Test: Husqvarna 415X – an obot lawn mower that is easy to like

Tested product: Husqvarna Automower 415X
Award: From SEK 28,300 via PriceSpy

Among this year’s tests of robotic lawnmowers, Automower 415X belongs to the premium segment with the highest price tag. It will handle lawns of up to 1,500 square meters and delivers above expectations in practice.

Cable sets the boundaries

During the tests of Gardena and Robomow, we took care of the installation itself with some downtime as a result. Husqvarnan was delivered and installed by a professional who quickly went around the garden with a machine that dug down the boundary wire required around the surface the robot is to cut. It is worth noting that this model is sold without installation kits, you can buy it and it is available in three sizes to fit different gardens.

Regardless of whether you want to install yourself or hire someone, we can warmly recommend digging down the cable so you do not have to have the robot cut the cable yourself. Just make sure you remember where you dug in future gardening so you do not chop it off with a shovel.

The installer also fixed with the guide cable which makes it easier for the mower to find a home for charging. With manual settings, it can also be used to ensure that the mower really takes care of the entire garden. However, we have run completely with the mower’s smart functions that will take care of the mowing best.

We have tested this mower in a villa garden of about 1,000 square meters with an upper flat surface and a narrow passage down to a more hilly part with slopes, stumps and bushes and more.

The mower can handle real slopes, up to 40 percent according to the specifications. The cutting width is 22 centimeters and you can set the cutting height electronically between 2-5 centimeters (strangely enough, the app and the mower use a scale between 1-9).

It can be out and mow 24 hours a day (it has the LED lighting in the front), but you should refrain from doing it for the sake of the animals (there is also a smart function for this, more on that further down). A normal haircut lasts for 50 minutes and then it charges for about an hour before running out again.

Gets along – almost everywhere

Thanks to the help with the installation, we did not have to spend any time adjusting the boundary wire the first few days we had to do when we took care of the installation ourselves in previous tests. The robot takes care of almost the entire lawn we would normally mow with a petrol-powered mower. Only a small bit at the stairs down to the garage will be without cutting because it is too narrow between the tiles and the flower bed.

Automower 415X has taken on the challenges in the garden with gusto. It has had to work with GPS-supported navigation. This means that it uses GPS to ensure that all parts of the garden are cut equally. This is the setting that Husqvarna recommends, but if necessary, you can set cutting surfaces and passages yourself. Rarely has the lawn been nicer with less effort from the people in the house, but some problems the robot still encountered in the garden.

At a bush, a longer sloping stone surface protruded and there the mower got stuck on a few occasions. Instead of reversing and driving elsewhere, it strangely enough dug the wheels deep in its attempts to climb over the obstacle.

In general, we think that it goes on various obstacles relatively hard. At one point, it climbed onto a bicycle that had fallen over. If you have sensitive flower beds or shrubs, you should lay a boundary wire as protection around it. You will also need to be careful that there are no, for example, children’s toys scattered in the garden because they risk breaking or at least damaging the blades on the mower prematurely.

In another place near the boundary wire it gets quite deep down towards the hedge and there the front tipped down and the mower did not always manage to back back (and could not drive forward due to the boundary wire and the hedge). One solution might have been to change how far outside the cable the mower is allowed to run (standard is 32 centimeters, can be set between 25-40 centimeters), but we made a red zone in the app instead.

Draw zones on the map

In the app, after a few weeks of operation, you get a map drawn on top of a satellite view of the area and on it you can draw green and red zones. With the greens, you can divide the garden into smaller parts to control where the mower moves and when. With the red ones, you logically tell the mower to stay away from certain surfaces – and it was with two red zones that we solved the problem areas above.

However, it was a bit unnecessarily complicated to get to such small zones as, as is well known, there is a fairly large margin of error with GPS. The easiest way was to physically carry the mower to the problem area, see where the position dot ended up on the map and try to get to the correct location.

Unfortunately, there is no test function, so we had to make a smaller green zone around and ask our Automower (which we named Robocut) to cut into it and try to adjust the red zone until most of the grass around was cut without the robot getting stuck. After a few attempts, we seem to have succeeded in the mission.

Smart features

Husqvarna can be connected to Google Home so you can sit at the kitchen table and give the mower commands. It works fine, but we rarely had reason to put ourselves in the mower’s work schedule. Perhaps some would have appreciated being able to do automations in the style of the mower only running when you are at work yourself, but that possibility does not exist beyond what we could see.

Automower 415X should be able to notice for itself if it needs to spiral cut any part of the lawn where the grass has grown taller than in other places. Maybe you have moved the garden furniture or trampoline to access the mower. Throughout the test period, our lawn looked very even and nice.

We activated a weather timer in the app that allows the robot to adjust how much it mows based on how the grass grows. At the beginning of the season, the grass usually needs to be cut more often than during the warmest and sunniest days later in the season. Our mower went home several times earlier than the end time on the schedule and referred to the weather timer, which is good. Reduces wear and tear on the machine and the lawn.

Via IFTTT, you can set smart features such as it goes and parks automatically between dusk and dawn to protect the wildlife. If the weather offers frost or heavy rain, you can also interrupt the mowing schedule with an automatic function. If you are away and the mower is stuck or similar, you can also send an email to a kind neighbor who can make an emergency call.

What is worth knowing about IFTTT is that the service can mean a new monthly cost for the household. Up to 5 so-called “applets” fit in the free account, more than it costs money.

Flexible app

With the Automower Connect app, you rarely have to physically go to the mower, with this you can do pretty much everything except change the blades when it’s time. On a map you see where the mower is and you get notifications when something happens. You also get lots of fun statistics, like how many times it collided with something (at the time of writing 4,752 times).

The mower has a pin lock and time lock and a built-in siren if you want it to sound if someone tries to carry it away. With this price tag, it would be really sad if someone unauthorized took the machine with them.

Another good thing about this model is that it can receive updates wirelessly.

Specifications

Manufacturer: Husqvarna
Tested: June – July 2022
Cutting surface: Up to 1,500 m2
Cutting width: 22 cm
Cutting time / charging: 50 min
Charging time: 60 minutes
Cutting height: 2–5 cm
Maximum slope: 40%
Noise level: 62 dB (A)
Connection: gps, bluetooth
Screen: 2.8 ” screen, monochrome
Other: a guide cable, anti-theft protection, frost sensor, zone cutting
Award: From SEK 28,300 via PriceSpy