Bushranger BRUROB7101 72V Battery Powered 30" Ride On Mower

Pretty good for what it is – This mower is ideal for level land, and, surprisingly, because it is so low to the ground, it can be used on a 20-30 degree slope as long as the ground is solid/dry and care is taken to prevent rolling. I find the blades get stuck often if the grass is long and not totally dry - I then have to switch it off and pull the blockage out by hand, then… Read more

it's all go again. I've been caught out in a paddock and run out of battery only once - that was all it took to realise I never want to push/pull/swear that much ever again - it is VERY heavy (for a lady, might be less of an issue for a guy). I love the fact that my solar power is all I need to use it and it is so quiet. Most of my land is steep slopes, so I have only really used it on the 1km driveway, every spring/summer maybe once/twice a month and in 4 years it has never missed a beat.

The worst – As of last week, my local mower centre told me these were no longer being distributed in Australia. If our experience is anything to go by I don't wonder. We bought ours about 10 months ago and it has never worked properly. The major reason for buying electric was the perceived inherent reliability of electric motors - I figured there was so… Read more

little to go wrong.

How wrong was I? Very! Every single time I used it something went wrong such as refusing to go forward or backward, randomly coming to a complete halt, not starting again after coming to a complete stop, etc. When it actually worked I loved it. It is maneuverable, has a great run time, and cuts well as long as you have a fairly "normal" lawn.

It is no good for heavy cutting duty and does not cope with flowering weeds such as paspalum at all. I went into the purchase with my eyes open and was aware of these shortcomings and knew I'd have to accept those, and was happy to when balanced with the joy of not having to handle fuel, oil spark plugs, etc ever again. Unfortunately, it was returned EVERY time it was used so spent approximately 3 months "off the road" whilst the dealer tried to repair it. In all, it had seven trips to the dealer.

It is also extremely uncomfortable as noted by another reviewer and the speed with which it gains speed down even a slight incline is alarming. When it did work, I found the charge lasted about 2 hours before going into limp mode, Unfortunately, it only ran for the two hours once in the entire time I had it.

Bushranger finally agreed to take it back and I ended up with a Toro electric which apparently is closely related to the Bushranger, on the understanding that if anything went wrong with it the dealer would take it back for a full refund. Well, the Toro has been used three times and the difference is chalk and cheese. It has not given one seconds problem in about 8 hours of mowing so fingers crossed it stays that way. It has an even better battery life as it appears to have regenerative braking. I used it for 81 minutes yesterday and ut still had over half a "tank". Impressive!

As an aside, when the mower technician dropped off the new Toro and took the Bushranger back, it stopped working three times in the 400 metres he drove it up our drive. I had to help him push it up onto the trailer. At least he got to see what an absolute POS this thing is.

This is honestly the worst 'appliance" I have ever bought and I am so glad that it is now consigned to history.

Depends on your Application – We have a rural property In SE QLD. Our house paddock is fenced into a roughly 2 acre section, which may have perhaps an acre or so of lawn. As with all local grasses, ours contains a blend of several, with paspalum in the mix too. In the past we’ve very happily used a base model John Deere ride on to manage the lawns, but it recently stopped… Read more

working, and given its 12 year old vintage, that’s fair enough!

We are staunch environmentalists, and have been prepared for several years for the conversion to electric equipment. We retired our still very much capable Stihl weed eater for an EGO 3 years ago ... and it has been absolutely superlative. We’d never run with a petrol weed eater again.

So against this, we’d already begun researching a suitable replacement for the JD; and had our eyes on the Ryobi electric ride on, which has had many sound reviews. Husqvarna makes an electric ride on as well, with supply being a bit of an issue where we are, but we’d earmarked it anyway as a second place contender. When the JD finally konked out though, we’d found that pretty well the only retailer for the Ryobi - Bunnings - no longer listed the model in their range, despite it having been there when we checked just a month or so previously. We have three Bunnings outlets close by, and visited two, but no longer saw the Ryobis there. (BUT we saw a shiny new Ryobi in the 3rd one soon after we bought the Bushranger ... GRRRRR!!!)

What we did find online though, was the apparently newly released Bushranger, which looked like being a fair fill-in for the Ryobi. Aussie company too .... double bonus. Very limited reviews though - could only find one (above) which in retrospect we’re a little dubious about now ....

So ... the mower presents as very small looking, belying its 140KG heft. It supposedly has a 30” cut. Charges from a standard 10 amp household outlet, taking around 7 hours, give or take, to fully charge - note that you’ll need to have an outlet close by, as the charger doesn’t have a long cord. You’ll get 1.5-2 hours run time, depending on the work you do. Fine. There are a handful of LED chargebars on the sparse instrument panel that indicate remaining charge. When it falls to around 2 bars, the mower emits an audible signal, the blades stop, and it enters limp mode to let you get it to a power point at a reduced speed. If you select reverse on the rocker switch you’ll get a quaint little alert sounding while you’re backing.

Starting is a matter of sitting on the seat, setting the rocker switch to neutral and turning the key. Little to no noise whatsoever, then set the rocker to forwards, throttle down and off you go. Well ... that’s the premise. Ours had a dud drive motor ... confirmed by a visit from a Bushranger rep - more about that later. Anyway, to engage the blades you simply activate the switch, which can be done on the fly. The blades turn at a set speed. Their electric motor is independent of the drive motor.

Herein lies the first problem. The blade speed is set. You cannot increase it to tackle heavier grass ... the premise is that you simply slow down on the accelerator so that the mower is moving slower to give the blades a better chance at cutting. Noise is nearly non existent when moving, with blade noise upping the ante obviously once you activate them. You could listen to music or make phone calls whilst on the fly, but probably not while mowing ... but you won’t need earmuffs.

