Is the Ego Power+ 21′ Mower the Future of Lawn Maintenance?

I’ve always worn ear plugs when I use gas mowers, but with the electric mower, I’ve never felt the need to. They aren’t silent, but it’s not a disruptive noise, so you can actually mow your lawn at times when you’ve avoided before, to not bother your neighbors. I still wouldn’t advise mowing at 5:00 a.m., but you won’t bother your neighbors with an electric mower compared to a gasoline mower.

But what I think will win most people over is the maintenance. Just like my Tesla, there’s really not much maintenance required, which can save you time and money in the long run. The only things you have to do are clear out the deck from grass build up and sharpen the blade, that’s pretty much it.

Both of these Ego models fold up for easy storage, which was a big selling point for me. You just unclip two clips from the push arm to collapse it and then you push the lever to swoop the entire arm over the top of the mower, stand them all up on edge and wheel it up against a wall. I’ve got a small garage, so being able to tuck this away after each mowing was a big plus.

One downside with the design of my original Ego mower were the clips. They never had a strong click or a grasp, so as you mow, they could sometimes work their way loose. My wife and I ended up using a little bit of tape on there to stop that from happening, but it wasn’t a great user experience.

Along the same lines of a complaint was the key that you had to insert and press down as you pulled the activation lever to make it run. The pull bar works in the same way as a gasoline mower for automatic shut-off if you let go of the mower while it’s running. I just never understood why it was a removable key, which could get lost. It came tethered to the handle when I bought it and I’ve never removed it or felt the need to.

The older Ego isn’t self-propelled, which I had some concerns about in the beginning, but it turned out to be somewhat manageable. It’s dramatically lighter than any other mower that I’ve used before so it doesn’t take much effort to push. However, we do have a bit of a steep slope in the front yard that can be challenging if your yard is more level than the lack of self-propulsion shouldn’t be an issue at all. For my wife and I it was a little bit of an annoyance.

The only other issue, if you can call it that, was that it can get clogged up with grass from time to time if it was too damp, and most the time this didn’t happen, but when it did, it was very annoying to have to stop and clean out a couple of times during a mowing session.

Having carried that in gasoline mowers too, but less frequently on mowers with higher horsepower. This may sound like a really annoying issue but they were manageable and the trade-offs were worth it to have a mower that had almost no maintenance, ran off of sunshine, and didn’t make you go deaf when you’re mowing the yard.

That brings me to the new model, which is the 56 volt LM 2130 SP. It rolls right off the tongue. It came with this 7.5 amp hour battery and it’s been a few years between the models and it shows Ego has clearly been learning, iterating, and improving the design. This model has erased pretty much every issue I had with the previous model.

It’s self-propelled so getting them are up the hill is now effortless. You control the speed of the mower with a little dial in the middle of the handlebar, which I think is a great location and it’s easy to use. It can vary the speed between 2.3 and 3.1 miles per hour on either side of the dial or to large green buttons which act as an accelerator pedal. Push either one of those down and the mower takes off.

The only oddity I’ve noticed is the motor can sometimes lock a wheel if you take your hand off the button to stop the motion and then immediately lift or turn or drag the mower backwards. This is actually mentioned in the manual’s troubleshooting section, which states to push the mower forwards just a little bit if that happens. I figured that out on my own the first time I used it so it just takes some getting used to and it really isn’t a problem.

The vertical part of the bar has a shape to it now that feels more comfortable and secure to hold in place ease your hand in the perfect location for the button, but the fact the button wraps the corner gives you a lot of flexibility depending what you’re doing. It replaced the key with a simple push button, so there’s no more having to worry about losing a key. It’s built right in now, which is the better design choice.

They’ve also included a headlight on this model, which I really haven’t had a chance to test out yet. The button to turn it on and off is located right by the handlebar and on the other side is an indicator light to show you the battery’s charge. This is kind of useless because the LED light is so dim when it’s bright and sunny out it just looks like a white piece of plastic unless you cup your hand around it and squint really hard.

