Pros Easy to set upQuiet operationGood battery life and automatic chargingSupports yard mapping and scheduling Cons Not good at edgingOnly usable during daylight hoursNo bagging option for clippings Eufy E18 Robot Lawn Mower Specs Anti-Theft Connectivity GPS Connectivity Wi-Fi Cutting Time 110 Cutting Width 8 Lawn Coverage 0.3 Mobile App Rain Sensor Remote Steering Sound Level 56 All Specs Table of ContentsFeatures: Plenty of ConveniencesBattery Life: More Than Sufficient for Small YardsSetup, Mapping, and App Control: Quick and SeamlessNavigation and Safety: Better Than ExpectedCutting Performance: Just as Good as a Traditional Mower Best known for vacuums and security cameras, Eufy enters the lawn maintenance market with the aptly named Eufy Robot Lawn Mower E18. While pricey at $1,999.99, the E18 doesn't require boundary wires, making it easier to use than models that do. Recommended for lawns up to 0.3 acres, it supports yard mapping, scheduling, and obstacle avoidance. I put it in charge of maintaining a small suburban yard, and the E18 cut the grass about as well as a push mower and did so extremely quietly. Though it falls short on edging, it can still greatly help reduce the amount of manual labor required to keep your lawn looking good. That said, if you have a larger yard and/or sharper inclines, you should also consider the $2,999.99 Husqvarna Automower 435X AWD.Features: Plenty of ConveniencesThe Eufy E18 is able to cut grass roughly one to three inches in height. It can be controlled manually from its companion Eufy mobile app (available for Android and iOS) or work autonomously using its onboard cameras, which means it doesn't require any boundary wires or external sensors. Under the hood, the E18 uses three small blades with an eight-inch cutting width—much smaller than the typical 20-plus-inch width of push mowers. The small width, however, means it can make sharper turns and maneuver to places a standard mower might not be able to.(Credit: Tyler Hayes)It's also much quieter than your average push mower. The E18 only operates at about 56 decibels, or lower than the volume of a normal conversation, according to the Center for Hearing and Communication. That’s dramatically quieter than the 75 decibels that retailer Tractor Supply Co. estimates as the volume of an average push mower. I could hear the E18 mower when I was outside and close by. But when I moved to the other side of an 80-foot yard and looked away, I couldn’t be sure it was running based on sound.(Credit: Tyler Hayes)It’s hard to overstate how quiet the E18 works compared with what you might be expecting. It’s nice not to introduce more noise pollution in general, but if it’s going to be running frequently, then it’s important that the robot isn't bugging you (or your neighbors). One caveat of the E18 to consider is that you can only use it during daylight hours. To protect wildlife, Eufy has configured it to only be able to operate from half an hour after sunrise until 30 minutes before sunset. (Credit: Tyler Hayes)The E18 is capable of handling a maximum slope of 40% (18 degrees). It’s rated IPX6 for water resistance, so rain shouldn’t bother it. In fact, Eufy recommends just spraying the unit with a hose to keep it clean. If you want to save a bit of money, Eufy also offers the E15 ($1,799.99), which is recommended for lawns up to 0.2 acres, but otherwise shares the same specs with the more expensive model. Comparatively, the Husqvarna Automower 435X AWD is recommended for lawns up to 0.9 acres and uses AWD (all-wheel drive) technology to navigate hills with up to a 70% (35-degree) slope, making it a better choice for larger yards with rough terrain. Battery Life: More Than Sufficient for Small YardsBattery life will depend on your configured settings, such as blade speed, travel speed, and path spacing. In my tests with those settings turned up, the E18 was able to cover 350 square feet in about 36 minutes, which brought its battery down about 15%.Eufy officially claims the E18 can mow for 90 to 110 minutes and cover about 1,076 to 1,614 square feet (or 100 to 150 square meters) on a single charge, which seems accurate (if not low) based on my testing. If it doesn’t have enough juice to complete your entire cutting area, the mower will automatically head back to its charging station and then resume after about 90 minutes of charging. Setup, Mapping, and App Control: Quick and SeamlessThe E18 comes ready to go out of the box. The most manual work required is attaching a plastic roof to the charging station using four hand-tightened screws. There are a few plastic ground stakes to secure the station on grass, and a power cable extension is included if you need it. On the mower itself, there’s nothing to set up or