks with the Mammotion Luba 3, though, I’m sold, because this fixed my biggest issue with other models.
I’m all for smart home advancements, but a robot lawnmower was one I was never really a fan of. I like mowing my lawn, crazy as that sounds, and leaving that to a robot felt like more set up and maintain than it was going to be worth. Inevitably, though, curiosity won over. When Mammotion sent over the Luba 3 AWD mower, my attitude flipped.
The main reason for that boils down to how this mower operates. Unlike many others, which require the use of a boundary perimeter or RTK base station, the Mammotion Luba 3 operates with what’s called a “NetRTK,” which is effectively just a highly accurate satellite positioning system combined with LiDAR.
After mapping the robot to the areas of my yard I wanted it to work on, it stayed nearly perfectly within those lines, to the point where I actually had to go back and redo the lines. Initially, I’d set up several feet of buffer zone between the mower and the fairly-busy road in front of my lawn for fear that, if the positioning shifted, the mower might risk getting run over. The first two runs showed how misplaced that fear was. It hit its lines almost perfectly, which left plenty of room for me to adjust those lines much closer to the road. There’s still a small buffer, but I now know I can trust that Luba 3 isn’t going to go rogue into the road. It’s not without hiccups. Another part of the yard with a ditch left the mower stuck a couple of times when the positioning was off by a few inches, and a tough-to-access area of the property also proved tricky. But in most cases, it goes off without a hitch.
It’s all managed through the app, where you use a virtual joystick to set up a map and the pathways the mower can use to get to various zones, including crossing over driveways or perhaps portions of your neighbor’s lawn. The same app can be used to set schedules, view progress, and even watch a first-person-view of the mower’s main camera as it runs through your yard.
Taking a step back, the initial setup is an absolute breeze. Assembly and setup took around 30 minutes, with the included tools making it easy to attach the front bumper and side covers.
Luba 3 has a docking station in the box that just needs a power outlet in the vicinity, with a generous length of cable included. You want a fairly level location for this, but I’ve found that even my slightly uneven and unstable mulch base works well enough. I’ve only had one occasion where it didn’t fully seat for charging in several weeks of use. You do get a physical RTK base station in the box but, really, you don’t need it unless you’re in some very specific circumstances.
Like most robot mowers, grass is cut using some fairly small blades underneath, and this also makes the whole thing feel safer. Not only is there a giant “STOP” button at the top, but the blades themselves won’t be able to do nearly as much damage as a real mower would.
The physical hardware is huge, easily 2-3x the size of a robot vacuum, and it turns heads. My dogs still go crazy every time they see this in the yard, and I always see neighbors and drivers passing by turn to look when Luba 3 is out in the front. But it’s not an eyesore either. The white finish shows all dirt and dust that’s kicked up – most of the pictures in this post are after about two weeks without a wipedown – but it’s a sensible color choice as it rejects heat. It is heavy at 41lbs, but that’s totally managable for the rare occasions where you need to move it manually.
Luba 3 thankfully cuts at up to 3.9-inches in height, which matters to me. Overly short grass is how you kill a lawn in a hot summer, so it was nice to see Mammotion offers the right amount of height to keep everything fairly healthy. Whether sending it off into a thick lawn or one that’s mostly been scorched by the heat and drought of the North Carolina summer I’ve been living in, Luba 3 gets the job done well. The cut is fairly even with only the occasional straggler blade left behind, particularly when cutting at maximum height or when running it less frequently. This benefits great from running on a regular basis rather than the “as needed” schedule you’d use with a traditional mower.
It also handles slopes like a champ, with it able to cover my steep front lawn and some other raised portions of the yard without skipping a beat. Mammotion says it can handle a slope of up to 38.6-degrees with its all-wheel-drive setup. There are a couple of spots in my lawn where I can tell there’s some dead grass from Luba’s tracks, but I’ll mostly blame that on the local conditions. In some particularly uneven parts of my lawn, I do need to go back with my push mower or weed-eater, but Luba 3 really takes the bulk of the work off of my plate – complete with stripes in the finished yard.
I do think that’s an important note to make. Mammotion’s Luba 3, and really any robot lawnmower, isn’t going to fully end your yard work. There are certain sections you’ll need to do yourself, especially with regard to weeds and edging along the sides. There are options that aim to solve this, but you’ll still inevitably need to do cleanup here and there.
But most weeks, this cuts my mowing time from an hour or two to just a few minutes – a couple of passes along the road, checking for spots it might have missed, and then weed-eating around the driveway and fence.
As for battery life, the 0.75-acre model I’ve been testing can run for about two hours before it takes a break to recharge, but that’s largely due to the hills it has to deal with. Mammotion says that, under ideal conditions, it can run for up to 215 minutes (about 3.5 hours).
Another point in favor of its navigation, too, is that it can easily handle jumping around to different portions of the yard. Zones are easy to set up and can make it easy to mow different areas at different times, or juggle things like fences. Part of my yard is gated, so having a specific zone I can run just when the gate is open is a really handy option.
All-in-all, Mammotion really changed my mind about robot lawnmowers. Luba 3 works like a charm and addresses every complaint I thought I’d have about setup, navigation, and cutting performance.
Mammotion Luba 3 AWD starts at $2,399 in the US, which is not cheap. But this is also on the bleeding edge and, in a world where time is money, might be worthwhile for anyone who just can’t seem to keep up with their lawn. It saves so much time.
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