Mammotion Yuka Mini 800 review: My hands-on experience

I had fairly low expectations going into reviewing the Mammotion Yuka Mini 800, mainly because my understanding of robot grass mowers was outdated. The last time I had checked, they were all too expensive for me to seriously consider getting one for my suburban backyard. I also thought that these machines required guide wires to define the areas you want mowed, something I couldn’t be bothered with. Finally, after some poor experiences with needy robot vacuum cleaners, I was skeptical about the navigational abilities of robot mowers.  

I am happy to report that the Mammotion Yuka Mini 800 proved my preconceptions wrong across the board.

Accessible, automated lawn care

The Yuka Mini 800 costs €1099, which is not exactly cheap, but it’s definitely in the realm of accessibility for many homeowners. Considering how much tedious labor can be outsourced to this unassuming little bot, I would even venture to call buying one a sound investment. 

The “800” part in its name means that this Yuka Mini version is designed for yards of up to 800 square meters (8,600 square feet). If your lawn is smaller, you can opt for the Yuka Mini 600 version instead, which costs €899. The two versions are largely the same, with the main difference being battery life.

With features like satellite- and vision-based positioning for wire-free navigation, a removable battery, and cellular connectivity, the Yuka Mini 800 punches above its weight for its price tag. Other robot mowers with similar features can cost more than double, though some competitors offer advanced features like all-wheel drive and more powerful motors.

Installation is very easy. The most challenging part for me was finding the best location for the charging station and the RTK station, which connects to satellites to pinpoint the location of the robot mower down to the centimeter. Mammotion recommends mounting the RTK station away from buildings or large trees that could obstruct the view to the satellites. I mounted it on my deck railing. Alternatively, you can place it on a pole that you can stick in the ground on your lawn. The box contains all the kit you will need for this and the whole process shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes.

Beyond that, assembly is minimal and, after the initial connection steps, your new robot mower is good to go.

The part you’ll likely have more issues with is mapping your lawn. If you have a simple space without obstacles or tricky spots, I recommend trying the auto-mapping option first. Mammotion claims the Yuka can figure out your space in as little as 10 minutes, using information from its two cameras. However, my yard is pretty complex – I have a bunch of trees and bushes, a long hedge running along the perimeter, two lawn swings, and some other obstacles that would make accurate automapping quite difficult. 

I opted to manually map the zones I wanted mowed, using the manual control option in the Android app. The process itself is pretty straightforward – using two virtual joysticks, you move the bot around the area you want to map out, and, once you complete the perimeter, you save it as a new zone. The tricky part is knowing how to optimize your zones, especially if you have a complex lawn. I found it’s best to split your space into several zones. This way, the robot can manage each section more efficiently and complete mowing on a single charge. You’ll also want to make the margins of the zones as straight as possible and avoid driving the robot too close to hedges or objects that could throw it off when mowing. You should also avoid overlap between zones, so the robot doesn’t mow them twice. Finally, you will need to ensure that the charging station is accessible from all the zones you’ve defined – in some cases, you’ll need to create a “channel,” which is a path that the robot can follow to return home.

The mapping process can be a little time consuming, especially if, like me, you do it wrong a couple of times. But it pays off to be meticulous. Once you have your lawn mapped out, you can schedule the bot to start mowing at specific times or on demand.

How does it work?

The Mammotion Yuka Mini 800 is very quiet in operation. I couldn’t hear it from inside my home even with the windows open. Coming from the loud rumble of a gas-powered mower, watching this bot quietly glide across my lawn felt extremely satisfying.

The Yuka Mini 800 can be adjusted to cut grass from 20mm to 60mm. Instead of a conventional rotary blade, it uses a 190mm cutting disc fitted with five free-spinning razor blades. On the one hand, this makes for a clean cut and silent operation. But it does mean you will need to replace the blades periodically – Mammotion recommends you do it every 100 hours of operation. There’s a spare set bundled in the box, but afterwards you’ll need to buy a 24-piece replacement set for 55 euros, which should last you a couple of seasons at least.

With the disclaimer that I am not fussy about my lawn, the Yuka Mini 800 does a great job of actually cutting grass. The length is uniform, the cut is clean, and in the absence of obstacles, the robot mower covers ground completely, without streaks or patches of uncut grass. 

Because it lacks a collector bin, the bot just scatters grass trimmings. I was a little worried about this, but it wasn’t an issue in the end. As long as you trim your grass regularly, the trimmings are barely noticeable. Plus, they’re good for the lawn, as they decompose quickly and return nutrients to the soil. It’s also nice not to worry about composting or disposing of all the grass. If you do want to collect trimmings, Mammotion offers the Yuka model with a sweeper attachment, but it costs twice as much as a Yuka Mini.

The Mammotion Yuka Mini rarely gets stuck. On a few occasions, it climbed over the foot of a swing chair or seemed to get lost, requiring me to manually move it. Thankfully, the machine is quite light at just over 10kg (22lbs) so most users won’t have an issue doing this. When it does get in trouble, you get notifications on your phone, so you know to step in. Overall though, the bot is remarkably self-sufficient. It will happily do its thing until the battery goes below 15%, when it returns to the charging station, with no oversight from the user. This is thanks to the dual cameras at the front, which work together with the satellite station to help the robot position itself and work around obstacles.

While I really like the Mammotion Yuka Mini 800, it’s not perfect. For one, I wish the manufacturer put more effort into the accompanying mobile app. It’s functional, but the UI lacks polish and some parts are unintuitive. I also run into a few issues connecting to the robot, requiring me to go and manually push a button to wake it up. The first-person view (FPV) feature is neat, allowing you to see through the robot’s cameras in real time, but the feed is often janky. To be fair, these issues could be due to poor Wi-Fi connectivity in my back yard, rather than a fault of the mower itself.

Another small problem is the fact that the bot will not attempt to return to a patch that it avoided due to an object it detected on the ground, even after I would remove the object. It can also be overly cautious when going around trees or other elements, resulting in patches of uncut grass that are larger than necessary. Sometimes even small low-hanging branches can trigger the obstacle avoidance mode, resulting in more patches you need to manually go over afterwards.

If you’re a pet owner like me, you’re probably wondering if the Yuka Mini can avoid stepping on sticky messes. Sadly, it cannot.

Mammotion Yuka Mini 800 review: The verdict

After using it for a few weeks during peak grass growing season, I can happily recommend the Mammotion Yuka Mini to anyone interested in getting a robot mower. In fact, now that I know how good it is, I would buy one with my own money.

My lawn is pretty messy and busy, so I still need to pull out the manual lawnmower to touch up areas where the Yuka Mini couldn’t go. But having it do the bulk of the work means lawn maintenance is no longer a time-consuming chore for me. And if your lawn or yard is clean and simple, I reckon you could delegate all the mowing to the Yuka Mini.

In short, the Mammotion Yuka Mini 800 functions reliably, runs silently, and gets the job done on its own, all for the cost of a good smartphone.

I wouldn’t recommend this robot mower if the area you need to mow is very large or very rough and uneven. Models with bigger wheels and stronger motors would be preferable. And lawn care fanatics will probably want to steer clear, unless they can learn to lay back and trust that robots can replace them.

If you like the concept, but you’re not quite sure about the Yuka Mini 800, you have many options. The Mammotion Luba Mini AWD 800 is similar, but more rugged and powerful (also more expensive). The WORX Landroid Vision M800 offers most of the same features at a similar price, but it fully relies on its onboard sensors for positioning, unlike the Yuka which uses GPS. Husqvarna is probably the biggest brand in this space, but its Automower lineup is much more expensive.