Introduction

Husqvarna was the first company to introduce robot lawn mowers 30 years ago, which is quite the pedigree. With this year’s Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera, there’s a choice of using boundary wire or adding the EPOS Plug-in NERA, which uses GPS for boundary-wire-free cutting.

Cleverly, the EPOS Plug-in doesn’t require a reference station, with the option of a cloud-connected system, so installation is easy.

There are some clever features, including different cutting profiles for different parts of the lawn, and EdgeCut to minimise trimming. It is quite expensive, although the rugged build and excellent cut make it a reliable choice.

Design and Features

• EdgeCut feature
• Electric height adjustment
• Rugged body

Husqvarna makes gorgeous-looking robot lawnmowers. I loved how the Husqvarna Automower 405X looked, and the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera looks just as good: it has a sense of purpose and looks powerful. While looks aren’t the most important thing, there’s nothing wrong with having a robot that looks nice moving around your garden.

You can buy the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera in two versions. There’s the standard model, which uses a boundary wire, or for £399 more, you can buy the version that I have on review with the EPOS Plug-in for boundary-wire-free navigation and cutting.

The specs say that the standard version can handle gardens up to 600m² and the EPOS-enabled version 900m², although there’s no physical difference between the two models.

You can buy the standard version and then buy the EPOS Plug-in later for £399, so there’s no real price saving by pre-buying the module. Either way, whichever version you buy, the Husqvarna AutoMower 305e Nera is expensive compared to the competition, such as the Segway Navimow i105e.

There are some reasons for that. For starters, the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera is incredibly well built, as you’d expect from the company.

There’s a big network of dealers available who can help you with installation, maintenance and support if you need it. When buying such an expensive purchase, extra support should be considered. There are some functional differences between this and cheaper models, too, which I’ll get into.

In terms of installation, you don’t really need a dealer to handle it, particularly with EPOS, as the model I reviewed had.

When I’ve reviewed GPS-powered robot lawnmowers before, they’ve come with a reference station, which has to be connected to the docking station, but the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera doesn’t need this. It uses just the single module installed in the robot.

The Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera uses network RTK via the Husqvarna Cloud. With this system, the correction information that allows for precise location is sent via the internet, rather than the reference station.

WIth this system, the robot lawn mower has to have a constant internet connection, so you need full Wi-Fi coverage in your garden. It provides positioning accuracy that is typically better than 5cm.

There’s still an option to use a reference station if you prefer. This doesn’t require a constant internet connection and improves accuracy better than 2cm.

And, you still add boundary wire to cover some locations, or for thin passageways between areas, allowing you to mix technologies. In these ways, this robot lawn mower can be adapted to work in even the most complex environments.

With the cloud version that I used, the docking station can go anywhere, regardless of whether it’s in a good position for GPS or not. All you really need is a straight line from the docking station to a nice bit of open garden with a clear view of the sky.

The docking station is easy to install. I had to use the provided screws to lock it securely to the grass, and then plug in the power adaptor, which comes with a long extension cable, with waterproof connectors.

Then, the robot lawnmower can be pushed into the station to start charging. Once it’s ready to go, the robot is paired to your phone via Bluetooth, and can then be hooked up to Wi-Fi.

The first job is to map your garden, which you need a good GPS signal for. For this, the app suggests how far the robot should drive before waiting to get a signal; I found that the default worked for me.

Then, I had to drive the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera around the boundary of my garden, clockwise, marking points as I went to complete the map. It’s simple to drive this robot, and it moves in a nice straight line, even over slightly bumpy ground. I had the robot ready to cut in less than 20 minutes.

So far, so good, but there are a few things to watch out for.

First, the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera can be programmed to go out on a schedule. Schedules work by defining a working time per day; during that working time, the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera will start to mow until its battery is flat (around 50 minutes), return to the dock, charge (around 40 minutes), and then go out mowing again.

By default, the scheduling is set to 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Clearly, this is too much for any garden, so I had to adjust it to suit my garden, where three times a week over a couple of hours is enough.

Given that the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera knows where it is and how big the garden is, I’d prefer it if it could suggest a schedule automatically, or if it just stopped mowing when it knew it had covered the entire garden.

If you don’t want to use the schedule, just delete it and then use the option to send the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera out for a set amount of time (30 or 90 minutes, or three, six or 12 hours).

Multiple lawn areas can be added, so you can split your garden into multiple sections, or you can have different areas, such as front and back gardens, provided there’s a path between them.

For particularly complicated layouts, or for areas where there’s poor GPS reception, you can use EPOS with a boundary backup. That can be useful for some tricky areas, such as small paths between garden areas. This kind of flexibility means that you can have the best of both worlds, and makes the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera more flexible than GPS-only lawn mowers.

