The Best Lawn Mowers

For a typical suburban lot, this is all the mower you need. EGO rates it at 7.0 ft-lbs of cutting torque, and in Popular Mechanics' head-to-head testing the LM2135SP matched or beat several 160cc gas mowers in dense, overgrown grass. That's the part that used to be the catch with battery mowers. It isn't anymore, at least not at this size of yard.

It weighs about 55 pounds, which you feel every time you turn it at the end of a row or wrestle it around a flower bed. Owners who've moved over from gas mention this more than anything else — older buyers and smaller-framed buyers in particular say it's the first mower they can maneuver comfortably. The Touch Drive self-propel engages with palm pressure and dials from 0.9 to 3.1 mph, so you set the pace instead of chasing it.

The Select Cut blade system is more useful than it sounds. You get a mulching lower blade, a high-lift bagging blade, and an extended-runtime blade, plus the upper blade, and you swap the lower one to suit the day. Mulching in June, high-lift when the growth is heavy and you want the bag full and tidy, extended-runtime when you just want to finish the yard on one charge. Eight cutting heights cover 1 to 4 inches.

Then there's everything you stop doing. No oil changes, no air filter, no fuel stabilizer, no carburetor to gum up over winter. At 70-something decibels you can mow early without an apology to the neighbors. And the 56V packs run EGO's blowers, trimmers, and chainsaws, so the next tool you buy costs less because you already own the expensive part.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Runtime claims assume reasonable conditions. Run the self-propel constantly through tall, thick, or damp grass and you'll cut well short of an hour — owners are consistent about that. If your lot is near a half acre, plan on a second battery rather than hoping.

Side discharge is the weak spot. It mulches and bags well, but owners who prefer to blow clippings to the side find the chute underwhelming. And the deck is composite rather than steel, which is fine for durability but means caked grass underneath goes unnoticed until your cut quality drops. Scrape it.

Honda's walk-behind gas mowers have sat at the top of Consumer Reports' category for years, largely on mulching quality and handling, and the deck design carries over here. The twin-blade MicroCut system uses four cutting surfaces, so clippings get chopped finer and pack tighter in the 2.2-bushel bag. If you bag, you empty less often. If you mulch, the clippings disappear into the lawn instead of sitting on top of it.

Versamow is the reason to want this mower. You mulch, bag, discharge, and shred leaves with no attachments to hunt down in the garage — a Clip Director lever splits how much material goes to the bag versus back into the turf. That's genuinely handy in autumn, when you want leaves shredded and grass bagged in the same pass. Most mowers make you choose one job per session.

It comes with a 12Ah pack rated for about 45 minutes, or roughly 0.37 acre, and there are two battery bays. Add a second pack, sold separately, and you're at nearly three-quarters of an acre without stopping. Owners who moved over from a decade-old Honda gas mower report the runtime rating is conservative in normal grass. Seven cutting heights span 0.75 to 4 inches via dual levers.

Support is the quiet argument. Honda sells this through the same nationwide dealer and parts network that backs its gas engines, which is unusual in battery outdoor equipment — plenty of cordless mowers are effectively unrepairable once something structural breaks. If you plan to keep a mower for a decade, that matters more than any spec.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It weighs 99 pounds, nearly twice the EGO. The e-Select drive does the work on flat ground, but you'll notice the heft loading it into a truck bed or steering it around tight landscaping.

It's the most expensive mower here by a wide margin, and the second battery is an extra purchase on top. Owner reports also include occasional quality-control misses out of the box — one buyer found the wheel height lever installed wrong from the factory, and another waited weeks on warranty parts. The dealer network is the reason those stories end well, but they're worth knowing about.

The catch is right in the name: tool-only. There's no battery and no charger in the box, so this makes sense if you're already on the Greenworks Pro 80V platform or you're buying a pack separately with eyes open. Do that math first, because with a battery and charger added, the price advantage narrows considerably.

On an ordinary flat lawn, it does the job without fuss. The 80V motor has enough torque for regular weekly cutting, and owners who've run one for several seasons describe it as a workhorse — one reported five years of outdoor storage in rain and snow before it finally quit. It stores upright, which matters if your garage is already holding bikes, a snowblower, and a kayak.

It's the lightest-commitment way into cordless mowing for a small or mid-sized yard. If you have a quarter acre that's mostly flat, you don't need 60 minutes of runtime or a four-surface mulching deck. You need something that starts instantly, cuts cleanly, and lives in a corner. This does all three.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The self-propel is the common complaint. Owners describe it as underpowered, with a noticeable delay between squeezing the bar and the wheels responding. On a real hill you'll be pushing.

It also struggles in thick, lush growth. More than one owner with dense Bermuda reports bogging down and leaving clumps rather than mulching cleanly. Sharpening the blade recovers a lot of that, and it's worth doing yearly on any mower, but this one is less forgiving than the EGO when the grass gets away from you.