9/10
Open rating explainerInformationWIREDWide cutting area reduced mowing times by 30 percent. Dual-blade system has more suction. Powerful self-propelling drive system. Good battery life. Wide range of clearly labeled cutting heights. Handle folds down for compact storage. Quiet and odor-free.TIREDOverkill for smaller yards.I dislike lawns. Vast unproductive expanses of grass are great for playing baseball, but I don't want one at my house. I want gardens, orchards, and silvopasture capable of producing food. And yet here I am, having recently purchased 5 acres of property, much of which is lawn, which therefore has to be mowed.
When my older, 21-inch gas mower died yet again at the start of summer, I decided it was time to jump ship for an electric mower. They are quieter, don't smell like exhaust, and are largely maintenance-free. The largest, most powerful residential electric mower I could find was Ego's 1300 series (30-inch) mower, which has made relatively quick work of my roughly 2.5 acres of mowing, but perhaps most enticing is how easy it makes the job.
Cutting Through
Photograph: Scott GilbertsonThe 30-inch model is the newest member of Ego's line of cordless, self-propelled electric lawn mowers. The wider cutting path makes it an excellent choice for larger properties like mine, but the fact that the handle folds down to make it easier to store, combined with its surprising maneuverability, means it'll handle smaller properties in no time as well.
My old 21-inch gas mower was a Toro that a friend of mine found for free at the side of the road. He gave it to me, I replaced the carburetor, and it fired right up. Score! It ran fine for over a year. And mowing 5 acres with a small gas mower at an hourly rate made my son a relatively wealthy 11-year-old. But then it died again. And again. And at some point, small engine repair isn't fun anymore.
While I was spending weekends cleaning carbs, tracking down air filters, and not mowing, the grass was growing. In northern Wisconsin, grass grows so fast I'm pretty sure you can see it happening if you take the time. A wet June ensured that by the time the Ego arrived for testing, the grass was well out of control, up to 10 inches in the lower, wetter areas of the property.
I figured it would make a good torture test for the Ego, but I'd still need to go in afterward to hack it back with my string trimmer. To my surprise, the Ego 1300 plowed right through almost all of it in a single pass.
For the first pass, I set the height to 4.5 inches, which is easy to do using the height adjustment lever. Unlike an alarming number of mower makers, Ego's height adjustment system is a thing of beauty. The height markings aren't arbitrary letters or symbols that require you to consult a manual to translate to inches. On the Ego, the height adjustment is plainly printed in inches. Imagine that. This lets you know that if you set it to 4.5 inches, your grass will be 4.5 inches high when you're done.
Photograph: Scott GilbertsonStarting at 4.5 inches and running in Turbo mode allowed the Ego, in a single pass, to cut just about anything I pointed it toward. There is one patch of grass, below an active seeping spring, that was long enough and wet enough that I had to make two passes to get a nice even cut. After that initial mow, I then went back over it a few days later at 3 inches to finally get the height back to what I could call normal. The second mow was, dare I say, incredibly easy. Even the lowest self-propelled speed was generally fast enough for me, though I did crank it up to about the middle to get up the steeper slopes (and then turned it off entirely going downhill).
The Ego has options to mulch, bag, or side-discharge your clippings. I ran the mower in all three for testing purposes, but left to my own devices I'd mainly leave it in mulching mode. So far as I could tell in testing the three modes, what happens to the cuttings doesn't seem to have any impact on battery life or how well it cuts through tall grass. I will say, though, that the included rear bag holds way more than I would have thought.
The Ego 1300 is a big mower, by far the biggest walk-behind mower I've ever used. Despite that, pushing it on level ground when it's dead isn't difficult at all if you're in moderate shape. Uphill is another story. I definitely suggest saving some battery to get back up the hill if your yard has anything steep. That said, maneuvering the mower around trees, firepits, berry bushes, and other obstructions in my yard wasn't difficult. The self-propelled motor is easy to turn on and off as you navigate obstacles and makes the mower comfortable to hold onto when you're on a straight run.
Under the composite deck are two 15.2-inch mower blades, which look and function similarly to those you'd likely see under a riding mower (though, of course, these are smaller). The twin 6.0-Ah batteries drive dual brushless motors capable of producing 13.2 foot-pounds of torque. The blade speeds range up to 3,800 revolutions per minute, according to Ego, with a top speed of 15,100 feet per minute. The dual-blade design gives the Ego a stronger suction and lift than a traditional single-blade design. Out of the box, the blades were nice and sharp and delivered an excellent clean cut.
Photograph: Scott GilbertsonBattery life depends significantly on which mode you're using: 1, 2, or Turbo. That first mow, which I ran almost entirely on the Turbo setting, sucked down the power. I hit the flashing-red-light stage at around one hour. In the mows since, which have mostly been at the lowest power setting, I get more like an hour and 20 minutes. I haven't felt the need to mow the entire property in the 2 mode, but I suspect that would net around an hour and 10 minutes of run time.
Because the Ego 1300 is cutting about 30 percent more with every pass than a typical 21-inch mower, battery life proved less of a concern than I thought it would. That's a significant time savings, which translates to getting more grass cut on a single charge.
Competition
I know what you're thinking: If you hate mowing lawns, why not get a robot lawn mower? I have tried some, including one I liked, but quixotically, while I don't like lawns, there is a strange appeal to the chore of mowing. It gets me outside, gives me a little exercise, and there's a certain satisfaction in the job that a robot mower deprives me of. I also often make spur-of-the-moment decisions, like letting the clover-heavy patches of the mowed area temporarily go to flower, which brings the pollinators (which help the nearby raspberries and blueberries be more productive). That's difficult to do with a robot mower.
Another, perhaps saner, choice would be a riding mower, but the storage space required and expense make this a less appealing choice for me. The amount I mow shrinks every time I dig another swale, with the eventual goal of eliminating all but the paths between plantings.
Photograph: Scott GilbertsonIn terms of other 30-inch electric mowers, probably the biggest competition is Ego's own commercial series, which is more expensive and intended for lawn professionals, but it is an option worth considering if you have a large property.
The Ego 1300 isn't cheap, but part of what you're doing here is buying into a battery system, which works across Ego's wide variety of lawn and garden electric tools. If you enjoy the chore of mowing the lawn, but want to cut down the time it takes, the Ego 1300 is a fantastic electric mower and well worth the expense.
$1,799 at Lowes
.jpg)
