Gtech Cordless Lawnmower 2.0 review: is it worth cutting the cord?

Winter came to an end and it was time for me to think about cutting the lawn. It’s not a job I relish, but I do like having a lawn so it’s something I accept as a necessary evil.

My lawn is of medium size – too big for a small hover mower but too small to consider a sit-on solution. The lawn is also far enough from the house to make a corded mower a nuisance, especially as I don’t have an outdoor socket.

Until now, I’ve had a petrol mower but I’ve not loved it. Every year, I pull it out of storage and just pray that it works – sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, I have to phone a local dealer to take it away and have it serviced – something that takes weeks and a fair chunk of money. That mower is an unreliable money pit.

After dusting it down for another year, I was dismayed to find that it wouldn’t start. Oil? check. Fresh petrol? check. I’d had enough. The petrol mower had to go.

Investigating the cordless electric alternatives, I settled on the Gtech Cordeless Lawnmower 2.0. It’s one of the more expensive models at almost £500 but gets excellent reviews wherever you look. Were those reviews right?

Assembly and first thoughts

Like most larger items that are sent through the post, The Gtech Cordless Lawnmower requires assembly, but it’s pretty obvious what goes where. The only thing I had any problem with were latches that are required to be snapped into place when assembling the handle – some adjustment with a spanner resolved this, though.

It’s all pretty frill-free with no extras – apart from the mower, you get one battery, a charger, and a small instruction booklet. Looks wise, that black plastic with green highlights looks very Microsoft Xbox. And that look is very inconsistent – the height adjuster, for example, is all chrome and very high-end looking. On the other hand, a safety key that must be inserted and turned to use the mower, is a cheap piece of plastic (and this would be my first minor criticism – for something so important, it’s a shame you only get one, let alone one that you’re worried may easily break. And Gtech sell the replacement at a spiky £4.99!).

Charging the Gtech Cordless Lawnmower 2.0

The mower comes with a single 48V, 2,000mAh Li-ion battery. This is very well made with rubber sides and a button on one end – when pressed, LEDs show you the current battery level.

Insert the battery into the provided charger and it will go from nothing to full within an hour – most other mowers on the market take at least four hours to fully charge.

Once charged, a transparent, plastic flap on the top of the mower is lifted and the battery is inserted underneath. This is transparent, so that you can see the LEDs, which are now pointed towards whoever is pushing the lawnmower – these will display your battery level when it’s in use. This plastic flap, however, has sharp edges and it’s easy to catch yourself on it. Again, a drop in attention to quality.

The first mow

Once everything was charged, it was time for me to use the mower for the first time and, to make it as difficult as possible, this would be the first cut my lawn has had since before winter.

You start the mower by depressing a button on the side whilst pulling back on a wire handle. You let go of the button but continue to hold the handle. The electric motor takes a second to burst into life and, then, it varies speed depending on the amount of cutting required. It’s not quiet at around 80 decibels, but it’s certainly much quieter than a petrol equivalent.

It uses a half-width, carbon-steel blade with a counter-weight on the other end and this works very effectively. It made short work of the long grass on my lawn.

One thing that concerned me about this mower in comparison to my previous model is that this isn’t self-propelled. I shouldn’t have worried, though, because the Gtech is light and easy to manoeuvre. Unlike other cordless lawnmowers, this doesn’t stripe or mulch – it just cuts. But, that’s all I wanted.

It will hold about 50 litres of grass and has an indicator flap to tell you when it’s full – the flap should be up when there is still room in the grass collector. In practice, it tends to flap up and down and it’s difficult to know when the cuttings box is full.

The battery is designed to last for around 40 minutes but, of course, this will depend on how hard it has to work – for my first mow, it didn’t last the entire lawn, so I had to put it on for a second charge. At this point you’re glad it only takes an hour to charge. However, the second charge was enough to complete the job.

Storing the lawnmower

The mower can be stored quite compactly after use and it folds away with little fuss. A metal lever can be pulled up to make the handles fold over – those latches I mentioned before are then released to make the handles fold over again. With the grass collector removed from the back, it has a small storage footprint.

The mower also has a carry handle on top. I can carry it by myself, but I suspect not everybody could, as it is weighty (13.5kg, to be more precise).

Future mows

I’ve mown my lawn a number of times with the Gtech now and, I’m happy to say, that, with a full charge, the battery more than lasted (usually having at least half a charge remaining).

One thing I would recommend, though, is always recharging the battery before the next mow, whatever the LED indicators on the battery may say. When I checked the other day it showed three out of four lights (indicating 50-75% battery), so I didn’t charge it. It lasted 10 minutes before dropping to one light and struggling to mow. An hour’s charge later and it got through the entire lawn without a single complaint.

Gtech Cordless Lawnmower 2.0 verdict

The Gtech fulfils everything that I wanted in a replacement mower – it cuts the grass well and is easy to maintain. For the money I think most people would want a more consistent quality, which can be patchy at times.

So, there are minor niggles but nothing major here to strike it off your shortlist. Well, other than the price. If you can get past that, the Gtech is an excellent and environmentally-friendly solution to the tyranny of regular lawn mowing.