Summer time is here, and those blazing hot temperatures have once again come pouring through with it, turning this city into a boiling pot. It’s not exactly the best time to be stuck outside mowing large lawns for long periods of time. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could be relaxing with a cold glass of water while a robot does all of the work for you? Well, you can, thanks to the Yarbo Robot Lawn Mower Pro.
This lawn mowing robot, which is part of the company’s flagship Y-Series, is the crème de la crème when it comes to smart robotic lawn mowers. So why not head straight for the top if you are going to test something like this out? We wanted to see if these robots have finally reached their potential.
Just like it took robotic vacuum cleaners a little time to become worthy of purchasing, robotic lawn mowers took even longer to gain appreciation. They can be traced back to 1969 with the original MowBot (look it up, it existed!), which operated off of battery power and featured touch-sensitive bumpers to determine if it was going to run into anything. It never took off since it was expensive, heavy, and didn’t have the best battery life. It also operated in random patterns, similar to the original robot vacuums. For its time, it was revolutionary, but the world wasn’t quite ready for it.
Fast-forward to now, and you have options like the Yarbo Robot Lawn Mower Pro. To be fair, it is also expensive and very heavy (but not as heavy as the MowBot). However, it wears the crown when it comes to being more capable, filled with features and technology (RTK-GPS, binocular cameras, ultrasonic sensors, bumper, etc), completely modular, offering an excellent battery life with excellent charging rates, and looking much cooler than something like the MowBot.
Also to be fair, this is a commercial-grade professional lawn mowing solution. So unless you have a massive yard, it could be considered a tad overkill (it was for us, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying it).
This model is designed for massive areas of grass, like farms, golf courses and various forms of commercial property. Or, for you, if you just happen to have a really large property with lots of grass. It is capable of handling up to 6 acres of lush green grass. Anything beyond that and you will be building out a fleet of these, which is more than reasonable.
It is capable of handling tall grass, weeds, thick grass, and so much more. All thanks to its dual 300W motors. It comes with standard discs or straight blades, that you can easily swap between, and is capable of handling various styles of slopes (up to 35-degrees). Which means that this lawn mower is capable of handling the thickest of challenges, allowing it to conquer the task no matter where you live. While also maintaining a reasonable physical size for what it can accomplish.
It features a docking station that it automatically deploys from and returns to at the end of its job. This allows it to automatically top off its charge before either continuing its job or doing it again on its next scheduled window.
It takes about 90 minutes to fully charge, and this provides you with up to 120 minutes of mow time. This allows it to cover a pretty large area (up to 1.7 acres) each day. The fact that it can return to its dock at the end of a task, means that time spent managing the use of this robot is minimal to none once you have everything configured and ready to go. Allowing you to relax inside with that cold glass of water!
Unboxing and Setup
This part takes a little time. With two to three people, it shouldn’t be so difficult. With one to two people, you are likely looking at two hours or so. This is because the Lawn Mower Pro comes in four different boxes, weighing more than 200lbs (combined). So you are going to want to use caution when putting things together, for both the safety of yourself and the robot. Again, keep in mind that this is a professional-level solution. Yarbo does have other consumer-friendly models for smaller yards, like it’s entry-level M-series robot that is great for up to one acre.
At first, we had only two people on-site helping, which grew to four when the camera team arrived. Having the extra hands really helped out as it was moving kind of slowly at first. Once everyone chipped in, things started flying out of the boxes and it didn’t take too long to get everything setup.
So why four boxes? The Yarbo Lawn Mower consists of two sections to its body, including the main core robot, and the lawn mower “module”. That module can be interchanged with other modules you can buy from Yarbo, for things like snow-blowing, leaf blowing, and trimming. This allows you to make use of your Yarbo robot all year round. You just have to be willing to invest into each of these additional modules.
When breaking things open, we started with the main core robot. It is the heart of everything and you can’t do much with the other boxes without it. It is the driving force, no matter what module you are making use of. It can even be used to tow a load, using the default tow hitch. It is capable of towing up to 500lbs in strenuous conditions) of weight, or more in perfect conditions that don’t require much effort, up to 3,500lbs.
