Our Robolinho 1300 W has now clocked up 170 mowing hours. My experiences with the AL-KO robotic mower are consistently positive in the core discipline.
Core discipline for me means: it mows reliably and evenly every time it starts, without missing any areas. It doesn’t get stuck and finds its base. Here, the Robolinho works like clockwork, even though our property is anything but simple. It’s an established garden with unevenness, slopes, irregular edges, etc.
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The mower has only got stuck once so far, and that was when a rake fell over in a storm and it unfortunately drove onto it. Otherwise, the AL-KO robotic mower does its rounds unimpressed by all adversities and sometimes lasts up to 3 hours on a single battery charge.
It’s a real pleasure to watch it mow, as the lawn area is worked very evenly and it also regularly goes into smaller corners. Last week, we reclaimed another 150 sqm from our garden and extended the wire loop there. It has been reliably mowing this very rough area too since then, without any disadvantages for the existing area. When I observe the Robolinho like this, I get the impression that it creates an internal map. The way it mows the area looks quite coordinated and not entirely random.
Maintenance and blades
The AL-KO Robolinho produces an excellent cutting pattern with clean cuts on the grass blades and extremely fine clippings, which is probably due to the special design of the cutting disc. It mows taller grass without any problems and reduces its speed when it registers more resistance while mowing.
Maintenance is simple and the Robolinho is easy to clean. I rotated the blades after 100 hours and resharpened the previously used side to razor sharpness myself with my Work Sharp Ken Onion knife sharpener . The original replacement blades are significantly more expensive than those of other robotic mowers, partly due to their special shape. However, you can also find some third-party suppliers offering much cheaper replacement blades for the AL-KO Robolinho .
The app - a disaster
Now I’ll get straight to the biggest problem with the AL-KO Robolinho: the app and software. If you look at the app’s ratings - and this applies to both the iOS and Android versions - you quickly realize that something is very wrong.
The connection problems where the app couldn’t connect to the Robolinho at all are now a thing of the past - I had no problems at all in February. However, the mower doesn’t always respond immediately to app commands and the user interface is an ill-conceived hodgepodge of icons and functions hidden behind them.
On the first screen, for example, you have the usual “Settings” icon at the bottom right, but behind it you can rearrange your connected devices. Now, presumably very few users have multiple robotic mowers, and if they do, they won’t want to rearrange them every day.
If you swipe left, you get a new screen where you can only add a new device. Why isn’t this screen used for configuring mowing times, etc.? Adding new devices would fit better with “Rearrange”, wouldn’t it?
You get to the mower’s important settings by tapping either on the mower’s image or one of the three icons for battery, mowing time or connection. All of them lead to the same submenu, where you get a similar view again, but now with an additional menu bar.
This now offers a menu for setting mowing times. Then comes a wrench icon. What’s behind it? Exactly! Ordering spare parts and product help. Obvious, right…
This is followed by a gear icon. Behind that are settings for smart home connectivity (Alexa and IFTTT), frost sensor and start time after frost, remaining blade runtime, firmware update (which currently doesn’t work), but also functions like Eco mode are hidden. In my opinion, Eco mode belongs to the basic functions and should therefore be displayed more prominently.
Please, a real smart home connection via API - others have had this for ages!
Speaking of smart home: many manufacturers simply don’t understand that voice control or IFTTT is not a smart home connection. It probably hasn’t gotten around yet that smart home hubs like Home Assistant, ioBroker or OpenHAB are used millions of times and users of such systems exclusively buy devices that can also be connected to them.
Hello AL-KO! Don’t be so stupid and leave this field to robotic mower manufacturers like Husqvarna, Gardena, Landroid, etc. - finally open up your API APIApplication Programming Interface – defined interface through which programs communicate. Home Assistant offers a REST and a WebSocket API (e.g. for MCP) !
Smart home connection means that I can actively control the device and also receive feedback about the operating status, battery level, blade runtime, etc. Why would I need something like that, you’re probably wondering.
Want some examples? Okay! I have a weather station with a rain sensor on the roof. The Robolinho 1300W doesn’t have one. By integrating the robotic mower into Home Assistant (or other systems), I could use this very rain sensor to interrupt the mowing process. I could even distinguish between light and heavy rain. It would also be very easy to coordinate the automatic lawn irrigation with the mowing times or not send the mower out at all if the weather forecast predicts continuous rain or drought anyway.
With an older Android version of the app and some tinkering, you can read out the API access and make it usable in Home Assistant via workarounds, but that shouldn’t be necessary. Charge a few euros a year for it if you must, but open up this possibility. Other manufacturers offer this for free.
App problems and firmware updates don’t work
At the moment, however, many have a completely different problem with the app: the new version now has an additional menu where you can set whether you want to mow the edge and area or just the area, when and where the mowing process should start and how long it should last.
Actually an interesting function, if it were usable. This would first require a firmware update of the mower, but that’s exactly what doesn’t work with the current app version. The update has been spinning for days and nothing happens.
This means you can only select edge mowing manually on the mower and no longer from the app. All other settings in the new menu are also unusable because the mower doesn’t start after the set start time. This is a real and avoidable annoyance, especially since the AL-KO Robolinho isn’t a bargain either.
Furthermore, it would be useful (if it ever works one day) if this new menu allowed you to save presets, i.e. something like
Preset 1: Edge mowing and area, 2 hours mowing duration, start from station Preset 2: Mow area only, 1 hour, from starting point 2 Preset 3: Edge mowing, 30 minutes, from starting point 1
If you could then assign the presets to the automatic mowing times, things would get interesting. Oh yes: please also add “until battery empty” as a mowing duration.
Conclusion on the AL-KO Robolinho in May 2024
The hardware and how the Robolinho does its job are beyond reproach. No getting stuck, long mowing time per battery charge. Reliable return to the charging station and an excellent cutting pattern.
However, the poorly executed and faulty software as well as the missing smart home API significantly tarnish this good impression. Why don’t manufacturers understand that nowadays software is much more important because it creates the connection to the user? Apart from cleaning it, I never have to touch the mower. That’s why the software and app have to work - no ifs or buts.
As of 29.05.2024: According to AL-KO Service, an app release is currently being tested that will fix the update errors and should be available in the next few days.
Click here for the first experience report on the AL-KO Robolinho 1300W »>
Hi! I'm Markus – the Fricklr. ⚡ Electrical engineer, 🎵 musician (bass, guitar, keys) and professionally 'something with the internet' 🌐 for over 30 years – nowadays with AI too 🤖 – a 55-year-old generalist from Bavaria, Germany.
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