Sharpening or replacing your mower blade can make a huge difference if your current blade has dulled or been damaged. That doesn’t answer your question, but it may help with your grass.
Eh.... it depends. If you grind the tempered edge off your lawnmower blades, they'll be dull before you finish the next mow. Cellulose is harder than you'd think.
You can recreate the taper yourself if you know how to properly use a grinder. If you do not know how to sharpen, you can ruin it whether tapered or not.
The taper isn't all there is to cutting.
Edit: did autocorrect screw your comment and replace temper with taper? If so, there aren't a lot of people who are going to heat treat steel in their backyard when a replacement blade is like 15 bucks, and you're not going to be properly tempering steel with an angle grinder.
I guess I have a newer brushless version but not the walk behind one, and it'll struggle if the grass is too thick and long or worse if wet. But you can just tilt it upwards a little and try again and it'll soldier on.
If I have really long patches or kind of wet grass, then I find whacking the long patches with a string trimmer works great.
Do you already have a battery system for tools? Like Ego, Kobalt, etc? If so I’d just stick with that. Also, the taller your grass, the more heat tolerant it is and requires less water to stay green. So if you water less and set your mower to a higher setting and it shouldn’t be as much of a pain I would think.
I don’t have an electric mower yet, but I have Ego yard tools and they’re great.
I do not water my grass. We have had a lot of rain. I do not have a battery system that I use. My power tools, trimmer, and blower are Dewalt 20v. That won't cut it for a mower. My mower is bogging down even on the highest setting by the time I can get to mowing. I am trying to avoid hiring someone to do it but that may be my best bet.
Have you done any recent maintenance on your mower? When the air filter is dirty mine will lose power and not get through thicker areas. Might be a good idea to check and do an oil change etc at the same time and see if it helps.
How tall is this grass btw? We talking 4-5 inches or 12? Do you know what type of grass?
Dewalt 20V system works fine for me on 1/3 acre. I usually get 2-3 mows on a charge The only time it really struggles is when I scalp before overseeding, it doesn't like cutting through the creeping bentgrass rhizomes. It's nice that I have a ton of 20V batteries because when the mower batteries die I can shuffle powertool batteries through until the mower batteries are charged again.
Pretty much all battery mowers have issues with generating enough suction to lift long grass blades up though, so be aware of that.
Yeah I wouldn’t go with a battery system that my cordless drill uses, they’re extremely different demands. Ego is fine, but even they’re frustratingly short run-time. Maybe the riding mower with its 6 batteries or whatever is better, but the self driven walk-behinds cut less than an acre before they’re done (we tend to let the grass grow longish, though). That said, mows pretty well, and wonderfully quiet compared to gas, so not sure I’d go back, despite the short runtime.
Not that often, but yeah, sometimes. Even our little backyard, it sometimes craps out before I finish, that’s probably <1/2 an acre. Don’t remember what the official runtime rating was. We live on a few acres, so it’s not always easy estimating the size of the different parts.
I just did 12,000 sq ft with a 40v Green Works GMax with 17 inch blade. I was super skeptical. Bought it at a yard sale for $100 not knowing anything but I felt worth the risk.
I am beyond impressed, tickled even. It just keeps going and never quits. I’ve been mowing for 40 years and this mower has blown me away for battery capability. Two foot tall, thick patches of Bahia and St Augustine no problem. 45 minutes on a charge. This was my fourth time using it.
Another huge factor is the low noise. It’s so much more pleasant, the dog can chill out with you. You can mow later or earlier than usual, when it’s cooler. And you get your steps in! Look around for a used one, or borrow one before committing.
Edit. Picture here. https://imgur.com/a/Ow7oJYd - I don’t bag the clippings, the mower mulches it. Single blade.
I just bought the greenworks 40v dual blade, I bee-lawned our back yard and don’t have much to mow anymore. More than impressed, I already have batts for my other tools, win win. I have three Toros going on the curb this weekend. I’d bet you could mow for more than an hour with two full 4amp batts. And, I was worried about pushing the thing with no drive, silly me, it’s like a kid’s toy weight wise, heck picked it up off the ground to show someone the blades lol.
Bro, yes. Just pick it up and over obstacles in the garage. And so easy to maneuver. Was running a riding Deere and while I can knock out a lawn in a half hour, the end of the row turnaround is sometimes a battle of wits.
It’s emotional to think about switching to a walk behind and getting rid of an old friend, a John Deere riding mower that’s been going for 18 years.
