back to GreenWorks 2501202VT electric mower

initial impressions:


I shopped around, and Walmart had the best prices, though they didn't have them in stock. There was no charge
for them to drop-ship to my door though, and it arrived in just two days. It shipped mostly assembled, so the
box was large and heavy, a bit awkward to handle. Fine if you have a garage or want to assemble it in your
driveway, but I hauled it into the living room to put it together. Assembly was easy, just unfold and connect
the handle, pull the bag plug out (no tools, just handle), insert the battery, and roll it outside.

The battery showed one light out of three, so I put it on charge before use. It was fully charged and cool by
the time I checked on it an hour later. Kill-a-watt says max charger draw was 285w, and it drew a total of 259Wh
of power to top off. I'll be keeping an eye on charge values to see how it performs. It draws almost exactly
five amps at 120vac when rapid charging, and the charger's internal fan runs continuously at full speed when it's
charging which is about as loud as a cordless vacuum cleaner, loud enough you don't want it in the room with you.

This is the first mow of the year so the lawn is uneven, so I set the deck height at halfway, 4 of 7. My first
pass was looking a little short so I raised it one notch and continued. It did a good job cutting the grass,
and the bag was easy to remove, empty, and reinstall. The wheels are large and the mower is much lighter than
my old gas one, so it's easy to push. It's difficult to tell when the bag is full though - I relied only watching
the top of the bag on my own mower, and emptying it when the top started to sag. For now I just pause and press
in on the side of the bag to feel the grass level. I spilled some grass on the sidewalk when emptying the bag,
and was disappointed to not be able to "vacuum" the grass off the pavement as I would with the gas mower. But
I still had the wheels set on 5, so I dropped them down to 1 and it got every last blade off the sidewalk. It's
nice that it's so easy to adjust wheel height - just move one very easy to shift lever, and all four wheels tilt.

It's easy to start too, just hold down the large start button while grabbing the handle bar. The blade stops
pretty quickly when you let go of the bar, and won't stat again if you squeeze it without pressing the button,
so it looks to be pretty safe. When I got to the back yard, there were stretches where there were sticks and
thick grass, which is the first time I saw the mower begin to bog down. But to my surprise, after about 3 sec
of bogging, the mower "shifted gears", sending more juice to the blade, which spun up to a faster rate. At that
speed it was no longer bogged down, and cut right through the dense grass and small sticks. A few seconds after
clearing that area, it "shifted down" back to its default speed. I hadn't seen any mention of this feature in
the advertisements, but I've never seen an electric mower respond like that to thick grass, so I don't know if
it's a discrete feature of this model or is common in all the larger electric mowers?

I decided to stop and take a break before doing the front left part of the back yard. The battery was at 1 of
3 lights, but I don't know if it would have the juice left to finish the job. I took it inside to charge while
I took a break. I was expecting it to be warm, but it was still cool to the touch, and started charging as soon
as I plugged it in. I know the charger will wait to start charging if the battery is warm, and it surprised me
that it was able to start charging immediately. My quadcopter's batteries are always warm when I run them empty,
and they always have to cool before charging, so this was a surprise. Maybe if it was hotter outside, or the
mower spent more or all of its time in "high gear" then it might have gotten warmer. I do wish the battery had
more than three indicator lights to show its charge - three lights isn't very precise, especially for a large
capacity one like this.

I didn't get much of a break, it only took 160Wh to get back to full charge. I went ahead and did my neighbor's
front and also most of the SW corner in my back yard. (I need to clear trimmed branches before doing the rest,
later today) I do wish it wouldn't switch out of "high gear" so quickly, just turning around to take another
pass is long enough for it to slow the blade back down to the slower default speed, then it has to spin back up
again as I start the next pass.

I've also discovered that it won't charge if it hasn't been depleted enough. Probably needs to be down to two
lights before it'll charge. That's a good thing though, improves battery life.




last updated 05/04/2025 at 17:09:07 by make_www_index.command version 2025.04.21.A