﻿Hi I’m Gidon from thetechnologyman.com. The EcoFlow Blade is a robot lawn mower and
lawn sweeper brimming with technology. It has a camera and LIDAR sensor to detect obstacles,
centimetre accurate enhanced GPS for defining lawn borders without wires and omnidirectional
wheels for precise manoeuvring. It uses AI to plan straight line mowing routes,
rather than the typical robot mower zigzag pattern. Together with its electronically
height adjusted blades EcoFlow claims it can evenly trim your lawn with no missed patches.
EcoFlow is a company best known for their portable power stations and they offer a battery and solar
panel solution to run this whole setup off-grid. I’ll run through its setup and thoroughly test
all its features to see if this is the right solution for you! By the end of the video I
really hope you’ll have enough information to make an informed buying decision.
Please feel free to use the timeline chapters if you want to jump around the video.
So let's take a closer look. Overview and initial setup
The Blade can be bought on its own or with the optional Lawn Sweeper Kit.
I’ll cover the Lawn Sweeper Kit shortly. The Blade comes well packaged and everything
you need to get started is in the box including the charging station with installation hardware,
a power adapter, the antenna, cabling to connect the antenna and power, and spare blades.
There’s a quick start guide but you also download the complete user guide from EcoFlow’s website.
The Blade itself weighs just over 12 kg and feels very well made, as you’d expect at this price.
It has a removable and replaceable 298Wh LFP or LiFePO4 battery that comes preinstalled.
You’ll need the accompanying EcoFlow app to use the Blade. The app also
guides you through the initial setup, but I’ve briefly cover the basics.
Setup is easy but you do need to ensure the base station is installed on flat ground,
and the antenna has a clear view of the sky, away from tall buildings and trees.
All the cabling is clearly labelled and it’d be difficult to get anything wrong.
You assemble the antenna tube, connect the 10 metre antenna extension cable to the base
station and feed this cable through the pole and connect it to the antenna. Mount the antenna into
the pole and drive the forks of the pole into the ground at your chosen location.
Then connect the 10 metre power cable to the base station and the power adapter and
then plug the power adapter in. You can then push the lawn mower into the charging station.
It’ll turn on and all being well its LED will turn blue within 10 minutes.
If not, you’ll need to adjust the position of the antenna. You can connect to the mower with the app
via Bluetooth. Most likely you’ll be prompted to update the firmware which I’d recommend.
This did take a while - around 20 minutes. In the app you can check antenna reception.
If you don’t have a particularly strong signal, you can try changing the position of the antenna.
I followed EcoFlow recommendations and got good reception straight off.
It’s worth noting that even though the mower has a battery, the dock itself needs mains
power. Not just to charge the mower but also to feed the antenna when the mower is at work.
The app gives you an option to practise controlling the mower with the on screen joypad.
I actually found this a little tricker than I was expecting. It did take me a
few attempts to really get the hang of it. You only really need to manually control it
once during the initial mapping, but even so a physical remote would have been easier to use.
Once you’re happy with the initial setup you can take the mower off the base station and
secure the base station with the supplied pegs. You can also use the smaller pegs
to tidy up the cabling if you want. You’re now ready to map your lawn. Make
sure your lawn is clear of any sticks, stones and any other obstacles before you start mapping.
This is one of the cleverest features of Blade. Many robotic lawn mowers rely on the installation
of a boundary wire around the perimeter of your lawn. With the Blade you remote control it around
the boundary of the lawn to construct the map using GPS. Typically GPS wouldn’t be accurate
enough for this and that’s where the antenna comes in. The Blade uses RTK or Real Time Kinematic
positioning, more commonly used in land surveying, to enhance the accuracy of its GPS location.
It compares GPS location data between the stationary GPS antenna and the moving mower
to enhance location accuracy from metres to just centimetres. We’ll see how well it works shortly.
The app guides you through creating your first map, controlling the Blade around the perimeter
of your lawn using the on-screen joystick until it gets back to its start position. Tap on complete
and you’re now ready to mow your lawn. This might take you more than one attempt, especially
with a more complex lawn. You can add additional areas and connect these together with predefined
paths. And you can create restriction zones - in this case around a trampoline and flower beds.
Before starting mowing you can configure Work Settings. Basically the mower’s speed and the
cutting height. You can set the cutting height from 20 mm to 76 mm. Both lawns I
tested Blade on are pretty uneven so I set this initially to 40 mm and set the speed to normal.
Then you can tap start. Performance
The Blade has three replaceable razor blades that are screwed into its floating base. Its
rear wheels have deep tread and its rather unusual omni-directional front
wheels are angled at 45° for what EcoFlow calls multi-directional movement. First
off I tried it on a small section of my lawn which is quite uneven and sloped.
