Best remote control lawn mowers

By the BackyardRated Editorial Team
Published July 31, 2026 and updated August 28, 2026

Affiliate links. We may earn a commission through MaxBounty if you buy, at no extra cost to you, and it never decides a ranking or a verdict. Full disclosure.

Who this machine is actually for

A remote control mower has no seat. The operator stands on level ground and drives it with a handset, so the machine goes onto the bank and the person does not. There is no boundary wire, no app, no mapping and no schedule.

Turning is done by driving the wheels on one side faster than the other, which is why these machines pivot tightly and why that same pivot can scuff soft turf.

Four things have to be true before one of these is the right purchase, and they are worth taking in order.

Your ground is genuinely past the point where sitting on a mower is sensible, which is a lower angle than most people assume: the safety guidance and how to measure your own slope settles that before anything else, and sets out the cheaper answers first, two of which cost nothing.

There is enough of that ground that a string trimmer or replanting is not realistic. The growth on it is rough rather than lawn, so an autonomous machine would bog down where this one will not. And the several thousand dollars is money you would rather spend than keep taking the risk or paying a contractor every season.

If the first one is not true, none of the rest matter and you should not buy one of these.

The four machines we can point you at

These are four variants of one machine, the Mowrator S1. The cutting deck, the motor and the blade torque are the same across all four; what changes is the drive layout, the tyres and the battery. Read the table by the job rather than by the grade, because two of these four are built for a surface rather than for an angle.

One trap survives in that table and it is the arithmetic: percent grade is not degrees. 119 percent is 50 degrees, not 119 of anything you can picture, and the two scales are what make this line hard to shop.

A second trap was here until recently and is worth knowing about even though it has closed. Until our August price check the most expensive variant in the line was not the steepest, so shopping it by price handed you a lower rated machine for more money.

The maker has since moved the prices and the ladder now rises with the rating. Read the grade you need off the table rather than inferring it from what a variant costs, because that relationship has already changed once.

Slope mowers and what the grade numbers mean has the full conversion table and the ground each class of machine is built for.

Every variant shares the same drawbacks, so read them once. You drive it the whole session with a finger held on the blade button, which owners describe as tiring on a long cut. It is over a hundred pounds and takes two people to fit the wheels. One owner reports the handset losing the machine at about fifty feet, so on a wide property you walk along with it.

Mowrator rates the remote at up to 400 metres, about 1300 feet, and says the working distance is a setting that can be raised. So check that setting before you take the fifty feet as the limit of what you bought.

And the collision sensors that make it safe are the same sensors that stop it in deep growth: two owners, one on the brand's own store and one on Trustpilot, describe switching them off to get through heavy grass at all.

Affiliate links. We may earn a commission through MaxBounty if you buy, at no extra cost to you, and it never decides a ranking or a verdict. Full disclosure.

The bottom line

Buy the S1 4WD rated to 75 percent unless something specific rules it out. It is the cheapest variant with the drive layout that holds on a wet bank, and the only one anybody independent has tested.

Go to the grip tread edition rated to 119 percent only if your ground is genuinely that steep and nobody is admiring the finish, and to the wide wheel edition rated to 85 percent only if your ground is soft rather than steep. The 2WD rated to 45 percent is the budget answer for a firm, dry bank.

And if your bank is already mown and you simply want the chore to disappear, none of these four is the purchase. That case is worked through below, and it earns us nothing to say so.

The class above this one, and why nothing from it is on this page

If you search this category you will meet machines that make the ones above look like toys, and it is worth knowing what they are so you can rule them in or out honestly.

None of them is on this page, for two reasons stated plainly. We have no affiliate relationship with any of them, so we could not send you to one even if it suited you better.

And they are a different class of purchase: dealer sold commercial equipment aimed at contractors and councils, on tracks rather than wheels, with flail heads built to take saplings rather than grass.

If your ground genuinely needs 55 degrees and a flail, the four machines above are not the answer and you should be talking to a dealer instead. We have named them here rather than quietly leaving the category at our own ceiling.

