[Intense Bass heavy Music playing]
So today I'm at my parent's
house with the world's first boundary-less electric robot lawn mower called the EcoFlow
Blade. It is a very, very interesting looking unit. I used to mow this lawn every single
week growing up and I never thought I'd be installing a robot to do my job for me...but
here we are. My mom says that if this robot mower happens to mulch her daffodils...well
let's just hope that the robot mower doesn't mulch her daffodils. I've been told that
this machine only takes 15 minutes to set up. Huge thanks to EcoFlow for sponsoring
this video. I think it's time we see if those rumors are true. Let's get started.
[Intro]
So this is the first mow of the season at my parent's house, and because we're just coming
out of winter, the grass is a little uneven in some spots. Some patches are as long as 4 inches,
and 4 inches is pretty long. The mower definitely has its work cut out for it.
The actual setting up of the mower went super quick. While other robot mowers might need a
buried wire to set yard boundaries, the EcoFlow Blade operates on a GPS system,
along with on-board cameras and lidar. I started off placing the base station and
GPS tower next to the house. The tower looks like a trident from a green thumbed Aquaman.
But after testing the signal strength I decided to place it farther away in a more open area.
And then to program my parent's yard into the mower's brains, I can drive the blade around
the edge of the lawn as it digitally draws a map of the operable area. I could set multiple areas
for the front and back yard, but since my yard is connected, I'm just going to do it all in one.
Once the exterior boundaries are set I can again take the mower and drive
it around trees or flower beds inside the yard and set these areas as no-go zones
where the mower is not allowed to go. So far the mower is extremely quiet. Just using its
onboard electric motors and almost 300 kilowatt hours of battery to maneuver around the yard.
So it's been raining a little bit as we've been mapping. So it should
make mowing a little bit more difficult, but we're here to test it to its limits.
We have the exterior mapped and the no-go zone set, so we should be able to
get it started. We'll see how this goes.
[Beeping
and motor sounds]
Alright. That's not bad! It's kind of taking a weird path straight through
the center of the yard, but I'm sure it has a plan. We'll see what happens.
You can see the diagonal path it took from the starting station over here to the edge.
Turns out I accidentally forgot to set the mower height and that first
pass trimmed the grass right down to its nubs. Nobody tell my mom.
I did adjust the deck height though and the rest of the mowing process went quite a bit
smoother. Apparently it just wanted to touch the edge of the yard before getting started.
So it finally said rain detected, which is valid because it's super wet. I think the rain sensor
is these little guys back here, and obviously there's water connecting the two points. So it's
making its way back to the charging station until the rain dries up. The blade is water resistant,
so a little rain sprinkles, or even rinsing off with a hose isn't going to bother it.
-[Robot] Start charging.
-[Zack] The strange looking wheels in front are called Omni wheels,
and it's basically a wheel made up of wheels, which eliminates the need for a mechanical
steering system. Less moving parts is a good thing since there's less to break, and probably
why EcoFlow is confident enough to offer a very impressive 4-year replacement warranty.
The wheels are 8 inches tall and can climb over obstacles that are one and a half inches high.
It really is amazing how quiet this thing is. Speaking of quiet,
the reason other regular lawn mowers are loud is because of the large engines for one,
but also because the large blades underneath are hitting pockets of air left behind by the blade
in front of it that makes the mower sound like a fan or a helicopter. The EcoFlow Blade though
has replaceable razor blades underneath that are much smaller, and cut the lawn silently.
Going through the very thick and tall grass in our front yard though was pretty difficult. Six
inches is far above average by the way, and it's getting a little longer than our robot friend can
handle. This is very much a real yard with a realistic lawn, making this a realistic test.
The mower has a 2 hour battery life and a working area of 3 quarter acres. My parent's yard is about
a third of an acre and took about 3 hours to cut with the robot stopping one time in the middle to
recharge. The first pass was pretty rough, but the second pass after the motor could travel over the
foliage and position itself easier was much more accurate. The EcoFlow Blade is very much designed
for regular consistent, scheduled, automatic maintenance runs and not for taming the Amazon.
One nice thing is that with the onboard cameras and lidar,
the Blade is able to see and avoid the unplanned obstacles, like pets or toys.
You might be asking, 'Hey Jerry, what happens if someone walks by and just steals my lawnmower?'
First off, that would be extremely rude. But second, it does have an internal e-sim.
Combined with GPS it can track its location. So not only is it geolocked to your specific yard,
if it ever leaves, you can still find it. The GPS is currently being used to make long passes
up and down each side of my yard. It might be fun in the future if EcoFlow would allow
us to change up this pattern, you know, run east and west one week, and then north and south the
next week to change things up. Overall it's an extremely impressive machine. There were a few
times that leaves and sticks got caught up in the Omni wheels, but later in the summer when
leaves and dead twigs are gone, I don't see that being much of a long term issue. Plus,
EcoFlow has a sweeper attachment to help pick up leaves and sticks automatically.
The sweeper attachment is an industry first. With one screw and one plug, it clips into place and
uses rubber bristles to sweep grass and leaves into the bag. Since this is the first mow of the
year, I probably should have started with a good sweep, but it'll also be fun to try out with the
leaves this fall. One suggestion I would add during setup is to make sure that the base
station is in a wide open area since the robot is using cameras and lidar to dock itself. If the
base station is hidden from view or obstructed, it's harder for the Blade to accurately find it.
So is this robot mower something grandma could set up all by herself? I mean, I guess it depends
on your grandma. But it is something that she could run by herself since everything
happens pretty automatically. Super excited to see EcoFlow branching out into the robot
world. I've had one of their battery solar systems powering my barn for the last 2 years, and if you
were to connect the robot mower to a battery backup, your lawn care would be extra green.
I'll leave a link with the current pricing down in the video description,
along with an early bird discount code so you can grab one for yourself. Thanks a ton for watching,
and since we didn't dice up any of my mom's flowers, I will see you around.