It's 2025, and we have AI. We have humanoid robots that can do front flips. We have autonomous delivery vans and taxis. And yet, the craziest thing to me is having a little autonomous robot doing my yard work.
So far, I'd only seen one of these little grass-clippy creatures out in the wild, slowly and silently making its way across a yard a couple of blocks from the new house I just moved into. I admit it, I ogled.
So when I was offered the chance to review the Mammotion Luba 2, you'd better believe I was like "Heck yeah!" It had been just over a month since I'd moved here, and I hadn't yet purchased a mower or anything of the sort. And the previous tenants? Let's just say, "they didn't prioritize the yard" while they were here.
My grass was patchy but quite long, growing in sandy soil. The kind of terrain sand spurs thrive in, especially when the grounds aren't taken care of. It's not an "easy" yard or layout, to say the least.
Unboxing the Luba 2 was pretty fun. It comes very nicely and securely packaged. Definitely a 5 on the AR:SE scale (Apple Rating: Standard of Excellence). That's my made-up packaging scale, where a Bazooka Joe is a 2, Rolex is a 10, and of course, Apple products are an 11. It took me about 10 minutes to mount the camera and front bumper.
Setting up the RTK and the charging base station wasn't terribly difficult either. Finding a place where the RTK would have clear access to the sky and power was the hardest part, frankly. It's an older house that didn't prioritize external electrical outlets. The RTK has a shorter cable that can plug directly into the charging station, or it has a long cable option to plug into power separately in case the RTK is installed anywhere but next to the base station.
Once I got those two dialed in, it was off to the races.
It took me about 10 minutes to figure out the controls and what to do. The app is fairly intuitive, even if a little annoying with the many warnings and info bubbles it throws at you while setting it up. I'm generally not one to read the instructions first, and tend to dive in until I get stuck.
It told me that I needed to make a map of my yard, and to do so, I could either manually drive Mean Mowin' Machine (as that's what I'd named the Luba 2 AWD in the app) along the perimeter of the area I wanted cut, or I could just hit "auto" and let it figure it out itself. My back yard is somewhat complicated with trees, flower beds, paver stones and all that fun stuff, so I opted to show it the perimeter manually.
All that being said, my first outing with the Luba 2 AWD was a true test of robot versus neglected yard, and frankly, I was quite surprised.
That was about four weeks ago. Since then, I've become somewhat of a neighborhood hero ... or weirdo?
I have 14,445.2-sq-ft (1,341.7-sq-m) over 10 zones mapped out for the little Luba that could. That's just a hair over one-third of an acre, but it feels like so much more. Included zones are the vacant lots – remaining evidence of Hurricane Harvey – that bookend my block, my neighbors across the street, the easement a block over, and, of course, my front and backyard plus the easement behind my house.
I intend to keep adding more until the little mower simply refuses. The furthest point from the RTK station out to "area 9" is 271 ft (82.6 m) away, and the Luba 2 hasn't so much as hiccuped.
The app optimistically tells me that it'll take 3 hours and 24 minutes to complete all 10 zones with my settings of 2.2-inch (5.6-cm) cutting height at 1.3 ft (40 cm) per second, but I've learned to add about 10% to what the app says. I could speed it up to 2 ft (61 cm) per second, but it seems like it does a better job of getting every bit of grass when moving slower.
I could probably knock it all out myself with a push mower in half that time or less. But … do I really want to? I live on the Texas Gulf Coast, where 95 °F (35 °C) days actually feel like 109 °F (42.8 °C) and it doesn't really cool down at night. It just gets more humid. Even now, as I write this at 10 am on an unusually beautiful Sunday morning, it's 89 °F (32 °C) but "feels like 95 °F" because of the relative heat index.
So no, I really don't want to do it myself. Especially when the Mean Mowin' Machine will do the job for me (and my neighbors) with little to no complaint.