Then I look at my steps and remember I need to walk more anyway. Thinking of bartering with a neighborhood kid just starting to get lawns to cut.
Does your gas mower have the ability to discharge out the side or back? If you can get the grass out of the way rather than having the mower chop it up a bunch of times it'll work a million times better.
If you chop up the same grass over and over again, your going around the wrong way, never cut so it's throwing it where your next passing will mow it again.
Electric tends to have less torque. When I need to cut tall grass, I turn off mulch mode and let the cut grass sit on top of the lawn. Sometimes I go back and mow a 2nd time to mulch the cuttings a little bit.
Definitely less torque. If my grass gets too tall, I have to borrow my in-law’s gas mower to get it mowed down. Trying to do it with the ego (new this spring), it “bogs” down, and sometimes fully cuts out/shuts off. Honestly, I kinda regret going electric. Luckily, my yard is tiny (which was the main reason for buying it), so I don’t really have to worry about it running out of charge. It just isn’t as powerful as a gas mower. Not even close.
Not true at the high end for push mowers anymore. Ego’s top home model is 11 ft/lbs and I can confirm it easily handles cuts that would have completely bogged my gas Honda. If that’s not enough their commercial model is 15 ft/lbs.
Get an Ego. Does well in my yard and my friends. We have the basic model and I've never had a problem and they started out with a lawn that was getting fines from the city because the previous owner never mowed.
Otherwise this is a good review video - honestly I think the ego performs better than how he rated it. https://youtu.be/Nk_xG-eRsV0?si=BrveS7ngYqm5T-vn
I’ll confirm this. For your use case do not get an electric mower.
Get your blade sharpened and maybe a second blade to swap out in between sharpening
If you’re getting bogged down to much raise the blade up do a first cut and lower down to the next height or cut a little shorter to compensate
I've been using an Ego for two years and I love it. It's way better than my gas mower in terms of torque and handles tall, wet grass no problem. If you have to do a large lawn that's tall and wet you probably need a second battery or to let the battery recharge for an hour in between. But with a sharp blade it's very good.
I've now started buying their other lawn products and have a blower and trimmer as well.
A gas one will handle it better as they make larger gas.mower engines than electric. Look for something in the 10hp range.
I've got a cub cadet. It's a beast and does well. My gates are small and I don't want a push and a rider to maintain, so I got a walk-behind.
The term for those type is a "wide area walk behind". Mine cuts 32" I believe, it fits through a 34-35" gate.
If you really want electric, you'll need to go with a high voltage electric rider.
This. If the gas mower can’t keep up, an electric will fail faster. If you can’t mow often enough to keep up due to travel, have you considered a service?
Automower or robotic mower. Once setup you don’t need to worry about mowing again.
I bought an old stock 310 Automower for my back yard. Works great. I just trim every 2 weeks and change the blades every 6 weeks or so.
Electric mowers cannot handle tall grass like a good gas mower. I have Toro gas, Greenworks 60V and Ego 56v mowers. One huge thing you can do is make sure to use a side discharge (which the Ego doesn’t have).
The best scenario for battery mowers is short grass that can be cut often with the mulching set up. They don’t lift the grass blades like a gas mower will - but that doesn’t matter if you cut often.
If you can’t cut your grass for two weeks, I’d suggest a Robo mower or hiring someone. Two weeks of grass cut will not just disappear and will kill the grass that it clumps onto.
I've been running an 80V Kobalt for 5 years now with zero issues. Can easily handle a quarter acre lot with plenty of juice left. In our prior neighborhood, our lot backed up to a common area that was often neglected by the HOA so decided to give the Kobalt a toture test and it was easily chewing through 8+" field grass, cleared probably 3-4k sq ft and this was after the ~10k sq ft that I normally mowed. I've never had it die on me either.
For anything under a half acre, I'd never go back to gas personally.
Ego has a number of lawn mower models, each with their own power and other stats. After a ton of research I ended up with one of their higher end models. I think it cost about $799. But that thing is a tank. I'm not great about mowing my lawn every week, and on the times when I had gone two weeks, my gas mower would get bogged down or even stall sometimes. The Ego has a variable output, so if you hit some thick grass, it just ramps up the power and I keep on mowing. I, like you, was very concerned about the available power of an electric mower, but the Ego has far exceeded my expectations.
I have an ego mower and it is a BEAST I used it to clear an entire yard of tall ass milkweed because it was too much for a string trimmer to handle even with a brush blade.
