ANTHBOT M9 Review: Quiet, Low-cost, and Picky About Your Garden

The M9 covers as much as 1,000 sq. meters, or roughly 1 / 4 acre. It navigates with full-band RTK plus two ahead cameras, so there is no such thing as a boundary wire to bury. You get the mower, a charging base, an RTK reference station on a pole, a spare set of blades, and cables. The storage is further, and it normally provides about $70 in a bundle.

Anthbot lists it at $899. It has bought nearer to $649 for many of the 12 months, which places it far under the Husqvarna and Mammotion machines individuals cross-shop it towards. That low cost is the entire argument for purchasing one.

Setup took twenty minutes, not ten

Anthbot advertises a ten-minute setup. Plan on twenty. You plant the bottom station, increase the RTK pole the place it may see open sky, pair over Wi-Fi, then map. None of it’s onerous. It is simply extra steps than the advertising suggests, and reviewer instances land in every single place.

Angus Jones at GadgetGuy, who has examined 5 robotic mowers, obtained it executed in beneath ten minutes. Zu at Retro Handhelds clocked twelve, and notes he needed to relocate the RTK station first as a result of his home and a close-by tree blocked the sign. A German proprietor with an angular yard wanted forty-five minutes to stroll the boundary.

The lesson in these numbers is the antenna, not the app. Retro Handhelds put it plainly: the RTK station wants actual line of sight to the sky, and the spot that works is normally additional out in your yard than you need it to be.

The unboxing mirrors what you get from Lymow, all the way down to the outsized quick-start sheet. Open the app and it affords you a quick-start information, which seems to be a scan of the precise sheet already in your fingers.

One small factor the guide won’t let you know. The app has no setting to change from millimeters to inches. If you assume in inches, you may be doing conversions each time you alter reducing top.

Cutting efficiency: clear, till it isn’t

The M9 cuts with 5 free-rotating razor blades on a 20 centimeter disc. That is a 7.9 inch path, which is small. The Lymow One Plus clears near double that in a go, and you’re feeling the distinction in how lengthy the M9 takes to complete something.

Blade design is the actual story right here, and it cuts each methods. Swapping blades takes seconds with the included screwdriver, and the spare set ships within the field. That is an actual possession win over heavier steel-deck machines. But razor blades shouldn’t have the mass or the chunk of the metal blades on the Lymow. Give the M9 thick, tall, or moist grass and it stops being a mower.

Other house owners hit the identical wall for a cause price figuring out: the imaginative and prescient system reads tall grass at digicam top as a strong object, so the mower refuses to drive into it. An skilled proprietor on Reddit lays out the repair, which is to chop with a traditional mower first after which by no means let the grass develop greater than about an inch between robotic passes.

Anthbot places that within the app earlier than you map. It tells you to get the garden beneath 7 centimeters first, then step down via 5 and three, and to not use the machine on weeds. Follow that and the reduce seems good. Skip it and you’ll spend your weekend rescuing a robotic.

On maintained grass, the end shocked me. I anticipated the razor setup to go away a tough, directionless reduce. It doesn’t. The M9 runs a U-shaped path and produces actual traces, and the app permits you to set the mowing angle to no matter you need. Marcus Schwarten at Notebookcheck confirms the path management is freely adjustable, and house owners who care about stripes call that the best feature on the machine.

GadgetGuy makes the strongest case for the razor design, and it’s price listening to. Sharp razor blades taking a small chunk each few days beat a boring metal blade taking an enormous chunk as soon as per week. The grass grows sideways as a substitute of up, the clippings disappear into the turf as mulch, and the garden seems fuller.

Angus Jones cuts buffalo grass on a 1-in-6 slope in Australia and says it has by no means appeared higher. That is the strongest model of the argument for this machine, and it solely holds if you happen to mow usually.

One thing more from that check. The M9 doesn’t reliably keep away from small objects. GadgetMan discovered it drove straight over immature inexperienced fruit that had dropped from a tree, and warns that small toys are a threat. Pick up earlier than it runs.

