Editor’s Update—May 2026: Now that we are fully into mowing season, we’ve been testing new models of self-propelled walk-behind mowers and have added them to our recommendations below, including a new 30-inch wide-cut from Ego Power+, as well as aluminum-deck 21-inch and steel-deck 22-inch mowers from Greenworks. While we still have several gas-powered options here, electric is fast becoming a formidable option, even in the power-hungry self-propelled category.

For homeowners with yards larger than a postage stamp but not much more than a half acre, the self-propelled lawn mower feels like the sweet spot between a riding lawn mower and a standard walk-behind push mower. With a self-propelled mower, the gas engine or electric motor does the “pushing,” routing power to a pulley on the transmission and axle. All you have to do is squeeze a handle or push a lever, and the mower starts moving forward. Move the drive control lever back, and the tension is released, the pulley stops turning, and the mower stops moving forward.

Right now, there’s a wave of new electric self-propelled models flooding the market, supplementing and supplanting the tried-and-true gas-powered mower. There are advantages to electric self-propelled mowers: They make less noise, generate no fumes, and don't require as much maintenance. Still, we think gas engines are the better choice in many cases, as they deliver more power and topping off a gas tank is quicker than recharging a battery. This is why many of the selections below, including the best overall, are gas mowers.

• Best Overall: Toro Super Recycler 21-Inch Gas Lawn Mower
• Best Value: Ryobi 40V 21-Inch Lawn Mower
• Best Electric: Ego Power+ 56-Volt 22-Inch Aluminum Deck Self-Propelled Lawn Mower
• Best Cut Quality: Toro Recycler 60-Volt, 22-Inch Electric Lawn Mower
• Easiest to Use: Greenworks 80-Volt 22-Inch Self-Propelled Lawn Mower

Some of the mowers in this roundup were tested by one of our former test editors, Roy Berendsohn, at a nearby college, while more recent additions to the list were tested by members of our staff at our homes and properties. In either case, the majority of these picks are put through their paces and subjected to various types of grass (and weeds) in wet and dry conditions. We mow on flat sections of yard, up and down hills, and during different seasons.

Mower testing involves living with these machines and using all of their various modes, mulching with them during the spring and summer, discharging when applicable, and picking up thick grass and leaves with the bagger system. We deplete the batteries on electric mowers and recharge them. If the mower has a folded, standing mode, we'll put it into that position to see how easy it is to fold the handle and lift the machine. Basically, we try to subject our tested mowers to the most plausible real-life scenarios that an owner may encounter.

We’ve become big fans of battery mowers because they’re so quiet and clean, but our hearts will always flutter with gas engine mowers such as this Toro Super Recycler. One lazy pull on its recoil rope and the 163-cc Briggs & Stratton engine springs to life. Wheel it over the lawn, especially through tall and wet grass, push forward on the Personal Pace drive handle, and it chugs blissfully along, leaving a neatly mowed surface.

Even more impressive is the fact that it bags nearly every shred of grass that it cuts. We were impressed with its mulching capability, given the soggy conditions when we ran the test. If the Super Recycler will mulch grass as wet as what we were cutting, then its mowing under normal conditions is sure to be particularly good, earning its nomenclature wholeheartedly.

We partially attribute that mulching ability to the two wedge-shaped baffles under its deck, and a blade-mounted gadget that Toro calls an accelerator. These features do appear to increase mulching performance under less-than-ideal conditions, though in this case, they also accumulate wet grass clippings.

We used this mower throughout the 2024 mowing season; it’s still seeing regular use, and it always starts easily and cuts well. As the leaves came down last fall, we used the bagger more to pick up heavy leaves from the lawn to put into the garden. While the mower worked flawlessly through all conditions, we did have difficulty pulling out the mulch plug when we wanted to bag. This became a tedious step during early fall when our mowing consisted of a mix of mulching and bagging. But in the grand scheme of things, that’s a quibble on an otherwise excellent mower.

