Lawn mower handle padding. How to Use a Self-Propelled Lawn Mower

How to Use a Self-Propelled Lawn Mower

David Beaulieu is a landscaping expert and plant photographer, with 20 years of experience.

Jessica Wrubel has an accomplished background as a writer and copy editor, working for various publications, newspapers and in public libraries assisting with reference, research and special projects. In addition to her journalism experience, she has been educating on health and wellness topics for over 15 years in and outside of the classroom.

Self-propelled lawnmowers work on a vehicle-like drive system that requires the operator to squeeze a bar (called a bail) on the handle to engage the mower. Squeezing the bar causes the cutting blades on a self-propelled rotary mower to spin and makes the mower take off. After that, the mower moves forward independently, not requiring your pushing power. You only need to control the direction it goes.

If you release your grip on the bar, the mower stops moving, and its blades stop spinning. You may be familiar with this type of device if you have a hand-guided self-propelling vacuum cleaner; it has its drive doing a lot of the moving for you.

If you’ve ever wondered how self-propelled lawn mowers work and if they’re worth considering for your lawn, read on to learn more.

What Is a Self-Propelled Lawnmower?

A self-propelled device means it has a drive and doesn’t require your strength to operate it. You still need to steer the lawn mower since it’s not an autonomous robot, but it can save you time and energy.

Self-Propelled Lawn Mower vs. Push Mower

Self-propelled lawn mowers are motorized and drive independently, only requiring you to steer and move along with the device. The machine does the heavy lifting while you guide it along.

On the other hand, a push mower tells you in its name that you will need to use your body strength to push it. Push mowers can vary widely from non-motorized reel push mowers to motorized push mowers powered by battery, gas, or an electric plug. Here are two different types of push mowers:

• Reel mowers: Best suited for small, flat lawns; using no power, only your push strength to turn the axles that push the blades and wheels; least expensive and lightest to transport, requires some effort to wield; not the best for all situations
• Motorized push mower: Uses gas, battery, or electric plug to run its motorized blades; still requires your pushing power to move the mower; requires less strength than a reel mower; a better option than a reel mower for larger, uneven lawns
• Heavier
• expensive
• Require less body strength and effort
• Best for large lawns and uneven surfaces
• Feels like less of a chore
• Requires gas or electric energy source
• Lighter in weight
• Cheaper
• Motorized types still need power
• Reel types require more strength and energy
• Reel types are safest; no mechanized parts
• Reel types are most eco-friendly option

Parts of a Self-Propelled Lawn Mower

A self-propelled mower uses many parts in the mower’s drive and transmission system, including engine parts, blades, pulleys, belts, a power source, and the safety bail. Much like a car, these parts need regular maintenance and occasionally replacement. The list goes on, from bearings and bushings to axles and air filters. These mowers can offer speed controls, height adjustments, discharge bag attachments, and even cup holders.

Some higher-end models may have a special feature like a blade override system that makes the blade stops spinning when you release the bar, and the unit stops moving, but it does not entirely shut off. This feature is convenient for two reasons: You can move the mower from point A to point B using its drive but not cutting grass along the way, and you don’t have to restart the mower every time you release the bar.

Safety Considerations

The bail or squeeze bar safety feature is the norm nowadays, even on mowers that are not self-propelled, like a battery-powered push mower.

This safety feature works great to prevent accidents and avoid hazards in your line of sight, like giant holes on the lawn or sprinklers, rocks or boulders, children running around, or pet mishaps. If you slip and lose your footing, there’s less chance of spinning blades coming into contact with your body. Also, while sidestepping things in the way, you don’t have to fiddle with a switch to try to shut the mower off; you only release the bar.

Buying vs. Renting

You can get a decent self-propelled lawn mower starting at about 300. The price goes up from there. If you rent a lawn mower, it can cost you around 40 a day or 150 a week for a name-brand lawn mower that is listed for 450. Most lawn mowers will last many years and most good models come with a 2- to 4-year warranty. If you have any size lawn—whether small or large—it will require mowing. And, during the growing season, from spring to fall, you might need to mow it once or twice a week.

Rentals only work in your favor if you’re saving money to get a new machine, your mower is being serviced, or you want to try a newer model before buying it. Ultimately, purchasing the device is less expensive than renting it.

Keeping the Self-Propelled Lawn Mower Maintained

Your lawn mower will need a tune-up once a year. You can do this maintenance or call for a service to maintain your machine. Annual maintenance includes changing the engine oil, adding a fuel stabilizer to the fuel system or removing the gas from the system if it’s old or at the end of the season; replacing the spark plug and air filter; sharpening and balancing the mower blades; cleaning the housing; and winterizing your engine. Also, check your belts for wear and tear.

When to Replace Your Self-Propelled Lawn Mower

Most lawn mowers have replaceable parts that can help you extend the life of your machine. Do the required maintenance, such as changing air filters and getting new gas and oil. But, as the years wear on, your costs to fix a problem may be more than buying a new one.