I had mowed this lawn less than a week before my tests, which EcoFlow do recommend.
The Blade did a good job and only got stuck when I reduced the height of the blades all the way down
to 20 mm, the minimum cutting height. I could get away with 30 mm on my lawn without any issues.
Whatever map you create, the Blade uses AI to plan its mowing route. So rather than the random zigzag
pattern you get with many robot lawn mowers, it cuts in straight lines for a more professional
looking cut. And GPS accuracy is very good - it cut the same area I mapped on each attempt.
After it’s finished cutting back and forth, it then cuts the perimeter in one continuous
movement before returning to the base. You can turn this feature off in the app, or choose how
many perimeter laps you want it to do. Initially it did have trouble returning to its charging
base. I had to reposition the base and remap the patch of lawn. You really do need the base
on completely flat ground as EcoFlow recommend. I left the Blade cutting this small lawn every
few days for over a month, but I also tried Blade on a larger more challenging lawn,
around 500 m2 in size, with 2 zones joined with a connecting path and multiple exclusion zones.
A larger more complex lawn like this does take some time to map and controlling Blade around
any tricky sections does require some care. This lawn hadn’t been cut for a few weeks and so was
probably a little too long. But it made for a good test of the limits of the lawn mower.
This lawn was also quite sloped and uneven but the mower did a pretty good job overall. It could
have done with overlapping its stripes a little more. You can just about see it’s left some lawn
between the stripes. I only had time to do this large lawn once, but I’m confident these would
be cut on future passes. It had to do quite a lot of manoeuvring in the tighter sections between the
Apple tree beds which took some time and it did get a little stuck on a few occasions. Even with
their deep tread, the wheels did spin a little but the mower cleverly retried these sections again,
approaching from different angles and did successfully get even these harder sections cut.
After completing the first larger section of lawn, it had to travel up a quite steep bank
to the second section of lawn, that I’d defined as the joining path. It coped with this fine
and cut the second section of lawn before travelling back to the charging station.
EcoFlow quotes 240 minutes of runtime, but that will depend on the lawn.
The larger lawn took almost 2 hours and used over 70% of charge.
It takes around 130 minutes to charge the battery with the 36 V, 5 A charger.
If the mower does run out of charge, it will return to its base station and recharge itself.
EcoFlow does sell a specific IP65 weatherproof battery for the Blade - the Smart Extra Battery.
This is a 1024 Wh LFP battery which can be charged via solar for a completely off-grid
solution if you don’t have power nearby. But you could also use any portable power station.
I used the EcoFlow Delta 2 together with EcoFlow’s bifacial 220W solar panel with the larger lawn.
But most of these portable power stations aren’t waterproof including the Delta 2,
so you would need some enclosure for permanent installation. The lawn mower does come with spare
blades, and you can see how these blades look after a month of fairly heavy use.
What’s particularly noticeable is just how quiet it is. From around one metre
away I measured between 55 and 59 dB, around 10-15 dB above background noise.
You can barely hear it 10 metres away. You could even set the Blade to cut your lawn
at night without annoying your neighbours if you really wanted to, which I did try once. If you are
using it at night, you can enable Gentle mode which is even quieter - just a little slower.
You can also turn off the Blade lighting in the app, and reduce the voice announcement
volume, for full stealth mode. The Blade has a LIDAR sensor and
camera which work together to create a 3D map of the lawn for obstacle detection and avoidance.
I tested this several times and everytime it negotiated its way around various objects and
people I introduced into its path. But I would still keep pets and children out of the way.
It will depend on your lawn, but in most situations you will still need to go around
its edges with a strimmer every once in a while. EcoFlow recommends leaving at least 15 cm to the
edge of your lawn. Even leaving this distance, I was expecting the Blade to struggle with a fence
around part of my garden. Especially when it was turning with the large Lawn Sweeper attached. But
it appears EcoFlow have thought of this, and there weren't any collisions in my testing.
The Lawn Sweeper attachment is an optional extra and attaches to the rear of the unit with a cable
and is tightened in place with a knob. A recent firmware update flashed up a warning that this
knob needs to be fully tightened so it sits slightly recessed. Otherwise it might become
detached. You need to tilt the Sweeper up slightly to get the knob recessed.
To use this attachment you have to change from Mow to Sweep in Work Settings. And then start
a separate lawn sweep. I did initially think it’d do the mow and sweep at the same time.
