Quick review
The good
The not-so-good
Need to cut the grass but don’t want to cut your wallet in half? The Ozito 18V Brushless Lawn Mower makes the case for savings, but does it really deliver quality and value?
Our old Aldi lawn mower just wasn’t cutting it, even if that was clearly the whole point. It did the job-ish, but the problem with Aldi’s special purchases is the long-term viability: buying something from Aldi often means sacrificing the ability to find replacement parts later on.
Things like batteries become an impossibility, and in the case of an electric mower — where extra batteries would be extremely useful, especially as batteries lose power over time — that is a problem.
So we went in search of a new mower, and one that had no problems with finding batteries.
Sold exclusively though Bunnings in Australia and New Zealand, Ozito is where we found ourselves looking at a lawnmower from, partly because the value seemed clear. You can look at a box with the lawnmower skin (that’s the lawnmower!), a battery, and a battery charger for what will very likely be the lowest price in the store, and it’ll appear like a solid value overall.
That’s certainly the case we found with the Ozito PVC 18V Brushless Lawn Mower, its $250 tag beaming at us online. So we grabbed one to find out whether it could cut the grass, and even the mustard. Does the Ozito 18V Brushless mower win on value, and is it worth your time and investment?
What is it?
From the name on the box, it’s pretty clear what you’re dealing with in this kit, with the things you need to mow your lawn.
This isn’t one of the robotic mowers you can find, but given the price, you shouldn’t expect that. Robotic appliances like vacuums and mowers aren’t quite this wallet friendly.
Granted, at $249 we’re not expecting a whole lot, with cordless electric mowers typically starting a little higher. By comparison, the Ryobi 18V equivalent is $329, and a 36V Ryobi model is $499.
At a buck under $250, Ozito’s mower has the market cornered on price, and maybe value given what’s inside.
What does it do?
And shock horror, it’s a lawn mower, so grab one of these and you’ll be cutting your lawn with it.
There’s a 25 litre grass clipping catcher in the box, but it’s made of plastic and requires you to assemble it yourself, which has to rate as one of the least fun jobs I’ve ever spent time doing.
It’s remarkable how hard this thing is to build, given it’s only a few pieces of plastic, and once you’re done, you’ll probably have broken a small section off just trying to force it in place. We hope you don’t, but we definitely did.
Outside of that, there’s a 4.0 amp battery in the box with a push button power check, plus a charger for it to be charged up, and from there you really just need to plug the battery in, press the button and squeeze the controller, and away you go, trimming your lawn.
Does it do the job? Does the Ozito 18V Brushless Lawn Mower cut grass?
The good news is that for $250, the Ozito mower cuts grass, and does it fairly efficiently, provided you’re happy with one of three heights.
Yes, it works, and it’s even quite quick to use, though it’s not as wide as we expected, or at least not as wide as our ageing Aldi-brand model is, and meant our lawn needed a few more runs of the old slice and dice.
The mower definitely does the job, and is fairly efficient at doing so, but the lack of height choice — 30mm, 50mm, and 70mm — means you’re kind of stuck in the middle of quite close, reasonable, and not much at all, when it feels like you really need something between its first and second setting.
On our lawn, the Ozito was pretty much stuck in Goldilocks and the Three Bears, only it never really found just right. We yearned for what would have been 40mm, with the 30mm way too close, and the 50mm feeling like it wasn’t doing much to tidy things up.
What does it need?
So more height control would be appreciated, as would a better way of controlling that. As it is now, you need to flip the mower on its side and go in underneath, changing the height of the wheels manually.
A gear system would be much nicer, controllable from up top, but we suspect that has been lost to the overall cost Ozito is going for.
We also wish the build quality was better, and that it managed to fold up more easily for storage in the shed.
For instance, the build feels cheap and very plastic, almost as if the thing was a toy. There’s a plastic set of controls that almost comes off like it came out of a kids play set, while the cord connecting it looks like the plastic hose you’d hide desk cables with. This is an inexpensive lawnmower, and it really looks and feels like it, too.
The inability to fold the metal handle is one of those things that bothered us, and instead allows you to bend over the top section onto the bottom, but nothing else.
That barely makes the mower folded, and instead you need to undo the thumb screws at the bottom, disconnecting the part from the main mower body entirely. It’s clumsy and feels like it could be better designed.
Is it worth your money?
The problem Ozito has with its brushless budget lawnmower package is the value: it looks good on paper, and when you see the box advertised at Bunnings with a big dollar figure, it screams like it would be great, but it’s also not that amazing.
We came away from this mower feeling like we should have spent more to get something that felt better, that was more durable, and screamed quality as opposed to “she’ll do”.
Use the Ozito 18V Brushless Lawn Mower and you’ll get the lawn cut, but we’re not sure it’ll last longer than a year or two given how it feels. That’s not to say this is a cheap-as-chips flimsy garden tool — it’s not that — but that even though you can find the batteries, the whole thing feels like it just won’t last.
We’ve all owned gadgets like that, and this is no different. Frankly, we’d be surprised if this wasn’t out on a council collection within the next two years. It just feels that cheap, even if the price is downright friendly.
Yay or nay?
While the price is attractive, the result with the Ozito Brushless Lawnmower is very much a case of you get what you pay for. Yes, the price is great, but the performance feels under where it should be, and the quality leaves a lot to be desired.
Plastic and cheap feeling, the Ozito 18V Brushless Lawn Mower doesn’t at all feel like it’s quality, and you’re really getting something for the price.
But that mightn’t matter to you, either.
This is a mower that competes on price, and if that’s the main factor for you, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Could you do better with another mower? Probably, but if you’re looking to save money on a garden haircut, the result isn’t that bad, it just could be better.