The robot is perfectly protected within a small puzzle of thick foam pieces that quickly come apart once you open the box. You want to slide the top section of the box straight up and off, revealing the bottom tray that the robot is resting on. This is because you do not want to have to life that robot out of the box by hand as it is too heavy.
Instead, they make it as easy as manually driving the robot right out of its tray and toward where you want to set it up. So you will likely want to do all of this outside. We chose to do it indoors only because we had the sweet embrace of the AC, and wanted to see what kind of journey it could make in its drive through the house and out into the backyard.
Of course, I am getting ahead of myself a little, since before we were able to drive it out of the box, we did have to open the smart module box as it does require a little assembly (but not much).
This box contains some needed essentials, which include the dummy smart module that connects to the front of the robot when any normal module isn’t attached and in use (mower, trimmer, blower, etc). This provides it with the eyes it needs to get around.
The box also contains three antennas that need to be installed on the robot before it can communicate with anything, as well as various tools, screw, bolts, instructions, and more.
It also contains the data center (and the hardware for it), that acts as the centralized hub for your Yarbo robot(s). This includes a PoE power and data setup and can be installed in the ground using a modular pole, or the side/roof of a building using a mount. See? This is a commercial/professional solution that is capable of massive areas of grass, so Yarbo isn’t playing around.
So you have to install the antennas to the core robot, plug its cable in (as the battery comes unplugged for safety and batter health), and get the data center powered on and paired to the robot using the Yarbo app.
Then you have two options for driving the robot out of the tray. You are able to make use of a wireless Xbox-like Bluetooth controller to drive it with (kind of cool, eh?) or by making use of your phone as a controller through the app. The remote feel like something you’d get from a quality gaming accessory company, like Gamesir. So Yarbo is not cutting any corners, even on this.
We took the core robot on a journey through the house we have been testing it at and into the backyard. It rolled flawlessly though the rooms (us controlling it) and into the backyard. We helped it down the step since the core robot is around 100lbs and we didn’t want to cause any damage to it.
From there, it did a great job rolling across the cement, through the rocks, and out onto the grass that will soon be its home and work area.
Remotely controlling the robot was a lot of fun (like anything else you can remote pilot). You can pivot and drive or use the thumb sticks on the controller (or the app, as the center button of the directional pad on the app also acts as a joystick when you move your thumb around) to move it around.
We then broke the third box open, choosing to go with the charging pad. This box was the simplest of them all and contains just the giant charging pad/dock, a power cable, and some hardware for attaching it safely to the ground so that it can never slide anywhere (you can choose between expansion bolts and metal stakes).
Then came the final box and the second heaviest part of the unit, the lawn mower module. The box does open from the top and the module can be easily lifted out with two people. The two yellow sections on the sides are handles, making it easy to grab it with your hands. This is helpful for both moving it around and installing it to the robot as you attempt to slide things into place.
Flipping the module over, you can see that it comes with the regular blade discs installed. These can be swapped out with straight blades that are included in the box, depending on your terrain or preferences.
There are four holes on the back of the mower module that slide over the four metal stubs of the core unit that are used to fully attach each module.
Once you have slid them into place and locked two little locking arms that prevent things from sliding back out, all you have to do is plug the module’s power cable into the core robot and apply a rubber shield across the top that helps slightly protect things from being fully exposed.
From this point, the app will notice you have plugged in a module and once you select from the list which module it is, it will have updated your robot in the app to being in lawn mower mode, changing the image in the map and adjusting controls to adapt to what it can do.
The App
The app is very friendly once you have everything paired and ready to go. That being said, it took us a few tries to pair everything together in the app. This could be because this unit is a dealer unit that likely has been used in previous demos and presentations (not completely brand new), as it was provided to us by Yarbo for this story and not something we bought brand new from the website. So after a few tries of putting it into pairing mode and trying to get the app to talk to it, suddenly everything just started working and we were off to play with the rest of the app.