The issue I had with the clips on the old model looks to be solved. These clips have a very strong click in grasp. It’s obviously too early to say if these will hold up for years to come, but they feel dramatically better than the old version. And just like the other version, it has the option for mulching or catching the grass.

You can easily switch between modes by inserting the mulching plug or removing that and attaching the bag. The new model does come with one extra attachment for throwing the grass to the side in case you don’t want to mulch or catch it. In my case, I’ll never be doing that, but it’s nice they include it in the box as an option.

With this model, the new version has also redesigned the battery compartment. The old version wasn’t bad, but the battery inserted straight up and down. It worked just fine, but it made it a little more difficult to see the battery light indicator from behind the mower.

It was also a two-handed operation to remove it because you had to hold the lid open. The new design puts the battery at an angle towards the back of the motor. You have a straight line of sight to the compartment now, but because the angle, it’s also slightly easier to insert and remove the batteries even with one hand because you don’t have to hold the lid open anymore.

But probably the most impressive thing is the new double blade design, which they call “Select Cut”. Out of the box that comes to the premium mulching blade attached, but you can swap out the lower blade with the included premium bagging blade, which is oddly described as “cutting grass into finer fragments” that’s great for mulching and bagging straight from the manual, “if you want to get better mulching and bagging performance, please replace the lower blade with the edge premium tri-cut lower blade”.

So why not install that by default? It’s not a big deal because they do include it in the box but it is just a little bit confusing so what about batteries and the charging experience. Before I get to that though I’d like to thank Skillshare for sponsoring this video.

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The first 1,000 of my subscribers that click the link in the description will get a 2 month free trial of premium membership so you can explore your creativity. Thanks to skill share and to all of you for supporting the channel. So what about those batteries in my opinion this is where the entire line of eco products were really shines. The 7.5 amp hour battery that’s included charges in about 60 minutes with the included rapid charger. How long it will run depends on the workload and how much you’re using the self propelled motor.

In my case it only used about 40 percent of the battery to do my entire yard which is a little less than a quarter if you’re doing the light load then it can last but on average you’re probably going to see somewhere around 45 minutes of use, and this is often pointed out as one of the downsides to battery driven electric lawnmowers over gasoline.

But I really do not agree. If you buy a second battery, then you can swap out the battery and keep mowing when the first one is recharging. If you buy multiple Ego products, you can end up with a nice little stockpile of batteries. I’ve got two 2.5 amp hour batteries and one five amp hour, in addition to the 7.5 that came with this mower. I got those extra batteries with the Ego trimmer, the leaf blower, and a previous mower. Ego also sells a 10 amp hour battery if you need to really max things out.

How long is their lifespan? Well, I’ll tell you when I find out because my oldest batteries are five years old and they’re still going strong. From May till early October, I mow my lawn at least once a week, sometimes twice depending on how fast the grass is growing. In the fall, there’s a lot of time spent using the leaf blower and taxing those batteries too.

Ego even makes a portable power station that you can pop forward these batteries onto and get up to 2,000 watts of continuous power to run anything you want. Hopefully this doesn’t sound like an ad because it’s not. I paid for all of this with my own money and I’m just impressed with the quality of what I purchased.

My wife, who hates mowing, doesn’t mind it so much anymore since we got the Ego. I wanted her to tell you in her own words but she hates being filmed so we came to a compromise. “You know I have to say I like it a lot more than the gas mower. It’s definitely quieter. I can listen to my music. It’s easier to push and I kind of make mowing fun.”

So if you’re looking for a better mowing experience and you want to get a little greener by getting rid of a gasoline mower, you really should be looking at Ego. They really are the Tesla of lawn mowers. And even if you don’t care about going green, this mower can easily go toe-to-toe with a gasoline powered mower but without the maintenance and the fumes. It’s just a better mowing experience all around.

Now if you liked this video and you’re looking to make your home a little bit greener, be sure to check out my review of the Ecobee smart thermostat. It’s another great way to reduce your energy use, save some money, and make heating and cooling your home easier. Jump in the comments and let me know if you’ve gone with an electric mower and how it’s working out. And as always, thanks so much for watching. I’ll see you in the next one.