This mower is smart stow-equipped, meaning you can fold the handle forward, over the mower deck, after releasing two locking clips, and it will lock in place in that low position. Then, you can stand the mower up on its back end to store it in a more space-efficient vertical position. The Briggs engine is designed so that the fluids in the engine won't leak out. While we haven't stored the Super Recycler in this way for any extended period of time, the vertical position has been used to allow easy access under the mowing deck to clear away stuck-on grass clippings. This is important maintenance on all mowers and is made easy by the smart stow feature.

The Super Recycler is an expensive mower with a cast aluminum deck. Our hunch is that if you keep it clean and tuned up, you should have a long-lasting machine that delivers great mowing performance through three seasons, for many years to come.

Full Toro Super Recycler Lawn Mower Review

Of all the mowers tested so far this spring, Ryobi’s 40V HP 21-inch self-propelled mower seemed to roll smoothest over the lawn. With even weight distribution, front-to-back, this mower settles down in the grass and jostles around less. This facilitated mowing nice, straight lines and helped keep them straight as we worked across our test area. Combined with its quiet electric operation, it made for a very pleasant mowing experience.

Adding to the experience, you don’t have to fool with a mulching plug on the Ryobi mower, because it has a mulching gate. You can switch from bagging to mulching by simply turning a switch at the back of the mower body. That also means there is one less mower part to keep track of—that’s a bonus. The mower deck also has a provision to install a side discharge chute to complete the bag-mulch-discharge trifecta.

Mowing performance was good in our testing, and the Ryobi was an adequate bagger. Mulching was good, with clippings dispersing evenly, in part due to a cross-cut blade configuration that uses two crossed blades. It also automatically increases power to adapt to mowing conditions, which worked pretty well, and it has a turbo button you can engage before you hit thick, heavy grass.

On the user controls, there are seven sequential speed settings to choose from. Of course, there is a standard battery gauge, but it also has a blade life indicator that illuminates when the blade needs to be replaced. This Ryobi comes with two 6-amp-hour batteries that provide up to 75 minutes of mowing, depending on conditions.

We have to stop saying “good for cordless,” because in all honesty, mowers like this one from Ego Power+ (model LM2200) prove they can hold their own against their gas-powered competition. In fact, this mower has more motor torque at 11 foot-pounds than most gas push mowers. Plus, you get the benefits of a much quieter operation and lower maintenance.

We also loved the self-propel drive on this mower, too. To move the mower forward, all you have to do is rest your palms against large pads embedded in the control handle. That’s a lot more comfortable than squeezing a bar from below, as many self-propelled mowers make you do. Plus, it’s easy to adjust the speed (between 1 and 3 mph) using a thumb dial placed right in the middle of the handle.

While we were testing it, there wasn’t much to complain about in regard to cut quality. The Ego uses a two-blade system that neatly and efficiently cuts grass and sucks it up into a bag that we found spacious and easy to remove and replace. No clumping was left behind, even when the grass was a bit damp.

If you’ve been looking to ditch your gas mower but worried about sacrificing performance, the Ego Power+ 56-volt cordless lawn mower is likely to convince you to take the plunge and run forever more on battery power.

Full Ego Power+ 56-Volt 22-Inch Lawn Mower Review

We never want to give any manufacturer a free pass in our testing, but Toro’s mowers perform so consistently well that we keep drawing the same conclusion with them: “Of course, it does well. It’s a Toro.”

That’s the case with the 21469 60-volt Recycler, a reliable cordless electric mower that hits on the three criteria that we consider to be most important with this form of mower: cut quality, mulch quality, and bagging. The mower did well with all three of these. It’s a polite suburban machine for those reasons, but also because it’s reasonably quiet. Like many high-quality mowers today, it’s simple to operate: insert the battery and mow.

