McCulloch ROB S400 Robotic Lawn Mower – Cuts up to 400 sq m, Manicured Lawn, Tackles 35 Percent Slop Gradients, Lawn Growth Sensors, Simple Set Up, Intuitive Keypad

 

I use it for mowing the lawn. It’s a pleasure to see him out in the morning, working away by himself. I think, even if he were doing nothing, it would still be relaxing – better than a goldfish.
And the lawn looks fine. 🙂

 

The set up time of installing the wires a lot longer than expected as dug them in. Needed more cable and a longer low voltage cable which increased the initial cost. Although still need to cut around the edges the remainder is well looked after by the robot. Grass is more even and looking healthier. It’s entertaining sitting watching it cut.

 

Although quiet there is some high pitch noise from the blades .
minimum cut is 2.5 cm so its no daisy cutter and as I have a dog I don’t want to use lawn weed killer

The fact that’s the minimum cut is the most disappointing thing about it .

I have a lot of plants so leaves and debris can litter the grass around the edges Once every 2 or 3 months its useful to just hoover them up with the lawn mower
but to do this you need the boundary wire buried

 

So had this now for a couple of months and the installation was really challenging because the instructions have been translated poorly. There are some helpful you tube videos out there, so we opted to watch a few of those to check our understanding before starting.
We’re still moving the border wire every so often even now to perfect the border cutting, but as I haven’t had to cut my lawn for 2 months, I really don’t mind as my lawn looks perfectly manicured every day 🙂

 

I have a fairly large front garden and 300m2 back garden so I bought this mower for the back garden to take some of the load off and to improve the condition of the grass. It was only cut every 2 weeks and was looking scrappy with lots of dandelions etc.
The mower arrived ahead of schedule and was well packaged. The one criticism is that there were 5 User Manuals included but not one was in English. I downloaded one after a short search.
There was a comprehensive parts list (in English) and all the parts were present.
The user manual is comprehensive, well written and easy to follow. The setup can take a few hours but it is straightforward and, if you get it right, you are rewarded with a functioning robotic mower. It has been working autonomously for a short couple of days but hasn’t put a wheel wrong. One of the reviews mentioned that you can spend a long time just watching it – true, but that’s just to make sure nothing goes wrong.
Strictly speaking this is only half a review and I hope to update it after a couple of months but so far so good.

 

So I thought I’d run it for a few weeks before writing this. It works it’s easy and is doing a good job! The instructions are more complicated than they need to be. Set up is easy. After a few days I started to notice a difference in the grass, now after a few weeks it’s looking thicker and greener! So basically the mower is actually a husqvarna in a different shell. It’s reduced hours of work into a quick strim around the edges. There’s only one down side I have come across, it’s leaving 3 little tracks where it comes out of its charging station other than that nothing else negative to report. Definitely worth the investment highly recommend.

 

Arrived with no operators guide but all other parts seemed to be there. Install was fairly easy and took about 1 hour. Fell into a flower bed and snipped its own boundary wire. But fixed pretty easily.

BIG ADVICE: If you get one watch the online install videos from McCulloch first before trying to install. better than the manual.

One small point is I wish it had a rain sensor. When Rob goes out in the rain he leaves unsightly muddy tracks everywhere.

2nd year of operation update: awesome in a word. So glad i bought this. I stored him in the garage over the winter period and brought him out in the late spring. Doing a great job keeping my lawn croquet-ready. Would buy another tomorrow if i needed one.

 