If your machine chugs, sputters, or makes a loud unexplainable noise, the rule of thumb is the costs of repair should not come close to buying a new model. If the motor, transmission, or crankshaft is gone on your machine, it’s probably time to look for a new lawn mower.

The Best Robot Mops

Some of the recommendations in this guide may be outdated or unavailable.

We plan to test several new robot vacuum-mop combos soon and will update this guide with the results.

A good robot mop is like an automatic Swiffer: It won’t make your floors sparkle, but it will wipe up splatters and some grime, and it can be a handy, low-effort tidy-up tool for busy areas like your kitchen, bathroom, and mudroom. We tested 10 different bot-mops, and we think that the first one you should consider is the small, simple, Smart-enough iRobot Braava Jet 240.

Things to know

We tested 10 different models at home over five months, and we analyzed more than 6,000 for further insights.

The best robot mops work about as well as a wet Swiffer: great for stains and splatters, and decent on some greasy, grimy stuff.

Great for kitchen and bath

This small, quiet bot automatically wipes down one or two rooms at a time, with less fuss and better results than other robot mops. It also costs less than most, and it may be more durable. If you run it regularly, your busiest rooms will never get too grimy.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 170.

The iRobot Braava Jet 240 is slightly more effective at removing stains and grime than other robot mops we tested, and it’s a little simpler to use, too. You attach a cleaning pad (disposable or reusable; iRobot makes both types), fill the small reservoir with water (and, optionally, cleaning solution), plop it down near the edge of the room you want to clean, and press the start button, and it handles the rest. The small bot—measuring only 7 by 6.7 inches—moves quietly in an orderly back-and-forth pattern and usually doesn’t miss any patches of flooring. The Braava Jet 240 isn’t as quick, clever, or controllable as some other robots; it’s meant to wet-mop only one large room or two small rooms at a time (something like 150 to 200 square feet), and you can’t program how it navigates. But in a lot of homes, it’ll be all the robot you need, because you probably don’t need to mop most of your rooms often. iRobot also has a very good reputation for making durable, repairable products, as well as for keeping spare parts available for ages. Like all robot mops, the Braava Jet 240 is safe to use on any kind of sealed hard flooring.

Smarter, cleans multiple rooms

With many of the same great qualities as the smaller Braava Jet 240, the Braava Jet m6 has a bigger battery and water tank, plus a sophisticated navigation system that lets it clean larger areas and even specific rooms on command. It struggles with rug edges and thresholds, though.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 350.

If you want to use a Smart-home app to control when and where your robot mop cleans, or want to be able to mop multiple rooms at a time (up to 1,000 square feet), you could upgrade to the iRobot Braava Jet m6. It’s essentially a smarter, larger version of the Braava Jet 240. The navigation system is the key upgrade: The m6 uses a camera that helps it learn the layout of your home after two or three cleaning sessions per level (and it can learn multiple levels). After it’s been “trained,” you can use an app to tell the bot to clean specific rooms while skipping others. You don’t have to use these advanced navigation controls if you don’t want to, though it’s also kind of the point of paying to upgrade to the m6. (A few other robot mops have Smart navigation systems that work well, too, though those models either cost much more or don’t clean as well as the m6.)

Like any robot mop, the m6 is not quite an auto-magical, hands-off experience: You still need to change the pads and fill the reservoir after every cleaning session (and remember to sometimes order fresh supplies or wash the reusable pads). Rugs and thresholds can also trip up the m6 as it tries to navigate between rooms—a side effect of its above-average cleaning performance, since the cleaning pad hugs the ground tighter than on other bots. There are a host of reasons why the m6 might end up disappointing you, but if you have a home that’s well suited to its limitations and you buy it with appropriate expectations, it can be worth the price.

Vacuum and mop combo

The S5 Max is one among loads of great robots that can both vacuum and (kind of) mop, but Roborock has a better reputation than other combo-bot brands. If you’re looking into getting a robot vacuum anyway, and your mopping needs are modest, the S5 Max could be a good choice.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 426.

You can find plenty of combined or hybrid vacuum-mop robots. But don’t count on a combo bot to wipe away most splatters and greasy buildup: They don’t apply as much downward pressure or scrubbing action as a dedicated robot mop does, and most models are meant to work only with water—no detergent. But if your floors tend to stay pretty clean, or if you mop or Swiffer by hand regularly anyway and just want some help staying tidy between those deeper cleanings—and you’re looking for a robot vacuum anyway—you could consider a combo. Look for a model with lidar navigation (you can recognize this feature by the circle-shaped bump on top of the bot’s body), which is excellent for speedy, whole-home navigation.

