Yarbo Y40 Core with Lawn Mower Pro Module

First thing to say about the Yarbo is when it arrives there may be a bit of a learning curve or frustration with drawing your maps and getting it to work initially. When I first started drawing my map the app wasn't very intuitive as far as how new maps were created and existing maps were edited. However, once I got familiar with the app it got to be rather simply to create a base map and then edit it by sub-dividing or adding to it. It is worth the trouble though.

I have had my Yarbo for a month or so now and I have not sat on my mower once since it arrived. In my book that is an absolute win. The Yarbo leaves nice lines and my lawn genuinely looks better than it ever did when I mowed it myself as I couldn't be bothered to do the lines myself. The Yarbo does struggle sometimes with heavy growth and in those areas it will leave patches behind that require a second pass.

I absolutely love that the Yarbo has remote view cameras. I have used these multiple times to remotely assist the Yarbo in navigating an obstacle I didn't plan ahead for. I also once subdivided my map in such a way that the Yarbo had no known path to reach a remote part of my yard. When I told Yarbo to go mow it, it didn't know how to get there and I wasn't home to address the problem. However, using remote view I was able to drive the Yarbo to the area and edit the map to create an access path to the remote section.

In the weeks since I've gotten my Yarbo I have been doing a lot of map tweaking to get things working optimally. I'm very satisfied with the work it is doing in my lawn and I fully expect that it will get better over time as the unit gets updates and I continue to tweek my map.

Love this little guy. It takes Yarbo a lot longer to mow my 3.5 acres than it takes me to do it on my mower, but he doesn't seem to mind mowing through the night so I don't see this as an issue.

Note: I have not yet received the Snowblower module as they are on back order, but I'm not expecting snow for a while so that's not an issue (yet).

I am someone who almost never posts reviews, and I try very hard to give companies the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong. Unfortunately, my experience with Yarbo this cutting season has made that increasingly difficult.

At this point, Yarbo has spent more time on "injured reserve" than it has spent cutting my grass, and I have spent more time troubleshooting and trying to repair Yarbo than I have on just about any other outdoor project.

Based on my experience, I would not recommend Yarbo for someone with a large yard (1.5+ acres). The system may work well for some users, but my experience suggests that it has not been engineered or supported well enough for the amount of work required on a larger property.

Here is what has happened:

Problem #1 – Broken tracks

About two months ago, the tracks on my Yarbo failed. After several support tickets, videos, and troubleshooting conversations, Yarbo agreed that the tracks needed to be replaced.

The problem? They didn't have replacement tracks available.

To Yarbo's credit, they went the extra mile and offered to send me a refurbished unit instead. I appreciated the effort and was hopeful that this would get me back up and running.

Unfortunately, that led to the next problem.

Problem #2 – Refurbished unit was still tied to the previous owner

When I received the refurbished unit, I couldn't connect it because it was still associated with the previous owner.

Yarbo initially told me they couldn't release the unit and that I needed to contact the previous owner. That would be reasonable if I actually knew who the previous owner was or had any way to contact them. I didn't.

After another week of back-and-forth with Yarbo, they eventually released the unit.

Unfortunately, because I was traveling and didn't respond to one of their messages within 24 hours, Yarbo attempted to close my support tickets without actually confirming that my problems had been resolved.

Once I returned, I was finally able to connect the system and begin transferring my maps.

Problem #3 – Another hardware failure

After getting my maps loaded and preparing to restart my mowing routines, the refurbished unit developed another hardware failure.

The system now reports that it is "out of position."

The strange part is that the Yarbo is physically sitting on my charging pad, but the system thinks it is located in my neighbor's yard. I attempted to correct the map drift myself, but the software would not allow me to make the adjustment because the reported drift was too large.

I contacted Yarbo support, and the issue has now been escalated for multiple weeks.

At this point, I have repeatedly asked Yarbo to replace the refurbished unit with a new unit, particularly because Yarbo's own refurbished-unit policy indicates that if the refurbished unit fails within 90 days, a new unit will be provided.

I am still waiting for a resolution.

I want to be fair to Yarbo: I have had some positive interactions with their support team, and they have made efforts to help at various points. The problem is that the overall process has been extremely slow, fragmented, and frustrating, and I shouldn't have to spend weeks troubleshooting a machine that is supposed to be making my life easier.