I bought my Rob 400 earlier this year when my petrol mower packed up and Coronavirus prevented me from getting it repaired. The grass was rapidly growing under my feet so I took the bold step of buying a robotic mower, which eventually became known as Boris. I have to say I have no regrets and would strongly recommend it. I thought I would focus my review on the App which I downloaded to help communicate with Boris, and for him to tell me what was troubling him on a bad hair day!
The App works through Bluetooth on my android smartphone and the range is impressive. Boris lives at the bottom of the back garden (30 metres from the house) and 90% of the time I get an instant connection to Boris from inside the house (even from the front of the house).
The mowing schedule can be set from the app, allowing two cutting periods per day, with different setting for every day of the week if required. Also, the app can be used to over-ride the schedule by starting Boris at will, and then returning him to the base station to either await a new (manual) command, or to await the next scheduled instruction. So, in effect, once I had set Boris up, all instruction could be given from the comfort of my armchair or sunlounger. The App also provides information about the percentage of battery life remaining, the status of Boris (mowing or parked), whether there is a fault with Boris (or the perimeter/guide wire), and gives access to guides, manuals, and customer support. So if, when I draw the curtains at night, Boris is still cutting away in the dark, the app allows me to check that he has safely parked himself in his base station before retiring to bed myself. Cutting the grass has never been so easy, but I have grown fond of Boris and like to know that he is safely tucked in at night, and the app provides that reassurance. Alternatively, if I’m feeling wicked I can give Boris a shock by starting him at 5 am from the comfort of my bed! Hope this adds to all the other excellent reviews that informed my decision to buy Boris in the first place.

 

We bought the S600 after moving to our new house which has a big garden (550-600m2). After one or two cuts using a conventional petrol mower it became clear that cutting the grass was going to take at least 2-3 hours every few weeks which is time better spent with the family.

Our garden is fairly typical for England i.e. not perfectly flat/square as you see on the usual demo videos. Most of it is like the surface of the moon so I did question whether or not a robotic lawnmower would do the job. In addition, we have a big slope spanning the full width of the garden which we estimated to be 31 degrees using string, sticks, a spirit level and a tape measure, therefore, just within the tolerances of the S600. The majority of competing models will only cope with a 25 degree slope.

Install:

This is the worst part of the job but there is an excellent video on YouTube by the manufacturer which provides a step-by-step guide (they make it look so effortless!) Most people bury the boundary wire to avoid the mower cutting into it which is what I did. Doing this, particularly on a big garden, takes a lot of time and I’m not the most patient of people – far from it, in fact.

I used a flat spade to dig around the perimeter then tucked the boundary wire into position. I then laid the guide wire across the middle of the lawn which allows the mower to find its way home. I followed the instructions and laid at an angle across the slope. In reality, you need to set at least half a day aside to lay the wire on a large garden and take regular breaks/deep breaths(!)

Tip – you can create ‘islands’ which involves looping the boundary wire around obstacles such as trees in our case. I did this for three trees and wish I had just laid a rectangular boundary wire and allowed the mower to bump into trees since creating an ‘island’ means that there’s 20-30cm or so of grass that does not get cut around the trees. Yes, you can programme the distance that the mower drives past the boundary wire but clearly this affects all boundaries, not just the ‘islands’. Not the easiest thing to explain.

The S600 comes supplied with 150m of wire but (frustratingly) I was left 5m or so from being able to complete the job so purchased another 25m. It’s always a good idea to have spare wire as even with a buried boundary/guide wire, wildlife will inevitably dig it up from time to time. Our lawn seems to be a sanctuary for moles which is part of the reason it is so lumpy.

Tip – when it comes to the connectors (particularly the blue ones) you are best using a pair of plumbers grips. You need to apply some force here to ensure contact is made otherwise you will run into issues as I did.

In terms of location for the charging base, you need to plan this carefully as the power supply is not the longest and it’s not possible to extend using terminal blocks (as far as I can tell). I plugged ours into a bedroom near the garden and routed the wire through a hole I drilled through the wall.

Tip – there’s no need to drill a hole big enough to push through the whole connector block – you can gently remove the terminals and reconnect them to the block once you have pushed them through the wall.

The charging base has an indicator light which tells you whether or not the setup is good. In my case, I had a flashing yellow light and instantly worried that I would have to dig up all of the wire. Fortunately, I checked all of the blue connectors first and found that I had not gripped them tightly enough. 30 minutes later and we were up and running.

Operation:

The mower is very simple to operate, simply enter the size of your lawn and it will propose a cutting schedule. I’ve had the mower running for a month and have found the factory settings to be good. It cuts from 8am to 9pm-ish with charging breaks in between.

The mower is Bluetooth enabled which is useful for checking on the mower status from inside the house. If your house is quite a distance from the mower then you may find the Bluetooth feature less useful as you’ll need to go outside, at which point, you may as well just use the controls on the mower itself.