The Roborock S5 Max is a notable example of a combo bot, with ever-so-slightly smarter navigation and greater control than on many others like it, from a brand with a decent track record for customer support. But there are plenty of other combo models that are very similar, and we don’t have a strong preference for any particular one.

Great for kitchen and bath

This small, quiet bot automatically wipes down one or two rooms at a time, with less fuss and better results than other robot mops. It also costs less than most, and it may be more durable. If you run it regularly, your busiest rooms will never get too grimy.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 170.

Smarter, cleans multiple rooms

With many of the same great qualities as the smaller Braava Jet 240, the Braava Jet m6 has a bigger battery and water tank, plus a sophisticated navigation system that lets it clean larger areas and even specific rooms on command. It struggles with rug edges and thresholds, though.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 350.

Vacuum and mop combo

The S5 Max is one among loads of great robots that can both vacuum and (kind of) mop, but Roborock has a better reputation than other combo-bot brands. If you’re looking into getting a robot vacuum anyway, and your mopping needs are modest, the S5 Max could be a good choice.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 426.

Why you should trust me

For this guide, I tested 10 robot mops. Six of them were dedicated mop-only robots, while four were vacuum-mop combo robots with more advanced mopping features than on typical combo robots. Most of the testing took place between late spring and early fall of 2021, though I had tested a few of these gadgets earlier.

I also drew on my experience testing about a dozen other vacuum-mop combo robots for Wirecutter’s guide to robot vacuums, which I’ve written since 2013. I’d treated those robots as vacuums that happened to have optional mops, and I tried out their mopping features from time to time but didn’t pay too much attention to them.

I’ve also written or edited Wirecutter guides to a bunch of other floor-care products, including traditional vacuums of all types, carpet cleaners, and (coming soon) upright vacuum-mop combos.

In addition, Wirecutter recently analyzed more than 6,000 Amazon customer reviews for 10 different robot mops and vacuum-mop combos (most of which we also tested), with the assistance of an artificial-intelligence-driven tool called FindOurView. It gave us loads of detail about the features that owners appreciate most, as well as a statistical breakdown of the kinds of features and bot behaviors that owners tend to find especially delightful or frustrating.

What to expect from a robot mop

This is a diverse category, with a few different approaches to cleaning and navigation. But regardless of the differences, all robot mops should be pretty good at the following:

Orderly navigation: Most robot mops move around a space in an orderly, deliberate pattern, without missing patches of flooring. This means that you can mostly count on the bot to clean an area thoroughly, which is what you want for a messy, high-traffic room (like a kitchen, bathroom, or mudroom). We recommend only those robot mops with some version of an orderly navigation system.

A few bots navigate randomly, which can be frustrating if you want your dirtiest rooms wiped down reliably. If you can’t close the doors on the room you’d like to clean (to prevent the robot from wandering off), you’ll need to give the bot a lot of time to get the job done—and it won’t always succeed in a single session. With so many better navigators available for just a bit more money, we don’t think these random-nav robot mops are worth it. (Astute readers might notice that Wirecutter recommends some robot vacuums that use random navigation. We stand by that advice because aimless vacuuming isn’t as pointless as aimless mopping.)

Among robot mops with orderly navigation, some can navigate from room to room and clean larger areas, while others are better for cleaning a single room at a time. Both types have value, depending on how you plan to use yours.

If you just want a robot to clean a couple of busy, messy rooms (kitchen, bathrooms, mudroom) a few times per week, and don’t mind carrying the bot between those rooms, you can get a simpler robot, like our top pick, the iRobot Braava Jet 240.

If you’d prefer something closer to a hands-off experience, with the option to automatically clean any (or every) room at any time, you need a bot with a bigger cleaning pad and reservoir, a longer-lasting battery, and a navigation system that’s Smart enough to learn your home’s layout, like our upgrade pick, the iRobot Braava Jet m6, or a vacuum-mop combo robot with a lidar navigation system like the Roborock S5 Max. (You can recognize lidar bots by the bump on top, which is actually a turret that shoots invisible lasers to find walls and some obstacles.) These bots can be especially great in homes with predominantly bare floors and flat, unobstructed transitions between rooms.

But homes with lots of rugs or thresholds are trickier for most robot mops to handle, even the higher-end models. Mop-only models, including the Braava Jet m6, struggle the most in this environment. Those obstacles might as well be walls or stairs: There’s no way through or over. The bots can only navigate around the obstacles via rug-free, level paths, and some bots cannot self-navigate to any rooms or patches of floor that are cut off by these common features. Combo bots are better at crossing rugs and thresholds, but they get rugs a little damp in the process and still don’t always work flawlessly. So the more rugs and thresholds your home has, the weaker the case for upgrading to a higher-end robot, because it won’t be able to work to its full potential.

Stain and grime removal: Most robot mops wipe floors with absorbent cleaning pads, and the best ones also use detergent, a jet to squirt the cleaning solution in front of the bot, a scrubbing motion of some sort, and downward pressure on the floor with the pad. These models are able to wipe away many stuck-on stains and some grimy buildup.

