The Airseekers Tron ... it's an odd one, for sure. There are a few things that I find irritating, but then it'll go and surprise me with some stuff it can do really well, where even "better" or "more expensive" robomowers tend to struggle. I ran the mower in my neighbors' pristine yard that has a few more obstacles than mine, as well as my yard, which couldn't possibly be any more straightforward.
To start, I have to mention the front wheels. Between the pigeon-toed front end and the weird organic lines on an otherwise very robotic-looking machine, the wheels might be the first thing anyone notices.
The 30-degree toe-in front wheels are its biggest weakness, in my opinion. I know Airseekers says that it's a great design, but, in reality, it's absolutely not. Not in uneven terrain, at least. It's incredibly difficult to drive manually, which you have to do when you're creating work areas, channels, or no-go zones ... especially when you're trying to create fine-tuned areas. The faster you go, the easier it is, but it's still impossible to drive in a straight line. If you have one and you've been able to drive it perfectly straight, please let me know and teach me your Yoda-mower ways, for I can do it not.
But it's not just the fact that it's nearly impossible to drive straight – forget about manually mowing with the Tron, unless you like to be mad – it's also the fact that the machine is long, the rear wheels are what turn the machine, and even though they're omni-wheels up front, they still get hung up on every irregularity in your yard. Meaning, it doesn't turn very well sometimes. Even the instructions say to try avoiding making 90-degree angles in your maps when possible, and instead make curved corners.
I keep seeing reviews talking about "unique front wheels won't mess up your WET grass ..." Airseekers has specifically told me they don't recommend running the Tron in the rain. So naturally, I did it anyway. The Tron isn't particularly destructive to begin with – unless you're in soft/sandy/muddy soil, then expect your lawn to look like the 10+ handicap tee at the driving range – and I saw no real difference in the wet.
The package comes with an RTK – the tallest RTK I've ever seen, which is cool because I could put it right next to my privacy fence and it clears it. That being said, it also comes with the absolute shortest cabling for the RTK and charging station, by far, of all the mowers I've tested ... like, 3 feet (just under a meter). But, the Tron also has NRTK built in, so you've got options. And another buuut ... RTK maps aren't compatible with NRTK maps! So you have to choose one or the other, and you can't have both working in glorious harmony like I tried to do (because I think it would be the best of both worlds, right?).
And for clarity's sake, NRTK is a cell (4G)- and Wi-Fi-based positioning system that most companies seem to be leaning towards lately instead of RTK, which is where you stick a GPS antenna in your yard somewhere.
Airseekers' NRTK is complimentary, too, but I can't find any documentation on if it's free forever or for how long. Other companies usually include a year or more of free 4G before you'll have to spring ~US$50 per year or so with T-Mobile or whatever.
The app sucks. No mincing words whatsoever. The app is simply not good. The worst part of it is that it flat-out lacks communication. It's like the quiet kid at school who does all the work, never says a word, doesn't show their process, doesn't tell you when they’re finished, and then suddenly turns in an assignment that took way longer than expected but still somehow earns a 90%. Like, where did that come from? Or it could be the total opposite: the kid doesn't show up at home after school, so you put out an APB, ready to file a missing persons report, only to find him hours later sitting in after-school detention when you never even knew he'd gotten in trouble for making out with a tree on the playground. (We'll get to that in a minute). That's the app.
Not to mention, it's strictly in metric ... I wasn't born with that DLC installed, so I've had to memorize stuff like "70-mm cut height" is actually 7 cm, then I'll hold my fingers up to guestimate what that might look like ... "Yeah, right around 2.8 inches!" Or "square meters" is a smidge over "multiply it by 10 but less than 11." I totally understand that SAE is vastly inferior in many ways and makes very little sense to the entire world, but it's what I know. I will say that "miles per gallon" is a MUCH better metric than "L/100 km." That's just weird.
I ran the standard disk on my neighbor's lawn before swapping over to the large disk blade for my lawn. The standard disk is 8.66 inches (220 mm) in diameter and comes installed in the unit, as does this cute little shroud that goes around it that I assume has a purpose. The large disk is 11.81 inches (300 mm) and requires the removal of the shroud.
Both use a double-blade setup, unlike any other mower I've tested in the past. That helps with mulching. The Mammotion Luba series, in my experience, has been one of the most refined and polished setups to date. But it uses a single blade stack attached to its deck(s), which results in mostly mulched grass, but will leave clumps in its wake, especially if the grass is long. The Tron has yet to leave a single clump of grass in the eight or so weeks I've been tasking it into the wild. Literally, not one. The stacked blade setup, paired with its weird propeller suction, minces blades of grass into what seems like particles. Yes, mounted above the cutting disk is a prop, like you'd see on the front of a Cessna, that lifts the grass for a neater cut. That's pretty cool.
