GARDENA 15101-41 SILENO Life - Automatic Robotic Lawn Mower, with Bluetooth app and Boundary Wire, one of The quietest in its Class, for lawns up to 8100 Sq Ft, Made in Europe, Grey

The Great: We’ve had this mower for two years and it’s held up well. Our lawn is small, but it has mowed quietly enough at midnight not to disturb us or our (fussy) neighbors. I don’t think they even know we have it. It does well in rain, too. Setup wasn’t so bad, except wiring the yard. If you follow videos posted by the company on YouTube (I think from Australia or the UK), it’s pretty easy. Cleaning really has been as easy as hosing it down or even just brushing off accumulated grass clippings with your hand. It’s pretty safe, too. The blades are small and many inches inset from the edges of the machine. It would be difficult for it to accidentally injure our dog or a small animal unless they actively flipped it over and chewed on the tiny blades (our dog has no interest in it). I doubt it would even run her over; it bumps into things softly, like a robot vacuum does (though I don’t think she’d just lie around and let it go over her leg or tail in the first place). The Meh: The app could be better. Occasionally, we’ll find that the device stopped running - for no apparent reason - and we have to hard reboot it and delete and reset our schedule in the app all over again to get it running. The app has also never kept track of previous mows (even though it’s supposed to). Lastly, sometimes the charging indicator is waaay off. It’ll go from 100% to 0% to 5% to 20% in seconds. But it has worked and mowed on schedule most of the time. And, because the blades are inset from the edges of the device (they’re in the middle of the bottom), it doesn’t always get the edges of the lawn done when there’s a flower bed stopping the mower from overshooting the perimeter of the lawn itself. That’s fine. I do the edges it can’t get once a week. I don’t need to do the edges that are adjacent to the sidewalk, since it can overshoot and cut those. The Bad: There is NO customer support in the US. I reached the (I believe it was) Australian customer service, who sent me to the Canadian (“North American,” but really just Canadian) customer service, who sent me to the “US” customer service, but the US team never answered calls or returned emails. The Canadian team couldn’t do US support at the time. If you’re in the US, you won’t get support. (At least, as of late ‘22/early ‘23.) But we eventually got to the bottom of the issue ourselves. Why 5 stars? Despite the flaws, it has been a generally reliable product for about 2 years, and it was a budget option compared to the competition. I’m not sure that paying more for another brand would yield any better results. Value to dollar is great, as who’s gonna get someone to mow their lawn 2-3x/week for 2+ years for under $600 (and not have to worry about locking up dogs/granting yard access)? Who wants to do it themselves on their days off?

I like the design of the mower but it requires lots of manual intervention and check up. The gardena mower only connects to the phone via bluetooth but you will have to always open the app or check on the mower to know what is going on with the mower. Sometimes, the mower has stopped working for hours before I could realize that it needs manual help and sometimes the mower can't find it's way to the charger and the battery ran out so it is stuck somewhere in the lawn (Not sure if there is way to add more guide wires - still looking through the manual for that). The pros of the mower is that is looks prettier than the other mowers in the market and it is very quiet. However, the fact that there is no app notification, and no Wi-Fi connectivity tarnished the experience for me. I would recommend anyone wanting to buy this mower to consider the Worx Landroid which has these additional features for similar price. I could have returned my mower but unfortunately, the return window closed on me before I could make up my mind. To gardena, if the mower supports software update, the mower should be updated to communicate it's operating states to the owner via phone notifications since the mower has a controller app. Also, the mower cuts too low for my lawn which is basically killing my lawn by how low it cuts. The mower's maximum cut height is 2 inches. If your lawn is very thick, your lawn may fair well, but my lawn is not very thick, and the 2 inches max cut height exposes the lawn soil to the scorch of the sun thereby drying it out and in turn causing the lawn to suffer. I am considering going back to my traditional mower to allow my lawn to recover to its somewhat healthy state it was before I started using this mower. Overall, I am not happy with this mover at all, and would appreciate it if I can get my $1000+ back.

8 hours setup time but it works perfect. You can barely here it working also. Very happy so far. Handles hills no problem. Recommend.

After purchasing and owning the top of the line Husqvarna automower 450xh, I was wondering if the minimo could do the job on my city home. It handles my lawn easily. I would say that i am as satisfied with its performance on my 1200sf city lawn as I am satisfied with the 450xh on my 65000sf countryhouse lawn. The minimo keeps the lawn looking perfect with only 3 hours per day at 6 days per week. The 450xh needs 14 hours per day at 7 days per week. Both lawns look amazing. Two excellent machines.

C’est notre deuxième tondeuse, car notre terrain est vraiment grand. C'est un appareil formidable ! J'ai 4000m² de pelouse et elle ressemble à un parcours de golf. Quand l'une des tondeuses a été endommagée au printemps, le service de réparation a été très efficace. Ils ont pris en charge l'expédition et la réparation, m'informant par courriel à chaque étape, avec possibilité de communiquer avec les techniciens. Finalement, Huguette (oui, nos tondeuses ont des noms 😉) a été réparée de manière professionnelle et fonctionne parfaitement bien. N'hésitez pas à acheter ce produit, vous n'aurez plus à vous inquiéter pour votre pelouse.

The app is just useless. After I restarted the Gardena Sileno Minimo the app does not recognize the lawnmower and the customer support has only one answer: reinstall the app. I have done it at least ten times and it still not working and no support at all from the company. You can read the reviews for the 5400 sqft and you will see the same major comment: it is the worst customer service you can experience. They do not have support via telephone, only via e-mail. So you write… they answer after two days and they do not help you solve the problems. I had an accident and unfortunately I could not install it before the Amazon return window and now I am stuck with a product which is not working. Please read the reviews and if you decide to buy please try it within the returning window. I have installed the app in my iphone, the android emulators they suggest for windows are not compatible with bluetooth… useless advice.

I wanted to love this guy so bad. Affordable, small, cute. It does it all. Except handle my yard. People have mentioned that it creates visible patterns, which it really does at first. But at least in my case it was because the grass was just long to begin with and the idea of this guy is that it runs daily and clips off small amounts of grass each day. If you rake the initial cuttings up and then let its do its job, you grass will look fine. So clearly it works, what then is the problem with it you may ask? The problem is that 25% grade sounds hella steep if you are driver, but yards are kinda lumpy. None of my backyard is extreme but this guy ended up getting stuck almost everywhere in little lumps and bumps that I didn’t even notice were there before. I ended up having to restrict it to a tiny subset of the lawn to do its job and it does it well, but I want no more mowing, not just mowing 30% less of my yard. I ended up getting a Sileno Life and returning this one. The Life is dope, it says it does just 35% so I was skeptical, but that guy just flies through my yard. If your lot isn’t perfectly graded, do yourself a favour and skip this budget option. Other than that, the boundary and guide wire are a pain in the butt, but it makes sense and they all work like that. Give yourself some time to adjust and maybe also buy some extra couplings because you will guaranteed mess up somewhere and then either the mower eats a bit of the wire or you gotta patch it in a different way. Ideally you bury the wire, but no sane person is going to start out burying the wire before at least testing and making sure the setup works. This part is annoying, take some time, don’t rush it and it’ll work out okay. One downside here, other than the upfront work, is that you lock the layout of your yard in forever (or you splice and patch more). This is a limitation of all of these mowers though and hardly something unique to this model. Just something to keep in mind. Lastly, the app could be better. The minimo lacks a screen, so the app is a must. The other sileno mowers have a screen and can be configured on the device. Overall for me it’s a 1 star product. If you have a level yard though, it could be a 5 star product for you.