LawnMaster VBRM16 OcuMow™ Drop and Mow Robot Lawnmower with MX 24V 4.0Ah lithium battery and fast charger. No Boundary Wire, App or Outdoor Power Socket needed. For small to medium lawns up to 100m2.

Product Information

If you are someone that doesn’t want the hassle of using a complicated advanced robotic lawn mower, then the LawnMaster VBRM16 will be right up your street. It’s a brilliant entry level robot mower as operation is as good as fool proof. What’s more, it’s incredibly affordable so you won’t need to spend a lot of money to familiarise yourself with this type of technology. As with all robotic lawn mowers the LawnMaster VBRM16 is a mulching mower. This essentially means that it doesn’t collect the clippings as this simply wouldn’t be feasible with such a compact machine. Maximum lawn size: Larger lawns tend to need a smarter and more expensive mower, so measure your garden before you buy, to the nearest 100 square metres.

SPOT CUT FUNCTION: for a neat finish, use the additional spiral spot cut function on any uncut grass. However, the downside to not having a charging station is that the lawn mower won’t automatically return to it. Some more advanced models will return when the battery is low and many have rain sensors so they’ll return when they detect rain. With the LawnMaster VBRM16, you will need to keep an eye on the weather and if the heavens open, you’ll need to go out and bring the mower in. Control Panel, Setup and App I allowed the lawn in my front garden to grow to around 60mm, despite having given it the first cut of the season the week before testing the LawnMaster VBRM16. For this, I used the 40mm cutting height but there are five options to choose from between 20mm and 60mm which I thought was more than adequate.

What should I consider when choosing a robot lawn mower?

Robot lawn mowers are traditionally fiddly to set up, requiring an outdoor power supply and a boundary wire laid around the edge of the lawn to stop the robot disappearing off into your flower beds. The LawnMaster VBRM16 is different, though, and can be ready to start mowing as soon as you’ve brought it home and charged its battery. The great thing about the LawnMaster VBRM16 is that the manufacturer has carefully combined the blade width and run time to ensure the mower covers up to 100 square metres in one go. You also need to lay a boundary wire around the edge of the area you want your robot to mow. This is usually supplied on a reel, is connected to the charging station at both ends and carries a low voltage, which the mower uses to detect when to stop and turn around. You can bury this wire, or peg it down and eventually it will bed down into the grass. Charging your LawnMaster VBRM16 takes barely any time at all. Simply attach it to the charger, plug it in and it’ll be ready in around one hour! Navigation System

The sky’s the limit at the upper end of the scale but, for a top-of-the-range mower with the smartest sensors, the most sophisticated control apps and enough equipment to mow a large lawn, you can expect to pay thousands of pounds. Other features to look out for: Key specs – Size: 425 x 350 x 220mm (WDH); Weight: 6.6kg; Cutting height: 20-60mm; Maximum lawn size: 100m²; Maximum incline: 35%; Replaceable battery: Yes What do I mean by this? Well, unlike most robotic mowers, this one isn’t designed to be left outside all the time. It’s a drop and go machine which can be charged indoors and then you simply need to pop it on the ground and let it do its thing. There are many advantages to this which I’ll dive into in my LawnMaster VBRM16 review. However, you can add additional functions and take greater control over the mower using an app on your smartphone. This lets you start and stop the mower remotely (though it only supports Bluetooth, so you still have to be in the vicinity). More crucially, it lets you control exactly when the robot should head out for a run, with two programmable mowing slots available for each day of the week, so you can really fine-tune your mowing.

The best robot mowers for 2023 are:

My front garden doesn’t have any slopes, but there are lawns all over the UK that do. If this sounds like your garden then you’ll be pleased to know that the LawnMaster VBRM16 can handle inclines up to 35%. This is comparable to the range of Flymo and WORX robotic mowers. Charge and Mow Time Mechanically, most robot lawn mowers are surprisingly similar. In your garden they look a bit like a tiny car, about the same size as an upturned washing-up bowl, with two large wheels to control movement and one or two coasters to add stability. They tend to cut the grass with sharp steel blades that closely resemble razor blades, which you will find attached to a spinning disc on the underside of the mower’s chassis. Are they difficult to set up? Key specs – Size: 445 x 364 x 202mm (WDH); Weight: 7.6kg; Cutting height: 30-50mm; Maximum lawn size: 700m²; Maximum incline: 27%; Replaceable battery: Yes It’s designed to cut up to 100m² and has a 16cm cutting width. Combine this with the four hour run time, which I’ll talk more about shortly, and you’ve got something that’s going to deliver an even cut without running out of power. Most robot lawnmowers have to be connected to Wi-Fi if you want to control and schedule their activities using a smartphone app. The Honda Miimo 70 Live is a bit different because it has a mobile internet connection built in.

Gardena’s app lets you carve your garden into areas, so you can set it to mow some sections more than others. This includes CorridorCut, which reduces the intensity of the mow in small, narrow areas that don’t need as much repetitive mowing. If you don’t like watering, either, you can also control Gardena’s automated irrigation system (not included) using the same app. One of the things that a lot of people ask me about robotic lawn mowers is whether they have enough power to complete the entire lawn in one go. I found that, when testing the LawnMaster VBRM16, it detected the perimeter of my lawn very easily and would stop and turn in good time. However, my front lawn, as you will see in the video review, does have well defined boundaries.

How we tested

Instead of being guided by a wire, the mower uses a camera mounted on the front of the device to scan the lawn in front of it. If it sees a surface that isn’t grass, it turns round and heads off in a different direction. Because of this it doesn’t need a perimeter wire or a charging station – when it’s cut enough you simply switch it off and put it away. The battery is removable and is charged in a separate charging unit. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Rain detection: It’s better to let your grass soak up excess moisture before mowing it. A rain sensor will send your robot home if it starts to rain, and can delay mowing until it’s dry again. As I discussed earlier, some of the more expensive robotic lawn mowers use GPS and RTK to navigate. However, the LawnMaster VBRM16 benefits from a camera and two sensors located at the front of the machine which enables it to ‘see’ the lawn and move around objects or stop at the edge. There’s no complicated setup, no need to update software and no need to install a boundary wire. All you need to do is charge the battery, insert it and then press the ‘on’ button and choose your mowing mode. There is an auto-mow or a spot cut mode; just press and hold the button to select your mode and the robot will do the rest.