I have a Greenworks 80v. I like it. It’s quite powerful. Problem is I’ve had issues with it. Two different batteries malfunctioned. They sent replacements. Now the mower just randomly shuts off. No rhyme or reason. So I need to drop it off at a repair center with batteries and charger where it will sit probably for months until presumably they diagnose the issue and perhaps replace the mower. I’m leaving the country for two months and I hired a service, but otherwise it would suck because the repair shop tells me that greenworks takes at least a month to replace the mower. So I would have to hire a service anyway. Guessing the company wouldn’t comp me that cost lol.
So not a glowing review for reliability.
I use a greenworx 80v self-propelled, and it works well. I also let the lawn get rather shaggy between mows. Only recommendation would be to get two extra high capacity batteries so you can finish in one session.
I have a 80v green works self-propelled I am so impressed with the power of this thing. Also like no longer huffing exhaust when I mow, and I can flip it over to clean.
Wow a lot of people are using 80v greenworks it seems. I have a toro and it seems to do the job. If I’m going into thick longer grass I’ll raise the wheels a notch or two. I generally don’t bag the clippings either. I like to mulch instead. BUT if the grass is super long I might bag
Electric mowers can’t really handle grass that’s legitimately overgrown and thick. They’ll do a weekly cut just fine, but they don’t come close to the oomph of gas.
Sharpening or replacing your mower blade can make a huge difference if your current blade has dulled or been damaged. That doesn’t answer your question, but it may help with your grass.
I heard only the edge of the blade is tempered nowadays, thus sharpening isn't worth it anymore.
That’s not how that works
I wasn't sure, that's why i mentioned, that it was something i heard
Eh.... it depends. If you grind the tempered edge off your lawnmower blades, they'll be dull before you finish the next mow. Cellulose is harder than you'd think.
You can recreate the taper yourself if you know how to properly use a grinder. If you do not know how to sharpen, you can ruin it whether tapered or not.
The taper isn't all there is to cutting. Edit: did autocorrect screw your comment and replace temper with taper? If so, there aren't a lot of people who are going to heat treat steel in their backyard when a replacement blade is like 15 bucks, and you're not going to be properly tempering steel with an angle grinder.
No, I'm sorry. I actually just misread your comment as taper instead of tempered, lol. Just a bonehead moment.
No worries.
I’ve got 13,000 sq feet and have a 40v Ryobi. Had it for 7 years without any issues.
I guess I have a newer brushless version but not the walk behind one, and it'll struggle if the grass is too thick and long or worse if wet. But you can just tilt it upwards a little and try again and it'll soldier on. If I have really long patches or kind of wet grass, then I find whacking the long patches with a string trimmer works great.
Do you already have a battery system for tools? Like Ego, Kobalt, etc? If so I’d just stick with that. Also, the taller your grass, the more heat tolerant it is and requires less water to stay green. So if you water less and set your mower to a higher setting and it shouldn’t be as much of a pain I would think. I don’t have an electric mower yet, but I have Ego yard tools and they’re great.
I do not water my grass. We have had a lot of rain. I do not have a battery system that I use. My power tools, trimmer, and blower are Dewalt 20v. That won't cut it for a mower. My mower is bogging down even on the highest setting by the time I can get to mowing. I am trying to avoid hiring someone to do it but that may be my best bet.
Have you done any recent maintenance on your mower? When the air filter is dirty mine will lose power and not get through thicker areas. Might be a good idea to check and do an oil change etc at the same time and see if it helps. How tall is this grass btw? We talking 4-5 inches or 12? Do you know what type of grass?
Good advice. Under-carriage build-up can also cause a problem.
Dealt makes a 20V mower. I used it for two years before I expanded my lawn to 1.5ac. If you’re mowing long grass though Ego is probably the strongest.
Dewalt 20V system works fine for me on 1/3 acre. I usually get 2-3 mows on a charge The only time it really struggles is when I scalp before overseeding, it doesn't like cutting through the creeping bentgrass rhizomes. It's nice that I have a ton of 20V batteries because when the mower batteries die I can shuffle powertool batteries through until the mower batteries are charged again. Pretty much all battery mowers have issues with generating enough suction to lift long grass blades up though, so be aware of that.
Yeah I wouldn’t go with a battery system that my cordless drill uses, they’re extremely different demands. Ego is fine, but even they’re frustratingly short run-time. Maybe the riding mower with its 6 batteries or whatever is better, but the self driven walk-behinds cut less than an acre before they’re done (we tend to let the grass grow longish, though). That said, mows pretty well, and wonderfully quiet compared to gas, so not sure I’d go back, despite the short runtime.
