we've been anticipating ego's battery-powered zero-turn mower
for a while now it finally arrived and we wasted no time putting it
through its paces to see if it's a viable replacement for gas-powered residential zts
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watching this video check out our thoughts on ego's nexus power station let's start with a tour
around the mower as you can see it maintains a fairly traditional zt design with 18 inch
drive wheels on the back that are independently controlled and 11 inch 360 degree casters on the
front to help you make those tight turns with the lap bars looking at the front of the mower
you can see the led lights now these are always on whenever the mower is on but if you hit the light
button on the control panel you get even more so you can mow and low or even no light whatsoever
now on the back there's another set and those blink when you're in reverse so anybody who's
standing behind you will know you're coming moving around to the driver's right you'll find the
manual deck height adjustment bar now this raises or lowers the 42 inch steel deck between 1.5 and
4.5 inches and 10 increments further around and up is the lcd control panel now we're going to come
back to that in just a minute because there's a lot going on here behind the seat you'll find
the battery bank now the kit comes with four 10 amp hour 56 volt arc lithium batteries but you
can use up to six now the nice thing is the ego uses the same exact batteries for this mower that
it does for their other lawn care products making it completely compatible across their entire line
if you want to swap in other packs just keep in mind that you need at least 15 amp hours worth of
batteries to mow moving to the left of the driver you'll find the charging port and we think it's a
pretty big deal that you've got on-board charging you can leave the batteries in there and the only
time you ever really need to take them out is if you just want to use them to power another tool
now the charger is pretty substantial on this but it's got keyholes on the back so that you can hang
it on the wall and it gives you a pretty generous 15-foot cord reach as far as the actual charging
goes this is an impressive system we ran the mower down to six percent when it kicked into limp mode
to tell us to go back to the shop and we put it on the charger and it took one hour and 53 minutes
for it to come back to a 100 charge on the four batteries we started with the eco z6 gives you a
handy storage area on your left hand side it's got a magnetic closure and a usb charger on the inside
it's also big enough to store your keys wallet and phone if you want next to that is a welcome
cup holder with two sizes that can hold a bottle of water or even an oversized mug from your local
corner store at the center of it all ego includes a pretty comfortable seat with movable armrests
clint was able to find a good setting for his considerably lighter frame but it did bottom out
on bumpier areas a few turns to tighten it up and he was good to go on the other hand my six foot
two 200 pound build needed to increase the tension and set the seat back some but i was also able to
find a good fit with room to spare to turn the mower on start by making sure you have the key
inserted a press of the power button will show you your battery charge status press and hold it to
bring the z6 to life and push the parking brake on the left side with your foot to release it
you have separate controls for the drive speed on the left and blade speed on the right and
that takes a little bit of getting used to each has four levels to choose from and if you hold
the button at the top of the drive speed you can kick into a fifth mode that turns off the blades
and lets you travel at your highest speed about eight miles per hour the mowing speeds run between
three and 7 miles per hour also if you want to change speeds or modes you can't do it on the fly
you'll need to stop and put the lap bars in the park position first the bottom two blade speeds
are good for light cutting and dry grass the top two speeds are better for thicker wetter grass
now similar to the drive speed if you press and hold the top blade speed you'll kick into a turbo
mode that's great for those tough patches but we didn't find it necessary for any of our cutting
across the bottom of the control screen you'll see three drive modes these define the aggressiveness
of the acceleration and the turning control mode is great if you're new to zero turns or trying to
be careful around landscape obstacles standard mode feels most like the residential zt's we've
used in the past and sport mode is where you're going to get the quickest accelerations and turns
we were even able to spin the tires slightly in sport mode we recommend sticking with the standard
mode unless you're an advanced zt veteran or need to outrun that summer thunderstorm
there's even more information on the control panel including connecting to your mower with bluetooth
and adjusting for left and right drift check out your manual for more details on those
looking forward from the driver's seat there's an led indicator between your feet to help you keep
an eye on your charge levels without having to take your eyes off of what's in front of you it's
a brilliant concept and we love it like many zt's the long wheelbase of the mower becomes noticeable
when you're mowing around objects it's certainly capable of tight zero radius turns but getting
the cutting deck to hug smaller trees buried tank covers and other obstacles is a challenge
all that's great but how well does it actually cut ego claims the z6 has the power of a 22 horsepower
engine with that in mind we weren't testing so much to see if it's good for an electric
zero turn we were testing it to see how it compares to the cutting experience of a gas zt
we did our testing in january which is still mowing season for central florida cutting a
combination of bahia and sand augustine grasses we've got excellent cut quality taking our test
lawn down from five inches to three and a half inches at least that's what we presume the height
was considering the adjustments seemed to take place in one-third inch increments there's also
plenty of muscle behind the blades we were able to cut the bottom two speeds but we've got much
better lift and side ejection at high speed that's where the mower cuts most like a gas powered model
that's also the setting that should give you the best mulching if you add the optional plug we
had about an acre of lawn to cut and the runtime was more than enough to cover that to do our run
time test we set the mode to standard and both the drive and blade speeds to level four after
borrowing some of our neighbor's lawn to help us out we were able to cut for a full hour with the
same settings and similar lawn conditions you can easily cover an acre and a half two acres isn't
unreasonable if you've got the type of larger property where you're making longer runs filling
out the battery capacity with two more 10 amp hour packs ego claims you can cut up to three acres
as we roll into the spring and summer seasons when the grass grows fast and thick we expect our run
time will drop a bit with the heavier workload but we should still be able to get it done on the
kitted batteries without a problem in our opinion the design team clearly did their homework and
ego's first attempt at a battery-powered zero-turn mower is a home run priced at 4999 dollars it
offers a really compelling value compared to other mowers at the same price point and yes we
do intend to compare this mower to the others as soon as they become available if you have
any questions or feedback for us feel free to leave those in the comments below and as always
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