Segway Navimow i210 AWD review: grip first

Small robot mowers get stuck. Two driven wheels and a caster cope with a flat rectangle, then spin on a root, a soft corner or a bank. The Segway Navimow i210 AWD is built around fixing that one problem: all three of its wheels are driven.

Everything else about it is a modest quarter acre mower, and it is the AWD robot mower holding the small yard slot on our robot mower shortlist. What follows rests on Segway's manual and product page for the Navimow i2 AWD series, the live listing, a hands-on test by the French site Maison et Domotique, and seven owners. Six are among the 71 people commenting on seven YouTube videos about the i210, and the seventh ran an i2 AWD in a small yard (how we count). Four of the seven describe actually running an i2 AWD, one of them for five weeks, so read this as early ownership.

Segway Navimow i210 AWD max slope: what the third wheel buys

Segway rates it for 45 percent, or 24 degrees, a figure Segway took on dry grass 1.97 inches tall, on a slope free of obstacles. The two front wheels are 9.8 inch off-road wheels, the rear wheel steers and drives on demand when the front pair needs help, and the mower is rated to climb a 1.57 inch step. Electronic stability control and a traction control setting cut slip on wet or uneven ground.

Maison et Domotique ran the European i208 AWD, which Navimow rates for 800 m² on the same 5.1 Ah battery. Where their ground slopes toward a border, a typical robot veers, sometimes into the fence, and the i208 kept its trajectory better. On short climbs, "The robot doesn't seem to struggle." Owners agree. The one who ran an i2 AWD in a small yard calls the drive great, and a buyer who sold a tracked Lymow for an i210 says it did not get stuck on its first day.

Boundary method: Network RTK, and an antenna in the box anyway

No wire. The i210 takes its position from Segway's Network RTK correction service over a cellular link, fused with its camera, and Segway's FAQ calls the NRTK service free for life. Where your address has coverage, Segway says you can skip a local antenna. The box still carries one, with a mounting kit, for addresses where the network falls short.

Read this part twice before ordering.

Of the four owners who describe running an i2 AWD, two say positioning fell short. One, five weeks in, writes "I use the RTK receiver because it works better than the RTK network." The other, an i2 AWD owner who does not say which model, found GPS plus RTK terrible in a small yard. If you end up needing the antenna, Segway's manual wants its patch of sky clear and not "obstructed by trees or roofs", and a small lot has plenty of both. On their own ground, Maison et Domotique found running without the antenna very convincing. Your address matters more than the machine: run Segway's coverage checker first, and if the lawn is shaded, read our boundary guide.

Coverage and zones: a quarter acre, slowly

Segway rates the i210 AWD for 0.25 acre. Patience helps. It mows 0.06 acre per charge at 0.03 acre an hour, and Segway's own table puts the full rated lawn at 16 hours on the clock, charging included. Plan on a day of short trips out from the dock, and up to 0.37 acre across 24 hours. "It's slow, but quiet," writes the owner who had theirs a day.

The map has a ceiling as well. A footnote caps map storage at 1.2 times the rated area, which on our arithmetic puts the i210 near 0.30 acre, and up to 20 zones all draw on that one budget. A sponsored YouTube reviewer, sent the mower by Navimow, says they mapped and maintained roughly 1,500 m², about half again past the rating. One report against Segway's footnote, so plan to the footnote, and the yard size guide shows which side of it your lawn falls.

Cut height: 2 to 3.6 inches, set by hand

Height is set by hand on the mower, which Segway's spec table lists as manual adjustment, so the app cannot touch it. Maison et Domotique found their mechanical wheel quick and reliable for a setting you rarely change, though on their European i208 it ran 20 to 60 mm. One disc with five blades cuts a 7.1 inch swath, and spare blades ship in the box. Segway's warranty treats blades as disposable. We expect that 3.6 inch ceiling to bite in a wet spell. One owner, rained off for two or three days at a time, already runs theirs at the maximum and asks how long the grass can get before a robot sized bite becomes too much.

A buyer in Denmark reports a digital setting and no dial at all, which disagrees with the French test too, so a mower sold outside North America may not match Segway's US spec table.

Obstacle avoidance and the weather setting

VisionFence works from a 140 degree camera, and Segway claims more than 150 obstacle types. In France, the tester watched it handle a pot, a ball, a branch, a toy, furniture, a person and an animal, and warn that a very low object or a thin string can still catch it.

Rain handling runs on a forecast.

Segway's spec table lists the weather feature as Weather Forecast, and Maison et Domotique found it parking the mower on a rain forecast while their own lawn stayed dry. The body is rated IP66, and the manual asks you not to mow in heavy rain regardless.

Runtime and charge, plus the 4G clock

Two hours on, two hours off: a 5.1 Ah, 110 Wh battery gives about 120 minutes of mowing and takes 120 to recharge. Segway includes a year of 4G data with the i2 series, and the manual says anti-theft tracking only works while that 4G service is current. The warranty is three years on the mower and two on the battery and power adapter.

Which Navimow instead

Under about 0.15 acre, the i206 AWD mows at the same hourly rate on half the battery. If trees are the obstacle and slope is not, the i215 LiDAR navigates on LiDAR and vision with no antenna or RTK hardware in the box, though Segway drops its slope rating to 25 percent at the boundary. The i210 belongs on the open, bumpy quarter acre between those two.