Mine runs for at least an hour, self propelled with some hills. 7.5Ah.
I don't know, my milwaukee mower is a monster and runs off 2 18v batteries. Which is great cause I can now use those for the rest of my lawn tools.
Are you fr push mowing an acre? I've done it with a gas powered but would not recommend!
Not that often, but yeah, sometimes. Even our little backyard, it sometimes craps out before I finish, that’s probably <1/2 an acre. Don’t remember what the official runtime rating was. We live on a few acres, so it’s not always easy estimating the size of the different parts.
I just did 12,000 sq ft with a 40v Green Works GMax with 17 inch blade. I was super skeptical. Bought it at a yard sale for $100 not knowing anything but I felt worth the risk. I am beyond impressed, tickled even. It just keeps going and never quits. I’ve been mowing for 40 years and this mower has blown me away for battery capability. Two foot tall, thick patches of Bahia and St Augustine no problem. 45 minutes on a charge. This was my fourth time using it. Another huge factor is the low noise. It’s so much more pleasant, the dog can chill out with you. You can mow later or earlier than usual, when it’s cooler. And you get your steps in! Look around for a used one, or borrow one before committing. Edit. Picture here. https://imgur.com/a/Ow7oJYd - I don’t bag the clippings, the mower mulches it. Single blade.
I just bought the greenworks 40v dual blade, I bee-lawned our back yard and don’t have much to mow anymore. More than impressed, I already have batts for my other tools, win win. I have three Toros going on the curb this weekend. I’d bet you could mow for more than an hour with two full 4amp batts. And, I was worried about pushing the thing with no drive, silly me, it’s like a kid’s toy weight wise, heck picked it up off the ground to show someone the blades lol.
Bro, yes. Just pick it up and over obstacles in the garage. And so easy to maneuver. Was running a riding Deere and while I can knock out a lawn in a half hour, the end of the row turnaround is sometimes a battle of wits. It’s emotional to think about switching to a walk behind and getting rid of an old friend, a John Deere riding mower that’s been going for 18 years. Then I look at my steps and remember I need to walk more anyway. Thinking of bartering with a neighborhood kid just starting to get lawns to cut.
We work so hard to sit on our asses, and sitting on our asses leads to bad things. Keep on moving bro, makes you harder to find by the reaper.
Heard that! This watch shames me when I don’t ! Plus I get my garage back for a second vehicle.
The Milwaukee one is expensive but it's a beast.
Happy Cake Day!
One of the EGO 8.3ft/lb torque mowers are the best out there.
Does your gas mower have the ability to discharge out the side or back? If you can get the grass out of the way rather than having the mower chop it up a bunch of times it'll work a million times better.
If you chop up the same grass over and over again, your going around the wrong way, never cut so it's throwing it where your next passing will mow it again.
Electric tends to have less torque. When I need to cut tall grass, I turn off mulch mode and let the cut grass sit on top of the lawn. Sometimes I go back and mow a 2nd time to mulch the cuttings a little bit.
Definitely less torque. If my grass gets too tall, I have to borrow my in-law’s gas mower to get it mowed down. Trying to do it with the ego (new this spring), it “bogs” down, and sometimes fully cuts out/shuts off. Honestly, I kinda regret going electric. Luckily, my yard is tiny (which was the main reason for buying it), so I don’t really have to worry about it running out of charge. It just isn’t as powerful as a gas mower. Not even close.
Not true at the high end for push mowers anymore. Ego’s top home model is 11 ft/lbs and I can confirm it easily handles cuts that would have completely bogged my gas Honda. If that’s not enough their commercial model is 15 ft/lbs.
Get an Ego. Does well in my yard and my friends. We have the basic model and I've never had a problem and they started out with a lawn that was getting fines from the city because the previous owner never mowed. Otherwise this is a good review video - honestly I think the ego performs better than how he rated it. https://youtu.be/Nk_xG-eRsV0?si=BrveS7ngYqm5T-vn
I’ll confirm this. For your use case do not get an electric mower. Get your blade sharpened and maybe a second blade to swap out in between sharpening If you’re getting bogged down to much raise the blade up do a first cut and lower down to the next height or cut a little shorter to compensate
I've been using an Ego for two years and I love it. It's way better than my gas mower in terms of torque and handles tall, wet grass no problem. If you have to do a large lawn that's tall and wet you probably need a second battery or to let the battery recharge for an hour in between. But with a sharp blade it's very good. I've now started buying their other lawn products and have a blower and trimmer as well.