When it comes to cutting height, I recommend starting with the highest blade setting as going too low too soon may mean that grass gets rolled over rather than cut. I have gradually reduced the blade height to 3.5 which seems to be the sweet spot for our lawn. Any lower and the lawn gets covered in bald patches due to the bumps.

Once up and running the mower is a joy to watch as it goes about its business and returns to base when in need of a charge. We have two young children and have found that if the mower runs into an obstacle on the lawn (including a child!), it simply backs off and tries a different direction. Lifting the mower instantly stops the blades so it is also safe in this regard. In terms of negotiating the slopes, I have watched it a number of times and find that on occasion it struggles to gain traction on one side but eventually stops and takes a slightly different angle which gets it moving again. Clever stuff.

Issues:

So far I’ve had a few teething issues but nothing that has made me regret purchasing. First of all, the mower has got stuck on two occasions where both wheels have sunk into a ditch and have continued to spin on the spot – the mower obviously thinks it is still in motion. A manual push sends it on its way.

Secondly, I had an issue where the mower was docking with the charging base but was not charging the battery (despite the charging indicator being lit). To solve this, I cleaned the contracts on both the mower and the charging base.

The blades required regular maintenance in the first couple of weeks as they quickly clogged up. I found that using an old razor blade to gently rake out the build-up on both sides of the cutting blades works well and is quicker than unscrewing them. The blades need to be moving effortlessly for optimal cutting. When you first look at then you question how they could possibly cut a lawn (think about the blades found on traditional electric/petrol mowers) but they do a fantastic job – just keep them clean.

Security:

The security alarm is loud but not piercingly so and I think a thief would fancy their chances. I have seen people invest in fancy mower houses but in my view, you really shouldn’t draw attention to where it sleeps! I have built a very rubbish looking mower house from old wood to help disguise it when charging.

All in all I’m incredibly happy with the mower. It’s quite a big outlay for something that may seem like a gimmick but it actually works. Once you calculate the cost of running/maintaining a petrol mower or paying a gardener you realise it’s not a ridiculous amount of money. Pus, consider the time that you will be getting back.

 

So happy with it.
We had an amiro for 6 months and that was a nightmare. We were placing back on it’s dock every day and it was getting stuck.
This one, it’s never gotten stuck! It’s doing a great job 🙂
All I would say, like others is that for that price, the ap should work with WiFi too and do more

 

Amazing bit of kit. Keeps your lawn looking amazing. Buy one you won’t regret it.

 

Can’t review yet as bought for my son for Christmas, weather not good yet to try out but looks very sturdy and great price. Will review again when tried ou

 

I’ve had the Mcculloch rob 1000 since July and I’m really pleased with. Set up is pretty straight forward and the it does the rest. The only issue I’ve got is a big oak tree overhangs my garden. The Rob 1000 mulches the leaves no problem but the acorns cause still look untidy. So long as you don’t have branches or something like acorns then the Rib 1000 makes grass cutting effortless.
If McCulloch bring out a robot lawn vac then I’ll be the first to buy it.

 

Fantastic bit of kit! I haven’t cut my lawn (2 acres) all summer. This mower has worked brilliantly. Only negative is that it took me days to install and get the boundary wire right. Neighbours are fascinated

 

A tip to all new users. Think carefully about how you construct the perimeter and return wires. With hindsight I would have very superficially buried all the wires – just maybe half an inch under the turf.
A couple of months into Robbie’s working life – he’s a busy little chap – working 7 to 11, but with hourly rests about 7 times a day. Results seem good!

 

BEWARE Don’t buy a robot lawn mower if you have foxes visit your garden, they dig up the cable and chew it in to small pieces.
I’ve had mine for about a month and have had to repair the cable almost every day. The McCulloch Rob 600 is great but it needs a boundary wire. If you don’t have foxes you should buy one.
I going back to my old motor mower.

 

I am so pleased that we have this. Our grass now always looks well tended. We have a complicated garden on a slope so it took about a week of tweaking the perimeter wires for the robot to stop getting stuck in the flower beds. It rarely happens now and it is much more to do with the intricacies of the garden than how the machine operates.
Well worth the money. I was paying 40 a time to get the grass cut so over time it more than pays for itself.

 

What’s not to like. A robot that does just what you want with no hassle.

