Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If you really want to know what it's like to own one of these, I'm about to give you all the details. Get comfortable. I'm a 50 year old woman and I'm tech savvy and a big electronics fan. I build websites and have a passion for all things tech and electric, so I thought this would be a home run for me. I bought this in March 2022 and installed it in April 2022. I've waited five months to write this review. Five months of daily experience, to really get a true feel for how this thing works. And now I'm here to tell you what it's like, and to be sure you understand what you're getting into. If you just want the cliff notes of my review, here it is: the wire will drive you MAD. It will become the solitary source of your descent into pure, clinical, unbridled madness. The sheer and utter frustration and defeat you'll experience may actually cause you to seek medical help. I am not exaggerating or being dramatic. This is the real, unvarnished truth. Why do I say this? Because the term "wire missing" will become your new trigger words. Every time you get a "wire missing" alert on your phone from the Landroid app, your blood will run cold and your stomach will turn. Cold beads of sweat will form in places you didn't know could sweat. Then you'll gulp down the fear, and set out to do the -literally impossible- task of finding where the wire has broken. Your Landroid will become the new source of fear in your life. Because you'll spend time and money trying to find the broken wire. And you'll likely never find it. You'll spend hours, days, tracing the wire and find nothing, but it still says wire missing. You'll see the indicator light on the base solid green, but still says wire missing. You'll see your Landroid start out to go mow and then stop, always at the furthest distance from the base, of course, so you can lug it across your lawn in front of your neighbors time and time and time again, and believe me, it is Heavy, and then it'll stop and say "wire missing". But let me back up to the beginning. In the beginning, you'll set out to install the wire. Take your time and read the instructions. Trust me. Then you'll endure the agony of being on your knees pounding stakes into the hard ground, hitting rocks, roots, and any other hard thing you could think of. The pounding of stakes will become your obsession and an absolute form of exhaustion, as you realize how much further you have to go, and how much longer this is really going to take. But keep going, the joy hasn't even started yet. Get ready for broken stakes, accidentally breaking the wire, running out of stakes and having to order more from Amazon, using the included wire connectors and they don't work so you order real ones from Amazon, running to Lowe's to buy wire strippers because the cheap ones you have don't work, so yeah be ready to invest much more money than you think. So you're installing the wire. Be prepared when you're sitting on the lawn to be bitten up by red ants or other bugs. Wear longs, socks and shoes. Not shorts and sandals. Wear gloves because you'll get a lot of dirt on your hands and nails. So you get 3/4 of the way around your yard and run out of wire. Order more 18g wire from Amazon, and wait. That's an additional $50 at least. Remember, during all these delays, your grass is growing. It's probably been a week by now, maybe two if you work full time. The new reel of wire arrives, you have new wire connectors and strippers, you are set! Now you breeze through the final quarter of installation. Set up the base: you'll do this ten times. You won't find the perfect spot for it for at least 3 months. Just be ready for that. Oh, and take a valium before you try to run the wire through the tracks on the base or try to fit the wire into the tiny hole connectors. Or take a shot. But take something, because it's a true test of human will to complete. Then the day finally comes, your Landroid leaves the base and heads out to mow your lawn! It's truly one of the happiest moments in your life. You'll film it more than your child taking his first steps. You'll watch it again and again. It's a moment you'll never forget. And then, as it mows, you'll start to learn the trouble spots, like under low bushes, or little pits in your yard where a tree used to be, etc, and you'll correct them with topsoil, or cutting the low bushes. You'll learn where you made your wire corners too tight, and you'll move the wire. That's one of the big elements of this game, you'll move the wire many times. Many times. I got a cardboard box and put all my wire tools and spikes in it so I can carry it out when I need to fix the wire. Like a Landroid first aid kit. You'll experience the wire being cut by the Landroid because it was too high. You'll experience the wire being cut because the wheels of the Landroid unearthed it and drove over it. You'll experience lots of these types of things. Pretty soon you'll have lots of wire connectors buried like old secrets all around your yard. I say secrets because, pssst... you'll never find them again... The grass will grow and rain and mud will move around and cover the wire, spikes, and connectors. After a few weeks or months, you'll literally never see them again. But! YOU WILL STILL GET WIRE MISSING ALERTS. That's when the real fun begins.. Get ready to enter the world of "locating the invisible wire". Yes, you'll watch hours of YouTube videos and read tons of posts on Reddit, you'll call customer service dozens of times and even beg and bribe local electricians for help. And you'll try all the suggested solutions but they won't work. You'll buy an "underground wire break locator" from Amazon and wait for it with baited breath, only to find it doesn't work. You'll buy a tiny transistor radio with an antenna, and that won't work. And now that 6 or 8 weeks have passed and your knee is finally starting to heal from the wire installation, you have to go back out there and crawl around to find the broken wire. Yes, don't forget to wear longs, those fire ants have now taken over your yard. Maybe you'll find the break - it'll be the second happiest moment of your life. You fix it and the Landroid is back in business. You resume your new favorite spot, sitting on your patio watching it roam around the yard. Because you have to watch it, it's like an infant. It doesn't know where it's going, so you have to monitor it to make sure it doesn't get into mischief. The times you spent with your family inside the house will become cherished memories as you sit and watch your Landroid like a hawk. But, maybe you can't find the broken wire. Maybe after months of lows and highs with your new obsession you finally reach the breaking point. You've done absolutely everything that you can do, but the light is green on the base but the Landroid says wire missing. Again. It's the end of August and the grass is so thick you can't even see the wire anymore, so you can't imagine how it could've been cut. You've checked the connectors you could find and replaced them, they seem fine. You check everything - and it still just doesn't work. So you give up. You've been defeated. You're done. You call your old lawn service and beg to get back on their schedule. Which is what I should've done in April. Just, re-hired my lawn service. And I would've avoided this expensive, emotionally damaging, exhausting, knee-ruining experience. I've never been so saddened by a defeat in my life. I gave my all to this project and it beat me. I get ill every time I think of it. The money, at least $2000 gone. I will say this; the machine itself, worked fine. When it ran, it did a great, beautiful job. I was thrilled with it. But the WIRE - just, save yourself the pain. And money. Hire a professional installer, or a lawn service, or just cut the grass yourself. I do not recommend a robot lawnmower wire installation for the average layperson. It should only to be installed by an experienced electrician or invisible dog fence installer or the like.