When an autonomous mower is the better buy

The easy version of this page would tell you that robots cannot climb, and that is not true. Mammotion's LUBA 2 AWD is rated on its own product page to an 80 percent slope, it is genuinely autonomous, and its entry model was listed on that same store at around $2,600 when we checked in July 2026.

That is a steeper rating than two of the four variants above, from a machine that mows while you are indoors, for less money than either four wheel drive machine here.

The line between the two is the kind of work, and the specification that shows it is the deck rather than the grade. The machines above cut a 21 inch swath with a single steel blade.

The autonomous class uses small, light cutting discs, low ground clearance and a body built to take an inch off a kept lawn twice a week. That design is excellent at maintenance and poor at clearing: a rutted ditch full of two foot growth, hidden branches and exposed roots is where it stops.

So if your bank is a mown bank and you want it to stay mown, buy the robot. If your problem is growth that has got away from you, buy the machine you drive.

The two look similar in a photograph and are opposites in use, so it is worth setting them side by side once.

Why you have probably never seen one

This is the question the category gets asked more than any question about a specific model, so it deserves a straight answer rather than a sales one. What follows is our reading rather than a finding from a study, because no source we know of has measured it. Each point rests on facts stated elsewhere on this page.

1. The price is in a different class. A capable self propelled walk behind costs a few hundred dollars. These run to several thousand. That is not an upgrade decision, it is a different purchase.
2. It does not save you any time. The one people underestimate. Every other expensive machine in a backyard, including the robot mowers this one gets compared to, sells you your afternoon back. This one sells you safety while costing you the same afternoon, and that is a much harder thing to want.
3. Almost nobody encounters one. The category sells largely direct, with a thin dealer network, and the results for its own search terms are dominated by manufacturers' own stores and patent filings rather than independent coverage. A product you never see in a shop, at a neighbour's house or in a review is a product you never consider.
4. The problem is narrow. It solves steep, rough or edge adjacent ground. Most properties have none, and among those that do, many owners have already made their peace with mowing it badly, paying somebody else, or letting it grow.

None of those four is a criticism of the machines, and that is the point worth ending on. The category is small because it answers a narrow question expensively, not because the answer is a bad one.

What it costs after you buy it

The purchase price is not the ownership cost and the gap here is wider than in most categories. A second battery alone is a serious fraction of what the mower cost.

The good news in that list is that the parts exist as parts. We went through the manufacturer's own catalogue and blades, tyres, hubcaps, the mulch insert, the grass bag, the charger and even the screw pack are sold separately, with blades starting under a hundred dollars.

The brand also lists repair locations in California and Missouri plus dealer service partners in other states, which is more than most direct to consumer hardware offers.

One upgrade is worth a warning: the high lift blade is sold as the fix for thick growth and does cut better, but an owner who fitted one reports the machine overheating on heavy foliage and needing to stand and cool down. More cutting power through the same motor and battery is not free.

Read these three terms before you order

1. What a return costs after it ships is no longer published. The policy we re-read on 27 August 2026 charges return shipping on returns made for customer reasons and names no fee, and the return still requires a video demonstrating that the machine does not meet expectations plus photographs of the cleaned inner packaging and the sealed outer box.

2. Thirty days is not the same as no questions asked. Before the return is accepted you owe one video demonstrating that the machine does not meet expectations, one photograph of the cleaned inner packaging and one of the sealed outer box. A change of mind still has to be shown rather than simply declared.

   The brand's FAQ adds a term the policy page leaves out. Re-read on 27 August 2026, it asks you to pack the machine back to its original size to avoid overweight fees on top of the return shipping. Mowrator told us the shipping is all a customer is charged, but no page publishes what it comes to, so confirm your return cost in writing before you order.

3. Two things void the cover most buyers assume they have. Using the machine for any commercial or income generating work puts it outside the consumer warranty entirely, and buying through an unauthorised channel removes free warranty repair.

   Keep the invoice, and film the unboxing before you open the box, because an unedited unboxing video is what the warranty asks for when a part is missing or damaged in transit.

   Two clocks start the moment it arrives: you have seven days from signing for the goods to report a problem at all, and transit damage has to be reported within twenty four hours. Open the box on camera the day it lands, not the weekend you plan to use it.

Frequently asked questions