Mammotion’s Luba 2 is a feature rich wire free robot lawnmower, with centimetre accurate enhanced GPS; smart obstacle avoidance with ultrasonic radar, a 3D vision camera and a physical bumper; advanced off-road capabilities; 400mm cutting width with 8 blades on 2 spinning plates and efficient mowing route algorithms that can even print artwork and text right onto your lawn!
I’ll run through its setup and thoroughly test all its features to see if this is the right solution for you! By the end of the video I really hope you’ll have enough information to make an informed buying decision.
So let’s take a closer look!
Overview and initial setup
In Europe, Mammotion sells 3 models based on your lawn size. I have the 3000 version to mow lawns up to 3000㎡ but they also do a 1000㎡ and 5000㎡ version.
All three models have an adjustable cutting height between 25m and 75mm (1.0″ – 2.7″).
In the US and Canada Mammotion also do a 10000㎡ model and they also offer an H variant with each model for taller grass between 56mm and 100mm (2.2″ – 4″)
The mower comes well packaged with everything you need in the box, including the mower itself, the charging station and the RTK antenna. There’s also one set of spare blades and a quick start guide. You can download a full user manual and there are videos guides for installation which I’d recommend watching before you get started.
The mower requires basic assembly. You need to attach the camera module and the bumper and install the security key around the back.
The charging station and antenna installation requires a little more time and thought. You want the antenna to have a clear view of the sky to pick up as many satellites as possible. And the charging station needs to be on relatively flat ground. The base is secured with the supplied 5 plastic stakes. If at all possible I’d recommend installing the charging station in a location with a decent WiFi signal. Apart from anything else this makes firmware updates easier.
Follow the instructions to assemble the mounting pole, attach the antenna and route the cable. The antenna has a ground stake that fits the back corner of the charging station. Make sure you also install the protective metal plate. Again follow the instructions for routing the antenna cable underneath the charging station. You’ll need soft ground for the ground stake and the charging station’s plastic stakes.
Plug in the AC adapter which powers the charging station and RTK module. Connecting, routing and tidying up the cabling is probably the fiddliest part of the installation, but it still only takes a few minutes.
You do also need to work out how you’re going to protect the AC adapter from the elements. The adapter does have an IP67 weatherproof rating, but I’d still try to have it indoors or contained in a dry box. It’s a shame the charging station doesn’t have a weatherproof AC adapter built in – you could then easily run power from an outside IPX rated outlet, without having to protect the adapter.
Now you can place the mower in the base station to charge it. The mower’s side lights flash red whilst it’s charging and constant red when it’s finished charging. The charging station’s LED flashes green when charging and constant green when it’s finished charging.
You’re now ready to control the mower via the Mammotion app which I found mostly intuitive and easy to use. You do need to create a login in order to use the app. Once logged in you can add the Luba 2. Turn on the Luba 2 with a long press of the power button and follow the on-screen instructions to connect via Bluetooth and configure your WiFi network. Most likely you’ll be prompted to download the latest firmware.
Then you can create a map of your garden. This is where this new generation of robot lawn mowers stand out. You don’t need to install any boundary wires. You remote control the mower around the perimeter of your garden to construct a map using GPS. Typically GPS wouldn’t be accurate enough for this, but using RTK or Real Time Kinematic positioning borrowed from land surveying, GPS accuracy is dramatically enhanced. It compares GPS location data between the stationary GPS antenna and the moving mower to enhance location accuracy from metres to just centimetres. We’ll see how well it works shortly.
To create your first map, tap on the lawnmower in the app, and then Map. Then tap Create | Area and manually control the mower around the perimeter of your garden. You can get pretty close to the edge of your garden’s boundary but Mammotion recommends keeping the mower at least 10 cm away from any drops.
You can use the Schedule function to create a regular mowing task. Weekly, on a specified date or on a fixed interval, although Mammotion recommends not mowing the lawn more often than once every 5 or 6 days in summer. You can tap on Once to start mowing immediately after configuration, or back on the main page, tap on Mow, set the cutting height – I’d recommend starting off at least 50mm – and tap on Start.
