In my neighbourhood, I know the weekend is off and running when I hear the sound of gas-powered lawn mowers starting up. It’s a Friday-night ritual, and I suspect there’s a sense of urgency to get this chore out of the way so the rest of the weekend can be devoted to other things.
However, there’s a real environmental cost to using gas-powered mowers. Environment Canada suggests that running a mower for an hour is roughly equivalent to driving a new car between 320 and 480 km. One way to reduce those emissions is to switch over to an electric mower. To retain the manoeuvrability and convenience of your gas mower, go cordless.
Buying a new cordless mower can be daunting, so we put a group of mowers to the test to help you out when you leave the gas guzzler behind.
Even though there are many choices out there, the good news is that all of the mowers we tested worked well. For an average lawn, none of the testers had concerns about the amount of power at hand or the run time of any of the machines; however, it’s important to note that cordless mowers can’t chop through the rough stuff as well as gas machines. Performance is definitely affected by moisture (several manufacturers caution against cutting wet grass) and length. You can overcome these limitations by ensuring that the bag is emptied regularly, not cutting wet grass and by cutting the grass down in stages if you’ve let it get a little long—all things you’d likely do with a gas mower anyway.
Each manufacturer states its mower can cover a particular size of lawn, although even a test like ours can’t tell you for certain whether a cordless mower will have enough juice to do the haying on your property. Variables such as grass species and height, mowing frequency, bagging or mulching, and even the roughness of the terrain affect performance. The best endurance test for your lawn is to use a mower for a month through at least a few battery charge/discharge cycles. If battery life is a concern, two of the mowers in our test use removable cells, so you can buy additional power to go the extra distance.
The setup
For this test, we selected rotary mowers with a blade swath of 19" to 20", figuring that anyone leaning toward replacing an old gas guzzler was not likely to switch to something much smaller; however, there are some excellent-looking 14" to 16" products out there. The only other criterion was that the mowers be reasonably available at stores throughout Canada.
The testers
Michel Roy
Lawn area: 4,300 sq. ft. of grass, with some curvy ornamental plantings to go around
Dwayne McDonald
Lawn area: 6,900 sq. ft. of yard; mostly rectangular, with border plantings
Roman Siedlaczek
Lawn area: 8,000 sq. ft. of yard that’s very hilly with many ornamental plants and trees
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