The Best Robot Lawn Mowers For Hills And Steep Slopes

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Gained early experience with automation technology in the private and industrial sector, can turn his living room into a movie theater with one voice command and is the owner of this website. He is happy to share his accumulated experience with every new article.

Image	Name	Max. Slope	Link
*	Husqvarna 450X	24° or 45%	Check Price*
*	Husqvarna 430X	24° or 45%	Check Price*
*	WORX WR140 Landroid M	20° or 35%	Check Price*
*	WORX WR150 Landroid L	20° or 35%	Check Price*
*	Husqvarna 315X	20° or 35%	Check Price*

The Best Mowing Robots for Hills & Slopes up to 24°

If your garden has a lawn with larger inclines, many cheaper mowing robots quickly reach their limits. If you still want to keep your hilly lawn well-tended, you will need one of the following robot lawn mowers, which can also handle an incline of more than 20°.

Husqvarna Automower 450X

The Husqvarna 450X* is one of the premium models among the robot lawn mowers and offers you excellent performance in addition to its many great features.

It can mow a lawn with an area of up to 1.25 acres or 54000 square feet alone. It can cover this large area thanks to its powerful lithium-ion battery, which gives it a runtime of around 260 minutes.

Due to its high motor power and specially designed wheels, it can handle inclines of up to 24° or 45%. This is far more than normal mowing robots can do.

Here is a list of some of the best features of the Husqvarna 450X:

Very quiet: This mowing robot operates at a volume of 58 decibels. This is absolutely not comparable to a conventional lawnmower, where you can no longer understand your own word.
Lift/Tilt sensors: With these sensors, the mowing robot notices when it is lifted. This way you can be sure that there is no danger if you have children or pets in your family. If someone wants to lift the robot lawn mower up or tip it over, there is no danger because the cutting blades stop immediately.
Rain sensor: Thanks to the built-in rain sensor, the mowing robot knows when it is raining and can thus adjust its schedules. It’s not that good to let the mowing robot run on a wet lawn.
Energy-saving: Its long running time of 260 minutes is not only due to its powerful battery, but also to its very energy-saving design.
GPS supported navigation: This feature can only be found in the upper class of mowing robots. With the GPS supported navigation system, the Husqvarna 450X always finds the perfect route to cut the lawn as efficiently as possible.
Security features: You can lock the mowing robot with a PIN and track it via the GPS sensor if it has been stolen.
Programmable schedules: Like many other mowing robots, the Husqvarna 450X allows you to create individualized schedules.

👉 Check Price*

Husqvarna Automower 430X

The Husqvarna Automower 430X* is basically the light version of the just-introduced 450X.

The 430X differs from the 450X essentially only in that it is designed for smaller gardens. Where the 450X can work up to 5000 m² of lawn, the 430X can do “only” 3250 m².

This smaller maximum area is due to its smaller battery. And instead of 260 minutes, the 430X can only work 135 minutes at a time.

The huge advantage over his big brother, however, is his much lower price. The choice of which of both mowing robots you should buy for your garden depends completely on your lawn area.

All features are otherwise the same between these two robots – even the maximum incline of 24° or 45%.

👉 Check Price*

The Best Robot Lawn Mower for Slopes up to 20°.

With gradients of up to 20° or 35%, there is a greater choice, as this is the good midfield of mowing robots. If you have a garden where the lawn has slopes of less than 20°, you are in perfect hands here.

The Worx Landroid WR Series

With its Worx Landroid WR series*, Worx has brought a mowing robot onto the market that is available in various models. The individual models cover different sizes of gardens, so you can choose the perfect robot lawn mower for your garden.

The features are the same for all mowing robots, they differ only in size and battery life.

The smallest mowing robot in this series can cut up to a 1/4 acre* and the largest up to a 1/2 acre*. All models can effortlessly handle slopes of 20° or 35%.

