Husqvarna Automower 405X

Robotic Mowing, a great company to do business with – Sergei Konovalov from Robotic Mowing did a fantastic job of supplying and installing the 405X robotic mower. The mower does a great job and with its garage neatly installed in the garden bed it is both unobtrusive and very effective. It even returns to the garage when it rains. Sergei was great to work with. He is personable, reliable, smart and very practical. He also delivers excellent value. If you are thinking of a robot mower, then I recommend Robotic Mowing without hesitation.

Excellent Mower But Newer Tech is out there – I have a fairly small but complicated lawn that has always made manual mowing a bit of chore. Rather than having one level I have 5, each quite small. Fortunately 3 of them are connected but not in a way that I can just push my mower around so I have always had to pick up the mower and carry it down a few stairs or lift it up a half meter rise. Very anyone and not great on the back.

I went searching for robot mowers in the hope that a small robot could cope with the complexity and save me a lot of effort. After some searching and a visit to my local Husqvarna dealer I decided on the 405x model.

The X-line is the upgraded line for Husqvarna, largely representing the inclusion of GPS navigation assistance and some styling changes.

Much credit to my local dealer Leith who spent the time to take a look at pictures of my property and even came out to take a look after I had bought the unit before installation to make sure it would be suitable for me.

I bought my unit on a special that included free installation of the perimeter wire and that was well worth it as it included a 45 day money back guarantee when professionally installed taking a lot of the risk out of it for me.

On to the mower: Pros: - Looks great - Whisper quite - Very easily and infinitely customisable scheduling in the app - Cutting height is adjustable through the app - ITTT integrations

Cons: - Random mowing pattern (bump tech) - Struggles with narrow corridors - fairly short battery life Overall I have to say that this little robot does a great job and my lawn looks clean and cut all the time now. The small razor blades are intended to make frequent small cuts to your lawn so that it is constantly mulching 2-3mm pieces of grass rather than long blades. The mower is certainly capable of hacking back taller grass but for best results you want it going out more often than not (frequency should vary depending on growth rate).

As I said, I have a complex lawn with lots of small areas, my mower even has to go through a narrow passage under a set of stairs to get between zones. To accomplish this this model has a guide wire. This is an additional wire to the perimeter wires and runs from the charging station, through that narrow corridor to the edge of my farthest zone to guide the mower out there. The guide wire is also used to get the mower home when it’s time to charge. For me this is critical otherwise I’d be relying on random chance for my mower to get from one zone to another. This is my one big gripe with the random mowing strategy employed by the Husqvarna units (for now). The mower bounces around randomly changing the angle slightly each time it encounters the perimeter wire. This can lead to some areas getting mowed more than others esp. in tight places and if you have different sections you’re really relying on random chance to reach them. The GPS is meant to help identify areas that are not being cut and guide the mower there but this seems like more of a macro feature for large areas and struggles to get smaller runs of grass sorted. That said, everything does seem to get cut eventually, just some areas far more than others.

It’s important to note that the Husqvarna app does allow for you to program the mower to start by following the perimeter wire in either direction but this struggles if there are turns early in the shape of your lawn.

I won’t make this review too much longer because I could go on for a fair bit talking about features, issues I’ve had and solutions I’ve found. But please feel free to message me if you have a questions about it or are wondering if it’s right for you.

The bottom line with this unit is that it’s perfect for simple, medium sized lawns with medium slopes (I have a slope up to about 30% and it’s no issue provided there is good grass, if you have dirt put down some turf otherwise it will slip). For more complex lawns like mine, this unit will do the job but not as well as you might hope and you could be left feeling like you’re spending as much time as you used to when you cut your own grass just differently.

Importantly, while I think that this is a great mower, there are some newer and far more exciting technologies coming out for robot mowers that are bringing them closer to the robot vacuums and if I had my time again I’d be holding out another 6 months and saving a few more pennies for those units. Husqvarna has 25+ years making Robot Mowers and it’s a bit of a shame to see that they are lagging so far behind with the newer technologies like RTK, LiDAR and SLAM. They do have some models coming out like the Nera but to be honest they feel a little to late to the party and the price point that Husqvarna is chasing is not competitive with other younger players.