Husqvarna Automower Solar Hybrid Review
Telephone: +44 (0)1453 820 300
The humble garden lawn often gets painted as an eco villain. It stands guilty of requiring a massive amount of water in times of drought and some gardeners soak theirs with chemical-packed fertilisers to make it look tip-top. But in urban spaces, they're actually good news for the local environment since they slow down surface run-off from heavy rain and cut the risk of flash flooding.
If your garden's tiny, clearly the greenest way to cut it is to get a push mower powered only by you and the sandwiches you eat. For anyone with a big lawn, however, there's this solar robot 'Automower' from Swedish firm Husqvarna. It's up against heavy duty petrol, diesel and electric mowers, and its big green claim is the solar panel on top.
Here's how it works. Find a spot in your garden for the compost-bin-sized charging station, run a supplied wire perimeter around the edge of your lawn and peg it down with the black pegs that come in the box. We found the process easy and the manual helpful. Once charged up, the Automower will trundle off independently of you and use its computer brain to map your garden and start cutting.
Now, it's worth bearing in mind the solar panel only partly powers the Automower -- most of its electricity comes from the sun. On a sunny day, for example, the mower will manage an hour out of its charging dock; on a typically overcast British day, that drops to 45 minutes. That's the same battery life as the nearest solar-less Automower model, the 220 AC. We found those times to be generally true in our tests.
In perfect weather, the Automower manages about an hour of mowing before automatically going back to its dock to recharge
In other words, under ideal weather conditions, this Solar Hybrid model has the potential to cut energy use by a quarter. Good stuff, then, but you'll need a good-sized garden to make the savings add up. The mower's capable of covering a 2,100-square-metre garden, which is just over the size of ten tennis courts. In between mows, the Automower takes from 1.5 to 2.5 hours to top up its battery.
Performance is decent. We gave the Automower a lawn with 10cm-high grass to cut, which is the limit it can manage -- anything higher and you'll need a conventional mower first. Given enough time, it produced a uniformly cut lawn. You can quickly adjust the cutting height from between two and six centimetres by adjusting a wheel underneath the solar panel cover. Ease of use scored high generally and we found the control panel very straightforward.
We liked how quiet the mower was in operation; the whirring of the blades was slightly quieter than your average food blender. You can also set timers for weekdays and weekends to ensure your lawn's neatly trimmed before you even get up. It's worth noting the grass cuttings are left on the lawn, which is good news in summer as they help the grass retain moisture.
There are some practical downsides, however. Because the boundary wire needs to be set at least 15cm away from your flower beds, decking and the like, you'll still need to get the shears out occasionally. You'll also need an external mains socket or a window open to run the power cable through to a socket, since the mower needs a current flowing through the boundary wire to tell it to stop.
In terms of materials, the mower's relatively green. Husqvarna says that 90 per cent of them are recyclable if you take the mower to your local recycling centre at the end of its life. That's good, but because the components are recyclable, it does make us ask why they're not made from recycled materials in the first place. The mower's plastic 'shell' would be a prime candidate for using recycled plastic.
The mower's 90 per cent recyclable, though it'd have been cool if it was made from recycled materials in the first place
The mower and Husqvarna's ethical pedigree are sound. We can make some positive assumptions about working conditions for the people who made it, since the Automower's made in the UK -- Aycliffe in Durham, if you're in the area and fancy dropping by. Husqvarna's main business, meanwhile, is in outdoor power products and it has no unethical investments (in weapons, say) that we're aware of. We also like the fact that it publishes some concrete green and ethical commitments, including the requirement for all suppliers to be certified ISO 14001 (a bunch of environment management standards).
So what have we got here? Well, a UK-made product from an ethical company that does what it says on the tin, and uses slightly less energy to boot. What's not to like? Um, perhaps the £2,000 price tag. But if you've got a big enough lawn to match the Automower, you can afford to pay for the greatest luxury: spare time, ideally spent supping organic beer while observing your finely-mown lawn.
Quality
Value
Ethics
Green
