Electric lawn mowers can cut it for most homeowners, but a gas powered lawn mower may still be best for your needs. Here’s how to decide on gas vs. electric.
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For most homeowners, an electric mower is more than sufficient to maintain a standard sized yard. And a small electric mower is actually better than a gas mower in many ways. Below, I take a look at the major differences between gas and electric lawn mowers, namely:
Gas powered mowers were once the only practical choice for large yards, thick grass, or mowing far away from a power outlet for an electric corded lawn mower. Times have changed though, and most modern electric battery powered mowers are just as powerful as gas powered machines.
Let’s sum it all up with a comparison of corded electric, battery electric, and gas powered lawn mowers.
Personally, I found using a corded mower absolutely infuriating, especially for a yard with a lot of rocks and other obstacles. If you have a big yard, a corded mower may prove unsafe and very irritating.
The longer a cord is, the thicker the wire, which creates a limit on cord length due to weight and expense. And, even if you use an extension cord, safety becomes a serious concern as you have to constantly be aware of where the cord is so that you don’t run it over, damage plants, knock over garden statuary, or otherwise cause an accident.
Cordless electric mowers do cost a bit more than a corded mower, but you’ll save a good chunk of money on your electricity bill by using a battery powered mower.
Most battery electric mowers now use brushless DC motors that modulate power depending on conditions. This makes for a very efficient mowing experience that is more powerful and energy efficient than corded models, and just as powerful and more environmentally friendly than gas powered mowers.
If you’re really into getting dirty and oily and have the kind of masochistic tendencies whereby you want to spend your weekends yanking cords to try to start an itinerant motor, a gas powered lawn mower might be perfect for you. If not, bear in mind that these engines aren’t anywhere near as easy to use and maintain as an electric mower.
For a gas mower, it’s best to have the mower serviced regularly by a certified professional. Doing the maintenance yourself may seem cheaper and easier in the short term, but the DIY approach invalidates your warranty, meaning you’re not covered if anything goes terribly wrong.
If you’re mechanically minded and like mucking about with motors, these issues probably don’t phase you in the slightest. The fact remains, however, that, compared to electric mowers, gas mowers are still:
For an electric mower, maintenance requirements include:
That’s it!
I’ve had my Ego mower for four years and have probably spent less than an hour on maintenance that whole time. It’s still in fantastic condition and works like a charm every time.
As a kid, I was very happy when my folks upgraded to a corded electric mower. I’d had it with the frustration of pulling a recoil starter again and again without the gas powered mower jumping to life. And that gas mower was heavy.
If you live somewhere cool or have an old mower, the chances are even higher of your engine not firing when you want it to. That might be because of carbon on your spark plug or a dirty carburetor, both of which you’re going to have to deal with if you want to keep using the mower.
Larger engines with heavier pistons are even harder to start. That’s why lawn mower manufacturers have mostly switched to easy-start functions that use an electronic decompression device to help reduce engine resistance. Electric ignition also makes for a more reliable start-up process. Some gas powered motors also have easy access spark plugs and drains for oil, including those in my top picks for Leaf Score.
The first lawn mowers, invented in the s, were largely ineffective and not at all energy efficient.
These days, we’ve mostly moved away from gas guzzling, smoke belching 2-stroke mowers to slightly better 4-stroke mowers and beyond, to:
These are far more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, not to mention quieter.
Unfortunately, lawn mowers are not eligible for an Energy Star rating, which means you have to do your own research to find an energy efficient, eco-friendly lawn mower.
Energy Star does offer an archive of products meeting Energy Star standards, but most of the lawnmower batteries on this list are lead acid or very low voltage, meaning they’re almost certainly outmatched for energy efficiency and performance by current lithium ion batteries and chargers.
Voltage (V) and Ampere-Hours (AH) are two key things to look for when buying a battery powered electric lawn mower. A higher voltage doesn’t mean more power, but it may mean a slightly longer mowing time between charges.
Basically, don’t be bamboozled into thinking an 80V battery is way better than a 20V; both will provide the same wattage, it’s just that the lower voltage battery will require higher amps. Confused? Let’s do some math.
Consider the following two batteries:
Which one is best?
Both provide around the same amount of working time because the 20 V battery has half the voltage but twice the Ampere-Hours than the 40 V 2 AH battery.