Performance
I like the design of the Luba 2 and it feels well made. It is pretty heavy at just under 18 kg with its integrated 207Wh battery. All models use the same battery except the 1000 models which only have a 97Wh battery. The larger battery takes around 150 minutes to charge and typically will mow for around 3 hours. If it does run out of charge, it’ll return to its charging base, recharge and then continue from where it left off.
It’s a standard NMC Li-ion battery, not the longer lasting LFP battery. Perhaps because NMC batteries are typically lighter for the same capacity.
The Luba 2 has All Wheel Drive (AWD) with omnidirectional wheels up front for tight turns and less damage to the grass according to Mammotion. There’s also active suspension arms for rough terrain.
Underneath the mower has two spinning cutting plates each with 4 replaceable razor blades for a 400 mm cutting width.
Over the last 4 months I’ve left the mower running on a smaller and then a larger lawn. Both lawns are pretty rough and had grass longer than the supposed limit of 75 mm on the first cut.
Overall cutting performance was excellent. The mower coped with uneven ground and even quite steep gradients admirably.
And because the Luba 2 uses AI to plan its mowing route, rather than the random drunken walk pattern you get with cheaper robot mowers, it cuts in straight lines with a professional looking finish.
You have tons of customisation for the cutting pattern as well as the spacing between two cutting paths, the speed of cut and even the cutting path angle, but I imagine most people will stick with the defaults which work fine.
It cuts the perimeter of the lawn nicely too. For the best results you do need to take care mapping the precise edge of the lawn.
On a few occasions I did manage to overload at least one of the cutting disk motors. You can see any issues the mower has experienced in the app. But this was really down to user error and me testing the limits of the mower. You just need to be careful you don’t try to cut too low if the grass is long, slightly wet and the terrain is very rough.
The Luba 2 does a very good job of returning to its base station but you do need to make sure it has enough space approaching the charging station to turn around.
The mower is also very quiet – you can barely hear it unless you’re very close.
For my small lawn at home I set up a simple map to test its basic functionality, but in the new property we’ve been at for the last couple of months with a larger garden, I could experiment with some of the more advanced features of the mower. In this property I had the mower on the patio and could set a path from the patio to the lawn. It also had to climb a fairly steep slope – not quite the Luba 2’s limit of 38°, but it still managed it with ease.
I also added various no-go zones around the greenhouse and other obstructions in the garden I wanted to exclude from the map.
It’s very straightforward – on the Map page you choose No-go zone and guide the mower around the area you want to exclude.
To create a non-cutting route or Channel back to the charging station, on the Map page tap on Channel and guide the mower back along your preferred route from the lawn to the charging station. If you have multiple lawns you can also create multiple cutting areas and join these together with channels.
It’s very easy to see all the areas and channels you’ve created and delete any you no longer want.
I also tested the new pattern feature, where you can create a design or custom text to “print” into your lawn. You will need a big lawn for anything more than a few letters, to account for the width of the mower. I selected a star and scaled it to fit on the lawn. This was also a great test for the RTK positioning since the mower needs to accurately repeat any design you create.
You can see the star came out pretty well. After maybe 6 or 7 cuts if you look closely it’s not perfect, but with its sharp angles this is quite a tricky test cut.
This lawn printing feature may seem a little gimmicky, but it does have some interesting potential. You could create a perfect circular wildflower meadow in your garden for example.
Overall The RTK positioning was very accurate in my tests – plenty accurate enough for setting a fairly tight perimeter around your garden and any obstructions. But you could improve accuracy by mounting the RTK antenna higher up, on the wall of your house perhaps, using the optional RTK wall mount kit. There’s a separate power supply for the RTK module in the Luba 2 box or there’s an optional Solar Panel.
It’s worth mentioning that both the RTK antenna and mower need a clear view of satellites for the best GPS positioning, but they don’t need line of sight between each other – they communicate at low frequency that can penetrate buildings and obstacles. If the mower does lose GPS signal temporarily, say underneath a tree, it can use its 3D vision system to help with positioning although I found this difficult to confirm in my tests.
