Best Robot Mowers of 2026 — Compared & Explained

The LUBA 3 AWD 1500H is the machine to look at first if your lawn is not flat. Where every other mower in this comparison stops at a 45% or 50% gradient, Mammotion rates this one to 80% — 38.6° — and backs it with four independent hub motors rather than two driven wheels. On a hillside, a terraced garden or ground that has never been levelled, that is the difference between a mower that works and a mower that sits on the charger.

It navigates by rotating LiDAR rather than by satellite. The 360° sensor sweeps a stated 230 ft on the listing and 200 ft on Mammotion's own specification table — both figures are recorded on the row below, because the manufacturer publishes both and we are not going to pick for them. What matters in practice is the consequence: there is no reference station to mount, no clear view of the sky required, and the machine can work under tree cover where RTK positioning degrades.

The honest reservations are weight, noise and software. At 41 lb it is the heaviest unit here by a wide margin, which matters when it needs carrying rather than driving. Its ≤70 dB rating is the loudest in this comparison, and owner reviews on the listing are consistently warmer about the hardware than the application — several describe deleting an auto-generated map and tracing the lawn by hand instead. Buy it for the slope capability and the sensor suite, and expect to spend an evening on the map.

If the lawn is open and large, this is the machine that finishes the job soonest. The GOAT A3000 LiDAR PRO cuts a 33 cm stripe against 15.7–20 cm for everything else here, and it is rated 250–400 m²/h against 135–400 m²/h for the field. On a 3,000 m² lawn that gap compounds across a season.

It navigates without satellites at all. The HoloScope system pairs a 360° top LiDAR with a forward 3D time-of-flight array and an AI camera, and ECOVACS states 2 cm positioning accuracy with a 5 cm safety gap around detected obstacles. On the listing that is the core claim: no perimeter wire, no RTK antenna, and no loss of positioning under trees, along fences or in shade — the three conditions where satellite mowers degrade. There is also a built-in TruEdge trimmer running at 8,500 rpm for the edges a disc cannot reach, which is the one feature here aimed at a chore rather than a specification.

Two things hold it back, and both are on the page rather than hidden in it. Warranty is 12 months, where ANTHBOT, Navimow and Mammotion all publish three years — on a machine in this class that gap is worth more than any specification. And the mower itself is rated 62 dBA, the loudest published figure for a mower in this comparison, with the trimmer at 82 dBA. Note also that cellular and GNSS are optional add-on modules here, not built in as they are on the Mammotion, so anti-theft tracking depends on buying a module.

Every mower here cuts grass. The N8 is the only one that also picks the grass up, and that distinction is why it earns a place in a comparison it would otherwise lose on speed. Its 135 m²/h is the lowest published rate in this group, and its 90 minutes of mowing per charge covers roughly 200 m² once the collection bag is fitted. Set against that, the 23 L bin empties itself at a point you nominate in the app, using an onboard radar sensor to know when it is full.

That combination — collect, then dump without you — is aimed squarely at the two jobs that make people abandon a robotic mower: emptying a small bin every session, and raking or blowing leaves in autumn. ANTHBOT rates it for four working modes, and the cutting hardware is genuinely different between them rather than a software mode: a six-blade disc for mulching and a three-blade high-lift disc for collection, swapped as a module.

The penalties are honest ones. It is slow, it weighs 16.5 kg without the bag, and its noise rating depends on which mode you run — ANTHBOT's own comparison table publishes ≤58 dB for mowing and mulching but ≤68 dB for collecting and sweeping, while the product page states a flat ≤60 dB. Both are recorded below. If you never intend to collect, a faster machine is the better buy.

The M9 is the sensible middle of the ANTHBOT range. It is rated for 1,000 m² — a quarter acre — and its headline balance is unusual in this category: 90 minutes of mowing for 90 minutes of charging. Most machines here either charge faster than they mow or mow much longer than they charge; this one is matched, which makes its schedule predictable rather than lumpy.

It positions itself the conventional way for this generation, with full-band RTK backed by network RTK and two 150° HDR cameras. The cameras matter when the satellite view fails: under a canopy or tight against a building, ANTHBOT switches to visual positioning rather than stopping. The RTK reference station is included in the box, unlike the Navimow i105N where the antenna kit is the setup task you inherit.

Two caveats worth knowing before you buy. ANTHBOT publishes 30 mow zones for the M9 on its comparison table but 20 on the product page, and we print both rather than choose. And the 45% slope ceiling, shared across the ANTHBOT range, is the middle of this field — enough for most domestic lawns, well short of what the Mammotion or ECOVACS will climb. If you want the shelter for the dock, the same machine is listed separately with it.