However, because the higher voltage battery is a little more efficient, there might be a few extra minutes of mowing time from this model, but that’s not enough to warrant a significant price difference.
If you compare a 2 AH 80 V battery with a 4 AH 20 V battery, however, the 80 V option gives you about twice the working time of the 20 V battery.
Newer battery powered mowers have power monitoring technology built in, so that the motor continually adjusts power output depending on cutting conditions. Thicker grass and/or longer grass means the motor will increase power, while the onboard computer will reduce power as the mower traverses shorter, less dense grass.
The responsiveness of mowers does vary, however. Some models suffer from a significant lag between when the mower senses changes in cutting conditions and when it toggles power output.
The easiest way to counteract this is simply to slow down. I do this in my yard when I hit an area of thicker or longer grass. That gives my mower a better chance to modulate power output for better results and better battery life.
If you mow a lot in summer, and have dense grass, get a second battery.
Want more information on gas powered products? Feel free to contact us.
Having a backup ready to go means you can zip through the job without having to wait for recharging.
A good battery charger is also essential. This means one with:
When you’re done using your battery powered device, set it to charge again. Storing a battery with less than 30% charge can speed up degradation, meaning it can’t hold a full charge as well.
Keep your charger somewhere cool and recharge all batteries at least once every three months to help keep lithium ion batteries in good working condition.
Most batteries will last at least two years before you start noticing any decline in performance. My Ego batteries are still going strong at four years!
One other big advantage of electric mowers is the potential rebate for new purchases. In some jurisdictions, local government offers money back on your first purchase of a new electric lawn mower if you can demonstrate it will replace a gas guzzling lawn mower.
For example, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) has two programs designed to support cleaner air by encouraging residents in the following places to replace their gasoline powered garden equipment:
Residents can get up to $250 in rebates for scrapping an operable, gasoline powered lawn mower in favor of a cordless, battery electric lawn mower. Not all models qualify, though, so check specifics before buying.
Many of the eligible mowers are on my list for the best eco-friendly energy efficient lawn mowers.
If you don’t live in this area, ask your local authority if they run a similar program. If the answer is no, form a delegation and ask them to put a program in place!
Now that you have a better sense of the kind of mower that suits your needs, you might want to look at other factors to consider when buying a new mower, such as:
For the average lawn, a fully charged electric walk-behind mower will finish the job, same as a gas one.
That may come as a surprise to gas mower owners who’ve hesitated to switch based on fears that an electric mower can’t tackle their lawn without a time-out to recharge.
The fact is that in the real world of mowing in America, the average-sized lawn is just around a quarter acre, according to HomeAdvisor, a home-services marketplace. Consumer Reports’ recent expert tests found that the average electric walk-behind mower’s run time was 45 to 50 minutes per charge. So it could easily handle a quarter acre, even on somewhat sloped land. On flat, unobstructed ground, it might cut a half an acre. That means in many instances, you can take worries about staying power out of the equation.
But then, there’s performance. Which type of walk-behind lawn mower actually cuts grass better: electric or gas? We decided to look at our tests to find out.
Environmental and noise concerns: Many communities—plus the state of California—are effectively banning gas outdoor power tools to curb the air and noise pollution they generate. If you live in one of those communities, the decision to go electric has been made for you. If you’re simply sick of your gas mower’s smell and din—or your mowing noise disturbs nearby neighbors—an electric mower offers a solution. They do make considerable noise, but they handily beat out their gas competitors in those tests.
Cost: There’s a decent argument to be made that electric walk-behind mowers, both push and self-propelled, are cheaper to own in the long run than gas mowers when annual maintenance and gas prices are taken into account. We found that to be true when comparing lower- and average-cost electric and gas models. But electric models are still generally more pricey up front.
Batteries: Charging the power source before every use and replacing it every few years aren’t issues for gas mower and tractor owners. With an electric mower, you’ll need to do both. Charge times are improving to less than an hour and a half for most batteries in CR’s lawn mower and tractor ratings. That’s still not an insignificant time, so you need to factor that in when planning your mowing.
