Segway Navimow X4-seriesSegwayIn their earliest deployments, robot lawnmowers were a fun concept that were plagued by a near-terminal flaw (and no, it wasn't the price). Wires. In order to get a robot mower to cut your lawn, you had to install boundary wire around the entire perimeter in which you wanted it to work. The insult to injury would come weeks later when your mower wouldn't start because of a disrupted perimeter signal. After you'd spent an entire weekend burying guide wire, you had to traverse the entire length, trying to find where it was broken.Finally, RTK (real-time kinematic) technology became reliable and cheap enough to deploy to home installations. With that brought a veritable tsunami of autonomous lawn robots who would use the signal from your personal RTK receiver to pinpoint their position on your lawn. Basically, the RTK connects to satellites to establish its position, the mower uses that local fixed point and its own internal positioning sensors to establish where it is on your property. No guide wire needed. A new problem arose, however, and it was how to place the RTK sensor itself. Every mower would come with a pole that would raise the receiver maybe 5ft. off the ground but that was only useful if you were installing the RTK receiver in the middle of an open field with nothing blocking the sky. To get a signal that your mower could actually use, you'd most likely need to affix a mount to your roof or attach the receiver to a 12ft. pole so that it could get a clear-enough chunk of sky. And if you had a property that was covered in trees? You might be out of luck entirely. MORE FOR YOUThere was a third generation of robot mowers that were little more than lawn Roombas, mapping via virtually the same bump-and-go tech robot vacuums use. But the less said about them, the better. So here we are, at the latest generation of robot lawnmowers and, finally, they're something that anyone can deploy, just about anywhere. Navimow X4 Is Set-and-ForgetThe Segway Navimow X4-series bots come with Network RTK and onboard 4G cellular connectivity to link to regional reference stations, allowing them to triangulate their position without relying on a single RTK receiver that you have to deploy. Essentially, as long as the X4 can access wifi or cellular data, you don't need to do much more than plop it down in your yard. Segway Navimow X4 mows up to the edgeSegwayIf you have a well-defined lawn (be it by roads, natural boundaries, or other barriers such as fences), the X4 is actually a drop-and-go device. You can map your work area manually, but you don't have to. Given the bot's AI vision capabilities, it's quite capable of figuring out where it needs to mow and where it doesn't. If you enable edge mowing, it'll even straddle the border when mowing so that you don't have to go back and edge along the sidewalk or roadway.Suffice to say, since I deployed the X4 over a month ago, I've barely thought about it. This is a good thing. I'll clean up palm fronds, do a bit of edging in the areas where I don't want the bot to go, but time spent on lawn work each weekend is minimal. The X4 is so capable a navigator that I installed path lighting by my front door and didn't even bother remapping around the new obstacles. The X4 saw them and worked around them without me having to do anything. I did have just one navigational mishap. My Navimow unit ended up partially in the lake that first week, which gave me the chance to verify that the waterproofing of the unit is top notch. Having had to deal with bots dumping themselves in my lake several times while I beta tested other mowers, I've seen it end very, very poorly. That said, it was the only incident and appeared to be a navigational fluke that's not been repeated. Segway Navimow X4-series has improved obstacle clearanceSegwayIt’s not surprising, given that the X4 can clear obstacles of 2.8 inches and handle a slope of up to 40% (the gradation near my lake is just a little gentler than that). And it somehow tackles slopes without tearing up the grass. Other robot mowers I’ve tried would leave divots over time from where they dug in to make turns on slopes. While the X4 is definitely a heavy customer, it manages to navigate and turn without grinding the grass beneath it due to its ability to adjust the torque on the front wheels and ability to switch between steering modes (Ackerman and in-place pivoting for you steering nerds out there). The dual blade system automatically adjusts as well to uneven terrain so that the bot doesn't scalp your lawn.Navimow App Completes the PackageThe Navimow companion app is dead-simple to use and keeps the mower up to date and ready to go. I appreciate that it gives you options to help preserve battery life. You can set limits for drain and charge so that you're not completely depleting or needlessly topping off the battery. Especially if you have a lawn under an acre (like most suburban homes), there's really no need to max out the battery with every charge. You can also tweak the operational settings for a variety of weather conditions, be it temperature (hot or cold), wind, or precipitation (even snow, though if you’re mowing in snow, I think you may be missing the point). But my favorite Navimow feature is one that I don't have to think about. Since the first generation of Segway robotic mowers, Navimow mowers will automatically alter their cutting path by 10° every mowing session. Changing the angle every time you mow is a tip that's been around for forever to improve lawn health. But actually doing it is something practically no one does. Between the X4 being lighter than a regular mower and the adaptive mowing pattern, it's a considerably healthier way to mow your lawn. Just in Time for SummerSegway Navimow X430Anthony KarczSegway's Navimow X4 series isn't cheap. Starting at $2,499, you'll have to decide whether it's worth it to sacrifice your lawn and garden budget for a few years (the average annual DIY budget is around $300, while lawn services usually start at $1,000). But having a reliable way to mow your lawn that doesn't rely on someone else or on you getting out in the heat is a pretty great summer hack.The X430 can mow up to 1 acre daily, with the available X450 available that can mow 1.5 acres. There are some pretty pricey accessories available as well. A "garage" (really just a stiff plastic awning) to protect your X-series from the elements is $350 and an automated fence gate is $450. Learn more about the X4 series on the Navimow site.