Here are the features of the Worx Landroid WR series listed:

AIA navigation technology: This navigation technology uses boundary wires and zone programming to ensure that the mowing robot finds the most efficient route and reaches even the most narrow places without getting lost.
Cut to Edge function: With this function and the associated construction on his right side, he can cut the lawn edges perfectly. This eliminates the need for subsequent trimming of the lawn edge!
Operation via app: The Landroid app is very user-friendly. The app allows you to control the lawnmower robot from anywhere and program it with individual timer functions. So you can always send it to work even when you’re not home.
PowerShare: The built-in battery can be used in many other Worx* products. This will save you a lot of money as you only need one battery for all your devices.
Integrated SIM card: Even if you don’t have wifi, you can still operate your mowing robot without a phone connection.

👉 Check Price*

Worx Landroid Accessories

Landroid mowing robots can be extended with various accessories. You can take a closer look at them by clicking on the respective link on Amazon. Here are a few of them listed:

Find my Landroid: This GPS module gives your mowing robot a GPS signal at any time with which you can find it again and again. The smart lawn mower robot will also automatically notify you when it is taken outside your garden.
Off limits: This accessory is great for gardens where there is often a change of scenery. Trampolines, pools or the like can be bypassed with it. All you have to do is place the magnetic strip around the object and the mowing robot will avoid these areas.
ACS Anti-Collision System: With this system you don’t have to equip all your obstacles on the lawn with a perimeter wire. The built-in ultrasonic sensors detect obstacles that the robot can avoid in this way.
Landroid Garage*: Of course, the Landroid series mowing robots are weatherproof, but their lifespan is increased by a lot with a suitable garage.

Husqvarna 315

Another high-quality lawn mowing robot that can handle 20° or 35% incline.

The Husqvarna 315*, like most other models in the Husqvarna family of mowing robots, makes virtually no noise. With its 58 decibels, it is really much quieter than a conventional lawnmower and many other mowing robots.

The low noise level is mainly due to the sophisticated blade system. The very fast rotating and very sharp titanium blades on the underside cut the grass with high precision. Due to the extremely sharp blades, the robot can cut the grass tips very finely. So if you let it mow the lawn frequently, these small pieces of lawn will fall to the ground past the blades of grass and fertilize the lawn.

This way you can save a lot of fertilizer and money and even protect the environment.

The Husqvarna 315 is completely weatherproof. It can withstand both heavy rain and intense sunlight. If you still want to protect it a little more to extend its life, you can still buy one of Husqvarna’s practical garages*.

Otherwise, the built-in features are similar to the 430X* and 450X* models described above. Here all technical data are summarized once again:

Maximum lawn area: 0.37 acres
Runtime: 70 minutes
Charging time: 60 minutes
Built-in battery: Lithium-Ion
Power consumption: 25 W
PIN code security system with alarm
LCD with 19 Button Keypad
Timer function
Lift and Tilt Sensors
Replacement knives: 9 pieces
Weight: 19.8 pounds
Size: 9.8 x 24.8 x 20.1 inch

👉 Check Price*

How do I Calculate the Slope of my Lawn?

To determine the slope of your lawn, you’ll need some math. But don’t worry, we explain everything as simple as possible with examples.

The lawnmower robots presented in this article can handle inclines of 20° or 35% and 24° or 45%.

The slope of a hill can be calculated by the following equations:

Gradient in percent = a/b

Gradient in degrees = arctan(a/b)

For comparison, here is a triangle with the angle of the slope ɑ and the length b and the height a:

All you have to do now is to measure a certain length of your lawn and the height it has gained. Let’s say that on a distance of b = 4 feet you find a height of a = 1 feet. Then you would have a slope of a/b = 1/4 = 0.25 = 25 % and arctan(0.25) = 14°.

The calculation of the gradient in percent is of course much easier than in degrees. Every modern smartphone is able to perform both calculations. The function arctan() is also equivalent to tan^-1(). In your calculation program or the calculator app you also have to make sure that the output is set to degrees (DEG) and not to radians (RAD).

