It’s a scorching afternoon in August 2024, with temps hovering at 101 degrees. I’m flat on my back, sweating under a 1970s Land Rover, trying to rescue a Segway Navimow. It turns out that the first rule of using a robot lawnmower is “don’t let anyone park on your lawn.”

Robot lawnmowers have been around for several decades, and with them the heady promise of spending the summer with your feet up, sipping a nice tall glass of something, while a robot mows your lawn. But it’s only in the past couple of years that they’ve become almost smart enough and cheap enough for me to try out.

New navigation tech means you probably won’t need to dig a trench around your lawn to lay guide wires (except, it turns out, in my yard), and while you can still spend $6,000 on a mower, you can now find one for under $1,000.

However, after three months of running four bots around my property, my advice is that – in all but a few scenarios – robot lawnmowers still aren’t worth your money.

If you have the right conditions and an endless supply of patience, a robot lawnmower might work for you. But if you are expecting a plu …

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