Traditionally, the main method of mowing your lawn has been with a gas powered lawn mower. It is a machine that has served the test of time and performs the job well. There have been corded electric lawn mowers around for a while of course, but gas mowers have remained the most popular. More recently though, cordless lawn mowers have come onto the market and have been growing in popularity. But, overall, which is best?
One of the attractions of gas powered mowers is that their range and how much lawn you can cut is limited only by how much gasoline you have in your can. Therefore, for large lawns this is clearly an attraction. Cordless lawn mowers are limited by how long they can run before the battery charge runs out - generally the largest range is a third of an acre from a single charge. However, you can increase the range by buying a model where you can remove the battery and then buy a second battery.
The power of gas mowers tends to be greater than electric mowers (either corded or cordless), so if you have particularly tricky areas then this may be a consideration for you.
However, cordless lawn mowers have a number of advantages. The most obvious one being that there are no messy gas or oil cans to deal with. Simply, plug in and charge with none of the obvious hazards of dealing with a highly combustible liquid.
One of the particular complaints made about gas mowers is their starting. The usual method for starting up involves a pull cord mechanism and in some instances can take several attempts before the engine springs to life. Inevitably this can require some considerable effort, not to mention frustration, particularly with some more erratic starting mowers. Gas mowers tend to be more difficult to start at the beginning of the mowing season (i.e. spring).
Cordless lawn mowers have no such starting difficulties. The starting mechanism varies but normally requires no more than the pulling of a handle to start. There are none of the reliability problems that have come to be associated with starting gas mowers.
Another issue relates to emissions. Although the engines of gas powered lawn mowers may be relatively small compared with those of cars, they are responsible for significant pollution. In fact some studies suggest that using a gas powered mower for an hour is equivalent to driving for 100 miles in terms of the emissions produced. Cordless lawn mowers do not produce any emissions directly, but of course cannot be considered to emission free as the power station producing the electricity to charge it will produce some emissions. Overall, however the net contribution to pollution is smaller.
Overall, unless you have a very large area to mow, I think that cordless lawn mowers offer considerable advantages over their gas powered counterparts and should be a consideration for anyone in the market for a new mower.