 

I had done a lot of research so I was fairly sure this would work quite well.

My expectations have been surpassed.

The following is my experience with a garden of around 600m/sq. I’m not at all skilled at general DIY.

– Installation was very easy – around 2 hours to install the guide wire.
– The mower goes about its business with very little input from me. I change the blades about once a month, which takes less than 5 minutes.
– I needed to change the boundary to accommodate a new shed – this took around 20 minutes and was very easy. I have ordered spare 3m connectors from Amazon for future.

Overall, I would highly recommend this (or, I guess Robot mowers in general) as a device which will remove the chore of mowing a large lawn.

One thing I hadn’t expected was the quality of the lawn when it’s being cut this way. Ours is now like a carpet…all of the time!! Great!

 

Mowing the lawn was taking 1.5 hours. Also, I was having real problems fitting it in as we also have a rental and I couldn’t do the mowing when guests were lounging around. Some weekends were just too wet, etc etc. Then this came up on prime day and I bought it. Hmmm, my partner said, shaking his head. Its just not going to work. Look at our garden. Oh dear oh dear, what have you done. So he settled down to watch youtube videos on installation and I started planning what to do with my many new hours of leisure.
He figured it out. I had to buy some more boundary wire to stop him trying to mow the pond or anything silly. An afternoon was spent pegging. At first you can see the wires but soon they disappear into the grass. Same with his charging station. It has pretty much disappeared now.
There is a good length of wire for plugging in the charging station so we got that in and set him off. At first a good amount of time is spent following him around.
Our garden has 3 lawn areas. The bigger one is where Robert’s base camp is and he can meander around that and take himself home to charge. The other two area he does on manual. It’s really easy to switch him to manual and carry him over then set him off. When he runs out of charge or looks as though he’s about to. ( My partner can tell – he is better at picking up on Robert’s feelings than mine i think )
When he does the front garden he gets many admiring comments and I proudly tell people how good he is at mowing.
The lawn is looking better than it ever has. Much greener. It was pretty mossy in some parts but it definitely looks grassier now.
If in doubt then go for it. Getting those precious hours back every weekend and having a lusher lawn. He is my very favourite gadget.

 

Hard little worker. Just gets on with it. Set up wasn’t too hard just a bit time consuming. I pinned my cables above ground to make it easy to adjust if I put them too far or too close to borders. Rob just trundles around the garden from 7 am until 10pm every day. Initially he got stuck on a couple of big holes where I’d removed trees but after filling the holes in and re-seeding no problem at all. It cut through the cable once where I hadn’t pinned it down low enough and the ground was uneven but easily repaired. No visible sign of any cutting going on other than the fact that the grass isn’t growing within the boundary whereas grass outside has grown several inches since Rob started mowing. I’ve now decided to time Rob to run just two days a week now as I noticed that the area near the boundary wires was becoming worn where he reverses and manoeuvres after reaching the boundary. I bought he 1000 which I think was probably overkill for my garden (350 sqm) and unless you have a very large garden there is no need to run Rob every day. My ground is very uneven where I’ve dug out weeds from the lawn and also there is a bit of a slope but neither of these things have caused any problems. I haven’t mowed the lawn for over a month now and wish I’d bought one of these earlier. Highly recommended.

 

Takes a bit of time to set up (buried perimeter wire) but I’ve had this going for 4 weeks now… and no more mowing for me! I’ve set it to go out at night time so it doesn’t interfere with our (young) kids and it can more than handle our 800m2 garden. ‘Rob’ just pops out at intervals to mow and goes back for a charge when he needs it. That there are no cuttings to deal with is also a major bonus. Recommend +++

 

Have been looking at robot lawn mowers for a long time not knowing what to go for, I finally decided on the Mcculloch Rob 1000 due to similarities to husqvarna model. We have just over 400sqm of lawn which is uneven and not in the best shape with many obstacles. But thought the Mcculloch was a good choice due to brand and size of area it should cut, setting up is the same as every other mower with the guide cable which takes some time to get right. I quickly ran around edge of garden then back to base, then set him off to cut. It was the first cut of the year so was fairly long and wanted to see how the Rob would cope. It took about 3 days to get all down level and then started lowering the cut. Had now for about 3 weeks and nearly have running faultlessly, due to lots of places to get stuck, obstacles uneven ground etc it has taken some time to keep the mower running without getting stuck which at first seemed a bit of a faff but now has actually improved the garden and getting the lawn in better condition and a little leveler.
All the robotic mowers seem to be very similar and the Rob 1000 copes with no problem and does a good job and has got the grass lower than I can with a normal mower due to the uneven lawn. If I were to buy again I would try to get a app based one but still can’t find one at a sensible price so at the moment I would still pick this Mcculloch Rob 1000

