Mammotion Luba 3 AWD Review

Design and Features

• All-wheel drive
• Adjustable cutting height
• LiDAR and GPS navigation

There are three versions of the Mammotion Luba 3 AWD, depending on the size of lawn you want to cut. The model numbers match the area in square metres, to make life easy: 1500, 3000 and the 5000 that I have on review here. It’s all down to battery size, but the actual features are the same between models, so buy the model that best suits your needs.

I had mine sent to a friend’s, who lives on a smallholding with the ideal lawn layout and pastures for this robot lawn mower to deal with.

As with the previous model, the Mammotion Luba 2 AWD, this new model is a beast of a lawn mower: it’s chunky and looks like a super-powered Formula One car. It’s all reassuringly well-made. 

It comes in a few parts and requires a bit of assembly. This is all easy, except for the bumper, which is a little fiddly to attach. This seems to be an issue, as after a few week the app sent a message to check that the bumper was fitted properly, which it was.

The overall appearance of the Luba 3 AWD is very similar to that of the Luba 2 AWD, with the four chunky wheels and all-wheel drive. Flip the mower over and underneath are the familiar dual cutting decks, with six pivoting razor blades on each (up from the four blades per deck on the old model).

With a 400mm cutting width, the Mammotion Luba 3 AWD is designed to make short work of large outdoor spaces, cutting more on each pass than many rivals. 

The big difference between the Luba 2 and Luba 3 is the navigation system. With the Luba 2 AWD you needed to install a reference station, but the Luba 3 ditches that, switching to network RTK instead, with the positioning information received over the internet.

Given the size of space that the Mammotion Luba 3 AWD can cover, it’s good to see that 4G is built-in, much like on the Husqvarna AutoMower 430V NERA. 

However, Mammotion only includes three years of free service, after which the 4G costs £49.90 per year.

In addition, there are cameras for obstacle avoidance and navigation, plus 360° LiDAR, which helps the robot move where there’s poor GPS reception – it’s similar to how a robot vacuum cleaner moves around.

Installation is pretty straightforward, and the docking station needs to be placed somewhere with a clear view of the sky for the GPS to work, and near a power socket.

Then, it’s time to connect the Mammotion Luba 3 AWD to the app. It has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 4G, so you should always be able to find a way to connect. As with similar robots, the Luba 3 has to have a map to work, which involves driving it manually around the perimeter.

That’s a little fiddly to get right, but go wrong and you can undo a point and start over again.

Multiple zones can be created, and paths can be created between areas, so the robot knows which way to drive.

The app is fairly straightforward to use, with tasks (schedules) easy to add so each zone can be cut when you want.

Dive a bit deeper in and there are cutting height options (the deck mechanically moves between 25mm and 70mm), and you can set the overlap and cutting pattern.

Performance 

• Cuts brilliantly
• Handles rough terrain
• Can let longer grass start to creep

When the robot first arrived, the lawn was still wet and muddy. The Luba 3’s AWD ability stood out in these conditions – it just kept going despite wet grass and fallen leaves. It even carried on when the front omnidirectional wheels were caked in mud, and only once did it get stuck in mud on a steep slope. 

As a result, there was some turf damage where the Luba 3 AWD did 180° turns over soft ground. But this is less a criticism of the Luba 3 and more a reflection of eagerness to try it out when the ground was simply not dry enough. A simple solution was to program avoid areas where the ground was softest, which worked well.

Once into the dryer season, AWD performance is very impressive. The agricultural test lawn is quite lumpy and has some steep slopes, so a great test for any AWD robot. The only time it has got stuck is when it has grounded itself by a hole big enough for someone to break an ankle, so it’s good practice to fill those in anyway. 

In terms of slope performance, the Luba 3 AWD is pretty unstoppable, with Mammotion saying it can handle 80% slopes. The only issue arises when turning on a slope, as the Luba 3 AWD tends to drift slightly downhill. If there is an obstacle at the bottom of the slope, such as gravel or a retaining wall, then it can get stuck. The trick is to ensure that on slopes you program the zone so there is a decent buffer between the edge of the zone and the obstacle at the bottom of the slope.

The Luba 3’s AI Obstacle Detection is effective, even on the standard setting (there is also ‘sensitive’). I’ve not experienced any problems with the robot running over things it shouldn’t. However, it tends to be a bit cautious going around trees (there are a few in the test garden), so tall grass establishes around them, which the robot then interprets as a larger obstacle, and the grass patch around each tree subsequently gets larger and larger. 

A similar effect occurs on one edge of the lawn where it borders grass that has been left to grow wild like a meadow. As a result, the edge of the meadow seems to be creeping closer. 

One solution to this is to turn the AI Obstacle Detection off (the app suggests you should constantly supervise the robot with this setting off, which is rather impractical), and you would be wise to create no-go areas around things where the robot may drive straight over. I guess a practical solution here would be to normally run with obstacle detection on, then occasionally run it with it turned off.

Cut quality is good, altthough if your grass is a little thick or weedy (the test lawn is rather agricultural, as it’s on a smallholding, so gets weed and pasture grass seed blowing in) you will more than likely need to do at least two cuts to get it looking neat.

Once the lawn is down to the right height, the Luba 3 makes light work of keeping the lawn looking tidy if set to cut around twice a week in typical UK summer conditions.

With rough, lumpy grass and trees, which tend to drop the odd twig, the Luba 3’s blades did dull after a while. However, the individual blades have four sides and flipping them all over isn’t a huge job, extending their life.

Should you buy it?