Stihl RMA 248.3 Cordless Lawn Mower Review

Introduction

If you have a small to medium sized garden with a few bumps and uneven sections, the RMA 248.3 is a perfect lawn mower choice. Running on the tried and tested AK20 battery platform and providing an effortless and great quality cut, it’s a seriously impressive cordless mower.

Design and Features

• Stihl’s signature folding single handle design
• Expandable to dual batteries for superior runtime
• Huge grass clipping capacity and clever level indicator

Squarely aimed at home gardeners, the Stihl RMA 248.3 is an battery-powered mower that feels anything but amateur. Everything is rock solid and there are no annoying rattles or wobbles from any of the joints.

The steel cutting deck gives an impressive 46cm cutting width, which makes it fast to cut even a large lawn. Its large rubberised wheels are premium feeling, with 18 cm ones on the front and 20 cm ones on the back.

This mower uses Stihl’s instantly-recognisable mono-handlebar, which comes attached so you can get mowing straight away. Attaching at just one side, the sturdily-constructed handlebar reduces overall weight and let me easily steer the mower around the lawn. Plus, it’s height adjustable, too, so easy to adapt for people of different heights.

It also makes it easier to remove the grass catcher box, as one side is completely unobstructed. This handle is a neat upgrade on the standard handlebar that the previous Stihl RMA 248 had.

You can buy the mower without a battery and charger for £404, which is expensive, but you get a quality mower for your money. Adding the recommended AK20 battery and charger ups this to £529.

There are several useful cutting modes available. Cut and collect in the grass catcher, cut and drop without the catcher, side discharge with a plastic insert, and mulching with the plug inserted in the rear of the cutting deck.

Height adjustment is via the single-point mechanism on the side that raises and lowers the chassis to provide a cutting height between 20mm and 100mm. That’s a huge range, and gives everything from longer grass, to something closer to a bowling lawn.

Folding away when not in use, it reduces the overall size, but you can’t hang it on the wall like the Huqvarna Aspire LC34-P4A. Stowing it upright reduces the space you need to just 51 x 55 cm. Unfortunately, weighing 27 kg without a battery installed, it’s a heavy machine to carry on stairs or over objects.

The large 52 litre plastic grass catcher box is another positive. After manipulating the two clamshell sides together, it does a great job of holding the grass. And when it’s full up, a simple plastic indicator on the top of the box lets you know it’s time to change.

And, unlike some mowers, the grass box doesn’t spill half its contents when you remove it from the machine. It doesn’t pack down like a soft fabric clipping bag, but you can store it on top of the mower when not in use.

Powering the mower is Stihl’s reliable 36V AK battery system, with the AK 20 recommended, although you can use the smaller capacity AC 20 or larger AK 30.

With a single AK 20 battery on full charge, you can mow up to 220 m², or just a bit less than a tennis court. However, there’s space to fit two AK batteries, doubling the available mowing time. There’s even the option to upgrade to AK 30 batteries for ultimate runtime. The only thing that slows things down is the AL 101 charger taking 180 minutes for a full charge.

Performance

• Large wheels for smooth mowing
• Seven cutting heights for a variety of lawns
• Not too loud during operation

As you might expect from Stihl, the RMA 248.3 makes short work of grass lawns. Even without being self-propelled, the handle and mower body are perfectly balanced with each other and it’s surprisingly easy to push around, with a simple handle on top used to turn the mower on.

I tested it out on a range of lawn types, from a flat square of lawn to a sloping countryside back garden that was home to trees, garden furniture, paths, and patios to see how it got on.

Whether the grass was undulating or far from flat, it effortlessly glided around thanks to the mower’s balance and its large wheels. Pushing the mower in and out of awkward places like behind a trellis and around a water feature was fine, and it didn’t feel like I was lugging around almost 30kg of mowing equipment.

With 46cm of cutting width, it’s perfectly adequate for small and even medium-sized gardens. And setting the mowing height was a one-handed affair.

Although it took a couple of goes to pick the right height, being able to choose between 20 to 100 mm grass length by grabbing a single handle was impressive.

Even when ploughing through quite tall grass for the first cut of the spring season, the RMA 248.3 didn’t miss a beat. Sensing when the load on the motor increased, it didn’t feel like it was struggling. And even though it’s rated at a rather high 95 dB during operation, it didn’t feel too loud. It’s certainly less ear-splitting than a petrol mower.

And the quality of cut was excellent. It was easy to see that the large blade underneath the mower cut neatly through the grass blades evenly and cleanly. The lawns were left looking neat and tidy.

Should you buy it?