If you aren’t counting on your robot mop to wipe away really tough stains—maybe just a little mud, say, or splashes of black coffee—you can get away with a weaker system. We like some robots that use only water and a one-pass, low-pressure wiping motion that’ll work fine for this level of cleaning.

Even if you have to pay extra for a bot and supplies from a reputable brand, you may save money in the long run because you get to use the same robot for longer.

Affordable, readily available supplies: Most robot mops have a similar cadence of care: Remove the used pad or dump the dirty-water tank shortly after the end of a cleaning session, refill the reservoir with water and maybe a small amount of concentrated detergent (good luck trying not to spill a little!), and attach a fresh pad. Then there’s the rigmarole of washing the pads (if they’re reusable) or ordering replacements for disposable pads and cleaning solution anytime you run out. Our take is that no robot mop model has a real advantage in ease of maintenance.

What does differ is that it’s easier with certain brands’ bots to find and buy extra pads and cleaning solution, or even spare parts. Some brands barely support their models beyond the initial sale—and sometimes they even vanish from the internet after a few months, so you might have a hard time finding fresh supplies for those bots. Don’t overlook this point! Even if you have to pay extra for a bot and supplies from a reputable brand, you may save money in the long run because you get to use the same robot for longer.

Durability: This is a big unknown, because most of the robot mops you can buy today haven’t been around for long. iRobot (which makes the Braava line) is one exception, so we gave its bots a bit of an edge in our assessments because of that. The company has a good track record for making durable and repairable products, as well as for keeping replacement parts in stock for a very, very long time. (iRobot still sells supplies for the original Roomba robot vacuum, which came out in 2002.) The other reputable labels (such as Roborock) have been common in the US for only a couple of years; we simply don’t know what to expect from them, let alone the slew of lesser-known brands.

I brought in 10 robot mops with some idea of what would make them good, and then I figured out during testing what actually made them good. These are the ones I tested:

• Bissell SpinWave Wet and Dry Robotic Vacuum
• EcoVacs Ozmo Pro Mopping System (a clip-on accessory for some EcoVacs Ozmo models)
• iLife Shinebot W450
• iRobot Braava 320 (a now-discontinued version of the Braava 380t)
• iRobot Braava Jet 240
• iRobot Braava Jet m6
• Narwal T10
• Roborock S7
• Samsung Jetbot Mop
• Shark AI Robot Vacmop RV2001WD

Over the course of about five months, I used each of these models for at least a week at a time as my primary mop at home, to clean my tiled bathroom and my vinyl-floored kitchen/mudroom. If a model worked well, I’d use it for a few more weeks, at which point I’d try it on wood floors, too. Once I narrowed the list down to the best few models, I did some side-by-side testing to see how well they each dealt with tough stains like stuck-on globs of marinara, maple syrup, or goopy egg.

My house is busy, with two adults working from home full-time, a child with a strong independent streak (but whose manners are still a work in progress), and an aging long-haired cat. As I’ve learned from testing robot vacuums, this is a challenging home for many robots to navigate, with tall, wide thresholds that bots often get stuck trying to climb over (MP4). I also have a few area rugs that are big enough to cover most of the floor in a room but small enough that they leave islands of bare flooring that are particularly tricky for robot mops to navigate around.

Our pick: iRobot Braava Jet 240

Great for kitchen and bath

This small, quiet bot automatically wipes down one or two rooms at a time, with less fuss and better results than other robot mops. It also costs less than most, and it may be more durable. If you run it regularly, your busiest rooms will never get too grimy.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 170.

The iRobot Braava Jet 240 is a great robot mop because it’s simple to use, less expensive than most, and still Smart enough and effective enough to do a good job tidying up the rooms that you need to mop most often, such as kitchens, bathrooms, and entryways. You can buy a smarter, faster robot if you want one, but you probably don’t need it.

After testing 10 robots, we found that the Braava Jet 240 was as good as any of them at mopping floors. It works like an automatic version of a flat spray mop (basically a Swiffer WetJet), tidying up floors through the combined efforts of a textured and absorbent pad, water, detergent, and a few different kinds of scrubbing action (downward pressure, vibration, and a back-and-forth motion). It can’t suck up solid debris or puddles of liquid, but we found in our testing that it can remove most food-based or other biological splatters, and even some stuck-on grime. (In our testing, we mostly used the blue wet-mop pads, which automatically set the Braava Jet 240 to its strongest cleaning mode—more details on the pads and modes shortly.)

Smarter, cleans multiple rooms

With many of the same great qualities as the smaller Braava Jet 240, the Braava Jet m6 has a bigger battery and water tank, plus a sophisticated navigation system that lets it clean larger areas and even specific rooms on command. It struggles with rug edges and thresholds, though.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 350.