attach. The three blades underneath are already installed and ready to go. It's much easier to set up than the Husqvarna Automower 315X, which requires laying physical perimeter wire during installation. (Credit: Tyler Hayes)Most of the initial setup for the E18 is done using the Eufy mobile app. Like with the company's robot vacuums, you connect it to your home Wi-Fi network. Then it’s ready to map your lawn.Recommended by Our EditorsThe first time I ran the mapping process, the grass was healthy and nearly six inches tall. That’s higher than recommended, but I wanted to test the robot's capabilities and limits. The E18 moved slowly as it identified the grass area. It did get stuck a few times due to the grass height, but it managed to complete its mapping task. (Credit: Tyler Hayes)After the lawn had been completely mowed and edged by a human, I then sent the E18 on another mapping run, and it completed the task much quicker, in about 10 minutes, without getting stuck or encountering an issue. So, as excited as you may be to get a robot mower going, it's well worth your time to get the grass in shape before mapping and mowing.Navigation and Safety: Better Than ExpectedThe E18 uses what Eufy calls Vision Full Self-Driving (V-FSD) 1.0 for navigation. The cameras and LED light are forward-facing, and there’s even a defogger built in. If you want to get a sense of what the robot sees, you can use the app to drive the mower around like a remote-controlled car, without the blades spinning.Initially, I was concerned that the E18 was too hesitant and cautious with its navigation. I wondered if its vision approach was the best method. But after comparing its auto-mapping capabilities with the $2,999.99 Ecovacs A3000 GOAT, which uses LiDAR, I began to see the E18’s efforts in this area as highly polished. The E18 handled all aspects of mapping better than the Ecovacs mower, from understanding charging dock placement to instantly creating a boundary. Occasionally, the E18 mistook bunches of fallen leaves for a foreign object, which it avoided. However, it was competent at recognizing grass versus non-grass areas on each occasion and never strayed outside the lawn.More important than avoiding a leaf pile is how it adapts to curious children or pets. To check that aspect, I walked in front of the E18 it was mowing. It slowed and then stopped, but it did get within a few inches of my shoe. I never felt in danger, but I would be hesitant to have kids wandering close to it.I also grabbed the back and lifted it completely off the ground while it was cutting to see if it would turn off the blades. It did instantly. By the time I could see underneath, there weren’t any signs that the blades had been moving. I tipped it on its side to simulate it falling from a steep hill, and the results were the same. Everything shut off completely. If you tap the big red Stop button on top of the unit, it reacts instantaneously.Cutting Performance: Just as Good as a Traditional MowerDuring its first mapping and mowing run, in less-than-ideal conditions, the E18 still managed adequately, roughly on par with having a teenage neighbor come do the job. It struggled a bit trimming the six-inch grass down to a 2.9-inch (75mm) height that first time, missing the edges completely and leaving a few tufts behind, but it also completed the job and mowed the majority of the lawn on its own. However, after remapping with a pretrimmed lawn and tweaking a few mower settings, it did much better. (Credit: Tyler Hayes)The results on subsequent cuts were more impressive. Each time it rolled onto the grass, it seemed to marginally improve, fine-tuning its work. It began handling 85 to 90% of the mowing work for the small backyard lawn I was using it on. Ultimately, after a couple of weeks of use, the highest praise is that I don’t think anyone would guess I was using a robot to handle mowing duties.Depending on the type of material your grass bumps up against, edging might always be a task you need to do manually. Eufy states there’s a four-inch gap between fences and walls that the mower can’t reach. Awkward corners, around trees, or other unique designs might present issues, too. I was a little disappointed that it didn’t straddle the perimeter next to the flat pavers more, for a closer edge, but it seemed to be playing it safe.Finally, note that the grass clippings aren’t collected. Those fall to the ground as the mower moves along. While I wouldn’t describe the cutting results as mulching, it’s not that far off. Even when it cut taller grass than recommended, the clippings were fairly small. But if you don't want clippings left on your lawn, the remote-controlled Mowrator S1 ($3,999) comes with a grass catcher bag and supports automatic dumping.