Mowing the lawn: love it or loathe it? If you decidedly hate being chained to this tediously routine chore, you might just want to give a robot lawn mower some consideration. While investing in this type of technology may seem pricey, not to mention a bit daunting for the not-so-tech-savvy, my experience with Husqvarna’s Automower 410 iQ robot lawn mower showed me there’s little to be scared of and that it can deliver on the promise of true automation.

Of course, you have to be careful when shopping in this category. Like robot vacuum cleaners, this market is flooded with fly-by-night brands you’ve never heard of before. Buying a cheap mower from a cheap brand can leave you with an inferior, hard-to-use product lacking any kind of reliable customer or product support.

Trusting a major brand like Husqvarna, which already has a good reputation for making quality residential and pro-level lawn care products, is a smart way to go. The 410 iQ is the company’s entry-level model, which I tested out on my brother’s half-acre property, putting it through the paces of setup, navigation, and, of course, mowing.

How It Works

Husqvarna’s iQ series of robot lawn mowers uses real-time kinematic (RTK) satellite navigation, which is a technology that improves the accuracy of GPS by pairing a reference station with a mobile receiver (found on the mower). The two work in conjunction to calculate corrections for errors caused by factors such as atmospheric conditions and satellite clock errors, resulting in 1- to 2-centimeter-level accuracy.

To enhance this technology, the iQ series uses the company’s Exact Positioning Operating System (EPOS), which incorporates satellite correction data via a 5G cloud connection. I spoke with Husqvarna Robotics Lead Chris Price about the technology. “So, there are companies that build networks of [satellite] reference stations around the world,” he told me. “And they build basically a map of these correction factors. We have the mower talk to the internet and basically download the correction data for the local area.”

While EPOS is potentially less accurate (1 to 6 centimeters), this cloud connection allows you to forgo installing the reference station—all you need is the charging station and the mower. EPOS isn’t available everywhere—some rural areas may not have access to it—so Husqvarna still ships its robot mowers with a reference station with instructions on how to install it. Luckily, I was within that EPOS network.

Obstacle avoidance is where this mower theoretically comes up a bit short, especially considering the price. The 410 iQ only uses radar sensing to detect unforeseen objects in its path; many comparable or even cheaper mowers have started to use built-in cameras and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) for this job. That said, during my tests, the mower easily sensed objects in the way (including a curious cat)—I’m not sure I have much of a complaint here.

Simple Setup and Easy Mapping

One of the common barriers to entry for these advanced mowers is the setup. Currently, no robot appliance can automatically figure out your lawn’s layout without some initial help. You need to set up the map first, and that can be intimidating for some.

I’ll admit, I’m one of those people. Even though I’m pretty comfortable with tech, a poor experience with a robot vacuum cleaner that I could never get to work properly set a precedent for suspicion. The last thing I want is a robot that randomly runs around the yard, mowing over the same area repeatedly and missing others entirely.

Thankfully, this was a vastly better experience. The mower is mostly ready to go out of the box, as is the base station. After securing the base station to the bare ground with some long plastic screws and placing the mower into the dock, I turned it on, and within less than two minutes, it had connected to the EPOS network. It arrived 50 percent charged, so I let it juice up for a bit. Meanwhile, I paired the Husqvarna mobile app over Bluetooth and connected the mower to the Wi-Fi network. Wi-Fi is optional, but it’s definitely worth it, especially for firmware upgrades, remote monitoring, control, and scheduling.

Then, it was time to start mapping out the yards. To simplify this, Husqvarna divides things into three different categories: work areas, stay-away zones, and transport paths. I set each area by driving the mower around remotely using the app and “dropping” waypoints along the way (effectively building a virtual game of connect the dots) to create the boundaries or paths. Once set, the mower won’t venture outside work zones, will mow around stay-away zones, and will follow work paths from zone to zone when instructed.

