Product Review: Gtech Cordless Lawnmower

I was recently asked whether I would like to trial Gtech's new cordless lawnmower.  When I bought my current lawnmower (an electric flymo) just over a year ago, at that time I looked at cordless ones but to be frank I did not know anyone who had one and I did not want to risk that amount of money on something that might not cope with my garden. Regular readers will know that I do have a fair amount of lawn so it was with genuine interest that I agreed to trial the mower.
The mower arrived in a big box and the first job is to charge the battery.
Did I say battery?  Sorry, I mean flux capacitor.
Oh come on, it is a flux capacitor, I don't care what you say!
The machine itself is not too heavy and has rather jazzy bright green bits.
It's a lawn mower, it's never going to look that sexy but for a lawnmower I can say I thought it looked very lawnmowery.  I did like the jazzy green bits.
I liked the green safety key a lot.  This is a very good safety feature and meant I did not lose any fingers or toes.
Flux capacitor loaded and I was ready to go.  I decided that I would split the front and back garden across two days as, quite frankly, it takes a while to do them both and splitting them makes it less of a chore.  So day 1 test was the front side lawn and the driveway.
The mower cut the side lawn with ease, no trouble at all.
Out into the driveway which you can see is much rougher and really about mowing weeds to a reasonable height - again the mower was totally happy with this on a fairly high cutting blade level.
After both jobs the 40 liter mowing basket was not even quite full.  I was happy.
Day 2 and it was time for the back lawn.  The back lawn is big so I was not sure it would get all the way around on one charge.
This is the formal lawn before the cut commences.
Stripe one - this is largely so you can see that the lawn really did need cutting.  It had two week's growth which is the usual length of time I leave it this time of year.
It looked a lot better after being cut.  I am not a lawn fanatic, but I like it when it's just been cut and smells nice.
I cut the Bermuda Triangle, did the paths along the Prairie Borders  and moved around to the Dancing Lawn.  I was now about 45 minutes into the mow and then, dear reader, after a few coughs the lawnmower declared itself out of juice.  I decided this was a message to go and have a mug of tea so I put the battery on to charge for 30 minutes whilst I made tea.  This was not a successful idea, the battery did not charge enough to do anymore of great note.  I packed the mower away for the night and put the battery on for a full charge.  It takes a few hours to fully charge so I knew it would be the next day before I could complete the task.
Day 3 and the fully charged battery made light work of the Dancing Lawn.
It also cut paths into the Wild Garden with ease,
even along the edges of the long grass was not an issue.
So - what did I think.  Well, I thought I needed two batteries.  If I had two batteries I could have done the back garden all in one day.  I could of course split it over two days which is no real hardship.
I delayed posting this review for another two weeks as I wanted to give the lawns another mow to try the mower out again.  This time I cut the driveway and side lawn and then moved straight into the back garden to see how much it would mow before it cut out.  It cut the whole of the formal lawn and I have just moved into the Bermuda Triange before it gave out (spooky it gave out there....)  I put the battery on to recharge overnight and then finished off the next day.  This worked very well as there was only about a third of the back lawn still to go.
The mower has six different blade heights and it cut the lawns well.  If the grass is a little too long for the height you have chosen it will snarl up the blades a bit, but as you can see it coped with my grass that was around  2-3 inches long (give or take).  All you have to do is raise the cutting height a little and it will cope, you can then go over it again if you really want to at the lower height.  I am not that fussy about the height of my grass so I was quite happy with this.
The 40 liter grass basket is very good, definitely better capacity than my current mower.  Also not having an electric cable was very nice.  I did not spend half my time faffing around with cable and decapitating my favorite flowers with the cable at any given moment.
My top tip for this mower is to recharge the battery the moment that you finish using it.  It keeps the charge really well and whilst I gave it a quick zap before I started mowing the second time I used it, it had kept pretty much fully charged over the two week period.  This means if I have a mowing emergency that the battery should be good to go.
Would I recommend this mower, yes, from my use of it it was good.  I do wonder if it will manage with the mowing of the Wild Garden after its first scything in September, I shall let you know.   If you have a large lawn I would recommend two batteries, it will make it much easier, failing that you might have to divide your time cutting your lawns which is not that onerous.
Oh - and did I mention it has a flux capacitor?
The lawnmower retails at £299, with an additional battery being £99.