Husqvarna Automower Solar Hybrid Full Review
Posted: 22 May 2008 by Adam Vaughan
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. Continue reading...
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