I say "little to no complaint" because I've had to rescue the capable little machine a few times. I've purposely pitted the Luba 2 against challenging conditions like sand, drainage ditches, overgrown weeds, tight squeezes, and maze-like scenarios chock full of obstacles. Whenever the Luba 2 has encountered an issue it can't (or won't) overcome, it politely sends a push notification to my phone and awaits my help.
Over the last month, it has mowed 17.44 miles (28.07 km) in 33 hours and 22 minutes. It's been "stuck" about a dozen times. Only twice was it actually stuck-stuck, when it high-centered itself. Even AWD won't save you if you're high-centered. Once, it thought the gap between my car and the fence was too tight to fit (I mean, it had at least a couple of inches on either side). I didn't even have to get off the couch. I fired up the app and put it in FPV mode (where you can see what it sees through the camera) and drove it to its destination like a remote control car. The other times were instances where it thought it might be stuck in sand after struggling to turn around, but all I had to do was get within Bluetooth range and manually drive it forward a foot or so, then hit "resume" in the app.
Not bad at all, in my opinion. And even better, Mammotion released a firmware update a week ago ... I'm not sure what it did exactly, but it hasn't been stuck a single time since then. I've even expanded one area in my neighbor's yard that was outright treacherous, so I'd purposely avoided it before. The update hasn't let me down yet. From what I gather, Mammotion is continually making improvements and updates to the app and firmware, so you won't feel like your rig is outdated.
Prior to the firmware update, my review was going to be something along the lines of "If you have a well-manicured yard and great grass, the Luba 2 AWD is near perfection. But if you have a less-than-stellar yard, it's still pretty good if you avoid the gnarly spots."
Since the firmware update, I've been pushing the mower even harder, trying to find faults, and I'm coming up mostly empty. I did notice that the channels I have for the bot to get from zone to zone are now all off by a few inches. Instead of running cleanly along the edge of my patio to get to the front yard, it now straddles the pavers and the yard. Easy fix to just remap the channel though.
Bot specs:
- The 41-lb (18.6-kg) Luba 2 AWD 3000HX is 27.2 inches (69.1 cm) long, 20.2 inches (51.3 cm) wide, and stands a foot (30.5 cm) tall, with a 15.7-inch (39.9-cm) cutting width.
- 10-position adjustable cutting height between 2.2 inches (5.6 cm) and 4 inches (10.2 cm), with six pivoting razor blades on each of the two cutting discs, powered by a 165-watt cutting motor that mulches grass.
- Powered by a 22-V, 12-Ah lithium-ion battery that runs up to 190 minutes or roughly 10,800 square feet (0.25 acres / 1,003 sq m) in ideal conditions. Recharge takes about two hours (if needed, the Luba will return to charge and resume mowing without requiring intervention).
- Capable of handling slopes up to 80% (38.6 degrees).
- Multi-zones management handles up to 30 mowing areas.
- Intelligent obstacle avoidance recognizes over 120 object types (people, toys, pets, posts, etc ... but not poop(?), as one commenter asked here).
- 4G (one year of free service via a T-Mobile SIM card (US$50 to renew for a year), Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi connectivity with GPS tracking.
- It uses UltraSense AI Vision and RTK for navigation and obstacle avoidance with an ultrasonic radar, a physical bumper, and a headlight.
- IPX6-rated waterproofing with a rain sensor (it will mow in the rain if you tell it to, otherwise it'll return to base if it's raining).
I'm in a fairly low-traffic and safe neighborhood. I'm not at all worried about the Luba 2 being stolen as it traipses around the neighborhood. Even so, the mower can be tracked if it were to suddenly disappear, as it has built-in 4G connectivity and GPS.
Because the little mower has to cross two streets to reach some of the zones I have mapped around my neighborhood, I've been more concerned about it being run over. I always watch it leave, but often forget about it when it returns after completing its task. So far, so good.