The biggest issue for me isn't that a piece of equipment failed. Mechanical equipment can fail. What matters is how the company responds when it does.

I purchased Yarbo because I wanted to automate a significant amount of work on my property. Instead, this season I have spent an enormous amount of time diagnosing failures, communicating with support, waiting for escalations, and trying to get the machine back into service.

Yarbo – I am still giving you the opportunity to make this right.

At this point, I am simply asking for a replacement or a reliable repair and a support process that actually closes the loop on problems rather than closing tickets before the customer has confirmed that the issue is resolved.

I hope Yarbo can get this resolved because I genuinely wanted to be a happy customer. But based on my experience so far, I would strongly encourage anyone considering Yarbo—particularly someone with a large property—to understand the potential reliability and support issues before making the investment.

A little bit harder than it looks, but it gets the job done. It's not as easy as shown in the videos. I'll break it down into a couple of different areas below:

0. Shipping: I got the Yarbo Pro. It's big, it's heavy, and it comes in many boxes. Be ready for these boxes on delivery day as everything is big, bulky, and heavy. Make sure that the delivery driver drops it off in an area where you can take things apart and get them set up. Also note that the battery comes separately. I had received multiple shipping numbers to track, but none for the battery. When everything arrived and I put it all together I was surprised to not have a battery. I contacted support who had said the battery had not shipped; later, talking with support they said it had shipped and provided a separate tracking number. The battery ultimately did come a couple of days later, but it was somewhat disappointing that it didn't come on the same day because I wasn't able to set everything up and had the robot sitting in the middle of my driveway because it was too heavy to move without a battery.

1. What's included: I apparently bought the product and received the product in a time window where they were changing what was included in the package. All instructions indicated that there should be a remote included that I should be using to set up the zones. After much back and forth with support, who said it should be there and then contradicted themselves by saying it shouldn't be there, they ultimately said that the remote had been removed in the time I had placed the order and my order had been delivered. So please make sure to read your description and on all documentation ignore the remote control setup — you should use the phone app.

2. Setup: I had watched many videos on the Yarvo website as well as on YouTube about people setting up their Yarvo. They were dramatically understated. I have about a six-acre property, and you need to, with a phone app, walk the perimeter of the entire property. This is also challenging because the robot constantly loses GPS signal and so you have to back the robot up until it can regain signal, and then start again. In some areas where I have a lot of trees, I spent tens of minutes backing up the robot and moving it forward. All in all, I have about six hours into the perimeter setup and no ghost setup of my property. This is incredibly challenging on an iPhone because you have to hold down a touch-interface joystick to be able to move around and navigate the property. I cannot overstate this enough: if you have a property surrounded by a lot of trees and not direct clear sky, get yourself ready for many hours of setup.

3. Ongoing operations: this is not a set-it-and-forget-it device. There is a lot of ongoing operation. Map drift is pretty consistent, and this will happen in the middle of a yard being mowed, which means you will get notifications throughout the day that you need to step in to reconfigure things. Beyond map drift, the device regularly loses access to telemetry from its positioning systems, which means the unit will just stop or get significantly off course and requires you to manually drive it back into its working zone so you can either resume or send it back to the charger.

After many, many passes and many many different configuration settings of which there are a lot, what kind of pattern you cut, what the overlap is, the blade height, on and on and on. You will see parts of the lawn that just have tall grass because they consistently get mist. This is something that you just need to play with until you can get the extensive settings worked out for your situation

4. Cool features that were undersold: the robot has multiple cameras and inside the app you can access the cameras as well as remote controls, so even when you're not home you can navigate around kids' soccer balls or drive it around obstacles. This is incredibly valuable and I have tested this from all different sides of the planet.

5. Support: support has a giant backlog. It often takes multiple days for them to respond to a ticket, and actually getting a resolution with their help is very challenging. I often spend multiple days waiting for a response and troubleshooting on my own, trying different things to get unblocked, which is the most efficient solution.

Overall: yarbo works and is saving me a great deal of time. I think the headaches have started to calm. And the results when the unit is working consistently are pretty solid. I would definitely buy Yarbo again, but it's a long way from being a set-it-and-forget-it solution for mowing your grass. I look forward to the software continuing to evolve as I believe the hardware platform is actually pretty strong.

I currently mow about 4 acres of my property, and was at a point where I needed to upgrade my mower. Having had a wire guided mower on a much smaller property years ago, I decided to check on the state of the technology for autonomous mowers that could handle larger lots and discovered Yarbo. This is a modular unit, and is rated for up to 6 acres per their documentation.

