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I’ve always hated mowing the lawn. I remember the first time my father asked me to mow the lawn, passing the torch from father to son in a ritual as old as lawn mowers themselves. (I suspect the first person to use a lawn mower’s first thought was, “Man, I can’t wait until my kid is old enough to make them do this.”) Parents look forward to that day because they also hate mowing the lawn. I vividly remember the horrified look on my dad’s face when he gazed upon my completed work. The patchy nightmare that I created of the backyard necessitated that he reclaim the task he had so joyfully handed off. If only the Navimow i2 LiDAR Robotic Lawn Mower existed in my youth, this whole messy affair could have been avoided.
I’d known about the existence of robotic lawn mowers for a while, and to say I was skeptical would be an understatement. I’d resigned myself to the idea that mowing the lawn is just one of those Sisyphean chores that you accept with home ownership. As I unboxed the Navimow i2 LiDAR Robotic Lawn Mower, my skepticism remained wholly intact. It reminded me of a large radio-controlled car; something that does not seem like it would be sufficient to tackle the average suburban lawn. I flipped it over to examine the blade, and was shocked that rather than the typical large spinning blade you would see on the underside of a traditional lawn mower, there were six small blades that looked like razors.
After establishing a home for the charging dock and setting the boundary of my yard, I was finally ready to put the Navimow i2 LiDAR Robotic Lawn Mower to work. I told it to mow, and off it went. I watched it for a moment. More importantly, I listened to it for a moment. “I don’t think it’s working,” I said to my wife. “Why not?” she asked. “It’s not making any noise. Every lawn mower I’ve ever used is louder than a boar chewing on a mouthful of bees,” I retorted. “A boar chewing on a mouthful of bees? Where do you come up with this?” she questioned. It was in the middle of this, the witty repartee of a couple married for ten years, that we both noticed the distinctive line of cut grass that the Navimow was leaving behind it.
It was actually working... and very quietly. The mower clocks in at a soothing 59 decibels, which is about as loud as a running refrigerator. If I impart nothing else, let it be known how exceptionally quiet this machine is. I’ve never heard any electric lawn tool work more quietly.
It was amazing watching the Navimow i2 LiDAR Robotic Lawn Mower work. We have a complicated yard, and it slowly but surely tackled the whole thing precisely and efficiently. Part of my concern before the unboxing was how this thing would know where my yard ends and the rest of the world begins (something my neighbor’s kid seems to forget whenever he hits a wiffle ball into our yard). The first thing you do in the process is to set the boundary of your yard. Navimow offers two ways to do that: you can either let it map the yard automatically or manually set the boundary. As I mentioned, our yard is complicated, so I chose the manual route. This had me driving the lawn mower around the edge of the yard, using my phone as a controller to tell the robot where it can and can’t mow.
Once you have your boundary set up, you can then tell it if there are any permanent “Off-limit islands” in the middle of the zone. This is great for telling the lawn mower about the trees or gardens in the yard, so it knows to keep a wide berth. It also allows you to draw channels between different parts of your yard that the mower won’t need to mow on (such as a driveway or a path) but that it can still use to access another grassy area. Essentially, you get to set the limits of where your mower goes.
What sets the Navimow i2 LiDAR Robotic Lawn Mower apart is its dual-vision system, which ensures your lawn is mowed as precisely and safely as possible. It employs both LiDAR and VisionFence technologies to navigate your yard as it mows, constantly scanning for obstacles with a 0.4-inch precision. LiDAR is a technology that emits laser pulses and calculates distances by measuring the time it takes for the light to return.
The i2 LiDAR system sends out approximately 200,000 points per second, which gives the system an ultra-detailed view of your yard, even in nighttime and shady settings. VisionFence uses AI to detect over 200 common obstacles the mower may encounter, enabling it to plan ahead and adapt its route to avoid them.
My backyard has some giant, mostly buried rocks that I would always have to navigate around when mowing with a traditional mower. The Navimow saw these with its robotic eyes and deftly worked its way around them. The same is true of any obstacle that may be in your yard, from rogue toys left out by the kids to a squirrel that may have ventured into the mower’s path. You can rest assured that this mower has both the ability to detect it and also avoid it. Squirrels rejoice. My other concern with a self-propelled mower was that it just wouldn’t have the power to navigate the terrain of our yard. It is uneven in many spots, and the backyard is mostly uphill. Those fears were completely unfounded. The Navimow i2 LiDAR Robotic Lawn Mower has spiked wheels that look like something out of Mad Max. Every time it encountered a slightly uneven area, it rocked back and forth for a second, adjusting its center of gravity until the wheels caught and it could maneuver through it. Frankly, it handled these spots better than I do with a traditional mower.
Before the Navimow arrived, I imagined I’d have to bring a battery to charge in my basement, much like my traditional mower. I was surprised when it came with a charging dock that you plug in and just leave at the end of your yard. Upon observing how the mower functions, though, it made sense. If you have a particularly large yard and it runs out of charge before it completes the job, it will return to the dock to recharge before heading back out to finish. When the job is complete, it returns to the dock to charge for the next time you send it out, whether that’s by manual launch or on a schedule you set. It’s designed to always be self-sufficient and ready to roll out for the next time you mow. I found myself concerned about leaving this mower charging in the corner of my yard, given the torrential downpours we’ve had this summer. Those fears were unfounded, as the mower is rated IP66, meaning it is dust-tight and protected against powerful jets of water.
My only quibble with the mower is that it takes a long time to mow, especially in Precision mode. The good news is that it doesn’t matter. The Navimow i2 LiDAR Robotic Lawn Mower is designed to work in the background of your life, so your lawn is magically mowed with no effort from you. In fact, it’s mowing my yard right now as I type this. It’s 93 degrees outside with an alarmingly high UV index. While the mower is out there braving the elements for the sake of my yard, I’m sitting in an air-conditioned room telling you about the miracle it’s performing. If anything goes wrong (which has only happened once due to a poorly drawn initial boundary on my behalf and a devious curb), you’ll receive a notification from the app.
The price tag on this model comes in at $1599 (currently on sale for $1,400), which is definitely a jump up from a conventional push mower. However, if you consider that this is essentially giving you the same benefits you’d get from having a lawn care company come and mow for you every week, that cost quickly becomes worth it. The Navimow i2 LiDAR Robotic Lawn Mower is the type of product people of a certain age dreamed about. We would imagine a future where robots took over all the chores that we hated so we could do way more important things like taking a nap or playing video games. That dream has now been made reality. Navimow has taken the “man” out of the manual labor. Kick back with a lemonade and fire up the PlayStation… the Navimow i2 LiDAR Robotic Lawn Mower’s got you covered.
