Overcomplicated & disappointing
I bought a Yuka Mini 600 as I liked the idea of no boundary wires. I plan to have a external plug put in place so it can be kept outside, but in the meantime naively assumed I'd be able to use the machine by manually popping it onto the grass and taking it in afterwards. First thing I realised was the self mapping option doesnt work unless you have raised beds or a solid permiter all the way around your lawn. After getting stuck in flower beds numerous times I gave up with this feature. It has a handy manual mapping option, where the app allows you to use your phone as a remote control, to drive the machine around the perimeter of your lawn. Fab, I figured once that was that done, given gps, in the future it would easily be able to tell where it was on my lawn. Not so. You cannot place the machine down on the lawn manually and have it get to work. It cant correcrky identify where it is on the lawn, and if you set it loose and hope it will figure it out, at best you're likely to only have a small corner of the lawn cut. I resigned myself to having to manually map the lawn each time until I get the charger installed outside, however now the app is throwing up an error message, which seems to be an issue with it getting satellite signal (the reciever is showing as functioning fine however). This is not an issue I was prepared for as I'd thought this feature would be a either/or situation since it can access the internet. I'm really quite disappointed by this machine. I purchased a top of the line robot vaccume about 7 years ago, which automatically maps my home floor plan, can sense obstacles and dropped edges with ease and avoids them, and can be popped down at random in any room in the house and is able to recognise where it is on the floor plan. I'd naively expected the tech robot lawnmowers like the Yuka use to at least be comparible to this by now, if not better. But it's perhaps worse than my 7 year old vaccum, and yet based on the issues I'm facing with the app, believe they've overcomplicated it. Prior to purchasing the Yuka, I had been under the impression it could be used without the internet or the app. I liked this concept, as its not uncommon for companies to go bust, and if it can be used simply (even if that means loss of features) then it can keep functioning even if there's no app support. However, after using the Yuka for a month, I do not believe it's possible to use without the app. So if you're looking for a machine that can be used in a low tech plug and play way, with long term reliability, this isnt for you. I regret buying this machine, but will persevere to try and at least see my moneys worth out of it.