The iRobot Braava Jet m6 is like a bigger, smarter version of the Braava Jet 240, with the same cleaning ability and some similar elements in its navigation system and interface. In the right home, it can cover more ground and work more automatically than the smaller Braava thanks to Smart, app-supported navigation. But the upgraded features can’t solve every problem that the Braava Jet 240 has, and this bot may be a straight-up disappointment in homes with thresholds and lots of area rugs.

If you want to mop large areas regularly, though, the m6 can be a worthy upgrade. Compared with the Braava Jet 240, the m6 has a wider cleaning pad, a larger reservoir, and a longer-lasting battery, so it can clean more space, faster. In a single session, iRobot claims, the m6 should be able to clean about five times the area of the Braava Jet 240 (1,000 square feet versus 200). So if you want to mop your kitchen, and your dining room, and the kids’ playroom, and so on, weekly or even a few times per week, the m6 can do that much more easily than the Braava Jet 240, which is built to clean only one room at a time. We suspect that most people don’t need to wet-mop that many rooms that often, so the extra capabilities might be overkill, but it’s an option if you need it.

The upgraded navigation system in the m6 holds the promise of greater control and even automation. In practice, however, it’s a mixed bag.

The Braava Jet m6 (left) is much larger than the Braava Jet 240, so it can cover much more ground per session, which can be useful if you’d like to mop multiple rooms relatively quickly. Photo: Michael Hession

The m6’s water reservoir lifts out of the bot for easier fill-ups at a sink, and the opening is wide enough for you to comfortably add the detergent. Photo: Michael Hession

The black oval near the back of the bot is a camera that (optionally) helps the m6 learn your home’s floor plan, so after some setup, you can use an app to tell the bot to clean specific rooms. Photo: Michael Hession

The Braava Jet m6 (left) is much larger than the Braava Jet 240, so it can cover much more ground per session, which can be useful if you’d like to mop multiple rooms relatively quickly. Photo: Michael Hession

The navigation system uses a camera to learn the layout of your home, which it then turns into an interactive “Smart map” in the iRobot app. From the app, you can command the m6 to clean specific rooms and skip others, and it’ll handle all the navigation on its own—you don’t need to carry it around like the Braava Jet 240. It’s a clever system, and we’ve found in our own testing as well as analysis of customer reviews that it works well in most homes most of the time. (It’s the same system as in some of iRobot’s higher-end Roomba robot vacuums, which have been available for years and have largely positive reviews.) You can train the m6 to learn multiple floors in your home, too, and you don’t need to purchase multiple docks (though the engineers haven’t figured out how to get it to climb stairs yet). You can also adjust a few cleaning settings through the app, such as the amount of water the m6 sprays per squirt.

iRobot suggests that the m6 will navigate most homes seamlessly, but in the real world it often falls short of what owners have been led to expect.

However, the m6 can struggle to travel between rooms when it has to cross thresholds or maneuver around rugs. Basically, any kind of height transition is a problem for the m6 (probably because it hugs the ground so tightly in order to clean better). You should count on it to clean only flat areas with contiguous bare floors. (You could consider a combo bot like the Roborock S5 Max if you want a model that’s better at handling height transitions, but such bots don’t clean quite as well.) The app includes a tool that you can set up to try to help the m6 cross thresholds. But in our AI-assisted review analysis, 15% of owners who wrote reviews on Amazon (out of 1,000 reviews we analyzed) complained that the bot still couldn’t cross them.

The Braava Jet m6 has pads for a dry dust-mopping mode (white) and a wet-mopping mode (gray). Both types come in disposable (left) and reusable (right) versions. Photo: Michael Hession

When you clip a pad to the bottom of the m6 before a cleaning session, it automatically activates the proper bot behavior for the job. Photo: Michael Hession

The Braava Jet m6 has pads for a dry dust-mopping mode (white) and a wet-mopping mode (gray). Both types come in disposable (left) and reusable (right) versions. Photo: Michael Hession

Even if your home is conducive to smooth, hands-off navigation, you still have to touch the bot nearly every time you use it to replace the cleaning pads and top off the reservoir. It’s not some kind of magical machine, and the advanced mapping system can’t automate away the mild tedium of maintaining the robot.

It’s concerning that there are so many negative reviews for this robot: 34% of the 1,000 most recent reviews on Amazon came with a lowly one-star rating (out of five), and another 21% rated it just two or three stars. We dug into the specific complaints, and the dissatisfaction with the m6’s general navigation stood out: 13% of m6 reviewers wrote that it got stuck a lot in general (triple the number of Braava Jet 240 owners who said the same), while 9% wrote that the m6 struggled to clean all the areas they wanted it to clean (about double the rate for the Braava Jet 240). iRobot suggests that the m6 will navigate most homes seamlessly, but in the real world it often falls short of what owners have been led to expect.

