Guides
The questions that come before the shopping. Answered in the first paragraph, then explained.
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The questions that come before the shopping. Each of these answers in the first paragraph and then shows the working, because a question like "what size mower do I need" has an actual answer and most pages take nine hundred words to avoid giving it.
These pages are also where the site's arithmetic lives in its most reusable form: the watt-hours-per-minute figures, the mowing-time calculation, the ten-year cost structure. Every roundup on the site leans on one of them.
In this section
4 pages under Guides. Every recommendation is built from published specifications and arithmetic you can redo — we have not tested these units.
guide
What size mower do I need for my yard?
Deck width and watt-hours by lawn size, with the mowing-time arithmetic for each.
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Greenworks 40V 20" Push LM2054
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guide
How much should I spend on a lawn mower?
Why we will not print a price, and the cost-per-watt-hour math to run instead.
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Greenworks 40V 20" Push LM2054
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guide
Are battery lawn mowers worth it?
Yes under about an hour of mowing, no above it without a second pack. The conditional answer.
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EGO Power+ 21" Select Cut LM2135SP
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guide
Battery lawn mower maintenance: what is actually left to do
Five maintenance jobs removed, one added. The short list that remains, and the storage habits that matter.
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EGO Power+ 21" Select Cut LM2135SP
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The four numbers everything else is built on
| Number | Value | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Push mower energy draw | ~4.0Wh per minute | Greenworks LM2054: 160Wh over a published 40 minutes |
| Self-propelled 21 in draw | ~7.5Wh per minute | Average of four mowers' published watt-hours over their own runtime claims |
| Riding mower energy | ~1,120Wh per acre | EGO Z6: 2,240Wh over a published 2 acres, cross-checked against its 3-acre claim |
| Blower on turbo | ~18.7Wh per minute | EGO LB7650: 280Wh over a published 15 minutes of turbo |
Every one of these is our division of two numbers the manufacturer published. None is a measurement we took, because we have not tested these units.
Those four figures let you size almost anything in the yard. Multiply your mowing time by the right rate, add 30% for wet or overgrown grass, and you have a watt-hour requirement that eliminates most of the market before you read a single review.
What is in this library
- What size mower do I need — deck width and watt-hours by lawn size, with the mowing-time arithmetic for a quarter acre through two acres.
- How much to spend — why we will not print a price, and the cost-per-watt-hour calculation to run instead.
- Are battery mowers worth it — yes under about an hour of mowing, and the honest case against above it.
- Mower maintenance — the five jobs going cordless removes and the one it adds.
The battery guides live in their own section
The deepest arithmetic on the site is in the platform section, because that is where the decade-long decision is made: 40V vs 80V explains why voltage is not the runtime variable, how long batteries last separates runtime-per-charge from lifespan-in-years, and the cost calculator works out the ten-year total that nobody else in this category publishes.
How these are written
Answer first, in the first forty to fifty-five words. Then the working, in full, so you can redo it with your own numbers. Then the edge cases, and an honest note about what we do not know — because on several of these questions the real answer is that nobody publishes the data, and saying so is more useful than filling the gap with something plausible.
Our methodology page sets out the whole approach, including where we are weakest and which publishers to read when you need hands-on data we cannot honestly provide.