From here, you can start adjusting the settings of all of the devices (robot, module, docking station, and control unit). You can configure your network information, verify and setup positioning service (RTK-GPS), access diagnose tools, configure safety settings, build our your map(s), create schedules, update firmware, and so on. You can even remotely restart the entire Yarbo system or shut down down from the app.
From here, you start building out your areas that are to be mowed, as well as the path that the robot will be following. You can name each area based on the job at hand (ie, snow blowing, lawn mowing, etc), you can define the job pattern it will use (parallel, spiral, checkboard, diamond, or adaptive), control the speed of which it moves at, configure object and boundary avoidances, set the target cut height (Yarbo recommends not going any lower on the cut height than 2.7 inches to protect the robot from potential damage), and more. It is actually filled with features that you can make use of to dial in the best experience.
You have to manually drive the robot around the perimeter of the area to outline the portion it will be focusing on. It then maps out the best pattern based on the settings you gave it when setting up the area (parallel, spiral, checkboard, etc).
You then take it along its pathway, to tell it how it gets to each area or from the charging dock to the area. We got a little lazy by placing the charging dock within the lawn space, when we could have placed it on the sidewalk or dirty patches, and just told it to drive using a pathway from there to the area. But we weren’t sure, at first, what its limitations would be. We wouldn’t recommend this since the grass underneath the dock wouldn’t be getting the water it needs and will die off. So it is best to place the dock off the grass somewhere that it can easily roll/drive to. As you were able to see in the last video we shared (with it driving through the house), that it doesn’t have many limitations since it is a bit of a tank. You just have to make sure the mower module is able to clear whatever it is driving over/through.
Now, you are ready as the app will show the robot and all of its stats. Including the current area it is assigned to, how much remaining area it has to do within its current task/schedule, and the estimated time of completion. You can start, pause, or end its current task, as well as take control of it and drive it around (or tell it to go home to the dock).
The app shows its current status for network connectivity, GPS, and current battery life. And all of this is incredibly user-friendly!
So How Did It Do?
The result of its operation during our weeks of testing it within this yard space was quite successful. The grass doesn’t typically get too high since its is commonly maintained, but it does get its fair share of weeds (that can reach surprising heights in such small windows of time) and patchy areas. All of which, it didn’t sweat for a single moment at mowing right through it all.
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While at this property, the owner made continuous use of it, both using a set schedule, as well as manually triggering it out of fun and playing with some of its settings.
It continuously completed its task each and every time, covering the mapped out area and keeping the grass in its place. The sound of the weeds and grass being pulverized is quite rewarding, knowing that you are behind it, pushing it around. It didn’t miss anything within the mapped out space.
You can tell from the above image that it also isn’t very loud. It does seem a little loud in the video, only because our cameras are right there in the action. But the actual sound level is a small fraction of what a gas-powered lawn mower would sound like.
When it comes to the various edges of the area you are trying to mow, you can always swap out to the trimmer module (additional purchase) to help dial things in perfect. Else you might have thin patches here and there that the mower will miss if you are trying to avoid certain obstacles.
Its object avoidance was also very accurate, making it safe (although, still not recommended since you should never play around a piece of heavy machinery with sharp blades) to be around. So if you have a dog that decides to run out into the grass as it is operating, you shouldn’t have to worry about it getting hurt.
One of ours stood in front of the robot as it was cutting, tapping into a great deal of faith in both technology and his own ability to jump out of the way at a moments notice. The robot stopped at a safe distance from him, and then detoured around him. If it was an energy-filled pup, it would simply continue to stop in place as its path is impeded. It may even eventually hault operating and send an alert to the app if it feels it shouldn’t continue, but we didn’t abuse the object avoidance to that extent to find out. We also do not recommend trying this at home!
It’s ability to successfully even out the overall job is fantastic, leading to a professional looking lawn. This yard is in the desert heat, and gets a lot of it throughout each day, so it has some brown patches that will green out in a few months after some care, and when that time come, it would look great after this robot has done its job.