10 available cutting heights across a fairly limited range, and unlike many ride on mowers the deck can’t be raised or lowered to give a further “coarse” adjustment range. You’ll need to watch the plastic grip on the stalk of the height adjustment lever ... it only needs to brush up against a branch and the grip falls off wherever you are at the time. Car style ratchet handbrake worked very well, but the little actuating button on the stalk became loose on just our 2nd use of the machine and fell into the stalk. Thankfully son had thinner fingers than me and was able to fish it out otherwise the brake couldn’t be released!

Side discharge chute attaches to the mower in a flimsy way. It fell off with such regularity that we ended up just leaving the darned thing off .... made little difference anyway.

The mower is very rough on uneven ground, with a completely basic plastic seat with zero cushioning features contributing. On a slope it never really felt secure, but to be fair we didn’t record any wheel spin to speak of. BUT it has an absolutely wizard turning circle, and feels subtle and nimble around obstacles. The LED headlights are truly outstanding ... and contributed to the sliver of funkiness that was embedded in this mower that even attracted the wife to actually hop on and use a mower for the first time in our life together!!! Great little metal bull bar at the front. Our block is undulating in nature. The mower will “automatically brake once pressure is released from the accelerator” - well - so says the owners manual. Our mower did not brake when we released our foot from the accelerator. Even on a gentle downward slope it ran away alarmingly unless considerable braking pressure was applied. Whether this was due to the faulty drive motor we cannot say. It’s just what happened in our application.

At a time of active grass growth we needed to mow the same area from 3 to 6 times to give a satisfactory result, despite intentionally not beginning the work until around 4PM to ensure the grass is completely dry (as recommended in the manual). The grass here with its high proportion of paspalum can be difficult to control ... however the old base model JD used to satisfactorily handle the same area with just one pass. This poor cutting effort meant that we took 3-6 times longer to cut our grass than we used to ... even more when the wider cutting width of the JD is taken into account. Our lawn mowing fell further and further behind because we weren’t able to ever get ahead given the repeat runs that need to be taken, the slimmer width of cut, and the fact that we could essentially only get one session in a day due to the requirement to only use the machine on dry grass, and length of time for recharging.

The mower is a real breeze to store. One adult can easily lift it up and backwards so that it rests upright on its “bum” - it has little bumpers there to accommodate this ... reducing storage footprint to nearly non existent. This also obviously makes the business end of the machine very accessible for cleaning or maintenance.

SO .... it’s a real problem to rate this machine. In our application it was only just better than useless, and would probably have been given a very high 1 or a low 2 out of 5. The fun value is there, the environmental credentials 100%. But a harsh ride, poorly executed fittings, and inexcusable cutting performance - which at the end of the day are requisites for a mower - truly shot it down.

BUT .... in the right environment I can see this thing pulling a 5 with ease. It easily cut small sections of more, shall we say, suburban types of grass that we have here and there very well. SO ... if your application is a small, level suburban block with easy grass types that you mow often, and isn’t too bumpy .... you will be on a winner. If you have anything OTHER than this. Give it a big miss!! Maybe the next generation will have a recipe for you.

So ... what happened... the Bushranger rep told us what we’d already worked out. The EV was inappropriate for us. He agreed to take it back less a substantial penalty for the 2 months we owned it. Our JD has now been replaced by a Bushranger Spartan zero turn ..... but that will be a different story!!!

Purchased this electric ride on mower and I'm delighted! – Purchased this Bushranger electric ride on mower after the petrol engine on my last ride on blew up. It is quiet and the 72 volt lithium batteries make if very powerful. The first test was to attach my mower trailer and shift firewood to my wood shed. This garden tractor worked flawlessly not even slowing down pulling heavy wood up the hill. I… Read more

spent the whole afternoon driving trailer loads of stuff around the property and it still plenty of battery power left. The second test was to tackle the neglected patch of weeds and long grass - and it cuts grass like any decent ride-on would. I normally finish mowing after about an hour - so there is still charge left in the battery after mowing an acre of rough hilly ground. It has plenty of power and does not seem to struggle with any task I would have given my previous 11hp petrol powered ride-on - this mower behaves like it is the mongrel offspring of a Tesla and a Makita. The ride is comfy enough with a padded seat on a big spring, and the seat adjusts back and forward to take any size of person. My only design feedback would be to put a softer spring in the seat safety switch, as sometimes bouncing down a hill, the safety switch will trigger unnecessarily, requiring the driver to spend a second switching the mower into neutral and back to reset the motor controller. Cleaning is easy - as it is electric, you can just lift it upright onto it's back, and give it a clean. It was built to be fairly stable resting upright, and all the battery and motor weight is over the back wheels. You can also store it on it's back - taking up half the space in the shed of an ordinary ride-on. A petrol ride on would leak oil and die if you tried this, and lead acid batteries would also not allow this. The manual says use two people to lift it onto it's back, but I've not had any issues doing this myself - they are just covering themselves, but get help lifting it if in any doubt. I'm happy with the lithium batteries too. They are likely to last much longer than lead acid, plus they are not as fragile - lead acid batteries cannot be regularly drained below about 40%. A lithium battery will actually give you more usable energy and work than an equivalently rated lead acid battery, with one third the weight. I also happy I do not have to handle or buy petrol - fuel is provided free from my solar panels. But the best thing (apart from making my neighbours jealous with my next generation tech) is the relative quiet, I can listen to music in my AirPods while I mow and actually enjoy the time being out in my in my garden - even using the built in cup holder for a nice cup of coffee, whereas I always hated the noise, vibration and the fumes of my last petrol mower.