Nice to read your post about Robomow RS630 SwitcheDon Quixote . I'm considering buying one myself but wonder if it's the right one. It's not a cheap robot but it do sound to be a nice machine. You have a 0,8 acre lawn and according to reviews
https://robot-lawnmowers.com/robomow-rs630-review the recommended size of lawn is 0.37 acre. My lawn is about 0,5 acre. With your 0.8 acre do you think my lawn is too big for this Robomow? What is your experience with Robomow RS 630?
I would say that I am pushing the edge of what this thing can do in terms of mowed area, and in hindsight I might have done better with two smaller units.
The key issue that troubled us last season was timing. Because it is a relatively small and slow device, it needs to spend most of its time mowing to keep up with my lawn. During the summer it is allowed to go out and mow whenever it wants to in the daytime hours, 7 days a week. Obviously it needs to spend time charging up at its base in between mows, and it's close to a 50/50 split of mow time vs. charge time. Therefore it spends half of every day actively mowing.
So far so good. Where this breaks down is wet weather. The mower (like many manned mowers) doesn't cut wet grass very well and it rapidly clogs with mulch paste. I have it programmed to stop mowing at night when the grass is full of dew, and it has a rain sensor to keep it from mowing during rain. Those factors keep the deck clean and reduce the need for cleaning.
The problem is that my climate simply has too many rainy hours per week, which limits the overall effectiveness of the mower. My neighbors with their large riding rigs have an advantage here- their machines have the speed to do their whole lawn in less than 2 hours, so they just hold for a good dry hour or two and get it done in one shot. I didn't account for this when planning, so I had to adapt elsewhere.
It's taken me a couple of paragraphs to describe this situation here, so this kind of limitation can't really get explained in the brochure/website/sales pitch. If I had known about it, I might have bought two smaller ones to let them work in parallel during dry hours. I may yet add a second machine in the future, but for now my solution is to occasionally mow some myself with my electric walk-behind mower. I use the app to program the robot to temporarily ignore one section of the yard and then mow that myself. It isn't total automation, but it is considerably easier than doing the whole yard myself. Once I get to the dry half of the summer, I let the robot do it all.
I realize you're already probably mentally juggling a lot while considering a device like this, and this is another degree of complication to throw in, but I would say that the lesson is to take note of how many "good mowing hours" there are in an average week where you live. That is a vague standard, but it's fine- just imagine yourself mowing it. If you wouldn't do it under current conditions, the robot shouldn't either. What time does the dew burn off? How often does it rain? Give it some thought.
Regarding the machine itself, it is fantastic hardware. The materials quality and engineering is really top-notch. Smart people built it to last outdoors. The software isn't wonderful by modern standards, but it works well enough and they are actively improving it. Support has been phenomenal, the few times I needed it.
tl;dr: This mower is 100% capable of keeping up with 0.8 acres in a drier climate than mine. I'm sure it would also be fine on a smaller yard in the mid-atlantic region.
Good luck!