The Sunseeker Elite X5 can mow on its own, but it doesn’t come cheap
The tentacles of AI seem to be reaching everywhere, even to the humble lawnmower. We tested the Sunseeker Elite X5, a robotic mower that uses machine learning to steer around your lawn, to see what happens when artificial intelligence meets whirling blades of doom.
The X5 weighs in at 26.5 pounds (12 kg) and measures 26.7 x 16.7 x 10.2 inches (68 x 42.5 x 26 cm). It has a 5 Ah battery, which, in our testing, lasted for just over an hour, at which point the robot will trundle back to its charging station.
The makers claim it will handle a lawn area up to 2,000 m² with a maximum slope of 60 percent or 30 degrees, although we couldn’t verify the latter. The chunky front wheels and single rear steering wheel certainly seemed up to the job and made light work of the undulations of the patch of grass we unleashed it on.
Cutting is performed using a floating cutting disk, capable of producing a 22 cm swathe through grass, with a cutting height ranging from 20 to 60 mm.
Although our inner child was hoping that the setup might resemble the Big Trak of our childhood, with buttons on top used to define a mowing pattern, the X5 had an altogether more competent approach via an app to define mowing zones and schedules. Setting up a mowing zone is a simple case of walking the mower around its boundary and saving the zone. The machine then emerges from its charger at the appointed time and mows the selected areas in neat lines.
Like the vast majority of robot lawnmowers, it also does not collect any grass.
