Mammotion Yuka 1500 robot mower review: Innovative but glitchy

Best Prices Today: Mammotion Yuka 1500

Mammotion is one of the newer robot mower manufacturers, with just two series on offer: the uniquely named Luba and Yuka. The all-wheel drive Luba series launched in the summer of 2022; the less-expensive rear-wheel drive Yuka series launched right before CES 2024. I received the Yuka 15000 for this review.

At first glance, you might think you’re looking at a Formula 1 race car—which is intentional. Its sleek design won Mammotion a 2024 iF Design Award. But looks aren’t everything, so Mammotion has given it some unique features including a “lawn art” mode that can cut stripes and shapes in your grass if you so choose.

Cut quality is the most important criterion, and on that score, the Yuka 1500 left my lawn evenly cut every time.

An optional sweeper attachment makes lawn clean up a breeze and includes an auto-emptying function. Its onboard vision and obstacle avoidance capabilities allow it to mow even in GPS blind spots, where some robot mowers fail. Dual floating cutting discs (similar to the Sunseeker Orion X7) should be much less susceptible to clogging in thick grass, at least in theory.

Mammotion claims setup can be completed in a little more than 15 minutes, too.

But as I’ve learned from testing robot mowers over the years, some manufacturers overpromise and underdeliver—sometimes by a mile. Mammotion sent the Yuka 1500, which retails for $2,048 with its optional sweeper kit, and supports yards up to 0.37 acres. I set it loose on my test 0.28-acre yard here in Pennsylvania in late August and September.

This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best robot lawn mowers.

The quickest installation yet

At least from the setup side of things, Mammotion’s claims are pretty accurate. Save for the user manual’s omission as to how to connect the GPS antenna’s power supply, I completed the initial installation in 20- to 30 minutes. Had those instructions not been missing, I would have had things set up more quickly.

Installing the optional sweeper attachment takes another 5- to 10 minutes.

Once that was all figured out, getting the mower to connect to the app was quick and painless. So far, we’re off to a great start.

It’s a fun mower, but it’s not perfect

My region of the country experienced a flash drought during my review period, with little to no rain for nearly two weeks. As a result, I didn’t get to operate the mower as much as I would have liked, but I got enough use of it to get a solid feel for what the Yuka can do, and its performance overall, during the latter half of the test period.

Things went generally well. Cut quality is the most important criterion, and on that score, the lawn stayed evenly cut. Like most boundary wire-free mowers, unless you have it straddle the edges of your yard, you’ll need to tidy up those parts; otherwise, we were more than satisfied, if not impressed.

The Yuka provides both autonomous and manual control (a first for me), and it works well, making it easier to cover any areas the mower missed. A true autonomous mode is one of the features I missed the most in my Mowrator S1 4WD review.

Unlike other vision-assisted mowers, the Yuka’s onboard cameras do more than just help the robot steer. You can peek in while the mower is working to watch it do its job (or find out where it got stuck). You can even control it from inside your house using FPV mode. A tiny windshield wiper on the front camera keeps the view clear as day.

Not everyone will use FPV control, but I still appreciate the unique feature—I’d even call it fun.

Now for the bad news. The Yuka repeatedly got stuck in the same spot, including driving up on objects in our yard. I finally created a no-go zone, because I was spending so much time rescuing it from the same mishaps. Fortunately, a series of firmware updates rolled in and the problem disappeared for the most part.

The absence of all-wheel drive and a paucity of torque left the Yuka underpowered in my bumpy and uneven test yard. While not as frequent a problem as the climbing on our yard ornaments, it also made the mowing process a bit frustrating initially as it would sometimes get stuck in these imperfections, too.

Encountering such problems on a $2,000 robot lawn mower is troubling, and it’s one of the primary factors that suppressed my bottom-line score for this bot. On the bright side, Mammotion is aware of the mower’s limitations, and not a week has gone by without the mower receiving a firmware update, sometimes multiples of them. That’s a good thing, and we’ve seen a steady improvement in mower’s operations even in just a month.

Mammotion’s app is a strong point

While the Yuka’s overall performance was a bit mixed during my review period, the company’s app is extremely well executed. Like Husqvarna’s Automower app, Mammotion has taken a less is more approach, and it shows in the user interface.

The controls for both mapping and the FPV feature are easy to use and responsive. I sat in the house and watched the mower work in real time, which was pretty cool. I even tried to mow; however, you do need to remember that the mower’s view is much lower to the ground, so I recommend being outside the first few times you try this.

If there’s any kind of problem or update, the app will alert you, as well as walk you through the steps of upgrading or correcting the issue. Most robot mowers don’t do this, giving you a generic error message instead.

There’s all kinds of customizations to choose from too, from adjusting cutting height to cutting patterns, and, of course scheduling.

The sweeper is fun, too—at least when it works. I know you were anticipating reading about my attempts at whatever “lawn art” is, but that flash drought made that impossible. As a consolation, I thoroughly tested the sweeper accessory, which arrived a week or so into my review.

The sweeper is not cheap—adding $700 to the price of the mower—and while it’s a good idea, it’s not well executed. The app allows you to set up to 100 different locations across your yard where the mower will stop and dump the contents of its clippings bag, so you can keep the debris out of sight until you can put it your compost pile or trash can.

The first issue I ran into was an “overpower warning” with one of the sweeper motors. This would lead to unexpected results. The sweeper also started and stopped awkwardly, and when this happened in taller grass, it would wrap around the sweeper, causing a jam. I’m not sure if these issues might be related to the sweeper’s odd performance.

I’ve reached out to Mammotion about this issue and will update my review when I hear back; there’s a chance this particular sweeper attachment could be defective. One thing that might not be an easy fix is the means for attaching the bag to the sweeper. It physically rests on the mower instead of locking in place and sometimes can fall off while dumping.

All that said, I’m excited about using this feature over the coming weeks, as leaves are already starting to fall. I’m hoping some of the sweeper issues I’ve encountered can be resolved—or at least ameliorated—with future firmware updates.

Should you buy a Mammotion Yuka 1500?

While I’ve been relatively critical of the Mammotion Yuka in this review, I think many—if not most—of the Yuka’s shortcomings can be fixed with a future firmware updates. And to date, these have been coming at a rapid clip—faster than for any other mower I’ve tested.

Some updates have yielded substantial performance improvement, even if they haven’t all gone smoothly; one firmware update early in my review period nearly bricked the machine. Fortunately, those problems were corrected quickly.

And to be fair to Mammotion, they don’t have the decade-plus of experience in robotic mowers that Husqvarna and Worx do. And to their credit, they’re trying some innovative things. When you’re pushing the boundaries like that, there’s bound to be hiccups.

So, consider this a preliminary judgement on the Mammotion Yuka 1500. I’ll take another look next spring to see if additional firmware updates yield enough value to justify its $2,000 price tag. And I’ll get to the lawn art feature, too.

But for now, the Segway Navimow is a much better RWD mower—even with its faults—and it costs $800 less.

Best Prices Today: Mammotion Yuka 1500