A review of the Ryobi 18V one+ Mower combo kit
Today I want to have a look at the Ryobi 18v +one Mower, Trimmer and blower combo kit. First, though a bit of background, we bought our home in late 2019, with our first summer being in 2020. With it being the year of the plague, we held off doing anything with our lawn. Some good friends had given us their old mower and weed trimmer which we considered to be more than enough for a relatively small 81sq m (870 sq ft for those of you working in freedom units). The mower was a rotary mower… which under good circumstances I could see the appeal… our lawn was uh, less than good circumstances. Mowing became a monster endeavour with many times coming awfully close to turning into an Olympic Discus throws except with… ya know… the lawnmower.
The thought process
The Combo kit was appealing because as new homeowners there was an opportunity to expand the tool collection while using the same battery technology. A move to a cordless trimmer would allow me to spend my time actually trimming vs. Fighting with the outdoor power outlet (childproof my ass…). So after having gotten this setup home and letting it sit in the garage until my schedule and weather permitted, I finally got to test it out! And?… Let’s just say there’s lots of frustration and doubt about this purchase. I was excited about this little unit but I just can’t recommend it without some massive caveats.
The Pro’s
I’ll start with the easy stuff first. Everything is lightweight and easy to move and the setup is as quick and painless as can be. Do note however that the batteries are discharged so if you’re planning on using it, best to do it the night before or plan for a few hours to charge the two batteries. The trimmer is well balanced and comfortable to swing around for relatively long periods without strain. Though the trimmer is lacking a few features some may desire such as the edging wheel(?) and access to some of the attachment heads such as a cultivator or pole saw, it does offer the ability to rotate the shaft and head for use as an edger.
The blower is going to be limited to a few situations. I found it pretty useful for blowing sawdust, dirt and grass clippings out of the garage in lieu of having a compressor. Another use will likely be using it for dealing with the light dusting of snow that just isn’t enough for a shovel or snow blower. The mower folds up into a tiny little thing and shouldn’t present much of a challenge to find a space for in most sheds or garages. It’s easy to roll out and get going in no time, has an easy single-point height adjustment and easy to switch between mulching and bagging. Unfortunately, that’s where the pros end.
And now for the patience part
And Into the not so great aspects… The batteries, while it’s great to have a single set of batteries for all your tools, these batteries are far too small for the mower. The mower requires the use of both batteries at once to run meaning once they’re dead (which doesn’t take much), you have 3+ hours of charging time before you can continue. There are of course some workarounds to this. One option is if you have a large stable of Ryobi 18v tools already then you might have some of the large capacity batteries available to run as spares. You could also drop some pretty pennies on a fast multi-charger to knock down the charge to 1 hour (30 min per battery pack, charged one at a time in sequential order). But for a newcomer, these options involve spending another 50%+ above and beyond the cost of the kit to get what seems like is just a woefully underpowered piece of equipment.
As mentioned above we have a teeny weeny suburb lawn that mostly functions as a dog potty. The first cut of the year to a shorter trim turned into a 4-hour affair with 3 of those spent figuring out if I can return it to the store while waiting on two batteries recharging. The second and third cuts were more successful as I was cutting to a higher level due to reseeding efforts and didn’t run into direct battery issues, however, it did highlight the next major con. The lawnmower will not consistently start. That’s sort of a big one. I need to reach out to Ryobi and see what the response is going to be (Will update this post at a later date) but a cursory search saw some company responses indicating ‘safety equipment’ lockouts. I would argue that if a safety lockout is the reason for the equipment not starting and it’s not obvious as to what is stopping operation, it’s bad design. Period. It’s not like I couldn’t get it started, magically got it figured out and then mowed my lawn interruption-free, no it was ‘struggle to get started for operation check, move to back yard, struggle to get started again, mow 4 minutes until I found a freshly laid dog mine, struggle to get it started once more’. Each time it was a gamble on whether it would start right up or not. If it didn’t, removing the batteries and key and reinserting multiple times until it magically decided that this time everything was just right and would run… until the next time you let go of the dead man’s switch. The inconsistency was annoying and added a not-insignificant chunk of time to the process.
Final thoughts
Overall I can’t recommend the combo package for most people. If you live in a little condo unit and have a really tiny patch of grass to mow, or you’re heavily invested in the Ryobi ecosystem with enough batteries to feed the monster then it might be worth a gamble, but the jump to the 40v version and losing out on the extra equipment looks like it might be worth the hair and stress saved.
What’s your experience with Ryobi mowers? Are the 40v versions more reliable? Are you having the same issues as myself with your too-good-to-be-true combo kit?