- Hi, I'm Parris, and this morning I'm reviewing
the Cobalt 13 Amp Corded Electric Mower.
I'm finally replacing my 12 year old
Black & Decker Electric Mower.
♫ Epic Review Guys
A gas mower really wasn't an option,
and I know the cordless mowers with
new improved batteries
supposedly can do a whole yard twice over on one charge,
but 500 dollars for a mower for this small of a yard
just didn't seem worthwhile.
This model I got for 199 dollars over at Lowe's.
I'll put a link to it down below this video.
After quite a bit of research
and seeing lots of good reviews for this Cobalt model,
I decided to try this.
I'm not that familiar with the brand.
I may have a tool or two by that company.
Black & Decker I know, and this mower has been great.
It's lasted 12 years and
it's not dead yet but it is on its way out,
so I decided to replace it
so I'll have a new mower for this entire summer.
This new Cobalt model comes with a bag
and I think the Black & Decker did originally as well,
though I lost it a long time ago
because I just use the mowers as mulching mowers,
chop up the grass and throw it back into the yard.
The other big selling point for me with the Cobalt mower,
in addition to it being a mulching mower,
is that the cutting track is 21 inches across,
as opposed to my Black & Decker,
which is 18 and a half inches.
And I know, what does a couple inches matter?
Well actually, you'll never hear a guy say that.
But it should reduce the number of passes
I have to make through the yard to cut the grass.
Here are the pieces out of the box,
with the Cobalt KM 210.
I really do like the color of this.
The handle has a cushioned grip,
which will be nice for a change.
I don't understand the starter mechanism,
why there's a separate button from
the handle that you have to pull.
Maybe that's something new.
And here's the grass catching bag.
And the other piece, that's either the side chute
or else it's the plug for mulching.
I found the mulching plug.
It was actually already installed right here.
And this is where you attach the bag catcher,
or you put the plug in place
when you wanna use it as a mulching mower.
And this is the side discharge chute.
These pegs on top here
will catch underneath this cover,
and it will sit right here,
catching the grass being thrown out from the mower.
Here are the two mowers, the Cobalt KM 210
and the Black & Decker MM 575.
If you wonder why I always have that cord
plugged into the Black & Decker,
it's because it will no longer unplug.
Not without breaking the mechanism.
So that has to stay there.
You can see we've got larger tires and wheels
on the Cobalt model.
Also the handle on the Cobalt is a little bit longer
and angles up a little bit higher,
which is gonna be a lot better for me
spending hours pushing it.
One thing I'm curious about,
on this 12 year old model,
all you had to do to start it
was pull this out and hold it up
and when you let go it would stop.
Just one thing to do.
Now, they do have,
I guess you could call it like a safety bar,
where you have to have that pulled
for the motor to remain running.
But in order to start it,
you separately have to press this button.
I'm thinking it's a safety kid,
in case you leave your mower out,
kids get around it, something like that.
Here's the underside of the Cobalt mower.
You can see the blade.
And in the back, the piece that keeps
rocks and things from flying out the back
looks very substantial and I like that
because it no longer exists on my old Black & Decker.
It was just a plastic flap and it has
come off and so things do fly
out the back of the mower at me.
And you can see the blade is in bad shape.
I've replaced the blade at least twice.
I've ordered new blades and put them on.
And maybe in this view you can see the difference
in the width of the cutting decks.
How the Cobalt is just a little bit larger,
cuts more grass each time you run it across the yard.
It's been about a month since I've mowed back here.
I'm gonna try out the Black & Decker for a couple passes,
and then the Cobalt, and compare their cutting quality.
I've set them both to one
adjustment notch above the shortest.
Instructions say press and hold the button,
then pull the rail so, okay.
Press and hold, there we go.
Here's the cutting job that they both did.
Now I overcut by half of the lawnmower width each time.
That's because with this mower,
I always end up getting lots of straggly pieces
that it seems to have missed.
So I put the mower and redo half of it
each time I make a pass, like you can see here.
This wasn't cut real well.
And here it just seems to skip some spots,
so that's why I had to do that overcutting.
Now with the Cobalt, it seems to have
dumped a pile of mulch all at once.
Decided it had had enough of that.
And some spots I thought it might have
been areas that I'd missed cutting real well.
Mostly just have mulch dumped on top.
Now I tried to cut exactly the same way
with both mowers here,
but you can see the width of what was cut
is much larger with the Cobalt.
So yeah, couple extra inches can get the job done sooner.
I've removed the mulching components
and put the grass clipping catching bag
on the back of the Cobalt.
Let's see how long this takes to fill up.
It's pretty small, I think it won't be long.
Alright, did another four passes in the lawn.
Let's see how full the clippings bag is.
Still lots of room in there,
I would say it's about a third full with four passes,
so I could probably do about 12 passes in the lawn
before filling the bag.
That's actually not so bad.
And the final test is cutting tall grass.
This is the first cut of the year
for this section outside the fence here.
And this is the most dangerous part of the lawn,
the reason being, people seem to think
when there's tall grass, they can bring their dogs here,
have them poop and not clean it up.
So almost every first cutting of the year
uncovers an unpleasantly fresh surprise or two.
Hold your breath and hold your noses.
Here we go.
Let's see if the Cobalt can get through it
without having to pause.
Let's see how they both did after a single pass.
You can see that the path of the Cobalt is wider.
And if you look
If you look carefully, there's quite a bit of grass
that the Black & Decker missed.
Especially when you get down here
to where the really tall grass was
and it bogged down a little.
The Cobalt really didn't have much trouble,
even with me pushing it along at a continuous speed.
When the grass got taller, the Cobalt
got into serious mulching mode.
Well after mowing the rest of the lawn
with the new Cobalt mower,
I'm really pleased with it.
I was able to finish faster,
part of it being the wider cutting width,
but also, I don't have to go back over spots
nearly as much as I did with the old mower.
I also feel like I can mow more quickly
and not have to worry about it missing spots,
so that was nice.
One thing I found unsettling
was the metallic sounds that came out of this.
At first I thought it was some issue with the mechanism,
but no, it's because the shell that covers the blade,
that housing is steel, as opposed to
on my Black & Decker model, where it's plastic.
So any twig or little rock or anything
that gets spinning or knocking around in there
makes quite a racket.
If you'd like to find out more
about this Corded Electric Cobalt Mower,
I'll put a link to it down below this video.
You can keep checking back for future videos
of gardening and other products that I review,
or you can click that subscribe button down below
and you'll get notified when our videos go up.
See you on the next review.