How we compare

Let us start with what we do not do. MowMentor does not run a test lawn, does not have a shed full of manufacturers' review units, and does not publish measurements of our own. Any site that implies otherwise while showing you stock photographs is telling you a story. Here is what we do instead — it is less glamorous and, we would argue, more useful.

We read the small print, so you don't have to

Every comparison on this site is built from primary sources: the manufacturer's specification sheet, the owner's manual, and the support pages where the awkward truths tend to live. We cross-check the figures that matter — navigation type, rated slope, coverage, cutting width, battery class — across at least two sources before a model is listed. Where versions of a mower differ, or a figure is a range rather than a point, we say so in words rather than tidy it into a false precision.

Prices are shown as typical price bands: the range a model commonly sells for across major retailers. They are a guide to what sort of money you are looking at, not a live quote, and they are reviewed as prices move.

What we weigh

• Navigation fit. Satellite, LiDAR or camera — and, more importantly, which gardens each suits. This is the decision everything else hangs on.
• Honest slope ratings. Taken from the manual, quoted as the manufacturer states them, with the steepest claims labelled as such.
• Coverage with headroom. We prefer a mower loafing to one straining, and we say when a model's rating sits close to a garden's size.
• Living with it. App quality, blade and battery replacement, parts availability, and the depth of the dealer network — the year-three questions, not just the day-one ones.
• Value at the typical price. Judged against the band the mower actually sells at, never the launch price nobody paid.

How the money works

The links on MowMentor go straight to the manufacturers' and retailers' own stores. Some are already affiliate links — our Ecovacs UK programme went live first — and the rest are plain links for now, becoming affiliate links as the remaining applications are approved. Either way, if you click one and go on to buy, the retailer may pay us a commission. It costs you nothing extra — the price is the price — and it is how the site will pay for its keep. Two promises follow from that. First, commissions never buy position: the order of our guides is set by the comparison, and a mower with no affiliate programme at all can still top a list. Second, where a model is hard to buy through any programme, we list it anyway and say so.

A word about the pictures, while we are being plain. The product photographs on this site are the manufacturers' own listing images, taken from their product pages so that the machine in the picture is the machine under discussion; the garden photographs are stock images, labelled as such. Neither sort shows a mower we have tested — for the simple reason, stated above, that we haven't.

If you spot a figure we have got wrong, we would rather know. Write to us via the about page and we will check it against the manual and put it right, with the correction noted on the page.