Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Good & Bad: buyers beware. This mower is great IF you have a very small lawn and don't have thick grass. But it has some serious limitations and problems you need to be aware of. I like the idea of a cordless electric mower, however the execution of the CM2040 is seriously flawed. I'm taking time to write this review because many of the other reviews here don't tell you what you need to know. There are some things about this mower that I like. It's light weight, maneuverable, quite and easy to store. It's arguably better than some older battery-powered electric mowers. It's a good match for you if you have a very small lawn. Most everyone else is likely to become very frustrated by the flaws and limitations of this model, and even if you like it at first you'll probably change your tune when it breaks... and when you discover that the batteries have a short life, a high failure rate and are IMPOSSIBLE to replace. - The life of the batteries is HEAVILY dependent on how hard the mower has to work to cut your grass. If you have a thick, healthy lawn and you've allowed it to grow even a LITTLE bit long you are likely to exhaust the battery in as little as 8-10 minutes... IF you can get the mower to cut your grass at all without constantly stalling. It's possible to nurse the thing along, but here's what that means in practical terms: - You'll need to set the cutting height much higher than is ideal, probably so high that you'll need to mow your lawn twice to get it properly clipped... or mow 2-3 times per week to make sure the grass never gets tall enough to stall the electric motor. - Every time you hit a patch that's even slightly thick you'll need to raise the height, push the mower VERY slowly, or cut significantly less than a full 20" swath at a time. - Even after I figured out how to nurse the thing along in thick grass it still stalls a lot. I'm not talking about 6" tall grass either; just ordinary healthy grass in a cool, sunny climate... like spring here in central Virginia where we typically get plenty of rain alternating with cool, sunny days. I suspect that many of the buyers who give this mower a good rating live somewhere hot and dry where grass is thin, dry and doesn't grow very fast. - You'd THINK that when the mower DOES stall you could just back up a couple steps and switch it back on again. But it doesn't work that way. Black & Decker has designed this mower with complicated, clever electronic sensor system with a mechanical "safety" interlock. This too-clever system kicks in every time you stall the electric mower, and it's REALLY FRUSTRATING because there's a VARIABLE DELAY that prevents you from quickly restarting the mower. At first you think the "go-control" is just an electric switch. If the mower stalls it's like a circuit breaker pops, so you'd expect to just be able to flip the switch back on. But you actually have to hold an orange safety button down while you pull the switch, and then you find the switch has been temporarily disabled and doesn't work. You have to release the bar on the handle (the switch), release the safety button, press the safety button again, and pull the bar again... and sometimes repeat this several times until the motor finally starts spinning again. It can be REALLY irritating because the delay is VARIABLE and there's no rhyme or reason to how long you have to wait before you can restart. - There also appears to be a thermal cut-out. If the electric motor OR the battery gets even a little bit hot the whole thing stops working. Which brings us to recharging the batteries: - They don't last long if your grass is thick. - And you can't just pop them back in the charger for a few minutes: you have to wait for them to cool down first, typically a 20 minute delay before they even START recharging, then recharging takes a LONG time, like more than 90 minutes. You typically need to allow 2+ hours for each battery for cool-down and recharge. And then when the battery comes out of the charger it will be warm, so it has somewhat reduced power and lasts an even shorter time than usual. - Oh, and don't think you can speed up the process by putting the batteries in the fridge. These are some very picky batteries: being chilly ALSO prevents them from starting the recharge cycle. How long do the batteries last before you have to replace them? Not long, it would seem. One of mine started dying after being recharged less than 10 times. It was probably defective... but that leads to another HUGE issue: You CAN'T BUY REPLACEMENT BATTERIES. At least not the high-capacity 2.5AH that ship with the CM2040. They simply are not available. That's a big problem. AH, "Ampere Hours" is a measure of how much electric energy a battery can store. 2.5AH really isn't very much power relative to the demands of an electric mower. That's why the 2.5AH batteries shipped with this model run down in as little as 8 minutes. But if you try to replace the standard batteries or buy a spare you CAN'T BUY the 2.5AH version. Instead, the replacements they try to give you (for $70!!!) are only 1.5 or 2AH. Either one of those is TOTALLY inadequate for this mower. The first CM2040 I received had only one battery (the other was missing from that box), and as mentioned above the single battery I received went defective within a couple days. While I waited for a replacement mower from Amazon (they were good about it as always, but see more about that below) my grass was growing, so I thought I'd buy a spare or two. No luck. I've pretty well established that the 2.5AH batteries SIMPLY ARE NOT SOLD as spares or replacements. B&D and Lowes both told be there IS no such part. So how long will a lower-capacity battery last? As little as 6 minutes. Worthless. A FEW MORE PROBLEMS - The CM2040 was received with two little plastic cable clips broken. They are probably 50 cent parts and they would fit in an tiny envelope. But they are important, so I called Amazon to request replacements. "Sorry, we can't get replacement clips. We'll have to send you a new mower." Great customer service from Amazon, but WHAT A WASTE to ship and second 50# mower (and ship back the first one) just to replace a couple cheap, wimpy 50 cent plastic clips! - The first mower was also shipped with only one of the 2 batteries. The replacement took care of that... but as mentioned above, by the time the replacement mower arrived I'd already had the single battery that came with the first mower FAIL. Also in the first few days of use: - The plastic knob on the height adjustment lever fell off. - A plastic part on the mower's battery connector broke off, leaving the contacts exposed. - The next time I inserted the battery in the mower one of the now-exposed contacts bent and broke, totally disabling the mower. - The left front wheel had started to wobble and looked like it was about to fall off. - The grass catcher basket was already starting to fit poorly and no longer had a snug fit, causing clippings to blow out around the edges. <><> Bottom line? I'm keeping the replacement because I really WANT to like this mower. But I have to go buy a new gas mower. The CM2040 is just too wimpy to be my only mower for a normal-size lawn. And I think it's rather obvious that if I use it frequently it won't last very long at all. I will use it only for a few areas where its light weight an easy handling make it easier to use than a gas mower.