The noise, or lack of it

The M9 is the quietest mower I’ve examined. Anthbot charges it at 58 decibels, and Notebookcheck measured about 60 decibels from a meter away. GadgetMan describes it as a faint whir and nothing extra. The reducing itself is close to silent. What noise there’s comes from the drive motor turning the wheels, which supplies the machine an odd, untraditional sound in comparison with the Lymow.

Whether that may be a function is determined by you. I missed the acquainted sound of a mower working. There is one thing helpful about listening to your garden get reduce from inside the home. With the M9 it’s a must to go look.

Edge mowing is the weak level

This is the place I’d hesitate earlier than recommending it to anybody with planted borders, and it’s the one grievance each reviewer landed on independently. The reducing disc sits centered within the physique, roughly 9 centimeters in from the sting of the housing. That leaves a band of standing grass alongside each wall, fence, and mattress. Owners measure 15 to 20 centimeters left behind. You will nonetheless personal a string trimmer.

Maik at commaik.de, who ran the M9 towards the M5 LiDAR in his personal backyard, discovered the excellence that issues. Where the sting will be pushed over, the M9 cuts it nicely and the garden seems completed. Where it can not, a slim strip stays behind and also you rework it by hand.

GadgetMan reached the identical place from a unique angle. Auto-mapping didn’t take his perimeter shut sufficient to the garden edge, so he remapped manually to tighten it up, and he nonetheless trims the sides each few weeks.

Anthbot’s reply is an overrun setting that lets the mower prolong as much as 20 centimeters previous a mapped border, adjustable per part. Use it with care. Notebookcheck tried it towards a ten centimeter curbstone and the mower zigzagged alongside the stone and left seen marks. The digicam detection didn’t override the app setting.

That issues for my check yard, which has a decent margin between turf and an herb mattress. Turn on overrun close to vegetation and the imaginative and prescient system won’t save them. I by no means obtained the edging dialed in to the place I trusted it unattended.

Navigation and terrain

The M9 is a ten kilogram machine on two drive wheels and two entrance casters, with plastic wheels. Any unevenness pushes it off its supposed line, which implies missed patches it’s a must to return over. Notebookcheck lists “primarily for flat gardens” as its headline con and says the mower shouldn’t be significantly succesful on uneven terrain.

Basic Tutorials, which ran it over a full season, flags the identical symptom I noticed from a unique path: the mower sometimes drops particular person mowing paths, which is what leaves these strips of standing grass between passes. An proprietor evaluating it to a neighbor’s Genie calls it small, nimble, and wiggling. There’s A Trick For That, who checks robotic mowers all season, says it struggles more with bumps than the all-wheel-drive items in his lineup.

Traction is the associated restrict. GadgetMan couldn’t get the M9 to his entrance garden in any respect, as a result of a steep, slippery brick path between the 2 zones gave it nothing to grip.

The larger downside is restoration. When the M9 loses its place, it can not discover its method residence. Mine drove off a small ledge and landed the other way up on the grass. I hit the house button and realized instantly that it had no thought the place it was. I flipped it over and drove it again to the dock by hand. Notebookcheck noticed the identical conduct as soon as throughout testing, when the mower left its mapped area and got stuck on an edge. Their recommendation is the best recommendation: map a protected buffer round something you’ll be able to fall off. Other house owners report the identical restoration failure, together with one who has to hold it again almost every other job.

RTK stability was blended. On one cloudy afternoon it misplaced connection to the bottom station mid-mow, with the GPS gentle blinking on its face. The residence button labored that point. Anthbot’s advertising claims its full-band alerts penetrate clouds. Basic Tutorials lists RTK sign loss at distance from the bottom station as a flat con and tells you to check navigation in your personal yard earlier than you commit, which matches house owners reporting permanently blinking GPS.

The app is healthier than I anticipated, with two traps

Anthbot’s app beats Lymow’s on options and on strolling you thru setup. Obstacle detection has three ranges. High avoids small issues like stepping stones and leaf piles. Medium handles stone paths and patio edges. Low solely avoids massive non-grass areas. You additionally get auto-mapping, which Lymow doesn’t supply, plus scheduling tied to dawn and sundown and a rain sensor. Basic Tutorials factors out one thing price figuring out earlier than you are worried about connectivity: the map lives on the mower, so scheduled mowing retains working with no web connection in any respect.