However, in the right homes and with the right expectations, the m6 is actually really good at what it does. Like the rest of our picks, the Braava Jet m6 comes with a one-year warranty.

Also great: Vacuum-mop combo robots with lidar

Vacuum and mop combo

The S5 Max is one among loads of great robots that can both vacuum and (kind of) mop, but Roborock has a better reputation than other combo-bot brands. If you’re looking into getting a robot vacuum anyway, and your mopping needs are modest, the S5 Max could be a good choice.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 426.

If you’re thinking about getting a robot vacuum cleaner anyway, you might consider buying a hybrid or combo vacuum-mop. They’re essentially robot vacuums that come with an optional clip-on mop and a water reservoir. Most of these models just drag a microfiber cloth across the floor as they vacuum, using only water (no detergent) dribbled into the pad from a reservoir (instead of being sprayed onto the floor).

This type of combo robot can be good for wiping up the occasional drink splatter or thin layer of dust that a broom or a weak vacuum tends to leave behind. Essentially, they’re best in homes where the floors don’t get very dirty very often: Maybe you don’t cook on the stovetop much, or the people (or pets) in your household aren’t especially messy, so you rarely need to scrub away stuck-on food or grime.

Tons of these robots are available. We’d recommend a model with lidar-based navigation (a circular turret on top of the bot is a clear sign it uses lidar); it’s a quick and accurate system that relies on invisible lasers to help the robot navigate your home in an efficient, orderly pattern, avoiding many obstacles along the way. The customer reviews for bots with lidar navigation systems are overwhelmingly positive, with a noticeably higher rate of satisfaction than those for robot vacuums and mops with other types of navigation systems, according to the AI-assisted analysis we ran.

And Roborock as a brand has earned a solid reputation for making above-average robot vacuums, with above-average customer service relative to other brands that make affordable lidar bots.

The Roborock S5 Max has several tweakable settings. It lets you control the mop’s moisture level, room by room, through the smartphone app and you can ramp it up to the highest level in the kitchen, for example, and then turn it off in rooms with rugs. The bot will still drag the damp cloth across the rug, but we’ve found that it’s not very troublesome—you might notice that your rugs feel a little damp if you walk across them in bare feet right after the robot crosses, but they aren’t soaked, and they’ll dry quickly. (Many other combo units have this moisture-adjustment feature, but several do not. Without the control, water drips into their pads at a steady, non-adjustable pace—which can mean more dampness on rugs if the bots cross them, though it’s still not a catastrophe.)

Most combo bots (including the Roborock S6 MaxV, pictured here) wipe floors with a washable microfiber pad, which attaches to a bracket that clips onto the bottom of the robot behind the vacuum brush and air intake, beneath a water tank. Photo: Michael Hession

Combo bots don’t scrub as thoroughly as dedicated robot mops do, but the system works fine for wiping away light splatters and dust. Photo: Michael Hession

Most combo bots (including the Roborock S6 MaxV, pictured here) wipe floors with a washable microfiber pad, which attaches to a bracket that clips onto the bottom of the robot behind the vacuum brush and air intake, beneath a water tank. Photo: Michael Hession

The main downside is that combo robots don’t clean as well as dedicated robot mops, since the combos are meant to use only water and usually don’t scrub back and forth or with much downward force. Drips of coffee and a dusty footprint? Sure, a combo bot will work fine. But anything oily or grimy, not so much. You’ll still need a stronger mop for those kinds of soils, whether it’s a robot mop, a Swiffer, or a traditional mop. In customer reviews, only a few percentage points’ worth of combo-bot owners even comment on the mopping features, and it’s usually just a neutral acknowledgement that the mop exists and works okay but doesn’t replace a real mop.

A bunch of combo bots have mopping features that are more advanced than those of the Roborock S5 Max and others like it, aimed at boosting the bots’ utility as all-around floor-cleaning machines. These features, such as vibrating pads or pads that lift themselves away from rugs, tend to make a small, positive difference, but it’s a stretch to say that any of them are worth paying extra money for. A dedicated mop of any sort—robot, Swiffer, string mop, whatever—just cleans much better, and with less fuss, than trying to adapt a combo bot for dedicated mopping duty.

The top-of-the-line Roborock S7, for example, automatically lifts its mop a few millimeters when the robot senses that it’s on a carpet. The feature technically works most of the time, though I still felt some isolated dampness around the edges of my rugs after using it—a lot like I did with other vac-mop combo bots.

Certain higher-end combo bots also add a little extra scrubbing action, such as a vibrating pad (Shark AI Robot Vacmop, Roborock S7) or a more deliberate wiping pattern (too many to list). These tricks make the combo mops slightly more effective than simpler bots. But they still don’t clean stuck-on soils, and they leave plenty of grime that stronger cleaning bots pick up easily.