 

I am in my mid-eighties and was finding some of the mowing fairly strenuous. Our garden has 7 lawns of various sizes, but the smaller ones were causing me the greatest difficulty because the mower, although self- propelled, had to be tipped to turn and pulled back from edges or under bushes. Also one lawn has an incline of about 10% and this was becoming hard work. I was sceptical about having a robot mower until I heard of other people’s experiences and am extremely pleased to have installed one . It ran for two months last summer and went immediately after charging when I set it off this year and, under manual it still seems to run for about 1 hours before requiring to charge — even on the sloping lawn.
After reading the reviews and watching Youtube videos I decided that I would purchase a McCulloch ROB 1000 as the specification of the cheaper models had little difference and it was the one claiming to cut the larger area. The installation was straightforward. We used a spade pushed in at about an angle of 60o, slightly easing the turf up and pushing the cable in about 2″ and pressing the turf back. This allows for no worries when one is strimming edges. Two lawns I still mow with the conventional mower as they have long straight runs and it gives me exercise! Two lawns have the guide wire installed which is very useful, but the remaining three the mower has to be on manual but as it is so light there is really no difficulty in carrying it between the areas. If it continues to be reliable I will consider it a most worthwhile investment. I have not found anything in the design which I think requires improvement.

 

So, Just thought i would put together a review of my installation. I purchased this mower to due value for money, size (1000 SqM) and relationship to Husquvarna – there are various Husky parts in it. Power supply battery to name a few. So in comparison to the Husky range which i wasnt willing to stretch to i though the Rob1000 was a good all rounder.

My Garden is L Shaped and has over 15 Tree/s Bushes in island format so the installation was not straight forward. Cabling took about 2 hours, its beyond simple anyone can do it. Just roll cable , peg it down and tap with a mallet done. Plan the base Station location for power supply. I ran a new RCD 2 Gang socket from the attic off a spur so was simple enough. (bungalow). And base station unit is just off the rear of the house. Once i crimped the connections and plugged them into the back of the charge. I then ran the guide wire diagonally across the rear garden so the mower could pick it up efficiently. Crimped that in place and good to go. I did precharge my Rob1000 the night before so that it had a full charge. Set it to Auto and press start closed the lid and off it goes its been around the garden 3 times now and charged in between.
I actually don’t understand the reviews on this that complain about Installation or faffing or some folks even sending back because the cant install it. It has to be one of the least complicated things i have done this year. If you are not into it then get one of the nieces or nephews to give you a hand. Anyone that can read a 1 sheet quick guide can install this thing.

I shall let you know how operation goes as i get it cutting over the next few weeks.

For now. Delighted with the purchase – no negatives

 

Excellent piece of technology. Simple setup a bit time consuming, but it definitely saves time in the long run. The Rob r600 is fully waterproof even in heavy rain, I live in the UK so rain is typical day. I’ve had Rob running for 3 days: 1st day (cloudy no rain), it cut the grass nicely. 2nd day(rained lightly), the grass looked great. 3rd day (heavy rain), it kept going like a little trooper but the next day it turn most the grass into muddy spots, where it had been going over the most. Only problem I have is it keeps getting stuck on its charing station whilst it cuts the grass. But all in all… it’s a must buy.

 

Great lawnmower. Does really the right thing and i have only to watch. So easy so quiet.

 

Bought to replace my broken lawn mower. Amazing. Easy to setup. Took less than 2 hours and my garden is quite big. After it getting stuck a couple of times and having to fill a handful of holes in my grass Rob just gets on with it. My grass is not the best with it being very uneven and having a couple of inclines but when it gets stuck usually only in the wet it just finds a different way.

Money well spent. Very cheap on Amazon.

I will try to upload a video.