Worx Landroid WR149E

When it works, it's great – I have the WR149E and when it works, it's great! It's the setup and maintenance that is frustrating as hell. The robot requires you to place a boundary wire around the property, regardless of any fencing that would prevent it going places anyway. This boundary wire is pinned flat onto the grass by provided pegs. The ends of the wire also need to be stripped and inserted into the docking station. The circuit has to be complete and the stripped ends sitting properly in the connection for the robot to even start. The paperwork that comes with the robot doesn't exactly explain this very well and I had to look up a youtube video. Since this isn't exactly my area of expertise, I didn't have the tools necessary to do it properly and it took me literal hours to get the robot to even start, after already having spent an hour laying the boundary wire.

When the robot does run, it runs OVER the boundary wire. I understand why it was done that way, but it puts the wire at risk of being cut by the robot. I painstakingly made sure the wire was as flat and taut everywhere as possible. It was fine for a while, but in time the wheels of the robot pulled at the wire and the grass/dirt around it. This made it loose enough that it ended up cutting the wire due to some uneven ground. I fixed this problem fairly easily with the parts that came with the robot. Mostly because by that point I had bought a wire stripper, and I had made and pinned loops of spare wire like recommended by the video (but NOT the documentation), so I could cut and reconnect the ends easily. But now I'm paranoid about when it will inevitably do it again, and I will need more parts than they've provided.

Really I wouldn't recommend this at all if you don't have solid grass that has a good root system, or if you have a lot of uneven ground. The wheels of the robot are not kind to the grass when it needs to make a turn, which I think contributes to the boundary wire being pulled up. It has still saved me a lot of time and energy, but I wish it would just bounce about the place against my fencing with some minimal electronic boundaries installed, and maybe a map where I could install digital blocks like the modern roombas.