The follow robot lawn mowers are ones I tested, but don’t make the cut due to a variety of reasons. They have potential, which is why they’re on this list, but they still have some things to work out.

Hookii Neomow X

The Hookii Neomow X i starting with the glowing “Hookii” branding across the front of the mower. It glows red, green or blue, depending on what’s happening as it works. At $2,300, it’s priced competitively with other wire-free mowers I’ve tested.

There’s also a LiDAR sensor on the top of the machine for guidance and obstacle avoidance. As expected, that means it does not rely on RTK beacons or GPS for navigation. It relies on its LiDAR and optical sensors to determine its positioning, so I was really optimistic about the mower until I ran into trouble.

The mower tends to get stuck in a particular area of my yard where troublesome tree roots are growing. So I should have simply created a no-go zone and called it a day. However, every time it got stuck in that area, I absolutely could not get the mower to do anything after that. I couldn’t get it to resume mowing after I moved it.

I couldn’t even get it to go back to its charging station. I followed the instructions in the app, which told me to press Resume, then Go, or press Home and then Go, but it just stayed on its error code. I tried pressing the buttons separately and together, but nothing worked. Every time, I ended up having to pick up the 30-pound mower and carry it back to the charging station.

Now, if you never have trouble with the mower in your yard, or if you properly set boundaries for exclusionary zones, you likely won’t have this trouble. But in my world, how a device behaves after a failure is almost as important as how it behaves when everything is fine, because in my experience with tech, everything is rarely fine.

Mammation Yuka mini 2

The Mammation Yuka mini 2 is another mower I was excited to test out. Mammation’s big feature is that it doesn’t just mow the lawn; you can also get an optional kit that lets it patrol your yard and sweep up leaves. That’s not bad value for a robot mower that only costs $1,560. Plus, it will empty its leaf bin in a designated place, making leaf raking simple. The Yuka also has vision sensors that it can fall back on to help navigate if both the GPS and the RTK beacon fail. At least, that’s what it says it can do.

Because my backyard is a Bermuda Triangle of GPS signal that has led more than one robot mower to failure, the Mammotion Yuka never got enough of a signal to even map my yard, let alone mow the grass or rake leaves. I had hoped that trying the mower later in the season, when the leaves had started to fall, might allow the Yuka to get up and running, but ultimately, that wasn’t the case.

That said, I fully intend to set up Yuka again in the spring and summer to give it another shot.

Yarbo Lawn Mower

The Yarbo robot mower is an absolute clinic in overengineering. Every other mower on this list arrived at my house in a box that weighed between 40 and 60 pounds. Yarbo’s mower arrived in six separate boxes, two of which weighed over 100 pounds each. There’s a reason for all of this, and it comes back to Yarbo’s mission. Yarbo built a modular system that has a core component and add-on modules for different functions. One is a snow blower, one is a leaf blower and the one I received is a lawnmower.

The “core” module, which is what drives the other components, has rubberized tank treads lights around the perimeter, and by itself weighs around over 100 pounds. The mower module weighs another 50 to 60 pounds. If you want to push around snow, you need a heavy-duty build — I totally get that. But at the end of the day, according to Eric Dowd Golf and Mobile Solutions Expert (and no relation of mine, despite the last name)  at Automated Outdoor Solutions, the Yarbo mower is a commercial unit. It’s not really intended for residential use.

The reason I have it listed in this section is because I had an enormous amount of trouble getting a connection to satellites (this was something of a theme). First, I had trouble with the RTK beacon, but once that got resolved, the mower itself had trouble. I have a large tree in my backyard. I’m fairly sure I’m not the only person with a large tree in the backyard, so this is not ideal. I will continue to work with Yarbo to get things squared away.

Airseekers Tron

The most oddly-named and oddly designed mower on this list, the Airseekers Tron will run you $2,099. Most of the mowers on this list have two drive wheels and two omnidirectional wheels, like what you’d find on an office chair. The Airseekers Tron on the other hand has two drive wheels and two powered wheels in the front as well. But the wheels in front are canted inward. Rollers on the wheels allow the Tron to be — in theory — more maneuverable. This all looks good on paper. However, there were some issues.

First, the Airseekers Tron shipped with comically short cables for both the RTK beacon and the base station. By the time I assembled the beacon and ran the cable through the pipe that holds it up, there was about 4 feet of cable left. If you’re attaching the cable to the base station (more on that in a moment) that means the mower and the beacon need to be in the same space. That may be OK, depending on your space, but really it’s not OK.

To mitigate this, you can plug in the beacon separately, but that requires a separate cord and plug. Airseekers shipped me the unit with European plugs and an adapter for American plugs — a not-waterproof adapter, besides. Airseekers assured me that when the device ships internationally, there will be appropriate plugs on all the cables for each region. Mine is an early unit.

When it comes to driving the mower — to map a space. for example — I ran into trouble. The mower would veer off in odd directions. It seemed like the front wheels weren’t functioning as designed. I’ve been working closely with Airseekers support, and the company has been responsive to the issues I ran into, but as of the time this article was published, the mower hasn’t accomplished the one job it has.