Bosch Robotic Lawnmower Indego M 700 (with 18V battery, docking station included, cutting width 19 cm, for lawns of up to 700 m², in carton packaging)

Having seen some of the reviews here, I felt that it was only fair to counter the critical reviews of this excellent product. Contrary to other comments, it was straightforward to set up, yes the boundary wire takes some time to lay out, but that is the same for any robotic mower and not such a big job on a sunny day. The docking station of course needs a power supply and to face in a certain direction but again, not a problem. The quality of the cut is excellent, it cuts in straight lines every time and cuts from a different direction each time to give a healthy great looking lawn, with thick, healthy green grass It does exactly what I bought it for and it is probably one of the best products that I have bought, the lawn always looks spot on. If I had any criticism it would be that it would be nice to have more adjustment in the blade height, but this is only minor and me trying to have a perfect lawn.

After three years ownership I think a review is due. I hope our experience helps you decide which robot mower to try. Update 05/06 Just had a most unpleasant conversation with a customer services agent at Bosch. Their systems seems totally out of control. My Indego has been sent to them three times and we have not had use of it for 6 weeks or more. They keep sending it back not working. I have stopped buying any of their products now as they seem to be unable to provide a reliable product and worse their customer service and repair centre seem unable to cope. My lesson is that these robots need a lot of maintenance and the customers service and repair systems just don’t seem to be capable of managing the situation. I want to buy another brand but when I check by simply calling the alternative suppliers customer service I am not convinced that they are set up to deal with the problems they will encounter. I am going back to my Honda petrol mowers until I find the robots are sufficiently supported. These are my opinions based about the Bosch Indego M+ 700 and its service set up based on my experience of owning one for very nearly 3 years. Obviously our garden and situation may not be typical or representative of other owners views. Please check out their reviews before making a decision on your robot mower. When it works it saves me a lot of time. When the Indego is playing up its quicker to use the sit on. If you have a smaller garden and the grass is flat with no slopes this review may not be directly relevant to you. Our garden is mage up of two areas, one is 235 square meters and the other is 340 square meters. It is mostly level but uneven. 1st off the Indego M+ 700 very very unreliable. In the first year it went back for repair three or four times. That takes a lot of our time as the repair centre insist you communicate by email. So each repair takes about three weeks. 9-12 weeks lost out of a short cutting season. In the 2nd year it went back twice I think then they sent me a new unit, this also needed to be returned for repair in that cutting season. Last year the replacement unit only went back once or twice. Later in the year it developed an internal error “1156 unrecognised battery” they sent me a new battery. Unfortunately this did not solve the problem but at least I had the machine where I could use it. This year is the end of our 3 year guarantee ends 22 May. After 22 May it’ll be all my responsibility. However, its already gone wrong and been returned. It was stopping with the unrecognised battery error again. This seems easy just reset and set it off again. But when it stops for this error it forgets how much it has cut and starts again. As I said our garden is 500 + square metres. It takes several hour for indego to cut this size of garden. It then has to repeat what ever its already done. The repair centre returned it not able to diagnose a problem. It of course went wrong the first time we tried to use it after its two week holiday at the repair centre. 2nd Quality of cut When it works the bits it cut can look good. However, it usually misses large areas of the garden so to get a good cut you need to cut the garden usually three times. The replacement machine came with different wheels. These new wheels grip the ground more but they over rotate the unit so it cannot make parallel passes which it is meant to do in its program. Quite often it cuts triangles and not parallel sections. This of course leads to missed areas that it thinks it has cut. This leads to having to cut many times to get one cut. Its difficult to show the cut path error but the image below shows many different cut paths from one cut. In 1 cut they should all be parallel. Its also possible to see the uncut area between the right and left sloping areas. 3 Software cutting logic There is something wrong in the software strategy. It stops cutting an area of the lawn its working on and just goes somewhere else to cut there instead even though it had plenty of more to cut where it was. Later it trys to return to the various abandoned areas but of course it cannot locate them so it ends up cutting the area next to the area that it should be cutting that it has already cut. Hence another reason why you need to cut multiple times to get the lawn cut once. 4 guide wire Indego needs a wire guide to operate. This was difficult to lay in our garden as it large and uneven. We discovered this year that the guide circuit had corroded and needed us to find 7 breaks in the wire all due to corrosion. 5 Customer service There is none as far as we know, you are directed to the service centre and only via email. I am sure the staff are wonderful but the blunt and unsympathetic emails sent to us make us feel they don’t cate less about the customer. I have a huge range of bosch tools but each time I replace a unit now I look for alternative suppliers.