The most advanced model we tried was the Shark AI Robot Vacmop, which picked up more sticky, grimy stuff than the other combo bots did. But in following Shark’s dosing recommendations, we found that it also left behind a ton of residue. And it still didn’t work as well as dedicated mops, we think, because it didn’t scrub with as much downward pressure. The Shark also doesn’t cross rugs at all with its mop bracket attached, so that can pose a navigational challenge in some homes.

Other robot mops we tested

Narwal T10

The Narwal T10 promises to be even more automatic than a regular robot mop, and it basically delivers on that promise. If your budget is large, and you really want to do as little work as possible to keep your floors wiped, the Narwal might be worth the investment. But it’s pretty rough around the edges for something that’s so expensive (normally 1,100). You could buy an excellent robot vacuum and an excellent robot mop for less money total than the Narwal, and they’d be almost as automatic and much more effective.

As with the iRobot Braava Jet m6, you’ll get the most out of the Narwal if you want to regularly mop a large area (more than just the kitchen, bathroom, and mudroom). What’s unique about the Narwal is the giant dock, which holds two 1.3-gallon water tanks: one for unused cleaning solution, to dampen the robot’s microfiber pads prior to cleaning, and one for dirty liquid, sucked out of those same microfiber pads after cleaning.

Here’s how it works: The dock soaks the bot’s pads with fresh cleaning solution. The bot drives away, cleans a small area (50 to 70 square feet), and then returns to the dock, which sucks the now-dirty liquid off the pads and replaces it with fresh cleaning solution. The bot drives back to where it left off and repeats the process until it can’t find any new areas to clean. (Or, if you’ve set up the Smart-map system, until it finishes cleaning the rooms you told it to.) Once it returns to the dock, a quiet fan runs at a low speed to dry the pads.

This pad-replenishment system helps the Narwal avoid a few of the problems that most robot mops (including all our picks) have: The pads get too dirty or damp to be useful after cleaning just one or two rooms, and you must remember to replace them after every session. In general, the Narwal can clean the same types of messes as other robot vacuums but over a wider area, because it keeps replenishing its cleaning pads.

The navigation system also does a great job of plotting an efficient and accurate path around your home, and—at least in theory, after some setup—it gives you a ton of control, through an app, over where and when and how the robot cleans.

But in the real world, the nav system has some serious flaws. The app that controls much of the advanced navigation features is glitchy, laggy, and unintuitive next to other bots’ apps. Despite the high price, the Narwal robot has no built-in carpet-awareness features, so it’ll just mop your rugs unless you draw “keep-out zones” in the app by hand, guessing—to a pixel—where your rugs lie on the low-resolution, 2D map. Plenty of robots that cost a lot less than the Narwal make it much easier to avoid carpets.

As with any other dedicated robot mop, you’ll still need to pre-vacuum. The Narwal does come with a vacuum attachment, but it has no brush roll, so the pickup is mediocre (especially on rugs). Also, since you need to manually install that attachment every time you want to use it, the whole system feels a lot less automatic.

For some people, it might be challenging to fill and empty the tanks, which weigh about 8 pounds each when full. And, as with any robot from a small company, we’re worried that it might be hard to find spare parts or even replacement detergent strips for the Narwal as time goes on.

The competition

It’s fun to watch the Samsung Jetbot Mop glide across the floor on its rotating pads, rarely getting stuck, never following a path that makes sense but looking so whimsical while it works that you might not care. That might explain why the owner ratings for the Jetbot Mop are actually a tick higher than those for most of the other robot mops we’ve looked at—it looks good, even though it does very little. The Jetbot Mop can barely clean any stains, at least not when it’s used as directed. You’re not meant to use any detergent, and the scrubbing action from the pads is weak, so it barely makes a dent on food splatters or stuck-on grime.

Unlike most robot mops, the iLife Shinebot W450 cleans with a spinning brush roll and suction, and it has a built-in reservoir filled with cleaning solution, plus a tank for dirty water and debris. We found that in some ways, it cleans a little better than the pad-type robot mops (including every other model we’ve covered in this guide). The Shinebot certainly left floors looking shinier than the other robot mops we used, probably due to the brush roll’s polishing action, and because it sucks up some of the cleaning liquid from your floors, rather than smearing it until it gets absorbed. There are two main problems with this robot: First, the navigation is unreliable. In some rooms, it’s thorough and orderly. In others, it misses huge patches. We found this in our own testing, and it’s echoed in customer reviews. (We were never able to connect the W450 to Wi-Fi to use the companion app, either.) Second, maintenance is a pain. There’s no great way to thoroughly clean the dirty-liquid tank, which also fills up with solid debris like hair and there’s a foam filter you’re supposed to wash regularly, but it’s easy to overlook.

