Roborock RockMow Z1 Robot Lawn Mower

Roborock built its name indoors, and the RockMow Z1 is the company's attempt to carry that reputation — slick app, confident navigation, obsessive obstacle avoidance — out into the garden. On paper it is an ambitious debut rather than a cautious one: four-wheel drive, front-wheel active steering, a dynamic suspension system and wire-free RTK-plus-vision navigation that Roborock says needs no base station antenna. The range splits into three models that differ only in battery and coverage, from 1,500 m² up to 5,000 m² on the Z150, so the hardware story is identical whichever one your lawn size pushes you towards.

This is not a mower for a flat, rectangular back garden — a cheaper machine will do that job. It is aimed squarely at owners of large, sloping, uneven or terraced plots, the kind of lawn where most robot mowers beach themselves or refuse the gradient. An 80% (39°) slope rating and 8 cm obstacle clearance are the headline numbers here, and they are the reason to consider the Z1 over the competition. If you have trees, roots, steps between levels or a bank that you currently strim by hand, this is the category of machine you have been waiting for.

The consistent thread through the available reviews is that the hardware is excellent and the software is not quite finished. T3 described a tank-like, premium build with genuine agility on rough terrain and praised the app's real-time tracking; Senses rated the hardware top-tier but found features still waiting to roll out. That is a familiar pattern for a first-generation product, and it is the single biggest reason to pause. Buying at launch means betting on Roborock's update cadence — a bet the company's vacuum track record makes reasonable, but a bet nonetheless.

The specification sheet is otherwise sensible rather than remarkable. A 24 cm cutting width with six blades is modest for a machine rated to 5,000 m², which the Z150's 200-minute runtime and quick 60-minute recharge are clearly intended to offset. Electric cutting height adjustment across 20–70 mm and a floating deck are the right choices at this price. Less welcome is the edge cutting arrangement: getting down to 3 cm from a boundary requires the optional PreciEdge module at extra cost, which feels like something a flagship should include. There is no grass collection either, and T3 flagged the sheer size and weight as awkward.

Then there is the money. £1,699 is the entry point and the top model approaches £3,000, placing the Z1 firmly in premium territory where buyers are entitled to polish as well as capability. My assessment is that the engineering justifies the outlay if — and only if — your lawn genuinely needs 4WD and slope-climbing. For everyone else, this is a lot of mower and a lot of money for abilities you will never call on. I am also conscious that the detail available here is largely manufacturer-supplied plus two reviews, with no long-term cut-quality or reliability data, so treat this as a provisional verdict on a promising machine rather than a settled one. Four stars for the hardware ambition, held back from more by the unfinished software, the paid-extra edge module and the price.