Segway Navimow X350e

Introduction

After proving it could take care of small gardens brilliantly, with the Segway Navimow i105E, the company is back this year with something built for much larger gardens, the Segway Navimow X350e.

Able to tackle gardens up to 5000m², this is a robot that is built for commercial use and for those who have very large lawns. Priced at an eye-watering £3,199, the X350e series mower packs a hefty price to match its capabilities.

Design and Features

• AI-enhanced cameras with 300° vision
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 4G connectivity
• Impressive-looking screen on top of the mower

There are four versions of the Segway Navimow X Series available. The X350E that I have on review is designed for gardens up to 5000m². There’s then the smaller X315E (£2,199, for lawns up to 1500m²) and X330E (£2599 for lawns up to 3000m²); and the biggest X390E (£4299 for lawns up to 10,000m²). All versions are built for bigger lawns than your average robot lawn mower and all have the same feature set.

As you might expect for a robot lawn mower that can tackle such a large area, the Segway Navimow X350e is quite a large robot, although set up is similar as for the Navimow I105E.

As with all of Segway Navimow’s robot lawn mowers, this one uses GPS for positioning. Using the company’s Exact Fusion Location System (EFLS). To make it work, there’s a long antenna to install with a forked trident design on the sharp end to stick it in the ground.

While some robots have ditched the need for this kind of receiver, such as the Husqvarna Automower Nera 305E, it makes sense here: external receivers are more accurate and they don’t need full Wi-Fi coverage to work; plus, you can install a second receiver to cover a larger area.

For the docking station, Segway provides a long 10m power cable to help you place it where you want. The setup almost didn’t happen thanks to the big, bulky power plug that comes with the X350e. The oversized block wouldn’t fit on the outside power socket with its protective rain cover, so an extra extension lead was employed to help it fit.

Otherwise, the setup is easy thanks to the clear instructions on the app. Like other premium mowers, defining the shape of your lawn and things like no-go zones and channels between lawns is done by piloting the mower like a remote-control car. You simply walk behind the mower, driving it around the grass to define the lawn shape. You can even leave it to automatically map the lawn on its own.

There’s a handy feature if you need to delete and re-draw borders too. By pressing and holding the eraser button, the mower retraces its steps until the incorrect section is gone. Fine tuning map edges and channels is just as easy, you select the wrong bit on the map, the mower drives there, then you retrace the steps by remote control. Just bear in mind that you can’t edit on the fly, any changes reset the mower back to the start of its mowing program.

Something that I found annoying about the last Navimow robot that I reviewed is that it’s bristling with cameras, but you can’t watch its progress live through the app. It feels like a useful, or at least fun, feature has been missed out, and it’s a feature I liked on the Eufy Lawnbot E15.

On top of the mower is a large LCD screen that displays current information and cheerful animations during use.

Not that you’ll spend a lot of time on the LCD, as the robot is controlled via the Navimow app. This can connect to the robot via Wi-Fi or 4G. The latter is free for a generous three years before turning into a pay-for subscription. This extra data connection is ideal for anti-theft security as it can tell you where the mower is in real time, should it be stolen.

Scheduling is in-depth, and it’s possible to set cutting times for the entire area on per-zone. That makes this robot a little more involved to get the schedule right, but the flexibility is appreciated.

The cutting is done by a deck of six blades that can be adjusted via the app from 20-70 mm. Boasting bright headlights and live weather information, it can cut the grass at any time but will stay in the garage if rain or snow is on the way.

The next trick up the X3 series’ sleeve is the array of cameras that peer out from both the front and sides of the mower. The position of the cameras gives the mower a 300° wide angle of vision and uses AI to recognise and avoid up to 200 different garden objects.

And the party piece of the Navimow X350e is the Lawn Doodle. Showing off its accuracy and artistic flair, it can mow letters and shapes into the grass over time by leaving precise parts unmowed.

Performance

• Incredibly quiet mowing at just 60 dB
• Great quality cut after several passes
• Not great on uneven terrain

To test out the Navimow X3, I took it to a country cottage garden that measured just over 300 m², divided over four different lawns. Featuring a range of obstacles and different terrains, as well as challenging channels to get between parked cars and other garden equipment, it was a good place to put any robot mower to the test.

Configuring the robot to work in this area was easy, and its general navigation and cutting was very good. I found the VisionFence cameras to be excellent at spotting and avoiding obstacles, so this robot will easily deal with a cluttered lawn.

However, it’s hard to explain, but it seems like the X350e’s Vision Fence side cameras have made the robot a bit timid. Rather than boldly mowing up to the base of hedges, it tries to avoid touching them at all. That’s not a bad thing when you want to avoid an object, but it meant that the X305e avoided tricky areas like narrow gaps between no-go areas and the lawn itself.

Now for the part that I feel let the X350e down. It was perfectly happy climbing steep slopes so long as they were straight on. The large orange drive wheels with their aggressive tread pattern were more than capable here. However, when trying to mow along a slope, the front end with its pair of passive wheels struggled to stay in a straight line.

On the plus side, the mower cuts the grass well. You can see via the app where it has cut and any places that have been missed.

Over several mows, it tidies up any missed spaces in the lawn and even lets you go over any bit you like with the manual mowing mode.

Should you buy it?

FAQs