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Those of us lucky enough to have gardens will be spending a lot of time in them in the weeks to come. That's why choosing a lawn mower you can depend on is more important than ever.
Recent expert research carried out by Which? can tell you which lawn mower brands are the most reliable and help you buy one that lasts.
We asked Which? members to tell us about the petrol, cordless and electric models they own, how satisfied they are with them, the faults they've had to deal with and how long they lasted for before they needed replacing.
Read on to learn some pros and cons to consider when buying cordless, electric and petrol, or head straight to our lawn mower brands guide to get the lowdown on the brands to buy and those to avoid.
Or head straight to our lawn mower reviews to see the best models of each type.
The powerhouse type, petrol mowers are often large machines with wide cutting widths intended for cutting large lawns of more than 150m sq.
In our independent tests, petrol mowers need to score 75% or higher to be made a Best Buy, which is higher than the scores needed for cordless and electric models.
The bar may be set higher than other lawn mower types for these big machines, but our tests have found some petrol-powered duds among the strong cutters.
Key factors to take into account include:
Want to pull the cord and start up one of the best lawn mowers around? Head to our top five lawn mowers for 2020 to see our picks.
The modern and most popular type around, battery-powered cordless mowers are usually aimed at cutting smaller lawns you might find in a city or suburb. However, there are some that rival petrol models for power and are well suited to larger lawns.
Although cordless products are convenient and usually cost less to run than their petrol and electric rivals, you should always make sure the battery comes included, as they are sometimes sold at cut prices without the batteries included.
Lithium-ion batteries also gradually lose their ability to hold a charge over time, so make sure you can buy replacement batteries so you aren't left with a product you can't use.
Thing to bear in mind when buying include:
We've made a shortlist of the very best cordless mowers money can buy. Head to our top five cordless mowers for 2020 to discover the kings of cordless.
The lightest lawn mower type available, electric lawn mowers can be very easy to manoeuvre - as long as you don't mind the wire trailing behind you.
The electric mowers we've tested have an average weight of 11.8kg, which is almost a third of the weight of the petrol mowers, which weigh in at 32kg, on average.
Our reliability survey found that electric mowers were a mixed bag. One brand had a very commendable customer satisfaction score of 79%, but we also found one with a much less satisfactory score of 65% - the lowest of all the brands we surveyed.
Other important elements to consider include:
Head to our Best Buy lawn mowers to see which electric lawn mowers we recommend you buy.
As can be seen from the graph above, the expected lifetime of different lawn mowers can vary by several years.
However, there are exceptions to every rule. There's one electric mower brand that our survey found lasts approximately 11 years, for example. That's much longer than the averages would suggest.
Ready to see the full picture of how reliable each lawn mower brand is? Check out our lawn mower brands guide.