This is not a different mower. It is the ANTHBOT M9 — the same machine, the same 1,000 m² rating, the same full-band RTK with dual vision, the same 90-minute charge-to-mow cycle — sold as a bundle with the manufacturer's shelter for the charging station. The two Amazon listings differ by the words "with Garage" and by nothing else.

We list it separately because it is a separate purchase decision, not because there is a separate machine to evaluate. The comparison table below separates the two records on a single row so you can see exactly what the bundle adds, and every other row is identical.

The shelter's case is modest and practical: it keeps direct sun and rain off the dock and the parked machine, which is the part of a robotic mower's life that ages least gracefully. ANTHBOT does not publish a rating for the shelter itself and it does not change the IPX6 rating of the mower, so treat it as a longevity accessory rather than a protection requirement. If you have a garage, a carport or deep shade over the dock site, the standard M9 buys you the same mower for less.

This is the i2-series machine that sits directly above the i105N, and the difference between them is mostly traction. All-wheel drive with traction control and a 45% (24°) slope rating replaces the i1 series' 30%; the recommended area goes from 1/8 acre to 0.15 acre; supported zones double from 12 to 20; and the cutting system is finally published (one disc, five blades) where the i105N publishes none. It is one of only two machines in this comparison that drives all four wheels, the other being the Mammotion.

The navigation story is the same family as the cheaper Navimow, one step on. Segway calls this "EFLS NRTK" — network RTK fused with the same 140° VisionFence camera — which in principle removes the local reference pole, because corrections arrive over the network rather than from a station in the garden. The manufacturer states plainly that antenna installation is not required. It then lists a GNSS antenna and an antenna installation kit in the box, and its own manual carries a section on installing the antenna as an optional step. We print both statements, because a buyer deciding whether they will have to mount something deserves to know that the manufacturer has said both things.

Two details to carry into the table. The cutting-height band is contradicted three ways across the manufacturer's own documents — 2–3.6 in on the US specification table, 2–6 cm in the European manual, and 2–6 cm again in the listing's catalogue fields — so all of them are printed rather than one. And the Amazon title for this ASIN names both "i206 AWD" and "New i105N" in the same line. The catalogue data behind that page gives the model number as "Segway Navimow i2 AWD" and the part number as RIV001, and on coverage, slope, drive, blade count, zones, noise and weight the i105N is a different machine. We have recorded it as the i206 AWD and flagged the title; the manufacturer has not reconciled it.

Setup is the argument for this machine. Every RTK mower in this comparison, including its own ANTHBOT siblings, needs a reference station mounted somewhere with a clear view of the sky — an installation task on a pole or tripod that you live with afterwards. The M5 LiDAR navigates by rotating LiDAR instead, so there is nothing to site and nothing to bury: unbox it, let it map, and start.

That design choice also makes it the only mower here besides the Mammotion and ECOVACS that works indoors. ANTHBOT states the machine can be parked inside to charge, which matters on a property without a covered dock site — and it is the manufacturer's own answer to the fact that this model has no anti-theft hardware.

The limits are real and worth weighing. 500 m² is the smallest lawn rating in this comparison alongside the Navimow, so it suits a compact garden rather than a smallholding. The 2.5 Ah pack gives 40 minutes of mowing per charge, the shortest window here, and 20 zones is the lowest count in the group. Most significantly, the official comparison table marks GPS tracking, Find My and out-of-boundary alarms as absent for this model — because there is no GPS receiver to do any of it. If theft cover matters, this is not the machine.

This is the machine to look at if you want a wire-free mower with a three-year warranty and the smallest outlay of anything in this comparison. It is rated 1/8 acre, supports up to 12 zones, and Segway publishes a 60–100 m²/h coverage band against 135–400 m²/h for the rest of the field — so it is genuinely a small-lawn machine, not a smaller version of a large-lawn one.

Its one structural difference from the LiDAR machines is the setup. The i105N navigates by RTK with vision assistance, which is accurate, but this generation still needs a reference antenna sited with a clear sky view — the antenna kit is listed in the box. The ANTHBOT M5 LiDAR, ECOVACS GOAT and Mammotion LUBA 3 in this comparison all avoid that step entirely. If your garden is enclosed, overshadowed or simply awkward to run a pole in, that is the deciding factor against this machine rather than any specification.

Two things it does better than anything else here. It is rated IP66 on both the mower and the charging station, where the rest of the field publishes IPX6 or worse — a real difference if your dock sits exposed. And it is the quietest, at a published 58 dB(A) sound power with a 50 dB(A) sound pressure figure. The oddity to understand before buying is the cutting band: 50–90 mm, where ANTHBOT and ECOVACS run 30–70 mm and 30–90 mm. This machine trims a lawn that is already maintained; it will not take one down.