In June, I reviewed my first robotic lawnmower: the GPS- and satellite-connected Segway Navimow X430. It was good! But it felt like overkill for the little lawn I sicked it on. So when Roborock, which makes robot vacuums that many people swear by, offered to let me try one of its first mow-bots, the much more reasonably sized and specced RockNeo Q110H, I jumped on the opportunity.
At $1,300, the RockNeo Q110H is the cheapest robot mower that Roborock sells in the U.S., and it shows. It’s a two-wheel drive model with swiveling front wheels and a manual dial for adjusting mowing height, and Roborock advertises it as requiring you to jam an RTK antenna (real-time kinematic) into your lawn. It’s comparable to Segway’s $1,600 Navimow i210 LiDAR, which I received alongside the X430 but didn’t have time to fully test.
Are the quality-of-life features that Roborock dispensed with to bring costs down, such as automatic height adjustment, a reasonable sacrifice? It depends on the yard you have. After a week of testing, I’m not fully sold on the RockNeo Q110H for lawns like mine, which includes obstacles such as tall garden plants and paving stones, as well as a sharp incline that thwarts the robot’s plasticky wheels. But for other folks, the Q110H could be a reasonable package. It’s a more user-friendly option than auto-mowers of the past, since it doesn’t require you to dig guide-wire trenches. If you have a simple, flat yard and can’t swing the much pricier Segway Navimow i210, it could very well offer all the functionality you need.
