Pros & Cons
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- Speedy
- Wide cutting width
- Can straddle lawn edges
- Quiet
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- Not the best at mapping
- Missed some grass on corners
Ecovacs Goat A3000 LiDAR Robot Lawn Mower Specs
| Connectivity | Bluetooth |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi |
| Cutting Time | 118 |
| Cutting Width | 12.99 |
| Lawn Coverage | 0.75 |
| Mobile App | |
| Rain Sensor | |
| Remote Steering | |
| Sound Level | 62 |
The Ecovacs Goat A3000 robot lawn mower joins the company’s expansive family of autonomous devices like vacuums and window cleaners, and aims to take the manual labor out of cutting the grass. It's meant for lawns of up to 0.75 acres and uses dual LiDAR sensors for wire-free yard mapping, navigation, and object avoidance. It even comes with a charging dock that it can return to automatically to stay powered up. The smart mower’s skills don’t come cheap, however, at $2,999.99. While it performed well on a small, well-defined backyard in testing, it’s best suited for yards that stretch upward of 1,000 square feet or more. Homeowners with smaller lawns or people seeking tighter precision should consider the more affordable Eufy E18 ($1,999.99), while the rugged Husqvarna Automower 435X AWD ($2,999.99) is a better fit for large yards, rough terrain, and steep hills.
Specs: Efficient, Quiet Mowing
Ecovacs makes several smart lawn mowers, but the Goat A3000 is the company’s highest-end model, capable of mowing 0.75 acres of lawn over 12 hours. It relies on a dual-LiDAR navigation system and doesn't require any RTK antennas, which the Ecovacs Goat A2500 ($1,999.99) and the Goat O1000 ($999.99) use. The Goat A2500 otherwise matches the A3000 in a lot of ways, but it doesn't have as big of a battery and is recommended for yards up to 0.5 acres. The Goat O1000 is smaller in size and capability, which makes it better for less demanding spaces up to 0.25 acres.
The Goat A3000 and the A2500 can handle hills with a 50% (27-degree) slope, while the Goat O1000 can climb up to 45% (24-degree) slopes. The Husqvarna Automower 435X AWD is even more rugged, with the ability to handle slopes of up to 70%, or a 35-degree angle.
(Credit: Tyler Hayes)The top-tier Goat offers a cutting height range between 1.2 inches and 3.54 inches, which you can electronically adjust via its companion Ecovacs Home app (available for Android and iOS). On its delicate speed setting, the Goat A3000 covers ground at a rate of 1.31 feet per second. When using the faster efficient mode, it moves at a rate of 2.3 feet per second.
Under the hood, the robot mower uses dual spinning discs with three blades each. It has a cutting width of 12.99 inches, surpassing the Eufy E18's (8 inches). The A3000's cutting blades are razor-like and similar to those used by other robot mowers, but I noticed some corrosion on them after only a couple of weeks of testing. I haven’t seen any decreased performance yet, but I’ll be curious to see how they hold up in the long run. The unit comes with extra blades in the box to get you started.
(Credit: Tyler Hayes)Unlike traditional push mowers, robot models tend to be much quieter. The Goat A3000 has an average operating volume of 62 decibels, which is louder than some other comparable models like the Eufy E18 (56 decibels). However, in most settings, I barely heard it working. Its motor, wheels, and even plastic cover seemed louder than the disc blades spinning and shaving the grass. Even if you do need to run the unit for an hour or more at a time, it shouldn't be an audible annoyance or cause disruptions to your neighbors.
In terms of safety, the first level of defense is a big red stop button on the top of the A3000. Pressing it immediately shuts the mower off. I stepped in front of the mower while it was in motion, and it stopped before getting to my feet. When I intentionally tilted it up, it used its speaker to repeatedly alert me that it was tipped over. These are all good safety features, though I would be nervous about letting young kids play in the grass while a lawn mower roamed free no matter what model I was using.
Battery Life and Speed: Thumbs Up
Ecovacs says the Goat A3000's 5,000mAh battery provides up to 118 minutes of continuous mowing time on a single charge. At its fastest speed, the Goat A3000 can mow up to 4,305 square feet per hour. Eufy's E18 can mow for 90 to 110 minutes and cover about 1,076 to 1,614 square feet on a single charge. In my testing, the A3000's faster speed and wider cutting width both contributed to its spending less time out in the yard than the Eufy E18.
