I really wanted to love the Luba but…
I really wanted to love the Luba AWD 5000, but it has lots of rough edges that make it far less useful than I had hoped. Our yard is ideal for a robot mower. It is 1.8 acres but fairly flat with few obstacles. We had purchased Luba in hopes that it would help maintain the lawn. While it mostly does do its job, it is not without close supervision. Forget having the robot run autonomously. Here are just some of the problems we deal with regularly. 1. Luba has problems returning to the dock and charging. Multiple times, I've found Luba dead at the base station. For some reason, it is not able to properly line itself up. Every evening, I need to check to make sure that it is actually charging. Usually it is 1-2cm off center, which is enough for the contacts to be misaligned. 2. The collision sensors are both overly sensitive and yet not sensitive enough. I've seen Luba stopped by a dandelion. Yet, I've also found it lodged under a truck we had to park temporarily on the grass. I would expect that the front bumper wouldn't be deterred by the very vegetation it is suppose to cut. I would also expect the ultrasonic sensors to detect large chunks of metal and go around, but the Luba rammed the truck as if it wasn't there. 3. Reverse has no sensors. I've seen the Luba in a tricky situation near a border and stairs. The front bumper triggered the stairs and it did its little dance to go around. However, there are no sensors on the back side and Luba proceed to mount the stone border in reverse. I had to emergency stop it, but not before the blades hit the stone. This seems like a huge gap in the safety of the system. I had to re-map the yard to avoid this area, which means more areas that need to be maintained manually. 4. The path tracking is not very accurate. The Luba is advertised as having centimeter level accuracy, but I've found it jammed up in areas 30-50cm outside of its activity areas. 5. Customer service has been super slow. I ordered the L-shaped mounting rod with my Luba. I was charged the full amount of my order, but the mounting rod was not part of the initial delivery. Weeks later, I get notification that the mounting rod shipped, but the tracking number was wrong. They sent the original Luba shipment tracking number instead of a the new tracking number. I sent multiple emails to customer support and do not hear anything back. Then suddenly, a few weeks later, I get a couple of emails saying that they are going to look into it. Its been a couple of weeks and I still haven't heard anything back. Customer service definitely needs an issue tracking system so that emails don't fall through the cracks. 6. The app drives me crazy. It is the little things, like being able to name the various mowing areas. The schedule tells you it is going to mow Area1, Area2, etc., but it re-numbers the areas, so I actually have no idea were it is going to mow. I've subdivided my yard into may areas to spread the mowing out throughout the week and I can't tell what is what but looking at the schedule in the app. Overall, a very uneven experience. Luba takes daily monitoring to make sure she is working. I still need to go out and do lawn maintenance periodically because some grasses appear to be too tough for Luba and I get islands of long grasses. Customer support is essentially non-existent. The only good thing I can say is that at least the product hasn't been abandoned and there are periodic updates. Some of the updates were a little uneven, but I hope that as the product matures these problems will get resolved.