GARDENA 15201-41 SILENO Minimo – Automatic Robotic Lawn Mower, with Bluetooth app and Boundary Wire, one of The quietest in its Class, for lawns up to 2700 Sq Ft, Made in Europe, Grey

The Great:We’ve had this mower for two years and it’s held up well. Our lawn is small, but it has mowed quietly enough at midnight not to disturb us or our (fussy) neighbors. I don’t think they even know we have it. It does well in rain, too. Setup wasn’t so bad, except wiring the yard. If you follow videos posted by the company on YouTube (I think from Australia or the UK), it’s pretty easy. Cleaning really has been as easy as hosing it down or even just brushing off accumulated grass clippings with your hand. It’s pretty safe, too. The blades are small and many inches inset from the edges of the machine. It would be difficult for it to accidentally injure our dog or a small animal unless they actively flipped it over and chewed on the tiny blades (our dog has no interest in it). I doubt it would even run her over; it bumps into things softly, like a robot vacuum does (though I don’t think she’d just lie around and let it go over her leg or tail in the first place).The Meh:The app could be better. Occasionally, we’ll find that the device stopped running – for no apparent reason – and we have to hard reboot it and delete and reset our schedule in the app all over again to get it running. The app has also never kept track of previous mows (even though it’s supposed to). Lastly, sometimes the charging indicator is waaay off. It’ll go from 100% to 0% to 5% to 20% in seconds. But it has worked and mowed on schedule most of the time.And, because the blades are inset from the edges of the device (they’re in the middle of the bottom), it doesn’t always get the edges of the lawn done when there’s a flower bed stopping the mower from overshooting the perimeter of the lawn itself. That’s fine. I do the edges it can’t get once a week. I don’t need to do the edges that are adjacent to the sidewalk, since it can overshoot and cut those.The Bad:There is NO customer support in the US. I reached the (I believe it was) Australian customer service, who sent me to the Canadian (“North American,” but really just Canadian) customer service, who sent me to the “US” customer service, but the US team never answered calls or returned emails. The Canadian team couldn’t do US support at the time. If you’re in the US, you won’t get support. (At least, as of late ‘22/early ‘23.) But we eventually got to the bottom of the issue ourselves.Why 5 stars? Despite the flaws, it has been a generally reliable product for about 2 years, and it was a budget option compared to the competition. I’m not sure that paying more for another brand would yield any better results. Value to dollar is great, as who’s gonna get someone to mow their lawn 2-3x/week for 2 years for under $600 (and not have to worry about locking up dogs/granting yard access)? Who wants to do it themselves on their days off? [...]