If you find the conversion to degrees too complicated, here is a small table that converts between degrees and percent gradient:

Degree	Percentage
5,7°	10%
11,3°	20%
16,7°	30%
21,8°	40%
26,6°	50%
31,0°	60%
35,0°	70%
38,7°	80%
42,0°	90%
45,0°	100%

Most mowing robot manufacturers give the highest possible gradient in degrees and in percent, so you only have to calculate the gradient in percent.

Practical Tip for Measuring Slopes

Since you have to measure a horizontal and a vertical distance to calculate the gradient, you first have to ask yourself how to measure this at all. After all, you can’t measure into the ground!

The trick is this:

Identify the upper and lower ends of the slope.
Sink a tent peg at the top of the slope.
Insert a pole or a stick vertically into the lower end of the slope.
Now pull a horizontal line or cord between the tent peg and the stick or pole.
Now you get an upside-down triangle as described above. The stick is the height a and the line is the distance b.
Finally, you only have to measure both distances and you can calculate the slope.

In the figure below all measurements are drawn for comparison. The green line symbolizes the grass, the horizontal dashed line b the cord and the vertical line a the stick or pole.

Important Features for Robot Lawn Mowers for Hills

Low Center of Gravity

Cars with a low center of gravity have better traction in curves. Also mowing robots are generally designed to have a very low center of gravity. This means that their weight is centered as close as possible to the ground so that it cannot tip over so easily.

In addition, the weight is distributed so that all wheels have to carry about the same amount of weight. This ensures that he always has good traction, no matter how around he goes up or down an incline.

The Right Wheels

Compared to their size, mowing robots have very large wheels. Usually, the rear two wheels are designed particularly large.

These large wheels are needed to have as much traction as possible on steep sections of your garden. You can compare the design with that of tractors. Large wheels compared to the overall size, lots of power, but at slower speed. This enables the greatest possible off-road capabilities.

And just like on tractors, the wheels are designed to give good grip on slippery and wet grass. It would be suboptimal if your robot lawn mower slipped on a wet slope and possibly overturned.

In wet and muddy weather, dirt and debris may accumulate on the wheels in the long term and restrict the freedom of movement of the mowing robot. In such weather it is advisable to clean the wheels roughly every few weeks to help the mowing robot with its work.

Rain Sensors

Rain makes it difficult for the lawn mowing robot to work on steep terrain. There are already many lawnmower robots with built-in rain sensors. This allows you to program them not to mow the lawn during a rain shower and a few hours later to avoid slippery spots on the lawn.

Wet grass offers much less friction than dry grass, which severely limits the ability of the lawnmower robot to climb it without effort. If the slope of your lawn is at the limit of what is possible for your robot, it may not come up or down the slope in wet conditions.

With the rain sensors of the different manufacturers, you can differentiate between such systems, which immediately stop the mowing process as soon as it starts raining and those which still drive on and then pause. Normally, however, you can adjust these default settings according to your preferences to find the perfect settings for your garden.

Solutions for Too Steep Slopes

You landed on this article because you have been looking for robot lawn mowers for hills, as your lawn obviously has them.

If you have calculated the slope of your lawn to be steeper than 24° or 45% in some places, you will unfortunately not find a lawn mower robot that can handle this slope.

But this is no reason to abandon your project to automate lawn mowing!

I have seen many gardens where too steep sections in the lawn have been defused by creative elements such as raised beds, depressions or walls.

Bottom Line

In summary, it can be said that the range of robot lawn mowers for hills is very good.

The maximum possible slope is 24° or 45% for Husqvarna’s 450X* and 430X* models. This is followed by a very wide midfield with a mowing robot that can handle hills of up to 20° or 35 %.

Since most of these lawnmower robots belong to the upper midfield or the upper class, you also get a lot of features included. These include features such as complete weather resistance, built-in security systems such as PIN and anti-theft protection, rain sensors and many more.

Take a look at this article if you want to browse a bit further: 🏆 The Best Mowing Robots – [List + Buying Guide]

Attention: When installing electronic equipment, please be sure to observe the manufacturer’s safety instructions. You have to take care of your own safety. The information on this site only helps you to learn.
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