We exaggerate there, but only slightly. Like the Super Recycler listed above, this mower uses Toro’s Personal Pace system, a rear-wheel-drive arrangement whereby the user presses forward on the handle push bar to make the mower propel itself forward. Release the handle push bar, and the mower stops propelling forward. The more fully you push the bar forward, the faster the mower goes up to its top speed, which is a comfortable walking pace—somewhere between a stroll and the fast trot that you need to keep up with many gas engine mowers.

The mower is a two-function machine: It mulches and it bags. To select between bagging and mulching, move a pivoting lever at the rear of the mower forward and back. The lever engages a mulch plate that blocks discharge to the bag; you’re simply lowering the plate to block airflow to the bag or lifting the plate to allow it.

While this Toro lacks the raw power of the gas-powered Super Recycler, it's definitely not too prissy to handle the rough stuff. Our test was under some very challenging and rather soggy mowing conditions. The Toro plugged its way along like the champ of a mower that it is.

This new self-propelled lawn mower from Greenworks ticks all the boxes for user-friendly features, such as single-lever, seven-point height adjustment, a built-in, lever-operated mulch-mode door, fold-up handles that cut down on storage space, a hand grip on the top-front of the deck to help you move it around or stand upright, and intuitive controls that make it easy to adjust your drive speed on the fly.

It’s fast, too. When we tested it on a yard of around half of an acre, we adjusted the horizontally sliding throttle from low to high to get a sense of how quickly this mower can go, and found ourselves settling somewhere in the middle as the most comfortable speed. But whenever we wanted to speed it up or slow it down, all it took was a quick adjustment with the thumb. The only caveat with this mower is that it has a steel cutting deck, which is great for durability, but a bit heavy to maneuver when you need to disengage the drive to navigate tight spaces.

The overall cut quality is good. We tested all three modes of bagging, mulching, and side discharge, but employed the first two the most. The Greenworks mower uses an X-formation dual-blade setup that claims to improve mulching, and from what we could tell, it does this well. The clippings were small, and very little clumping was left behind, except in one area that was particularly thick and wet with morning dew. Bagging mode was consistent with most average mowers. We had to empty the bag several times while mowing, so it’s not large, but it was quick to remove and replace. And as we mentioned, the mulch plug is built in and takes one second to switch over—love that.

The 80-volt motor is plenty powerful to cut as well as a gas-powered competitor, and a turbo mode will ramp it up to a maximum of 3,000 rpm if you need to get through a dense patch of turf. That can drain the batteries faster (it includes two 4-amp-hour batteries), but we rarely found a reason to use it. And the mower’s runtime was good, otherwise. After finishing up our job, there were still two bars (out of four) left on the batteries, so Greenworks’ claim that the mower can cut up to three-quarters of an acre on one charge is close to accurate.

If you don’t have a huge yard and haven’t gone electric yet, we think you’ll be plenty pleased with this mower. It gives you all the power you need, and all the promise of an electric mower: quieter operation, simpler maintenance, and freedom from fumes.

Full Greenworks 80-Volt 22-Inch Lawn Mower Review

The cutting path of Ego’s newest walk-behind mower is nearly 30 percent larger, which can be a real time saver. To test this out, we made 10 passes on a section of a yard with a standard 21-inch walk-behind mower, and then re-mowed that same area with the Ego. It took us seven passes to cut the same section with the 30-inch machine. That was 30 percent less time mowing, and while results may vary depending on the landscape of your property, you’d probably see similar, significant results.

Sitting beneath the wide plastic-composite deck are two 15.2-inch mower blades, similar to what you’d find under a riding lawn mower, just smaller. Like most mowers, it offers mulch, side-discharge, and bag cutting modes. We first mowed in mulching mode, which delivered a clean cut that didn’t leave any clumps of grass behind. It was easy to remove and restore the mulching plug, too. Meanwhile, when we switched to the bagging function, we found that the bag that comes with this mower is spacious and took longer to fill than expected.

Because it’s a bigger mower, we needed a bit more strength to move it around. It weighs over 100 pounds, even without the batteries, which made it a bit harder to turn. Self-propulsion helps with that, of course, though we found that adjusting the speed (between approximately 1 and 3 mph) was difficult to do on the fly. The knob is small, located at the center of the handle, and fairly sensitive.

