Mammotion Yuka Mini 2 review: AI-powered robot lawnmower tested (aff)
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With no boundary wires to install and enough intelligence to avoid toys, pets and garden furniture, this robot mower takes much of the hard work out of lawn care
Robot lawnmowers are quickly becoming as ubiquitous as the robot vacuum cleaner. They might only be needed for half the year in the UK, but while we've got them whirring away on our behalf, they're saving us a lot of time.
In the early days of this technology, before you could even get your new robotic worker to cut its first blade of grass, you'd have to go through the bothersome task of installing a boundary wire. It was challenging, visually obtrusive, and often unreliable.
Thankfully now, it's much more common to have smart mapping features on a robot mower, with many using GPS instead of following a live perimeter wire, and this has made the technology much more accessible, especially for those of us with awkward lawns.
But now they’re getting smarter still. Among the new breed of robot lawnmowers is Mammotion's Yuka Mini 2, and it's the one I've been living with since the start of the growing season.
Designed for smaller and medium-sized gardens, the Yuka Mini 2 aims to bring premium robot mower technology to more homeowners without the complexity that often puts people off automated lawn care. It uses a combination of AI-powered vision and LiDAR to map your lawn and to understand where it should and shouldn't mow.
LiDAR is a fabulous technology that's been creeping in to high-end robot vacuum cleaners for a while now, and it makes for a far more intelligent process, especially when it comes to obstacle avoidance. And I have two dogs, so obstacle avoidance is something I'm often testing out.
It can recognise and avoid a wide range of obstacles, helping it steer clear of garden furniture, toys, flower beds and even pets. I have a dog that likes to leave tennis balls around, and it's spotted every single one so far.
I also have another dog that likes to leave stones on the lawn. It doesn't tend to spot these, but thankfully it's not mowing deep enough to catch them.
The Yuka Mini 2 is available in versions suitable for gardens up to 800 square metres and 1,000 square metres, making it a realistic option for many suburban homes. I'd say it's worth going for a bigger capability than your lawn needs, to ensure it won't struggle on gradients, or if you've let your lawn get a bit long, but the battery is well up for the job even on large lawns, and it self-charges, so there's nothing to really worry about.
It can tackle slopes of up to 45 per cent, and its treaded wheels cope well with wet and slippery grass. The height adjustment has to be done manually, but I tend to leave mine at 40mm and just ensure I'm setting up a regular schedule, and it's fine.
This brings me on the Mammotion's app. It's absolutely brilliant. Setting everything up takes some time, you've got to walk it round your boundary, get a few firmware updates out of the way, and you'll doubtless be making some tweaks, but for the most part, the mower quickly learns its job and just gets on with it. There's minimal noise, minimal panics because it's stuck, and it's quite powerful, so it tends to sort itself out well.
For homeowners who dread dragging the mower out every weekend, the appeal is obvious. The Yuka Mini 2 maintains the lawn in the background, keeping grass at a consistent height while freeing up time for other jobs – or simply enjoying the garden.
As robot mowers become increasingly common in UK gardens, the Yuka Mini 2 feels like a glimpse of where the market is heading. It combines impressive navigation, clever obstacle avoidance and genuinely useful automation in a package that should appeal to a far wider audience than many of its premium rivals.
The only real hang up I have with the Yuka 2 Mini is the small blade disc underneath the main unit is nowhere near the edge. On a lawn that has paving around it, that's not a problem, as you can ask the mower to cut over the edge. But on lawns with fenced boundaries, or lots of corners, it can miss chunks. And you'll eventually have to get your conventional mower out.
But it's worth avoiding the illusion that a robot lawnmower will completely prevent you having to cut your lawn manually. As with any robot vacuum, it's ideal for regular cuts, keeping the grass down to a neat, tidy level. The first cuts of the season really ought to be taken on with a manual mower, and you'll probably find yourself intervening once or twice throughout the season. But it does remove so much of the work.
It's not cheap, of course, but there's a deal on the Mammotion website knocking £200 off the prices at the moment, bringing the 1000m2 version down to £1,000 and the 800m2 version down to £800.
Factor in the cost of bringing in a gardener for a year, especially if you have a large lawn, and you can see how it might start to pay for itself.
But then there's the moments when you're sitting in the sunshine, and suddenly your little robot whirrs into life, getting on with a job you'd have had to put your drink down for and work up a sweat to finish.
Those moments are almost priceless, and certainly worth the investment.