‘I hated mowing the garden till a robotic got here alongside to do it for me’
The Segway Navimow i205 AWD promises to give you your weekends back, and it delivers in the best way – from a simple set-up to the ability to tackle most terrains
The Navimow i205 AWD changed the game
I have a complicated relationship with my garden. I love sitting in it, pottering around it, watching the cats stretch out in the sun. But what I cannot stand, with a passion bordering on the irrational, is mowing it.
Our lawn is not an easy one to maintain. It slopes, it lumps, and thanks to an apparently thriving mole population beneath it, it resembles a small mountain range in places. Every mow felt like a battle I was gradually losing.
So when the Segway Navimow i205 AWD arrived, I was cautiously hopeful. Several weeks later, I am a convert.
The setup is simpler than you’d expect
There are no boundary wires to bury, which, if you’ve ever owned a previous-generation robot mower, you’ll know is no small thing.
The i205 AWD uses EFLS Network RTK satellite positioning combined with a front-mounted camera to map and navigate your lawn with centimetre-level accuracy. One-tap auto mapping has the whole thing deployment-ready in minutes. I was sceptical, but it genuinely worked exceptionally.
One practical note: you will need an outdoor power source for the charging dock. It’s a straightforward install, but worth knowing before you order.
Quieter than you’d believe
We have three cats, and anything loud or erratic sends them bolting indoors for the rest of the day. I had real concerns about how they’d react to a small machine trundling around the garden unsupervised.
As it turns out, they couldn’t care less. The i205 AWD operates at a whisper. I can sit ten feet away with a book and hold a conversation at normal volume. The cats treated it with mild suspicion for about two days, then simply ignored it entirely.
The built-in pet detection system provides an additional layer of reassurance. The mower identifies obstacles, pets included, and stops accordingly.
And it handles our lawn better than I ever did.
The automotive-grade electronic stability control manages slopes up to 45 degrees, and an on-demand third motor engages automatically when the terrain demands more grip, cutting energy use by up to 30% when it isn’t needed. The molehills, the steep pitch near the back steps, the awkward narrow strip along the fence, none of it caused any visible difficulty. Watching it navigate terrain that used to leave me sweating and irritable was, I’ll admit, slightly humbling.
Cutting height is adjustable between 2 and 6 centimetres, with an 18-centimetre cutting width across a five-blade disc. The results are noticeably neater than my own efforts ever were.
The app is also genuinely good.
This is not always a given. Smart home products have a long, undistinguished history of companion apps that feel like afterthoughts. The Navimow app is the exception; clean, intuitive, and actually useful. You can schedule mows, track the mower in real time, manage up to 20 separate mowing zones, and receive anti-theft alerts if it wanders somewhere unexpected. And a manual drive mode, controllable from your phone, is exactly as entertaining as it sounds.
Network RTK access and all necessary cellular data are included at no extra cost. In an era of creeping subscription fees, that feels worth noting.
The verdict
The Segway Navimow i205 AWD is not cheap. But for anyone who loves their garden and loathes maintaining it, and who has the kind of lumpy, sloping British lawn that defeats lesser machines, it makes a compelling case for itself. My Sundays are my own again. The cats are untroubled. The lawn looks better than it ever has.
I have absolutely no regrets.
The Segway Navimow i205 AWD is available on Amazon at a price of £899. For a cheaper alternative, you could also look at the Bosch Cordless Robot Lawn Mower VISIMOW18V-100, currently available for £364 on Amazon. Or you could really splash out and try the eufy Robot Lawnmower E15, currently reduced to £1,199 from an RRP of £1,499.