You can also find loads of vacuum-mop combo robots with random navigation, which is okay for vacuuming small spaces but not ideal for mopping. We selected one of these models, the Bissell SpinWave Wet and Dry Robotic Vacuum, for testing because it had the best mopping specs of the field, including rotating scrubber pads and compatibility with detergent rather than just water. It cleaned fine but tended to leave a little residue behind when we used detergent. The real downside is the random navigation system, which is an inefficient way to clean a must-mop area like the kitchen. It also had trouble with rugs, sometimes getting hung up on the edges and sometimes climbing right up onto the rug and then mopping it (not what we wanted).

What to look forward to

In recent months, there has been a flurry of new robot vacuum-mop combos. We plan to test several of them, including the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra, the Eufy Clean X9 Pro, the iRobot Roomba Combo j7, and the EcoVacs DEEBOT T20 Omni, which all come with obstacle- avoidance technology, self-emptying stations, and voice assistance.

The best robotic lawn mowers for 2023

Like the look of robotic lawn mowers? Browse our pick of the very best, for gardens of all shapes and sizes.

Increasingly popular with UK gardeners, robotic lawn mowers are a welcome, hands-free alternative to traditional petrol and electric lawn mowers. Because a robotic lawn mower is fully automatic, it can be a brilliant option for gardeners who have mobility concerns, are away from home a lot, or simply find mowing a chore. Powered by rechargeable Lithium-ion batteries, most mowers are guided by a boundary cable laid around the edge of the lawn, which helps the robotic lawn mower identify where to mow and to avoid flower beds, trees and other obstacles.

While we tested models from a number of different brands, note that all of them offer a range of mowers with varying sizes, capabilities and features.

To compare these robotic models against other types of mowers, see our reviews of the best cordless lawn mowers, the best electric mowers and the best push mowers. And, if you’re looking to give your lawn a bit of TLC, our experts have tested a range of manual and powered aerators and scarifiers. check out the best scarifiers and best aerators reviews. You can also keep edges looking neat with our tests of the best strimmers or pick of the best lawn edging.

Best robotic lawn mowers at a glance

Our expertise

To help you find a robotic lawn mower suitable for your garden, we tested a range of mowers for different size gardens, including gardens with slopes and a complex shape. Each mower is in use for weeks at a time to allow us to assess its battery capacity and cutting proficiency as well as ease of use.

Each mower in our review has a detailed list of pros and cons for clarity and has been rated according to set up and ease of use, cutting performance, extra features and value for money. Every robotic mower in our round-up below has scored a minimum of four out of five stars, so you can buy with confidence.

The robotic mower industry is constantly evolving, with new developemnts and advances, and we are currently testing a number of the latest models ready to update this review shortly. Please check back soon to see the results of our new review.

Best robotic lawn mowers

Husqvarna Automower 405X

RRP: From £1899.00

Our rating: 4.5 out of 5

• Unobtrusive colour
• Easy connectivity
• Clever mowing features
• GPS theft tracking

Awarded a BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine Best Buy for features, the Automower 405x boasts a huge range of features that help the mower cut well and make the experience easy for the user. These include, three different start points, switching mowing pattern according to where it’s mowing, such as through a narrow passage, frost guard and weather time that automatically adjusts the height according to the grass growth, and its new Rewilding Zone where you can leave 10% of the lawn aside to grow for pollinators.It’s available to buy as a bare mower, which is then installed by a dealer for an additional cost, or with the installation kit included and you install it yourself. Suitable for smaller gardens 600m2, the mower operates with both a boundary wire and a guide wire and unlike some other mowers, has a more flexible docking station, which doesn’t need a wide, clear space around it. ours was tucked neatly into the side of a hedge. It’s also easy to set up via the intuitive keypad or the impressive Automower Connect app, which allows you to change the schedule, adjust the height of cut, check on the mower’s progress and receive notifications, simply and quickly no matter where you are. As an X model, the mower also has a built in SIM so you have both remote and voice controlled control. Our only confusion with set up was working out the scheduling needed, which took a couple of weeks to establish, and that the height of cut on the app is listed as 1-9, when it cuts between 20mm and 50mm.The mower can cope with 40% slopes, which should suit most gardens. The slope in our test garden has a tendency to get muddy and slippery so at the installer’s advice, we used the spiked Terrain wheels which stop the wheels slipping. Only occasionally did the mower fail to get up the slope and when the weather was really wet we simply removed that zone from the work area. The mower cut consistently well and is very quiet, the only perceptible sound is the whirring of the blades as they cut. It occasionally missed spots on the lawn but overall this is a very easy to use and high performing mower.The Automower 405x is just one in a large range of Husqvarna mowers to suit different size lawns. A host of accessories are also available, including a cover for the docking station and wheel brushes, as well as spare parts, from batteries and blades to wheels. Both the mower and the battery come with a 2 year warranty.

Buy the Husqvarna 405X Automower from Sam Turner, Husqvarna and Red Band