Installation I knew from my pre-purchase research that this mower would require a fair amount of time to set up, although it is still quite frustrating when you just want to see the new mower in action. I set up the new mower when the lawn was in need of good cut. That way, at least the time spent setting up the mower would be offset by the time I would usually spend going round with my old mower. The first challenge was finding a suitable spot to site the power supply. The base has to face in a suitable direction to allow the border to be mowed in a clockwise direction. This is clearly described in the instruction manual The next step is installing the perimeter wire. This is a little tricky as you have to strip the wire yourself, made more complicated when my usual wire strippers broken. I had always assumed that the perimeter wire was mark out the area covered by the mower. I found out that the perimeter wire for this mower is used for its “golden source” around the garden. This means that the wire has to be away from the edge itself, without anything blocking the border so it can then map the rest of the garden. One thing I learned was to be initially lay the perimeter loosely with as few pegs as possible and then go back and fill in between the gaps. You also need to avoid placing any loose plant pots on the borders of your garden as the mower uses the perimeter wire as its primary path around the garden. It is also good to leave some excess wire for changes later, which can be done by pegging in a zig-zag pattern. Using the Device When the mower it first used, it follows the perimeter wire around the edge of the garden and once it has completed its route, returns to the dock, having saved a map of the garden. It will stop if encounters an obstacle and will ask you when it is in the dock! Once this has been completed, it is free to mow. Compared with using a conventional lawnmower, the robotic lawn mower seems to take a far more circuitous route around the garden. One problem is that it can easily get stuck in minor ditches so these need to be levelled out so it can move freely around the garden. If it does get stuck, it has to re-calibrate by moving back to the perimeter wire. It also has problems dealing with fixed obstructions on the lawn such as play frames, which it keeps bashing into whilst it is trying to find its way past the obstacle. Unlike my robotic vacuum cleaner, it lacks detectors to prevent it hitting garden furniture. It also often takes a long path around the garden when getting back to the dock as it seeks out the perimeter wire. Specific Features/App The “border cut” is a promoted as a feature of this mower. However, in practice I found that I still needed to use my strimmer at the very edge of the lawn as the perimeter wire cannot be placed directly on the border. The accompanying smartphone app is intuitive and allows a smart mowing schedule that takes everything into account from the weather to days you don’t want it to mow the garden for example weekends when you’re out there. It’s easy to setup and use and that certainly adds ease of use to the system. I have found it struggles to get to specific sections of the garden (for example on the other side of my path through the middle) – although it can get there very easily around the perimeter wire, it hasn’t quite learnt the optimal way to get there because it doesn’t “learn” as it goes so it makes the same troubles multiple times around really. I think it often just misses out some of these sections when it says Lawn Complete which is a bit frustrating, because there’s no simplistic way to set it off to only mow a specific section of the lawn (this would be a great feature in my opinion). Especially as it already has an image map layout of your garden – it would be a great feature (probably via software only) to be able to do several things: • Draw out paths/objects that don’t move even if in approximated places so it can learn the exact place on its round • Be able to draw a shape on the map of the section you want it to specifically do (some areas grow quicker than others or if something is missed out you can easily make it cover that specifically or if the kids are playing or their toys are all scattered in one section you can just eliminate that and come back to it later rather than not being able to run a 4-5 hour cycle over 400sqm). Conclusion I wouldn’t say at least I’ve got it to the point where I can go on holiday for a week or go to the office and expect to come home and find the lawn fully maintained for me and the device on the dock charged up nicely – it’s great if you’re around and can give it the nudge it needs when needed (if stuck) but at the same time it’s a gadget of sorts that makes your friends and family eyes light up with curiosity and a good conversation starter on the world of digital tech. If I assume I had to spend around 3 hours every 2 weeks on my lawn especially during the peak months of growing and it looked quite long after 2 weeks – I’ve probably simplified my remit down to about 15 mins every 2 weeks doing the edges and any other general maintenance and the odd kick here and there to get it out of the copious ditches I have that I’ve been trying to fill in on a case by case basis. So yes, it saves me time and from that perspective I’m more than happy as it stands – I’m sure there’s some other good models out there too so I wouldn’t necessarily say this is the best of all of them (I’m not working with comparisons in mind) but Bosch is normally reputable for reliability so time will tell if I made the correct choice!

This has made a huge difference to us. Previously we didn’t have time to cut the lawn regularly, meaning it was too long to enjoy and not good for the lawn health. This lawnmower has been great, it’s set on a timer and cuts the lawn every other day even doing so whilst we were on holiday. It leaves stripes and cuts the grass systematically.