It’s ability to make it right back to the dock to charge when it is finished is spot on. It launched and returned from the dock, each time, without failure. Continuously keeping itself topped off and ready for the next round. If there were multiple patches of grass (which there could be in the future since the grass here only covers about 16% of the overall backyard space), it would then leave the dock and head over to the next area, where it will then re-activate its blades upon arriving and go to work.
There was only one point where someone had opened the app and found that it had lost GPS and could not continue. For a moment, the thought of troubleshooting was on the horizon. But the very next time someone attempted to access the robot via app to see what was happening, everything showed as working just fine (and it was). So it might have been a small blip in the Matrix (this can happen with anything wireless).
As mentioned, the core robot can be used for towing. It is capable of towing up to 3,500lbs of weight, depending on the terrain. Yarbo has video of it carrying various loads, including a small trailer with someone sitting inside on a chair. You can find some of this content at the end of this review under related videos section (CES 2025 Interview).
It does have a heated battery and cameras, to help it successfully operate as a snow blower. We don’t get snow here, and it isn’t the right season even if it did. So we weren’t able to test this, but these features do help strengthen the series when it comes to professional jobs in tough environments.
We also didn’t have any of the additional modules to work with, so only the lawn mowing function was tested this round. Which as fine, since it is capable of so much, it really does help provide a strong example of how powerful this product is.
Our Conclusion
So after weeks of testing, the Yarbo Lawn Mower Pro ended up being an incredibly successful product. It is modular, feature-filled, and powerful. It is a great option for anyone with a massive yard of grass, and for commercial yards and gold courses. It can operate solo or you can build out a fleet of these, assigning each to its own area of operation.
It’s ability to avoid obstacles, conquer challenging yard terrain, and cut through the thickest of grass and weeds is an ode to how useful this product and its ecosystem of accessories can be. It can mow, it can blow, it can whack, and it can tow. Altogether, it is capable of servicing your yard all year round.
The only real point that anyone made on our team, was the desire to cut the grass a little shorter without having to worry about damage to the robot. It would be nice to go as low 2 inches. That being said, the average height that people shoot for is usually 2.5-3.5 inches, so a 2.7 minimum (for safety) isn’t all that bad.
It is heavy and takes effort to put together, but with 2-4 people, it shouldn’t be so too difficult. Just as with the price (MSRP is $5,999), it is important to remember that this is a commercial-level professional series from the company. If you need something smaller, they have you covered for that as well. We just went with the pro-level Y-Series to see what the company is capable of, and it delivered a solid answer.
To make things better, the launch of this story conveniently lands during its Prime Summer Sale window via Yarbo’s Website! With that, you should be able to find some great deals on the Yarbo Robot Lawn Mower Pro, and maybe even some of its additional modules. You might just be able to score a fantastic deal!
Related Videos (CES 2025 Interview):
Additional Images:
Specifications:
- Max Mowing Size: Y40: 6 acres (25,000 m²)
- Max Climbing Ability: 70% (35°)
- Cutting Motors: 2*300W
- Cutting Width: 20 in (500 mm)
- Cutting System: Dual Straight-Blade
- Mowing Area Per Day: Y40: 1.7 acres (6,880 m²)
- Charging Time (20%–80%): 90 min
- Mowing Time Per Charge: 120 min
- Adjustable Cutting Height: 0.8–4.0 in (20–102 mm)
- Vertical Obstacle Clearance: 2 in (50 mm)
- Smart Object Detection: Binocular Cameras, Ultrasonic Sensors, Bumper
- Connectivity: 4G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi HaLow
- Operation Time / Charge: 120 min
- Battery Capacity: 36 V 38.4 Ah
- Auto-recharge: Yes
- Operating Temperature: -13°F to 113°F (-25°C to 45°C)
- Driving System: Dual Drive Motors
- Waterproof Level / IP Rating: IPX6
- Rain Detection: Yes
- Teleoperation: Yes
- Weight: 216.4 lbs (98.2kg)
Are you a manufacturer or distributor that would like us to test something out for review? Contact us, and we can let you know where to send the product, and we will try it out.
