in this video i'm going to be doing a review about the lawn mower that i use for all my garden
videos and i've been using it for nearly around three years now which is a bosch rotak 43 li
this is not a sponsored review this is my own personal opinions and i'm actually a customer
of bosch and i bought this lawnmower around three years ago when i moved into my new house
i was fed up with using a cord and dragging the cord plugging it into the electrical sockets and i
didn't really want to use a petrol mower so when i started investigating i picked up on the bosch li
series range this is a battery-powered lawnmower so there's no cords and it comes with lithium-ion
batteries some of the things that jumped out to me at first were about the lightweight there's a
grass roller to get great stripes on your lawn low sound and really easy to use feel and also
i'd used a number of bosch products in the past so i personally had a level of trust in the brand
if i'm looking at the bosch website their marketing spiel says it's the easiest and
most effortless way to achieve a perfect lawn now i have to say before purchasing this lawnmower i
did not like lawn care at all and if anything this combined with watching some other youtube channels
encouraged me to set up my own lawn care channel that actually
i really started enjoying mowing again after using this lawnmower so
personally i'm really happy with the mower overall but let's get into some technical details
let's take a look at some of the technical details for the rotack first
the battery type is lithium ion 36 volts and the stated battery time is 140
minutes the width of cut is 43 centimetres which gives its name to the 43 li and if you get a
smaller one like the 41 or the 37 the width of cut is just going to be slightly smaller
and also the stripe that you achieve is going to be slightly smaller
in terms of the cutting system it's got a hardened and ground steel blade and it's also got a bit of
a sweep feature at the end which helps with leaf collection if you need that type of feature into
the august overall in terms of weight it's a very very light mower it's 13.9 kilograms
and i can quite easily pick it up with one hand and move it round the yard grass box capacity is
50 litres i can generally cut my whole lawn with one full grass box but it really depends on how
long you're leaving the lawn in between your mows but it's a good sized mower my lawn's around 70 to
80 square metres within around 100 square metres you'll be fine using the grass box with one fill
from a height of cut you've got from 20 to 70 millimetres
this can be really easily adjusted by pulling the lever at the side and lifting it up along
the notches this raises all four wheels in sequence so you can't alter the height on
individual wheels but it's a really really simple and easy to use system
the handles on the bosch are the ergoflex system they have these sort of raised pads at the back
which make it really easy and comfortable to use that along with the weight is very useful for
somebody who may struggle to handle a more heavier mower and it's really forgiving in terms of being
able to turn the mower or manoeuvre it one of my viewers has told me that they use this mower in
an allotment because it's really easy to pick up and it's quite portable you can stick it in
the back of the car and wheel it down the path i personally never thought about using it for
something like that but giving it's so lightweight and easy to move then it makes sense to me
the lawn mower itself has got a built-in roller when you've got a built-in roller you'll also
get great stripes to your lawn especially if you've got a healthy lawn and you're taking
care of your lawn through taking care of your lawn through regular mowing and fertilisation
if you want some tips about overall lawn care i've linked the
series up and above where you can check out my monthly lawn care regimen
that means that you can get a stripy lawn because as you mow the grass the roller's going to roll
it down at the back you won't get as strong as stripes as maybe a heavier cylinder mower
but i found i've achieved all the results on this channel using this machine i don't use any other
machines up until now and you can see just how good my stripes have been i found when you start
getting to heights around 40 to 70 millimetres the stripes become much more pronounced and even as
you're starting to drop the cut the stripes don't become as pronounced as you might like and i think
this is due to the weight of the mower just could do with a little bit more weight in it to get the
stripes at a lower cut but if you like a medium to higher cut this is going to give you absolutely
brilliant stripes and the stripes you can see in my intro video were all done with the bosch
there's different versions of this product with one or two different types of batteries
i personally went for two batteries which gives me a bit of flexibility to change over
i've actually found the batteries to last really well i'm three years down the line and i've had no
battery problems at all and in my opinion they're still just as good as i found them to be from the
first days i had them and the batteries themselves come with a charger which is really robust
you just open the lid at the front pull the lever and the battery can slide right out into your hand
and then you can put it in the charging dock i like to alternate every couple of cuts to
batteries just to keep rotating and make sure that i don't run out in the middle of a cut
there's also a really cool feature on the batteries where the bosch
is capable of charging up to 80 percent of the total power in a really short amount of
time i think it's around an hour or so which is really useful if you need a quick boost
just to finish off a job and then you can put it back in the dock to fully charge later on
i've had the mower for three years and i found it to be extremely low maintenance
i've had no issues both from a functioning parts point of view a battery point of view and the only
money that i've spent over three years on this mower is to replace the blade once per season
that means it's really really low maintenance
when looking at the mower blade you can sharpen these blades or you can also purchase
replacement blades to replace the blade it's relatively easy you can flip the mower on its
deck turn off the power i like to remove the batteries as well there's a small slot to put a
screwdriver or wedge in to stop the blade spinning around remove the blade and reinstall the new one
one of the other little features i quite like about this mower is the storage
when you move the mower into the storage you can just unclip these little clips
they're like quick release handles and the top can be folded down
i can also easily take off the grass box to further reduce the storage in terms of accessories
you can also buy a mulching plate for this mower and basically what that means is you can mulch
your grass clippings back on the lawn there's a lot of debate whether you should or shouldn't
mulch the clippings on your lawn i'm not going to get into that now but if you like to mulch
the clippings on your lawn leave me a comment below with why you think this is a good thing
but you've also got that option with the bosch to fit the mulching plate which is as simple
as lifting this flap up dropping the mulching plate down and you're ready
to go and vice versa you can also remove the plate and install the grass box just as quick
in terms of safety features the bosch has also got a ignition key at the start you can turn this key
on and off and there's also a deadman's trigger at the top so if you wanted to prevent unwanted
use you could actually remove this key and hide it somewhere or leave it on a keychain or something
like that and that way nobody would be able to start the mower and potentially cause an accident
this could be particularly interesting if you've got children and you don't really want to leave
the machinery out that a kid could get hold of i've put a link to the whole bosch rotak range
in the description below so if you're interested in buying one check out the links below to compare
some prices and see the full range overall you can probably tell i really really like this i've
not been paid or anything for this review this is my honest opinions and as i've said before buying
this mower was one of the reasons why i started this channel and if you'd like to see any of the
results you can achieve by using the mower you can watch any of my previous videos because all
the results i've achieved on my garden are from using this lawnmower in terms of downsides i would
say if you want a more traditional english type of lawn stripe which is a very short lawn with
clear and defined stripes you're probably going to need a machine that weighs a little bit more
as this only weighs about 13 14 kilograms as you start to drop the height to the lower heights
your stripes aren't as pronounced as they would be if you're using a cylinder mower for example
and also the other thing that you wouldn't get from using this compared to a cylinder
is you tend to get i would call half stripes and this is because the action of the rotary blade is
in a spinning motion sometimes you can see on the stripe that the stripe doesn't fully define across
the full plane of the stripe and you're not going to get the very finest of cuts like you would on
a cylinder mower with the scissor action where you can get a truly exquisite cut on your lawn
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