Back to the whole non-communicating aspect of the mower/app: when the Tron is in the field – in my case, saving me HUNDREDS of dollars per month – and you pull up the app, it keeps you updated on progress made. The moment the Tron hits the charger or comes to a stop for any reason, all progress info screeches to a halt and simply disappears, like it hasn't even left the dock yet. It's pretty maddening.
It'll miss lines of grass fairly often, but what's peculiar is that it mostly seems like it knows it ... then, once the Tron is about 99% done, it'll go back and clean up some or all of the missed spots. It's 100% not a human-brain thought process, which makes it exceedingly frustrating to watch it work. But if you have the ability to just walk away, then come back a million hours later to see if it finished or not – because the app ain't gonna tell ya – and it's done and docked, you'll be really pleased with the results most of the time ... sometimes you'll send it back out for a second pass.
I currently have three robomowers taking care of various zones on my property, running every day to keep up, so if it misses some, I know it'll get knocked out in a day or three, so I don't worry too much about it.
And if you're big into stripes, don't expect perfection with the Tron in terms of striping your lawn. Sure, it kind of leaves stripes-ish, but like I was saying about "impossible to drive straight ..."
The mower has five cameras, but somehow still got a stick in its eye. I have several low-hanging live oak trees. Some touch the ground, and the Tron will go give them little kisses, but some are close to the ground without touching. I think this confuses the mower enough that it'll ram its camera directly into the pointy end of a branch. Maybe 300 degrees of vision is too many degrees?
Therefore, marking no-go zones is important. I don't know if you saw my Mova review where I nearly hucked the mower into the street to let it fight off traffic – or not – but the Tron has a few obstacle-avoidance issues itself. It likes to kiss things first before asking permission, or just going around. I've jumped out in front of it a few times – with my toes pointed away, of course – and half the time it'll give me a little love tap before it decides I'm too big to mow. A few times, even in areas that I'd defined as no-go zones, it's crawled up onto an obstacle just enough to get itself stuck or hung up on its funky front wheels. I have a fountain in front of my house that has walls taller than its vision is, and it'll bash into it repeatedly before simply giving up entirely and going to sleep right then and there – without notifying me, of course. So its AI obstacle avoidance is questionable, at best.
My new rule of thumb for mowers that don't have LiDAR: "When in doubt, no-go it out."
And I wouldn't recommend mowing at night because it doesn't have a proper headlight, and if it drops RTK or NRTK for whatever reason, it'll rely solely on VSLAM navigation – Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, i.e., its cameras – which can be problematic when it's too dark. I've tried it ... and it ended up in a no-go zone proper, nearly mowing down my neighbor's tomato plants.
It also seems like the two rear drive wheels are a bit underpowered. Sometimes it'll just struggle to flip a U-ey on grass it's already cut. Then sometimes it'll chuck some bizarre error ... this is the first mower I've used that will do a sort of self-diagnostic turned to asking for advice. Like, "motor controllers abnormal, confirm?" And you'll have to confirm – I guess? – in the app. Am I giving it permission to have abnormal motor controllers? What's happening?!
Airseekers is a Chinese brand, after all – as is dang near every cool, smart, innovative product we can or can't have these days – and I often find translations don't always add up when reading manuals or delving into apps (C'mon, 'murica! Get with the times!).
I feel like I said a lot of bad things about the Tron. I really didn't intend for this to be a negative review. I actually like the thing once it's fully set up. It certainly has bugs, as do ALL things I've tested, but once you have this thing dialed in, 99% of the time it's just going to go out there and knock out your yard while doing a really good job of it. Especially if you just use the scheduler, then you don't even have to look at the app anymore.
And one of those things I mentioned earlier that it does really well, better than other mowers: It absolutely knocks down the tall stuff that other mowers refuse to touch. I'm not sure if that's a feature, or if it's because of its questionable AI vision, but either way, it does it and I like it.
Airseekers says the little mower is good for up to 0.6 acres (about 2,428 sq m) PER CHARGE. Yeah, about a three-hour runtime on a single charge. That's pretty good. I have the Tron working on about a quarter-acre section (~1,100 sq m) split up into four zones, and it seems to be doing a good job. At my neighbor's house, it was trimming a fifth of an acre (~819 sq m), but with far more obstacles in its path. It would take the Tron all day to do his yard. Mine is pretty straightforward with almost zero go-arounds, so it takes less time to do mine. Airseekers says the mower will handle up to 65° slopes, but I don't have anywhere to test that, and frankly, I'll believe it when I see it.
All in all, the US$1,299 Tron is a great little mower. The app needs a lot of work and you have to take your time mapping everything out, but once you get through it, it'll just go out there and quietly do a good job. You'll still need the string trimmer, of course, but otherwise you'll have freed yourself up a day or more per week. And at it's price point, a whole lotta money in the long run!
Oh, and it attracts a lot of attention. Far more than any other robomower I've tested so far. So be prepared for people stopping in front of your house, taking pictures and asking questions about it.
Product Page: Airseekers Tron or Amazon
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