Honestly, the mapping process was a lot simpler than I thought. It helped that there were some short video tutorials to watch, but it wasn’t hard, and I had fun doing it. Mapping my backyard area and two stay-away zones took just 20 minutes, and even less time to set a work path to the front yard and map that. And mistakes or changes were easy to enact by simply adjusting waypoints virtually on the map, which you can do at any time.

How Well Does It Cut the Grass?

Of course, all this advanced technology isn’t worth much if the robot mower can’t mow the lawn well. For this, you have to temper your expectations a bit. If you’re expecting a robot mower to run as quickly and as powerfully as a gas- or battery-powered walk-behind mower, think again. Robot mowers move slowly and take two to three times as long to cut the lawn. They’re also designed to maintain a lawn with lighter cuts performed more frequently (two to three times per week), which, in truth, is a healthy way to maintain the grass. The 410 iQ is no different in either regard.

Once I was ready, I sent the mower for its first mow of the backyard. It started by tracing the perimeter, and then it navigated around the two stay-away zones. Then, in a moment where it seemed to be confused, it stopped and went back to the starting point, and began the back-and-forth parallel paths across the lawn. It seemed pretty methodical, and I was impressed with how well it navigated straight lines. It’s also incredibly quiet. You can barely hear the motor, and only the snipping of the blades is perceivable.

The only thing I did notice is that it does slightly cover the previous path as it traverses a new one. Given the small size of the blades and a narrow 9-inch cutting path, this is probably a good thing; it’ll guarantee full coverage. But it does contribute to the overall time to completion.

I can’t complain about the quality of the cutting. This was already a pretty well-maintained lawn, but I looked at the clippings afterward, and they were cleanly and finely cut (much like a mulching mower would leave behind). The lawn looked like it got a nice, fresh manicure. That said, I don’t think this would have worked well on grass that had gotten very long. It would likely take an extra one or even two mowing sessions to get it to look right, but that’s true of most residential robot lawn mowers.

If I had one complaint, it’s that this system does not like 90-degree angles. Even though the mower can turn itself 360 degrees, it’s clearly stated that you should traverse diagonally when entering a perfect corner. Price explained to me that navigating perfect corners can leave tracks behind because of the way the wheels need to spin to rotate the mower in place. This is a fair point, but then you neglect that area, leaving it to be trimmed by something else, like a weed whacker.

Extremely Customizable and Automated

The icing on the cake is how customizable the 410 iQ is using the mobile app. You can schedule jobs by date and time, and set elements individually, such as mowing the backyard twice a week and the front only once, for example, or setting the length (between 1 and 4 inches) differently for each zone. You can even get creative with commanding it to make patterns, such as the classic “checkerboard” look.

Play your cards right, and you could automate your entire summer, setting everything up in advance, such as increasing mowing times for the months where the grass grows faster. The only time you would need to even think about touching the mower is when you need to change the blades, which the company recommends you do every 6 to 8 weeks (a free set of replacement blades ships with the mower).

Recharging is also hands-free, which is a good thing because this robot runs through its battery quickly. During my test of the 410 iQ, it stopped with about 78 percent of the job complete (it indicates this on the app) and returned to its station for a recharge. Once it was fully recharged (a full charge takes about 1.5 hours), it returned to the same spot it left off at and continued mowing until the job was complete. All told, the whole job, including the mid-session recharge, took around 4 hours.

Should You Buy the Husqvarna 410 iQ Robot Lawn Mower?

This isn’t the cheapest entry-level robot lawn mower on the market, but there’s a benefit to buying from a trusted landscaping brand like Husqvarna, namely, reliable customer service, consistent firmware upgrades, and a commitment to maintaining its proprietary satellite navigation technology. That’s important when owning an advanced piece of equipment like this. But what you also get with the Automower 410 iQ is a capable robot lawn mower that’s simple to set up, easy to customize, and delivers a clean cut that leaves your lawn looking well-maintained without any routine manual labor on your end. And isn’t that the point of a robot?