Ecovacs GOAT G1 Robot Lawn Mower Review: A cut above?

There has been a surprisingly pleasant outcome to reviewing the new Ecovacs GOAT G1. I recently moved to a neighbourhood where mowing the lawn is a sacred Sunday ritual, as I was convinced that the sight of a robot lawn mower would be enough to disown me from this collective of house-proud horticulturalists.

Instead, the opposite happened. Rather than torches and pitchforks, I found my neighbours staring with curiosity (and a decent dose of jealousy) as the G1 crept back and forth across the lawn. It turns out that my neighbours love a tidy lawn, but they hate mowing as much as the rest of us.

The price of the ECOVACS GOAT G1 is more than you think, with an MSRP of $2999 in Australia, and as it’s fresh on the shelves, we’re not seeing a lot of discounting in the street price as yet.

Hearing this price has had a universal effect on everyone I’ve told so far. They look up and the internal abacus behind their eyes starts running the same equation; how much would it cost to have someone mow the lawn for them, and how many times could that person mow before you’d hit the $3000 mark. In most cases, the cost estimate is about $100, so the answer is about 30 mows.

Surprisingly, the robot mower market ranges in price from about $1000 up to $25,000 across the models we’ve encountered. While three grand sounds like a lot, it puts the G1 squarely in the middle of the pack.

Design-wise, the GOAT G1 doesn’t break the mould. The size and shape of the G1 reminds me of a toddler’s scrambler bike without the handles, as do most other robot mowers. Ecovacs opts for a matte white plastic finish, which is unusual. Most other models come in brighter colours, like reds and oranges. This gives the G1 top marks for first impressions, but a couple of trips across the lawn and we started to question the logic behind a white-coloured lawn mower.

The Ecovacs GOAT G1 makes use of some of the same mapping tech behind the smarts in Ecovacs robot vacuum cleaners, including AIVI 3D Obstacle Avoidance.

The G1 is a wire-free model, meaning that it doesn’t require you to surround your lawn with long runs of perimeter wire to guide the mower, and this is a key distinction between the G1 and a majority of its competitors. Instead, the G1 comes with two boundary sensors; thin, white plastic poles that you screw into your lawn at opposite sides of your lawn. The sensors connect to your WiFi network and work in unison with GPS to make sure the G1 knows where it is in the yard.

There is a panoramic camera mounted on the top of the G1 with a 150-degree viewing angle. This helps guide the G1 as it mows and doubles as a security camera between haircuts. While in “guard dog mode”, the G1 will watch for shadowy strangers entering your yard. and alert you if it spots someone up to 7 metres away. You can also access the video camera at any time via the app, if you’re curious about what is happening in its field of view.

To protect itself, the G1 includes an option for an alarm to sound when the unit is lifted off the ground. It’s also PIN-locked, which stops nosy neighbours from fiddling with the settings, and blocks thieves from factory resetting the mower and setting it up somewhere else.

The answer to this, the central question of this review, is yes, but with a few caveats. For starters, you need to mow your lawn one last time before handing the reins over to the G1. Not because it struggles with longer grass, but because it views longer grass as an obstacle and will turn to avoid these patches. Who’d have thought that dandelions were the natural enemy of robot lawn mowers?

Even after thoroughly preparing the lawn, it took a few days before the G1 finished its circuit without leaving small mohawks of longer grass. My neighbours have taken to gathering around the fence, with a beer, betting on whether the mower will trim these patches as it passes or not.

But despite these initial battles with tougher tufts, my lawn now looks neat and tidy. I have it scheduled to run twice a week, and the G1 effortlessly handles this routine - shaving the tips off the grass and feeding the clippings back into the lawn. I’ve been testing the GOAT G1 now for over a month and my lawn looks healthier and seems a bit thicker too.

It doesn’t have a lot of guts, so don’t expect the GOAT to climb steep slopes. This is probably part of the various safety considerations, but because of the speed it travels, it doesn’t build up enough momentum to overcome these inclines.

The GOAT G1 is Ecovacs first foray into lawn mowers, but the company’s 20-plus years working in robotics is clear throughout the experience of using the G1. You control the mower using the same Ecovacs app that controls its range of Deebot robot vacuum cleaners.

The app does a good job, but there are a few shortcomings to note, especially mapping. For starters, the G1 can only store a single map in memory, so unless the front and back of your yard are connected by lawn, you’ll still need to drag out your ‘dumb’ lawn mower from time to time.

Unlike the latest robot vacuums, you need to map your lawn manually using a virtual joystick in the app to move the mower like a remote-controlled toy car. This is trickier than it sounds, and despite repeating this process several times, I’m yet to master the ability to create the map for the G1 without wobbly edges, and it doesn’t straighten out these boundary lines for you as it mows the lawn.

It’s certainly a flex to call your first-generation robot lawn mower the ‘Greatest of All Time’, but Ecovacs is off to a great start in this new area. The GOAT G1 saves you the hassle of running boundary wires around your entire yard, is easy enough to set up, and - best of all - it cuts the grass.

After several weeks living with the GOAT G1, I’m thrilled to have it in my gardening arsenal. My front lawn is the envy of the street, even if it doesn’t always get into all of the nooks and crannies. I still need to use a line trimmer to finish off the job, but it easily saves me hours each month, and the lawn looks great.

We expect Ecovacs to work on a few key areas before the inevitable GOAT G2; specifically the way it maps the yard, and the ability to add several maps in the software to accommodate all sides of the yard. Obstacle recognition in the G1 is good, but we imagine it will improve as GOATs start mowing lawns across the globe and the system gets smarter as it collects this information.