The Sweeper is much noisier - I measured just over 70 dB. It’s not excessively loud by any means,
but I wouldn’t run this overnight. It
has a rotating brush with thick plastic bristles. This works very well, a lot better than I was
expecting. Even after only a light mow of a small lawn, it still picks up plenty of cuttings. The
Blade even knows when the bag is full and returns to the base station with a notification via the
app that it needs emptying. Once emptied if you tap start, it’ll continue where it left off.
The app lets you configure a cutting and sweeping schedule via its Automation rules. So you can have
it cutting the lawn every week, and sweeping every two weeks for example. Every cut and
sweep is recorded in the app under Work Record. And there’s a built-in rain sensor that works
in tandem with this schedule. You can configure a rain delay of up to 24 hours to give the lawn time
to dry. I tested this feature and it does work. The Blade is IPX5 waterproof and can be left
outside all year round. It can even be washed lightly with a hose to clean it.
It did rain heavily for the first week I had which didn’t cause any issues,
but how it fares longer term remains to be seen. I will report back in a future video and down in
the description if I have any issues. If I end up leaving it out all year, I’d be inclined to
build a small canopy for it to at least protect it from the worst of the weather. Perhaps that’s
something EcoFlow will release in the future. Together with the sweeper attachment, it’s
quite large to store away over the winter months. The EcoFlow has a built-in e-SIM mostly intended
for anti-theft. It’s able to send its GPS location to the cloud and it’s possible to
remotely lock the Blade if it has been stolen. Additionally the Blade can only be used with the
original user unless it’s explicitly shared. If another user tries to add the Blade, there’s a
message that it's bound to another account. If I do want to share it with another user,
I can add their email under Device Sharing. I would still be a little concerned leaving
something of this value and so portable on my front lawn though, even with these
security measures. Conclusions
The EcoFlow Blade worked far better than I was expecting. Considering it was only announced at
CES this year that’s even more impressive. And it’s being continuously improved with
firmware updates almost every week since I started testing it over a month ago.
Its GPS mapping worked very well, it did a good job on both tricky lawns with its large wheels,
floating blades and AI route planning, and the lawn sweeper also did a great job.
And with its camera and LIDAR sensor I had no issues with obstacle avoidance.
I only really had minor issues with it and at least one of those issues could be considered
user error. You really do need to find a completely flat spot for the charging
station. Even with the base just slightly off level the Blade approaches at a very slight angle
and its hard rubber wheels slip on the charging station's smooth surface. Perhaps if the dock had
a grippier finish that would help. It did work a lot better when the dock was correctly installed.
A more general issue is many people have more than one lawn to cut. Although the Blade can
move between sections of your lawn and over small obstacles, it’s not going to get from my back
garden to the front garden for example, across large steps. And with any robotic lawn mower,
you should give the lawn an initial cut with a regular lawn mower. Additionally the edges
of your lawn will still need a trim. All this is to say I wouldn’t get rid of your
lawn mower or at least your strimmer just yet! I did notice with the larger garden that there
were a few thin strips of lawn left behind between the stripes which I’m sure would
disappear with additional passes. As I mentioned, I only cut this lawn once and
it hadn’t been immediately mowed before using the Blade so it didn’t have ideal preparation.
I’m also confident the amount of overlap could easily be tweaked in firmware if it was an issue.
You can check the current price in the video’s description, but the Blade and Lawn Sweeper Kit
aren’t cheap. And if you don’t have power nearby, you’ll most likely want to add in the optional
Smart Extra Battery and a solar panel. EcoFlow is pitching the Blade against ride-on mowers and lawn
mowing services which does make sense. You could certainly spend a lot more on a ride-on mower,
plus there’s labour involved and running costs. There are cheaper robotic lawn mowers like the
comprehensive Worx Landroid range starting at almost a ¼ of the price of EcoFlow’s solution.
I’ve not tested them so can’t compare how they work, but the basic Landroid model at least
requires a boundary wire and mows the lawn like a robot vacuum - in a zigzag pattern.
And the ones I’ve seen don’t have an optional lawn sweeper. You can probably get away without
the sweeper kit if your lawn doesn’t get covered in leaves. In normal regular use, the mower is
only going to be cutting a small amount of grass on each run so there wouldn't be much grass to
sweep. But the sweeper does work very well. EcoFlow boasts a 4 year warranty, a dedicated
service team for one on one support and free accessories for life which does all sound
very good. I’ve not yet tested their support but I’ll report back in a future video and update my
written article at thetechnoogyman.com when I do. Overall this is one of the most impressive bits
of tech I’ve tested, and if you’ve got a big lawn to mow and are considering your options
I’d definitely add it to your shortlist! As always, if you have any questions,
please ask - I read every comment and will do my best to respond.
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