It’s pricey at a list price of $1,799, but this larger walk-behind model makes a lot of sense if you don’t want to drop even more money on a riding tractor or zero-turn mower, but still have a lot of ground to cover. Simply put, the Ego 30-inch mower will make quick work of mowing a large lawn in much less time than a smaller self-propelled mower.

Full Ego Power+ 30-Inch Lawn Mower Review

If you have a big yard, but aren’t ready for a riding mower, DeWalt’s 28-inch self-propelled mower can help get the job done quickly. It features dual blades, mounted side-by-side on separate spindles in the deck, so you cover more ground in less time. This is the same type of two-blade configuration that's often used on larger commercial machines.

Following the trend of simplifying gas mowers, DeWalt has eliminated the throttle and choke on this machine—just pull the recoil starter to fire it up and hit the kill switch to turn it off. The engine is electronically governed and automatically increases power to meet heavier cutting loads as mowing conditions change. Additionally, it adjusts the speed of the rear drive wheels based on your pace. As you walk faster, the mower detects the pressure your hands apply to the handle and speeds up—as you slow down, it slows down.

Like some other mowers tested here, the deck has side discharge, mulching, and bagging capabilities. Mowing with the side discharge chute attached, the DeWalt throws the clippings far enough to evenly disperse them, eliminating clumps in all but the wettest conditions. Cut quality is good, and nice straight lines are achievable by engaging the locking pin on the front caster wheels. Mulching capabilities are good, but cutting too much when the grass is taller can leave visible clippings. Using the bagger captures the clippings well, and this large mower comes with a capacious 2-bushel bag.

One of our favorite features, though, is the front caster wheels that provide excellent maneuverability when mowing around edges or obstacles. The caster wheels are also great when moving the mower from one area to another, or even when jockeying it around in the garage. It’s hard to imagine a gas mower being much easier to operate.

There’s no question that German brand Stihl takes building outdoor power equipment seriously—its chainsaws are some of the best in the business. It also has a new lawnmower that is impressive to behold. The brand’s $1,600, 21-inch mower is equipped with an aluminum deck, riding on sealed ball-bearing wheels, and powered by a 173 cc Kohler engine coupled to a hydrostatic drive.

A blade-brake clutch allows you to stop mowing, leave the engine running, and move lawn furniture or empty the bag. Separation of the engine, drive, and blade is also helpful in transport mode and safer, too. You can power the lawnmower into the shed or garage, or drive the mower up a ramp into a pickup truck without the blade spinning.

The Stihl’s price tag is high, we admit, but so is its performance. Cut quality is immaculate—it is the best bagging mower we’ve used recently, even outdoing our usual bag meisters, the recently tested Toro mowers, long known for their bagging prowess.

And on that last point, we use the term “bagging” here somewhat loosely. The Stihl lacks the typical American-mower grass bag made out of porous synthetic cloth. Rather, it has a large plastic basket with a hinged lid. You have unfettered access to the basket owing to the machine’s unique handle—Stihl calls it a mono-comfort handlebar. The full-access design is an improvement over the handlebar setups of most American mowers, even with recent improvements.

Other features on the Stihl to ease the operator’s work include its spring-assist deck height mechanism. It’s a small and discreet lever that enables you to use no more than fingertip pressure to raise and lower the deck.

Like any yard machine, self-propelled lawn mowers range from basic grass-cutters to more feature-rich (and expensive) tools. We’ve found that a longer or more eye-catching list of features isn’t necessarily better. Sometimes, less is more. Here are the most important things to keep in mind.

Driven Wheels and Speed Control

Front-wheel-drive mowers tend to be less expensive than rear-wheel-drive units. They can be easier to turn because you don’t have to disengage the drive wheels to do so. Simply push down on the handlebar to raise the front wheels off the ground, and turn. However, their traction isn’t as strong on hills or when the bag is full, as there isn’t as much weight over the driven wheels.