I did test the 3D vision camera with various obstacles, and it did a good job avoiding them, both stationary objects, people and animals, including this curious cat. You do have various options for obstacle avoidance using a combination of the 3D vision camera, the ultrasonic radar sensors on the mower’s sides and the bumper.
I mostly left it on Slow touch which will slow down after detecting an obstacle, and bypass it after a collision with the front bumper.
You can also use the 3D vision camera for a live view of your cutting, which at first seems again a little gimmicky. But if you have decent WiFi in your garden this could work well as a mobile security camera when you’re away from home! Which is a good segway to the built in anti-theft system. An alarm will sound if you lift the Luba 2, and you can track its location in the app, but only if you’ve installed an optional 4G SIM card around the back. Mammotion also suggests attaching an AirTag to track the device. Additionally you can’t use the app to control the Luba 2 unless you’re the original owner or a permitted user which you can set up in the app under Sharing.
There’s a few other useful features on the Luba 2. There’s a rain sensor on the top of the unit. If set up in the app, the mower won’t cut the lawn until this dries out.
You can also use Amazon’s Alexa to control the mower with voice control. And finally you can directly manually control and mow an area of the lawn via Bluetooth.
Maintenance of the Luba 2 is fairly straightforward. Mammotion recommends changing the blades every three months or 150 hours of cutting. After 4 months of fairly heavy use the original blades still look pretty good but it’s simple to change them – you just need a Phillips screwdriver.
Grass does get caught underneath the blades but I didn’t find this an issue – when the grass dries, the speed of the spinning plates ejects most of it. If it bothers you, there are 3D prints to get around this.
I also tried to clean away trimmings from the base regularly, which can be a little awkward – the blade guards get in the way.
The mower and charging station do have an IPX6 rating, and the RTK mobile has an IPX7 waterproof rating.
And I also have the optional Garage for extra protection. But I’d still recommend following Mammotion’s website instructions for winter storage of the Luba 2 – at least where I live on Dartmoor in the UK. With all the damp weather we’ve had, even over summer I’ve had to give the contacts on the mower and charge station a good clean for reliable charging.
Conclusions
Overall I’ve been very impressed with the Luba 2. I didn’t test the original Luba, but this definitely feels like a second generation product. I had very few issues over hours of testing. The app was easy to use, setup was straightforward and most of the time it just worked and did a great job cutting the lawn with zero effort after the initial setup.
I did manage to overload its motors a couple of times setting the cutting height too low when the grass was too long, probably a little damp, and the lawn uneven. And on a couple of occasions I had issues charging the mower – I needed to give the contacts on the mower and charging station a good clean. But this was mostly down to me.
One area that is difficult to test is longevity and the Luba 2 only comes with a 2 year warranty – half that of the EcoFlow Blade I looked at last year. Also the Blade has a removable long lasting LFP battery, compared to the Luba 2’s standard NMC integrated battery. I checked with Mammotion how much a battery replacement would be out of warranty and was quoted around £300 plus the one-way shipping cost to their repair centre.
The Luba 2 is now set up in a 3000m² garden, replacing an expensive ride-on mower. I will report back next year to see how the mower has fared, so make sure you’re subscribed to my YouTube channel if you don’t want to miss that update – that’s the best way to get notified when I release new content.
These wire free mower’s aren’t cheap, but if you have a larger lawn and start comparing them to the cost of ride-on mowers together with their associated running costs, or lawn mowing services, they start to make more sense. Even comparing them to a cordless lawn mower like Milwaukee’s offering for example they don’t seem so expensive – and of course you still have to find time to mow your lawn with a cordless mower!
Don’t forget to take a look at my YouTube video at the top of the page, and again please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I’m releasing videos every week on the latest technology and how to get the most out of it. If you tap the bell icon when you subscribe you’ll get a notification as soon as I release a video, and there’ll be a link to my site here for the written article. YouTube is also the best place to leave a comment. I read all of them and respond to as many as I can!
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