Map modifying is the standout. You can develop areas, add a zone mid-mow, and mark a brand new part whereas the machine is already working. That flexibility beats what I get from the Lymow. Notebookcheck charges the settings as in depth and calls out the lacking stay digicam feed because the one actual omission.

Two issues will price you a day if no one warns you first.

The base station immediate. Every time I began a guide mow, the app requested whether or not I had moved the RTK station. Cancel and it really works usually. Confirm and also you begin the pairing course of over. That shouldn’t be a quirk. A German proprietor spells out what occurs: selecting proceed destroys your entire map. Another remapped eight instances in three weeks as a result of a gust of wind was sufficient to set off the alert.

Zone enlargement. I mapped out from the sting of an current zone, looped again to my begin level, and obtained a immediate asking whether or not to save lots of zone A. I learn it as a alternative between two choices. It saved A and deleted the part I had already constructed. Walking the brand new space counterclockwise is what actually adds to a map, and Anthbot help factors house owners to a video tutorial for it. That ought to be within the app, not in a Reddit thread.

Zones are additionally sq. solely, which no garden is. You find yourself overlaying rectangles and narrowing them till the form is shut sufficient. And crossing between zones failed for me outright. Asking it to mow the aspect yard, which required driving via an unmapped strip, produced nothing however “returning to dock” with no error. The function you want known as Pathways, and a Florida proprietor explains that strolling the mower over and hoping it figures it out doesn’t work.

What I couldn’t check, and what different house owners hit

Maine had a dry summer season, and I saved the M9 on a smaller part of garden due to its measurement and energy. That leaves actual floor uncovered, and the sample in proprietor studies is constant sufficient to flag.

Support is essentially the most repeated grievance throughout Amazon, Reddit, and TikTok. A German purchaser went seven weeks without a reply. A UK proprietor whose mower died obtained nothing from Anthbot for days, filed an Amazon return, and advised Mark Haley of EasyLawnMowing that Anthbot got here again inside fifteen minutes as soon as {the marketplace} was concerned. The flip aspect is actual too. Several house owners revised their rankings upward after Anthbot shipped free replacement units.

Firmware is the opposite one. Updates have damaged working machines. One proprietor’s M9 began plowing via flower beds and heading for a koi pond after an update, ignoring the no-go zones it had revered for weeks. Anthbot’s group supervisor factors to version 1.0.104 because the repair for navigation instability, so verify what yours is on.

Budget for the mobile plan as nicely. You get three months of 4G free, then $39.99 a 12 months. Basic Tutorials lists that annual subscription as one in every of solely two cons in its whole evaluation, which tells you the way a lot it grates. Owners in Ireland and Germany report the NetRTK toggle greyed out on present firmware, and Notebookcheck could not activate it at all on its check unit. It works over 4G solely, not Wi-Fi, and Anthbot doesn’t put the subscription within the itemizing.

Who can buy it

Buy the M9 in case your yard is small, stage, and open to the sky, and if you’re prepared to mow usually sufficient that the grass by no means will get forward of it. On that garden it’s quiet, tidy, and priced nicely beneath something comparable. Notebookcheck calls it the best-value decide beneath 1,000 sq. meters, and turf agronomist Greg Phillips, a former golf course superintendent, reaches the identical place from the grass aspect: the Genie stripes higher, and the M9 is the worth play.

Skip it when you have hills, ruts, tree roots, thick grass, or planted borders you can not afford to lose. The razor blades and the two-wheel drive aren’t constructed for that work, and the Lymow One Plus handles all of it higher for extra money.

Testing word: the M9 was run on a small part of entrance garden in coastal Maine throughout a dry season, alongside a Lymow One Plus on the identical property. Full-yard protection, evening mowing, and long-term sturdiness weren’t examined. Claims outdoors direct testing are linked to their supply.