I tested a robot mower with no boundary wire – here’s my buying advice after a month

ZDNET’s key takeaways

• The Eufy E15 Robot Mower for yards up to 0.2 acres is available for $1,600, while the Eufy E18 covers up to 0.3 acres and costs $2,000
• This robot mower doesn’t require boundary wires or an RTK antenna for setup, instead using visual recognition, AI algorithms, and 3D sensors to distinguish the boundaries of the lawn and avoid obstacles in real time
• While it’s good for smaller yards, I’d recommend it for fenced-in, flat yards, as it can get stuck on uneven terrain.

Mowing the grass can be a bitter pill for many who may enjoy a manicured lawn but not necessarily the process leading up to it. I typically enjoy the time and exercise I get while mowing my lawn, but after switching to a robot mower last year, I can honestly say it’s been months since I’ve used a traditional mower.

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And just like there are different types of yards, there are different types of robot mowers to care for them. Mowers typically need a boundary wire along the perimeter of the grass to stay within an area, while others come with an RTK antenna for satellite navigation.

But I’ve been testing the Eufy E15 Robot Mower, which requires neither of these features, and I’ve been pretty impressed with the technology behind it.

No boundary wire

I first saw the Eufy E15 at CES in January, and as a fan of the brand for security and robot vacuums, I was already looking forward to testing it.

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But what impressed me the most is that this mower does away with the requirements for boundary wire and antennas, instead relying on a combination of advanced sensors, cameras, and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to navigate your yard.

The Eufy E15 robot mower navigates much like a robot vacuum. This, I believe, is the future of robot mower technology. Ultimately, we’d like less invasiveness and more results from our smart devices. So, having a robot that autonomously mows your yard without worrying about placing an antenna just right or burying boundary wire along the edges of your property is ideal.

That said, such an efficient technology is neither advanced nor affordable enough to become the standard.

Struggled to mow my uneven lawn

While the Eufy E15’s mapping and obstacle avoidance technology is impressive, the robot struggled to mow my lawn efficiently. My backyard is fenced in, but there is a lot of uneven terrain, a couple of poorly defined garden beds, and a steep hill that leads to a wooded area at the back. There’s also a large deck under which some robot mowers have been trapped, and bushes along the sides of my house.

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My backyard is like an obstacle course for robot mowers. While the front yard is much simpler, it’s also unfenced, and I didn’t want to risk the Eufy E15 traveling over to mow my neighbor’s yard, so I set it up back.

Welp, my flowers

It took the Eufy E15 about two hours to map my entire yard, mainly because it maps by traveling around and scanning the area. Robot mowers with a buried wire use that to stay within a perimeter, while others that use RTK and GNSS require a well-placed antenna and for you to remotely steer them around their boundary.

The Eufy E15 uses neither of these technologies. It uses Visual Fusion Sensing and Decision (V-FSD), so it has to physically travel around your yard to see which areas are grassy and which should be ‘no-go’ zones. Then, the Eufy app saves a map of your yard, and you’re set to go, just like a robot vacuum.

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The Eufy app is the same app you use for Eufy Security cameras, which is very convenient, as I have a Eufy security system at home. Much like a robot vacuum, you can edit the app and set no-go zones, pathways, and grass-cutting zones.

Being able to set no-go zones makes it easier for the robot to avoid areas of my yard that aren’t very well defined, like the flower beds mentioned above and the hill leading up to the woods. Without manually adding these virtual boundaries, the robot mowed over the spring growth of my flowers and repeatedly got stuck on the steep hill.

Smart enough

My uneven yard does best with an AWD mower like the Mammotion Luba 2, but this Eufy robot mower is smart enough to find dips where it may get stuck to save on your map and avoid them each time it mows. I prefer not risking having to rescue it and being able to count on my mower not leaving behind bushy areas in my yard.

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The app allows you to customize most of the Eufy E15’s mowing abilities. You can set path directions, grass height, edge spacing, path spacing, travel and blade speed, schedules, rain detection, and the volume and language for the robot’s prompts. The Eufy E15 can also be controlled with the app like an RC car, and you can ring it to find it when you can’t physically see it.

ZDNET’s buying advice

The Eufy E15 robot mower is perfect for even-terrained, fenced-in yards. This is the perfect robot mower if you have a simple, relatively small grassy yard with no steep slopes and a physical perimeter around it. This is true even if your yard has a paved or concrete patio, trees, and well-defined garden beds.

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This mower is smart enough to avoid those obstacles and autonomously mark them as no-go zones in the Eufy app. It’s also capable of navigating around changing environments, like a pet that crosses in front of it, or around toys that weren’t on the yard the day before. It’s also proven smart enough to avoid going into the bushes around my home and even under the deck, which only the Mammotion Luba 2 has effectively avoided.