You might know Chinese company Roborock from its robot cleaners – mops, vacuums, robot arms that pick up stray shoes – but it has branched out, turning its attention outside the house. The company has a series of mowers that range from the entry-level offerings to the more advanced – and expensive – options.
The RockMow Z120 Lidar is more at the premium end of the range. Resembling a mini tank, it will barrel over challenging terrain in pursuit of the perfect grass height. It’s just a shame that its full potential to tackle slopes, bumps and other obstacles was relatively unchallenged in my suburban garden. The worst it had to contend with was a mini pool, a few footballs and a see-saw that was dragged to various positions around the garden.
I am no stranger to robot mowers. They have become an invaluable part of my garden care, taking over the tedious job of mowing so I don’t have to. But they have their limitations. Some require boundary wires to map their routes, and without them they can’t operate. Others use cameras, but that means you need a fence or some other type of boundary to make sure the mower stays within your property, rather than setting off on an epic journey that lasts until the battery runs out.
Roborock’s RockMow Z120 Lidar doesn’t have either of these issues. You create a virtual map on your first go around the garden, guiding it around the boundary of where you want to mow. It is similar to mapping your home for your robot vacuum; you send the robot around to get the lie of the land before dividing, customising and renaming different areas.
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In this case, though, you need to take the robot on a tour of the garden boundary. Think of it like a giant remote-controlled car, except the control is on your phone, and the “car” will eventually mulch your lawn. You can add a second mapped area – if you have a lawn that is split by a driveway for example – and link them on the app so when you schedule your grass-cutting sessions your mower will simply cross the passage you have created and carry on with the second area.
It sounds ideal. Who wouldn’t like to steer a high-tech mini tank around their garden? However, it is a little bit more difficult than you would think. Controlling the mower is a bit finicky with the default on-screen joystick, and it took a couple of goes to get the map fully completed. It was frustrating for the app to throw up an error and make you restart the process. It would have been easier to do it with the dual joysticks, which is hidden away in the settings.
Once the map is done, however, you don’t need to touch it again, unless you want to add an area or designate a no-go zone. No boundary wires, no messing about, just a familiar interface and sensors that demonstrate their strength when faced with a garden full of children’s toys at the height of summer.
Before setting it off, I enabled the safety protections: rain protection to ensure the mower returns to the charging station when it detects moisture; wildlife friendly mode to stop it operating during hours when it is likely to disturb nocturnal wildlife; and obstacle avoidance that covers everything from the odd child’s toy in its path to people.
The latter is controlled by the smart pause setting. If the mover detects what it thinks is a person nearby, it will stop working until they move out of range. This is a particularly useful safety feature if you have young children or pets – although it is no substitution for proper supervision, of course.
The one thing robot mowers struggle with is the edges and borders. No matter how close you try to get, there is always a strip of grass left behind. The RockMow hasn’t got it completely solved, but the PreciEdge module – an optional extra – will get a bit closer than the standard blades. In an ideal scenario, it will cut as close as 3cm from the edge of the boundary, which means all you will need is a quick trim every once in a while.
Some of the early niggles around navigation were ironed out by software updates that made improvements to edging, for example. Updates are periodically pushed to the device; within the first couple of weeks of use there were two that needed to be installed. The second took several tries to install, as the update kept failing at the final hurdle. You can’t use the mower while the update is installing, or do anything meaningful with it until it downloads and installs.
Overall the mower did a good job, even around the edges before the edging module was installed. As with all these devices, the more you use them, the better jobs they do.
Gradually reducing the cutting height will help the mower get to grips with your garden without overly stressing the blades or the battery life. And doing it regularly means there won’t be any long grass clippings to take up.
Good
Reassuringly chunky, the Z120 will navigate gardens of up to 2,000m. It can handle slopes of up to 39 degrees, so should cope with most Irish gardens, unless that garden is on the side of a mountain.
It cut consistently and didn’t take too long to complete the full circuit of the garden.
When it missed a bit – a low hanging shrub made it skip around a chunk of grass – the ability to remote operate the mower took care of it. For safety reasons, the mower stops if you are not within close distance while operating it.
Bad
Roborock has demonstrated its prowess in robot vacuums, but it is a relatively new entrant to the robot mower business. The Z120 Lidar model in particular commands a premium price, which might be a big ask for some people.
Obstacle images failed to show up in my app, despite being enabled. Default controls were not the easiest to use – switching to dual joysticks improved things.
Everything else
The app allows you to customise the cutting pattern for your lawn. Maybe you’d like the classic vertical stripes, but you can also go diagonally, or just skew it by a few degrees. Sadly, crop circles weren’t an option initially, but Roborock has since added custom pattern support.
Verdict
A sturdy contender in the garden automation battle.