Rear-wheel-drive mowers tend to cost more and aren’t as easy to turn, as you need to disengage the drive—but this isn’t too much of a hassle. Rear-wheel-drive mowers shine on hills and inclines, and when the grass bag is full. In either scenario, weight is shifted rearward and over the drive wheels, which enables superior traction, thus making the self-propel more effective.

Activating the self-propel function may be slightly different depending on what brand of mower you buy. These mechanisms can include a squeeze handle, a drive bar that you press forward, or even a dial. There’s no single right answer here. Look at the design and think about how you like to work.

For example, if more than one person will be using the mower (and not all of them are right-handed), a drive control like Toro’s Personal Pace system might be the answer. Just push the drive handle on the bar to make it go faster, or let up on the bar to slow down.

Engine/Motor

Battery-electric mowers are now prolific in the push-mower industry. We have historically performed a measured area test, wherein we would run an electric mower until the battery died. As the technology has progressed, it has taken longer and longer to the point where conducting such a test is unfeasible. All this is to say that battery-electric mowers are not second-class citizens regarding regular cutting performance.

Still, they do have some drawbacks, such as the need to recharge once the battery does deplete, and if your grass is particularly wet and heavy, that added strain will draw down the battery quicker.

This is where gas mowers shine. While they don’t get as much attention these days, gas mowers are still a great option for many homeowners, especially those who have thick grass or plan to use their mower for extensive fall cleanup. That being said, gas mowers require more maintenance than electric ones and are louder and not as clean.

You can get a gas-powered mower with an electric start feature, which lets you start the mower with the push of a button (like an electric mower), rather than using the pull cord. However, this feature can cost a couple of hundred dollars on some gas mowers, and in our opinion, may not be worth it for most users, as a well-maintained gas engine does not require a lot of effort to start the old-fashioned way.

Deck Function and Material

A mower that can bag, mulch, and discharge is known as a three-function mower, the most versatile kind. Two-function mowers bag and mulch, or mulch and side discharge.

Most mowers are made with either steel or high-impact plastic decks. Steel decks are prone to rusting if not maintained, which is something to keep in mind.

Some higher-end mowers, such as the Toro Super Recycler featured in this roundup, feature a corrosion-resistant aluminum deck, which is less likely to corrode but still needs to be kept clean for optimal performance. Many electric mowers feature decks made of a plastic composite that is strong enough to withstand the rigors of mowing, but also won’t rust.

Cutting Width and Height Adjustment

Typical walk-behind mowers are 21 or 22 inches wide and have a single blade. Wide-cut mowers built for residential use have either a single blade or, more typically, a pair of blades, and cutting widths of 25 to 30 inches. The wider cut lets you reduce the number of passes needed to complete your mowing job compared to a standard-sized mower. Of course, these wide mowers tend to cost more.

Mowers will typically have one, two, or four levers to control the deck height. Single-lever adjustment is the easiest to use, but it requires more linkages, which adds weight and complexity to the mower. If, for some reason, you find yourself varying deck height frequently, it’s a good option. Otherwise, two (one for each axle) or four (one for each wheel) levers work just fine.

Maintenance and Warranty

Self-propelled mowers powered by gas will require you to keep an eye on the fuel and oil levels, the cleanliness of the air filter, and the wear and tear of any belts. Electric mowers don't require engine maintenance like gas mowers, which is why they’re easier to maintain.

Both types of mowers will require you to occasionally replace your lawn mower blade, or you can learn to sharpen it yourself. After each use, it’s also a good idea to remove any caked-on grass or debris from under the deck or inside the discharge chute, otherwise, you could clog up parts of the mower’s engine or damage the blade.

All mowers carry some kind of manufacturer’s warranty, which runs anywhere from two to five years. For electric mowers, there may be a separate warranty for the batteries. Warranties generally cover the repair and replacement of defective parts, not damage caused by misuse, neglect, or bad repairs by a non-authorized service center.