The Echo cordless mower is the only model from the push mower testing that has a 4-point height adjustment for the deck. On the other hand, there’s more flex in this model than most of the others. Echo also puts a lifetime warranty on the deck. As long as you’re not slinging around rocks, it should be fine. However, the thickness of the deck on this model seems a bit lower than some of the other models, leading us to wonder how well it will hold up over time. There are plenty of other brands using plastic poly instead of steel, and it’s really a weight vs durability call. Plastic Composite DeckĪaaand, the main reason that it’s so light is that Echo uses a plastic composite deck. The 58V Echo mower doesn’t include self-propelled drive, but it’s light enough at 57 lbs, that it isn’t too taxing to shove around the yard. Feature SetĪ self-propelled drive is something we’d all love to have, but push mowers have their place in the OPE lexicon too. Considering the range for cordless mowers was between 74dB(A) and 88 dB(A), we’ll take it. At the ear, we measured it at 82 dB(A) under no load. The Echo cordless mower is the middle of the pack for noise. That’s a moot point if you don’t mind ponying up for a second battery. The mower also comes with an inactive extra battery storage bay, so if you’ve got a couple of the batteries, you can at least swap them out quickly. That’s not terrible for one battery, but several of Echo’s main competitors include a second in their kits and move ahead. Walking at a constant speed of 2.5 MPH, you can expect to mow up to 12,705 square feet – just under a third of an acre – on a charge. Its larger blade makes up for some of that, though. With a maintenance load runtime of 33 minutes, 7 minutes less than we like to see in a kit. This works out to 62 square feet per watt hour – the lowest in its class. It comes with a 58V 4.0Ah battery, which means we’re talking about 204-watt hours. It all comes down to efficiency. Truth told, Echo doesn’t use its battery super-efficiently. Today’s batteries and brushless motors could rival some gas engines, but if it only runs for 3 minutes, it doesn’t really matter. Manufacturers have to balance power and runtime with battery-powered mowers. Echo’s ability to start above that mark and rise as the load increases tells us it’s one of the more capable battery-powered lawn mowers across a wide range of cutting conditions. We like to see blade speeds at least 160 MPH to effectively cut. It ramped up to 3005 RPM and 187.6 MPH blade tip speed, finishing just behind Stihl’s 191.7 MPH. The performance continued to rise when we strapped a heavy load to the mower blades. That was still significantly higher than every other push mower. Under maintenance load, we saw the RPMs bump up to 2832 and blade tip speed nudge up to 176.8 MPH. Such was the case for the Echo cordless mower. It’s an advantage of electronics that even some brushed motors employ. Generally, a brushless motor will sense more resistance on the blade and ramp up the power to compensate.
We then hooked all the mowers up to a lighter load designed to simulate the stress put on a motor for a weekly maintenance cut. That’s the benefit of using a 21″ blade when most of your competition using 18″ and 19″ blades. Under no load, the Echo generated a-middle-of-the-pack-worthy 2776 RPM, but a class-leading 173.3 MPH blade tip speed. The Echo cordless lawn mower showed us some serious power when we tested blade tip speeds. Want the details about how we tested? Check out our cordless mower shootout! Cutting Power
Stick to lots that are 1/3 acre or pick up an extra battery to extend your runtime.īattery-Powered Push Mower Ranking: 6th Place If you like what you see, it has the power to handle maintenance cuts all the way through a week’s worth of overgrowth or more. If Echo is going to stay on the high side of pricing, just making those two improvements will see it quickly rise higher in the rankings. Moving up to a 6.0Ah battery or adding a second 4.0Ah would improve how much area you can cut on a charge.Īs long as I’m putting together a wish list, making the change to a steel deck really shifts the entire feel of what it’s like to use this mower. Echo has an excellent brushless power plant and we’re impressed with its cutting power. It’s not that the Echo 58V cordless mower is a bad tool, it’s just that most of the cordless world has moved ahead in the last 4 years.
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