LawnMaster L10 review: A simple and affordable robot lawn mower

The LawnMaster L10 is unusual among robot lawn mowers in that it doesn’t give you much control. As with most robot mowers around this price, it follows a random pattern around your lawn, using the principle that if it keeps mowing it will cover the entire lawn eventually.

However, many of the best robot lawn mowers come with an app you can install on your smartphone, which offers a modicum of control over when and how the mower operates. The L10 doesn’t offer this option. Instead, you use the control panel on the top to select how long you want it to run for, and off it goes.

LawnMaster L10 review: What do you get for the money?

The LawnMaster L10 is basic then, and it costs a reasonable £380, but it looks very much like any other robot mower – a bit like a small roll-on cabin suitcase without a handle. It measures 380 x 550 x 230mm (WDH), weighs 8.1kg and it’s driven by two large wheels at the rear with a couple of smaller coaster wheels for stability. It has three cutting blades, which are connected to a spinning disc on its underside, and these give it a cutting width of 18cm.

A dial on the top lets you adjust cutting height – from 20mm to 60mm and anything in between and it comes supplied with a charging dock, 10m power supply cable, 150m of boundary wire and 250 pegs. The wire is used to demark the edges of your lawn so the mower doesn’t end up mowing your begonias.

It also comes with a wire stripper, which you need to strip the plastic casing off the boundary wire before you connect it to the terminals on the back of the charging dock. Despite being essential for the setup process, you’d be surprised how many mowers expect you to have one of these in your toolbox, so it’s a welcome addition here.

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LawnMaster L10 review: Is it difficult to set up?

The LawnMaster L10 has a standard setup, which involves pegging the perimeter wire out around the area in which you want the mower to operate and connecting its two ends to the base station, which in turn needs plugging into an outdoor power socket. You have to leave a gap of 30cm between the boundary wire and any difficult edges, such as dropped borders into flower beds or raised patios, decking or walls.

This inevitably means it will leave a strip of uncut grass around the edge of your lawn that you’ll have to trim manually but this is no different to other robot mowers. They all seem to have this limitation.

Because the mower doesn’t have an app, it doesn’t need to be connected to a Wi-Fi network or paired with a mobile device via Bluetooth. Instead, you simply set the grass length with the mechanical dial and choose the length of time you want the mower to operate for per day – there’s a choice of four, six, eight or ten hours. It will set off, mow for the allotted time, then return home to charge. The next day it will set off at the same time again and repeat the process, unless it’s raining, in which case its rain sensor detects the moisture and cancels the mow.

If that sounds simple, making changes to the settings is anything but. To alter the amount of time it mows for, you first have to unlock the control panel using a four digit PIN (this is set to a default code but it can be changed). Next, press the Time button to select the desired option, then OK to confirm. To cut every other day, you hold the Time button down until it flashes on and off, then press the OK button. And to alter the time of day the mower starts you have to turn the mower off and then on again at the time you want it to start.

It’s worth noting, too, that the ‘mow every other day’ feature is new and that you may need to update the firmware to access it. This isn’t a complicated process. You simply have to insert a USB stick into a slot behind the battery cover and the mower does the rest. That’s not ideal but it is reassuring to see that LawnMaster is keeping its mower updated.

LawnMaster L10 review: How well does it mow the lawn?

Once it sets off, the LawnMaster L10 navigates the cutting area in a random pattern, turning and heading off in the opposite direction as soon as it detects your boundary wire. With a wide range of cutting heights available, it’s relatively versatile when it comes to grass length, too.

However, it’s very slow and mowing for hours can take its toll on your grass. I found the grass in the corner closest to the charging station was being worn away, perhaps because the mower visits it more regularly than other areas.

Because the mower travels into its charging station nose first, it parks smoothly and efficiently. However, it doesn’t mow well around it, because it can’t get its blades close enough. As a result, you’ll need to go in and trim the long grass growing around it. The same applies to the area around your boundary wire, if you’ve placed it 30cm away from flower beds and such like. With such a large gap, you can expect to have to deal with a strip of long grass that’s at least 20cm wide.

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LawnMaster L10 review: Should I buy it?

Whether you should opt for this model depends on how you want to use your mower. There’s a certain set-and-forget elegance to the LawnMaster L10 and, if you don’t want an app to fiddle with or are installing it for someone else, its simplicity is a significant benefit. This is a robot lawn mower you should be able to set up at the beginning of the grass growing season, then leave to work its magic until the grass stops growing again.

If you want more features without spending much more money, the Worx Landroid S300 has a modular platform you can build on later, and it does a neater job of mowing around its base station.

For collision detection, perhaps to avoid pets and other obstacles that can’t be permanently wired around, the YardForce Compact 400Ri, is better equipped, too.

Lastly, for more efficient mowing, we can’t recommend the Bosch Indego S+ 500 highly enough. This mower maps the lawn and cuts it in sensible stripes, knowing where it’s been so it doesn’t keep going over the same ground. You have to pay for such luxury, however, and the Bosch costs around twice the price of this simpler model from LawnMaster.