The initial set up involves driving the unit with an included controller to establish your boundaries. No more wires! Once you have completed this, you then use the same process to mark no go zones such as flower beds or other permanent obstacles such as septic pipes and the like that might not trigger the device cameras or you otherwise don’t wish to mow. No need to mark out trees, the avoidance for these works perfectly.

Once the boundaries are set, you can break it down into areas such as front yard, back yard, etc. From there, you then can set options for each area such as schedules, mowing height, and patterns and then let it do its thing.

The charging base is a large sturdy wireless charging station. No dirty contacts to deal with!
During the mowing schedule, it will return to the dock as needed to top up the battery, and then continue the job.

If you’ve never had a robotic mower, these devices use small razor blades on discs to mow. While it sounds a bit underwhelming, what this means is no more piles of grass trimmings, they are mulched up and dropped back into the lawn because the grass is being trimmed more precisely. The blades are inexpensive and easy to replace, much easier than dealing with riding mower blade sharpening.

They do not mow as quickly as your lawn tractor or zero turn. You will run it more frequently, but the advantage is that your lawn will always be well trimmed. I ran my Yarbo on each area twice a week for the first two weeks to get everything nice and trimmed.

There are a few options for this mower. I have the standard mower deck with razor cutters, as I was familiar and comfortable with this style. Yarbo does offer a pro model with more traditional blades if you have tougher grass to mow or would rather have that style blade.

If you live in a snowy climate, the snow blower option may be a value add for you as well.

You can even pull a cart with this thing! Yep, it comes with a hitch for yard attachments such as carts and rollers. I haven’t used this feature much, but you can load a cart and then give it a waypoint to drive to for example if you are picking up branches from the yard and then direct it to your burn pile and it will autonomously drive to a waypoint you specify. I attached a pic of my wife and grandson taking a little ride from the robot. :-)

So far - very pleased with my purchase. It’s not cheap, but if you compare it to a consumer lawn tractor or zero turn cost and factor in its potential for more attachments, the price is right in line. The unit is stout, around 200lbs. The chassis is metal and sturdy.

The stripes in the lawn are an added bonus. Robotically perfect, and you can set them to change direction and rotation each mowing session.

Summary: I am very pleased so far. Quality of the cut is great. I would buy this again in a heartbeat. My only negative is that I’ve had to find other time to catch up on my podcasts, now that I don’t have to drive the lawn mower around for 3 hours a week.

Recently upgrade to the Pro Mower and it’s doing a great work! The first days of the season look great.
My observations from the switch:
- surprisingly quiet, I couldn’t tell if the blades were spinning.
- it does consume more battery (expected) but still can do the same amount of work per day.
- transferring the map was easy if it is saved in the cloud. Review your work area settings to your preferences with the new module.
…and yes, tall antennas still there from snow season

Jarvis just trimming away. Will admit it took a bit to dial things in but like with all tech that is required. Glad I held out for the mower pro.

Mower Pro doing a great job cutting this fast growing grass.

Since I got the Pro lawnmower - my phone is full of these notifications. I am truly happy. Thank you Yarbo

Putting the Pro to the test. First pass. Second pass in the comments.

The pro version is a game changer. I knew its coming and I let my lawn to grow for thr last 7-17 days. The result - unstoppable. Thank you Yarbo

Thanking yarbo team for sending me the Mower Pro in one of the first batches. I've been able to drop the fixed blades an inch lower than the razors, and it's looking great, and is actually doing what i was hoping the mower one would. Cutting nicely on the first pass too.

Pro Mower, just doin it's job.....

I saw someone on here asking how well the Yarbo pro works on mulching leaves. I got my new module late last night.
I did a single test pass at 9pm at a 2.9 blade height on WET leaves (so it’s an unfair test) and this was the result. Very impressed!!!
Edit:
I posted an updated picture after a single pass. I am cutting under six large maples. No issues and the pro disappeared leaves.
Everytime leaves built up the mower would detect an obstacle, back up, and go at it again and pulverize everything.

The pro version is a game changer. I knew its coming and I let my lawn to grow for thr last 7-9 days. The result - unstoppable. Thank you Yarbo

Finally came! Needed some adjustments to my original mapping/plans but the pro module is definitely worth it.