Must-Have Monday: Make your lawn mow itself

As most of Canada is in the grips of winter weather, it seems like days of bright flowers and warm summer breezes are years away. But before you know it, spring will be here, and it will bring with it a chore that many of us dread: cutting the grass.

Those mavericks of mowing at John Deere have come up with a solution that will hopefully help you get even more time to soak in the sun during the summer without having to spend your time pushing a lawn mower back and forth. They’ve come up with the Tango E5, a “fully autonomous” garden tool.

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Like the indoor Roomba, which most of us recognize as the automatic vacuum for our homes, the Tango E5 navigates your lawn automatically and cuts the grass to the length you set, anywhere between 19 and 102 mm. You (or a John Deere dealer/installer) set up a boundary wire around the area you want mowed (probably not in the flowerbeds), then set the mower off on its merry way. When its lithium-ion battery runs low, the mower makes its way to a charging station. After 90 minutes, the mower is ready to go again. You can program the mower to tend to the lawn at specific preset times, and it will do its thing without your prompting. It can even mow the lawn in the rain, since the whole unit is weatherproofed.

The only potential problem I could see with this is the pattern it leaves on your lawn: for those of you who like your lawn mowed in clean, uniform lines, this probably isn’t the product for you. Then again, if you care that much about your lawn, you’re probably not getting a robot to do it, anyway.

The video is in French, but you can see the Tango E5 in action here:

Who would love this: People with large lawns to mow and something better to do with their time.

How much it costs: The Tango E5 is listed for just over £2,000, or about $2,700 CAD.

Where to get it: According to Gizmag, the Tango E5 is currently available in Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland.

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