I never needed to use the A3000 for too much time in a single run, as it hummed along and cut around 350 square feet of grass in 11 to 12 minutes on its delicate speed setting in testing. In its efficient mode, the A3000 could cut the same area from start to finish in about nine minutes. The Eufy E18 took 36 minutes to mow the yard, so the A3000's speed is impressive.
Setup, App Control, and Navigation: Only Minor Inconveniences
The Goat A3000 smart mower comes assembled and just needs its plastic charging dock snapped together and placed in an uncluttered area.
Since the A3000 is equipped with dual LiDAR sensors, I assumed it might do better at mapping and navigation than the Eufy E18’s camera-based system. I’m not convinced that’s the case, however. The A3000 first needed to be manually navigated to a starting place by using the Ecovacs Home app to drive it like a remote-controlled car. At that point, the app wanted me to manually drive it around the perimeter, walking close to it so the Bluetooth connection wouldn’t be interrupted. There is an auto-mapping button too, but it's not presented as the first option.
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My first manual mapping of the small grass area didn’t go well. It wasn't clear to me how close I should get to the edge of the grass, whether I was just guiding it in the vicinity so it could look, or whether I was actually setting the boundary it would follow. I drove it around, but not in a way that it would be able to be used as a map. In a second attempt, I used the auto-mapping process, and it went better, but still wasn't pinpoint accurate. Despite getting the close shape of the grass, not all of the edges were straight. When it mowed, it followed its map precisely, instead of looking at the actual blades of grass in front of it. That resulted in it purposefully missing a few strips of grass.
I tried to adjust the map in the Ecovacs Home app, but there aren’t any tools to straighten edges or redraw certain parts. After several mowing sessions with it missing small spots, I cleared the map and let it try again. It did better on the second auto-mapping attempt, straightening some lines more than before. It still missed the sharp corners, softening and rounding them off. For comparison, I had an easier time mapping the same yard with the Eufy E18.
The Ecovacs Home app offers modes for area, auto, edge, and manual cutting. When I selected the edge-only mode, the mower did a fair job of straddling the grass and pavement for edging maintenance. However, it still rounded off a couple of corners and could never quite reach every inch of the perimeter.
Controlling the mower manually with the virtual joystick on my phone was easier than I imagined it would be. There were times I used it to drive over parts the unit missed on its own. Still, the whole point of a robot assistant is for it to do the work for me.
Overall, the Ecovacs Home app is a fine way to control the mower, set cutting schedules, and even share its use with a family member. There are small implementation details I can quibble about. The interface for changing the grass-cutting direction is confusing, for instance. But on the whole, the app works well, delivers appropriate notifications, and isn't overly complicated.
Cutting Performance: Solid and Predictable
After using the Goat A3000 for a couple of weeks, I’ve been satisfied with its cutting results. Regardless of whether the blades were set higher or lower, the robot blazed through its jobs, balancing speed and performance. It doesn’t seem to have the same smooth, tight precision as the Eufy E18, but its strength is more in its quickness.
(Credit: Tyler Hayes)Its motor is strong enough to smoothly propel the robot through healthy green grass, and its nearly 13-inch cutting-blade width helps it cover a lot of ground with each pass. Using its efficient setting, it finished mowing the 350-square-foot yard in the blink of an eye.
There were occasional untrimmed blades of grass that you could see if you went looking for them, but in general, it thoroughly mowed down the bulk of the grass. The places the A3000 missed frequently were the sharp corners. For at least two specific edges, it just wouldn’t get closer than about five inches, despite there not being anything close to it.
(Credit: Tyler Hayes)As it came around the perimeter, straddling the pavement and grass to cut the edges, it would get some of those spots missed initially, but not completely. Even remapping the space didn’t help with a few problematic spots. It’s a bit annoying if you’re expecting the A3000 to be a completely automated gardener, but that's a slightly unrealistic expectation of any robot.
The mower can’t get all the way up next to fences or walls. So if any of those types of boundaries border your yard, you’ll still need to bust out a manual weed eater or trimmer at times. The A3000 can take care of mowing most of your grass, but you should still count on needing to do some lawn maintenance if you like a well-manicured space. It shouldn't be a problem around the more rural outlines of grass lawns that trail off into dirt.