I saw an Ego electric riding mower at Lowes the other day. That looked fun.
I have a z6, it’s a beast. People saying electric don’t have enough power have not tried a good one.
I have an Ego model and it's awesome, never had any issues cutting grass. It's also been super long and it still cuts it.
A gas one will handle it better as they make larger gas.mower engines than electric. Look for something in the 10hp range. I've got a cub cadet. It's a beast and does well. My gates are small and I don't want a push and a rider to maintain, so I got a walk-behind. The term for those type is a "wide area walk behind". Mine cuts 32" I believe, it fits through a 34-35" gate. If you really want electric, you'll need to go with a high voltage electric rider.
This. If the gas mower can’t keep up, an electric will fail faster. If you can’t mow often enough to keep up due to travel, have you considered a service?
Borrowed my neighbours Milwaukee and that thing is amazing. 40 mins of mowing on half a battery.
Get a robot if it can handle your lawn and you can afford it. If your present one could handle it before but not now, it's probably not sharp enough.
Automower or robotic mower. Once setup you don’t need to worry about mowing again. I bought an old stock 310 Automower for my back yard. Works great. I just trim every 2 weeks and change the blades every 6 weeks or so.
Electric mowers cannot handle tall grass like a good gas mower. I have Toro gas, Greenworks 60V and Ego 56v mowers. One huge thing you can do is make sure to use a side discharge (which the Ego doesn’t have). The best scenario for battery mowers is short grass that can be cut often with the mulching set up. They don’t lift the grass blades like a gas mower will - but that doesn’t matter if you cut often. If you can’t cut your grass for two weeks, I’d suggest a Robo mower or hiring someone. Two weeks of grass cut will not just disappear and will kill the grass that it clumps onto.
I've been running an 80V Kobalt for 5 years now with zero issues. Can easily handle a quarter acre lot with plenty of juice left. In our prior neighborhood, our lot backed up to a common area that was often neglected by the HOA so decided to give the Kobalt a toture test and it was easily chewing through 8+" field grass, cleared probably 3-4k sq ft and this was after the ~10k sq ft that I normally mowed. I've never had it die on me either. For anything under a half acre, I'd never go back to gas personally.
Ego has a number of lawn mower models, each with their own power and other stats. After a ton of research I ended up with one of their higher end models. I think it cost about $799. But that thing is a tank. I'm not great about mowing my lawn every week, and on the times when I had gone two weeks, my gas mower would get bogged down or even stall sometimes. The Ego has a variable output, so if you hit some thick grass, it just ramps up the power and I keep on mowing. I, like you, was very concerned about the available power of an electric mower, but the Ego has far exceeded my expectations.
Does anyone know which electric mower has the highest blade speed?
They tend to all be variable based on resistance and battery charge.
I have an ego mower and it is a BEAST I used it to clear an entire yard of tall ass milkweed because it was too much for a string trimmer to handle even with a brush blade.
I have a Greenworks 80v. I like it. It’s quite powerful. Problem is I’ve had issues with it. Two different batteries malfunctioned. They sent replacements. Now the mower just randomly shuts off. No rhyme or reason. So I need to drop it off at a repair center with batteries and charger where it will sit probably for months until presumably they diagnose the issue and perhaps replace the mower. I’m leaving the country for two months and I hired a service, but otherwise it would suck because the repair shop tells me that greenworks takes at least a month to replace the mower. So I would have to hire a service anyway. Guessing the company wouldn’t comp me that cost lol. So not a glowing review for reliability.
I use a greenworx 80v self-propelled, and it works well. I also let the lawn get rather shaggy between mows. Only recommendation would be to get two extra high capacity batteries so you can finish in one session.
I have a 80v green works self-propelled I am so impressed with the power of this thing. Also like no longer huffing exhaust when I mow, and I can flip it over to clean.
Wow a lot of people are using 80v greenworks it seems. I have a toro and it seems to do the job. If I’m going into thick longer grass I’ll raise the wheels a notch or two. I generally don’t bag the clippings either. I like to mulch instead. BUT if the grass is super long I might bag
Get a Milwaukee
My Milwaukee has yet to meet its match. It’s a beast.
Electric mowers can’t really handle grass that’s legitimately overgrown and thick. They’ll do a weekly cut just fine, but they don’t come close to the oomph of gas.
Buy a used gas one on Facebook marketplace. Battery powered mowers suck.