Each working zone has its own cutting height selection, so you can leave one area more overgrown and one with a much shorter cut. Cutting heights, when I first had the robot, were locked to imperial measurements between 0.75-inches and 2.25-inches (roughly 20mm to 60mm), and Husqvarna is working on a fix.

There’s also no Target Height control available with the EPOS module. Target Height, with boundary-wire robots, lets you set a start and end cutting height, with the robot slowly reducing cutting height over a couple of weeks. It’s a brilliant way to deal with grass at the start of the season, avoiding cutting too much off to begin with.

The Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera has electronic height adjustment, so the robot is easy to adjust as your needs change. A higher cut is useful at the start of the season, as you don’t want to remove too much grass; with a shorter cut coming in use later in the growing season.

This model uses two cutting decks, with the main deck providing a 22cm cutting width. That’s a touch bigger than on the Segway Navimow iMow 105E, which has an 18cm cutting width. A wider cutting width means that the lawn mower can cover more lawn on each pass.

There’s also a smaller cutting deck at the back, which is for the EdgeCut technology. As the robot reaches a boundary, it backs off slightly and then swings the smaller deck around, cutting almost to the edge of the boundary, whether it’s against a path, border or a raised area, such as a deck.

With the right settings, the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera can cut down how much time you have to spend with a grass trimmer tidying up the edges. But, I found that the map needed some tweaking to get it right (see the Performance section below for more).

Both cutting decks use three pivoting razor blades, which should be checked weekly and replaced as needed.

A random cutting pattern is used by default, which is fine for most lawns. Random cutting can help prevent wheel tracks from causing problems. However, the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera also has Parallel, Checkboard and Triangle cutting patterns.

With these, you can align the cutting path with the layout of your garden. And, with Parallel cutting, the robot slowly inches over by a wheel-width on each pass. This lets it flatten grass in paths as wide as the robot, creating strips: handy if you want that Wimbledon look and don’t want to spend hours with a roller.

Advanced options include the Weather timer, which lets the robot adjust its cutting time based on the weather conditions: spending more time cutting when grass will grow quickly, and less time when it’s dry or near the end of the season.

One thing that I’d like is the option to turn off the light off on the charging dock. It’s a very bright, green light, and I don’t need to see that the robot is working. I taped over it with black electrical tape.

Once a week, the robot should be checked underneath and cleaned out with a brush and running water, and the wheels need cleaning, too, as they tend to get clogged with mud and grass. The entire top can also be lifted off for cleaning underneath, making maintenance easy. Just follow the instructions in the manual and turn the mower off first, using the button at the back.

A large Stop button is also at the back, so you can manually stop the mower if there’s an issue. However, it does also have lift and tip-over protection.

Once it’s been stopped automatically or manually, the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera needs to be manually restarted, entering the PIN you created on the LCD. This PIN is also used for security: if the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera is moved outside of its home location (you can set the geofence radius in the app), it can’t be used without the PIN. There’s also an option to sound an alarm if the lawnmower is lifted or moved.

Performance

• Excellent on all types of ground
• Brilliant cutting
• Needs tweaking for EdgeCut to work at its best

Able to handle slopes of up to 30%, the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera is built for regular gardens. Its chunky wheels and powerful motor do help it deal with common issues. Thanks to my cats, I quite often end up with dug-up parts of the lawn, which can trap some robots, but not this one.

Hitting a divot with one wheel, the mower worked out it might be stuck, and adjusted its angle to get out; most other mowers will sit there spinning their wheels, digging a deeper and deeper hole.

Navigation through the garden is good, although I found that the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera kept stopping short of the boundary, so its EdgeCut feature wasn’t making much of a difference. To fix this, I used the map edit feature, and adjusted the boundaries manually.

Each boundary pointed can be expanded (or shrunk) in the direction you choose, using the ruler to select the movement distance in CM. I found that I had to give the robot a few adjustments, moving the boundary slowly, until the robot would approach the edges of my lawn and then cut right to the edge.

Once working, EdgeCut is brilliant: the Husqvarna AutoMower 305E Nera went almost right to the step in front of my garden office, for example.

General cutting is brilliant, too. Powerful cutting decks lift and cut grass cleanly, leaving what was cut to drop down to the soil, turning to mulch to feed the lawn and help it grow.

After a combination of a very wet summer to begin with and a dry period, my lawn was a bit sad at the start of this year, but the constant cutting and mulching helped bring the lawn back to life, making it fresh and green.

Coverage is also excellent. On any particular schedule, the lawn mower managed to evenly cut the entire area.

Obstacle avoidance isn’t the best on this model, as it doesn’t have a camera to spot and avoid obstacles, nor an ultrasonic sensor. Walking in front of the robot, it gently bumped into my leg, rather than stopping and moving away. It also bumped gently into the garden table we have. It’s not enough to cause any damage, but the Segway Navimow i105E is smarter at spotting and avoiding common garden obstacles.

Should you buy it?

FAQs