In my usual micro-manager state, I'll always go out and inspect its work after completion. It's always neat stripes up and down whatever zone I'd had it assigned to. I have the Luba set to "optimal path," which, for some reason, isn't always the same path. Regardless, you can orient your stripes or checkerboard pattern in any way you want with the app and it'll do as it's told.
I've seen mentions that you can mow artwork into your lawn as well, but I haven't found that option with the 3000 anywhere in the app. I think that feature might be reserved for the Luba 2 AWD 5000 or 10000 models, which are designed for even larger properties than the 3000. If the 3000 had the option, I'd 100% be mowing crop circles in my yard.
The mower is SUPER quiet. I struggle to even hear it when it's mowing – a far cry from the Briggs and Stratton barely-muffled days of yore. And I once snuck outside at zero dark thirty and let it rip in my backyard just to see if the neighbors would complain ... even in the late night hour, it's so quiet, you can't actually hear it inside the house. The headlight and red side marker lights, however, are pretty bright and give off a real Close Encounters of the Third Kind vibe. Especially when it boop-beep-boops, indicating it's about to fire up the mow deck.
During normal waking hours, when I peek out the window to see how it's doing, I often see drivers slow down and stare at it. Sometimes they take pictures. I've had quite a few people stop by the house if I'm out front to ask questions about it. I think I'll start signing autographs. Once, while in the back yard with the kiddos, one of my neighbors came running up my driveway in a panic yelling "your robot is running away!" It was mowing the area around the corner from me, and she'd run to it and hit the big red STOP button on the top, thinking it was mid-jailbreak.
In terms of safety, the Luba 2 has all sorts of fail-safes like the big red button. If it detects that it's being picked up, the wheels and cutting blades will go full stop. It also has a touch-sensitive bumper on the front that stops it from driving forward if it contacts something. Factor in the dual AI-powered cameras, and you, your family, and your pets are safe from any rogue comet Maximum Overdrive moments. Snack-sized Doritos bags beware, however, as they will end up in 100's of pieces.
The version I've reviewed is the 3000HX. There's another version called the 3000S, which is nearly the exact same thing except the mow-height range is lower, from 1 inch to 2.7 inches (2.5-6.9 cm), for those of you who are looking to automate the mowing of your putting greens.
All in all, this thing isn't cheap. You're looking at $2,399 for the H version that I've been using. If you want the "garage" accessory that basically covers the mower and charging station, that's another $209. If you want the RTK wall mount accessory, tack on another $139. Both of these should be included when shelling out that kind of cash, in my opinion. I don't have the garage accessory, nor do I have it under any protection, but it's survived several thunder/rain/lightning storms with mild flooding so far.
A 24-pack of replacement blades from Mammotion is $49 (though the Luba 2 did come with one set of replacement blades). Mammotion recommends flipping the blades at 50 hours and replacing them after 100 hours. I'm at nearly 34 hours in a month of usage, and they could use a flip, if I'm honest. It looks like you can find replacement blades for the Luba 2 much cheaper on Amazon, though. And it's a super easy job to change/flip them.
So like I said, getting a high-end and expensive AI lawn mower like the Luba 2 AWD 3000HX ain't for the faint of heart … but neither is sweatin' in 100+ degree weather.
And when you think about it, I'm currently mowing four properties along with mine (one even offered to pay me for the service, which I declined). Theoretically, if you live on a normal block with normal house spacing, you could easily reach around a dozen or more neighbors who may be willing to help offset the cost of the mower. The Luba 2 has a whopping 656-ft (200-m) range with the RTK, and will continue to mow another 975 ft (297 m) of mapped area, even if it loses RTK connection.
That's a lot of neighbors/potential cost savings/perhaps income.
Do I miss the sweat equity? Yeah, kind of, but mostly no. There's still plenty that needs the attention of a string trimmer – an AI mower can't help you there. And honestly, blasting away with the weed eater and carving out perfect edges is far more satisfying than endlessly pushing a mower.
Product Page: Amazon Luba 2 AWD 3000HX (4.2 stars) or Mammotion Luba 2 3000HX
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