Batteries for electric mowers are getting better and lasting longer, but replacing them—at $100 to $300 and sometimes more—still adds to the cost of operation. “The added benefit, though, is that most manufacturers offer other tools that can share that battery,” says David Trezza, who heads CR’s mower and tractor testing. “You’re getting multiple benefits from the same battery.”
Most manufacturers sell those compatible tools on their own, without the batteries and chargers—and their associated costs.
For this article, our engineers took years’ worth of lawn mower testing data to build a tool that allows us to compare performance scores from dozens of models, both gas and electric. We compared average scores for gas and electric walk-behind mowers in tests of cutting evenness, side discharging, mulching, bagging, and handling. The scores have a numeric value from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). We also looked at charge times and cut times for every electric model, and across electric models in general.
One thing to note: Averages can be misleading because they include outliers that are either exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. Bell curves show where a majority of models of each type fall in terms of performance. Keep in mind that we devised this head-to-head to compare models across categories. In your own yard, the only thing that matters is the performance of the specific mower you choose. For that reason, we’ve included some top-rated models of each type at the bottom of this article. Here’s how electric and gas models overall compared in our tests, and which came out on top:
Our evenness of cut score reflects how close a mower comes to leaving behind an even, carpetlike surface on your lawn.
Which is better? Gas mowers score very slightly ahead of electric for even cutting, with an average of 4.7 to electric’s 4.5. As a group, all gas mowers we tested scored in the top half of our scale. (The lowest evenness score for a gas mower was still a solid 3.5.) Electrics fell into a broader range (from 5 down to 3.8). The takeaway: There are plenty of electric mowers that match the best gas models when it comes to even cutting; though there were some underperforming electrics, all but two models scored very good or excellent. That said, no gas mower we tested scored below 3.5.
If you prefer to bag your clippings, you’ll want a mower that fills its bag to the max so that you don’t have to empty it as often. Our test measures how much the bag held before it was filled completely or the chute clogged.
Which is better? Both earn great scores, with a few gas models attaining a score of 4.6 against the electrics’ top score of 4.5. But for both types, the truth lies mostly in the middle: The bulk of models of both types settle in the area of “good,” ranging from 2.3 to 4.5 for electrics and 2.7 to 4.6 for gas.
We measure mower noise at the ear and at 25 feet away to represent a neighbor’s exposure. Models scoring fair or poor in our tests exceeded 85 decibels at the ear, a measure at which hearing protection is recommended. Unlike the other scores, the noise score runs from 0.5 to 5.5.
Which is better? If you value your hearing and neighborhood tranquility, you’ll switch to electric at the speed of sound. Here we find the biggest spread between average scores: 5.0 for electric against—wait for it—2.2 for gas when measured at the ear. The gas models that were noisiest scored 0.5 (poor) against the noisiest electric models, which scored 2.7 (good).
The story is even more compelling at a distance of 25 feet, with an average score of 5.3 for electrics and 2.8 for gas models. The quietest gas model scored 4.2 to the quietest electric’s 5.5, and the noisiest gas scored 1.1 to the noisiest electric’s score of 3.6. In other words, the noisiest electric mower was easier on the ears than the quietest gas model.
For mulching and side-discharging, both electric and gas walk-behind mowers are about even.
For cutting and bagging, gas walk-behind mowers slightly outmatch electrics. And pricewise, you’re more apt to find a great gas machine for a lower up-front cost.
When it comes to factors such as noise, smell, maneuverability, and ease of maintenance, electric mowers have the advantage. Over the long term, models at lower and average prices also can be more cost-effective than gas, even more so if fuel prices rise and batteries continue getting better and cheaper. And if the environment is important to you, this type of mower is the only way to go.
But because the choice remains with you, here are the best gas and electric walk-behind mowers from our exclusive ratings of over 160 models.
Every February our testers head down to Florida, where we put that year’s crop of new lawn mowers to the test on 500,000 square feet of grass at our testing grounds. We test each mower for how well it handles mulching, side discharging, and bagging (collecting 3,000 pounds of clippings in the process). We also see how each mower handles varied terrain by running it over slopes and ditches as well as level ground. And we assess its convenience features.
Then we combine the results of our field testing with CR members’ feedback on reliability and owner satisfaction from our annual member surveys. This data enables us to arrive at the Overall Score you’ll find in our ratings.
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