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TerraMow V1000 Review: Show Your Lawn Some Love
While the sci-fi future of robotic domestic servitude that was promised still eludes us, I'm happy to report that robot lawn mowers are actually good now. The TerraMow V1000 embodies this trend by combining a relatively affordable price, easy hands-off automation, and a nice, neat finish on my lawn. It’s feature-packed and comes with a covered charging station, making it a standout package at its current $1,200 price. (I’ve seen it dip below $1,000, so watch out for sales.)
Currently topping my picks of the best robot lawn mowers, this mower has been tending my front and back lawns with minimal input from me for several weeks. While it’s not without its quirks, it has outperformed many more expensive options. Folks with regular, mostly flat, rectangular lawns under 0.3 acres (around 13,000 square feet) in size don’t need to spend more than this.
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The TerraMow V1000 is a relatively small robot mower, and it looks like one of the friendlier competitors from Robot Wars. It has two large back wheels that drive it, and a simple front caster wheel. There’s a single spinning disc underneath with three cutting blades, and you get nine spares in the box.
As with most robot mowers, the power adapter is large and may not fit your outdoor socket, so you’ll likely need an outdoor box and extension lead. The TerraMow V100 also comes with a covered charging base to shield it from bad weather, something many manufacturers will charge you a couple of hundred extra for.
There’s no antenna or anything else to set up, because this mower relies on its triple camera system and AI to map and navigate your lawn. You can connect your phone via Bluetooth, and it supports Wi-Fi. It also comes with a year of 4G service ($19 per year after that), but you don’t need it if you have Wi-Fi in your garden. The 4G and Wi-Fi are just for firmware updates and remote control when you’re away from home. It has GPS tracking for theft alerts.
The setup was by far the easiest of any robot mower I’ve tested. Aside from not having to fiddle with wire or an RTK antenna, the TerraMow V1000 has an automapping feature. Usually, you have to remote-control your robot mower around the borders of your lawn to define the cutting zone. I have tried other mowers with automatic mapping, but I always ended up having to make significant edits to the map. Not so with the TerraMow. The V1000 successfully mapped my (admittedly straightforward) lawn without any input required.
The spec sheet for the TerraMow V1000 is relatively modest. It can handle slopes up to 18 degrees, offers a cutting height of 0.98 to 2.95 inches (25 to 75 mm), and a cutting width of 8 inches (20 cm). I like that you can define different settings for different zones. Perhaps you want a finer cut or closer edge mowing on one section of lawn. It can run for 150 minutes on a full charge and takes two hours to recharge. Like most robot mowers, it leaves the cuttings to mulch, and you can set a cutting schedule in the app.
I didn’t have high expectations of the TerraMow V1000, because it relies entirely on AI vision, which can be erratic in my experience. To my surprise, it mowed my lawn in perfect straight lines with a kind of fish-tail maneuver at the end of each turn, leaving neat but narrow stripes and a fairly uniform cut. Where the edges allowed, such as along a path, the TerraMow cut right up to the edge. On sides with obstacles, such as a garden shed and tall plants, it left a modest border. Strips of uncut grass of various sizes seem to be unavoidable with robot mowers, but the TerraMow V1000 got closer to finishing the job than most.
We have three cats, so obstacle avoidance is crucial, and the TerraMow V1000 does not disappoint. I always test mowers with a football, and I also had a badminton net on the lawn with very thin posts. The V1000 was able to skirt around both without touching them.