{"id":834869,"date":"2026-07-31T04:08:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T04:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/834869\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T04:08:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T04:08:39","slug":"ecovacs-goat-a2000-review-robot-mowing-with-edge-trimming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/834869\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecovacs Goat A2000 Review – Robot mowing with edge trimming!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Robot lawn mowers have come a long way in a very short amount of time and I think it\u2019s weird that we don\u2019t reflect sometimes on the journey that technology makes. In the case of robot lawn mowers I\u2019ve got to tell you the ECOVACS GOAT A2000 LiDAR Pro has demonstrated to me that very simple fact: we\u2019ve come a long way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

EFTM Snapshot:\u00a0I\u2019m still convinced that a robot lawnmower is the best thing you can do for the health and look of your lawn. Because we\u2019ve come so far, this is a fantastic option. Its mowing capabilities are exceptional and it\u2019s very easy to set up. The edge trimming is a huge bonus but I do think it depends on how good your yard is or how well structured it\u2019s laid out as to how good a result you\u2019ll actually get.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A short history of robot lawnmowers<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re new to this whole world, I got to tell ya it\u2019s a game changer. It\u2019s been nearly 10 years since I installed my first robot lawn mower<\/a> at our house.<\/p>\n

That first one seemed like a chore just to get set up. You literally needed to lay a wire around the entire boundary of your lawn and secure that into your lawn with pegs, which the lawn would eventually grow over. The wire was never visible but that wire was how the mower knew where it was.<\/p>\n

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Like with with robot vacuums in the early days, these early robot mowers just moved around your yard constantly, bouncing around randomly and erratically. Over time they would mow every square inch and they did a great job.<\/p>\n

Fast forward a few years and we started to see models that didn\u2019t need a boundary wire.<\/a> Maybe they could detect grass using a camera. We saw models that would actually run paths back and forth the same way you would mow in straight lines, lane after lane. The lawn was mowed beautifully.<\/p>\n

We saw GPS used to track and understand <\/a>the location of your lawn and the edges. All those technologies have kind of brought us to where we are today. The use of cameras, LIDAR, and a whole range of sensors to make setting up a robot mower easy and to make the quality of the robot mowing outcome pretty sensational.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Goat Grows up<\/p>\n

When ECOVACS first got into this game, it was no real surprise they make amazing robot vacuums. They know robotics. ECOVACS is a robotics company not a robot vacuum company so I guess the move to the outdoors was logical.<\/p>\n

The first GOAT, called the ECOVACS GOAT G1<\/a>, was different to anything I\u2019d seen before. It was a big beast, had a different style to it, used a camera on top, but it also used these kind of strange beacon poles that you would put at different corners or places throughout your yard. You only needed two. I needed three because I had an L-shaped yard but that would use those beacons to determine where it was. That was how it located itself in your yard critically. Also you would remote control the GOAT G1 around the edge of your lawn to actually map your property.<\/p>\n

The GOAT A2000 is a huge step forward for ECOVACS in this space and to be honest I\u2019ve been using the original GOAT G1 until this new GOAT arrived. The lawns looked great. It just never did the edges so every few weeks I get the whipper snipper out and do those edges. Now with the GOAT A2000<\/a> in part that job\u2019s also covered because the GOAT A2000 from ECOVACS features a line trimmer on the left-hand edge that, in theory, will trim right to the edge, whether it\u2019s a brick wall or fence or just the boundary of your lawn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Setting up the Ecovacs Goat A2000<\/p>\n

The setup process for the new ECOVACS GOAT A2000 was actually remarkably similar to the GOAT G1. Really out of the box very simple to set up. You just need power, no beacons required here, so it is literally just power and pairing the new GOAT with your Wi-Fi network and your phone\u2019s Bluetooth.<\/p>\n

From there it\u2019s a remote control lawnmower. You drive the ECOVACS GOAT A2000 around the edge of your lawn using your mobile phone as the controller, walking slowly along with it. It\u2019s got some pace when it\u2019s in direct forward mode. It motors along but when turning and twisting it\u2019s a much slower process.<\/p>\n

Overall a very simple process and from there there\u2019s a lot of little intricate things you can do in the app, like determining the mowing direction, which way you want the lines to go essentially, as well as schedules and things like that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One thing you\u2019ll notice in the app, though, is the regular map, which has been the case with the Ecovacs Goat before this. Because this device, the A2000, uses LiDAR to help it with its navigation, you now have a LiDAR-created 3D map of your yard. I got to tell you, it\u2019s amazing to see. You can look around this 3D map and actually see a brilliant rendering of your backyard in great detail, because LiDAR is the best way to reproduce a scene, an area, or a thing. It gives you real context for how well this robot is able to know its surroundings.<\/p>\n

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How well does it mow?<\/p>\n

Now I want to preface this by saying it\u2019s the middle of winter. I\u2019ve been using the ECOVACS GOAT A2000 across the month of July. Let\u2019s be clear: my lawn isn\u2019t growing fast. Come summer we\u2019ll revisit this, comparing the ECOVACS GOAT A2000 to many other robot mowers which are hitting the market in Australia over these coming months.<\/p>\n

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What I\u2019ve noticed most importantly is it\u2019s doing a great job. The lawn is constantly mowed. It\u2019s constantly trimmed. The one thing I think people probably don\u2019t understand is that this isn\u2019t a big blade on the bottom of this like you would get on a traditional lawnmower. There are literally three little razor blades that spin and articulate underneath this device that trim the lawn. It\u2019s not actually a robot lawnmower. It\u2019s a robot lawn trimmer because if you send it out every day or three, it\u2019s just trimming the top of the grass. What\u2019s most important is that it\u2019s always trimming the top of the weeds too so the weeds never take hold in your lawn. I think that\u2019s the healthiest thing that I\u2019ve ever done for my lawn.<\/p>\n

One key advantage of the Ecovacs Goat A2000 over many other robot mowers and Ecovacs\u2019 own original Goat G1 is the dual-blade disc. Underneath the mower are two discs, each with their own blades. You\u2019re getting a wider cut and therefore fewer passes are required. The extra power, the extra amount of cutting that comes from those blades, I think, gives you far better performance as well.<\/p>\n

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Let me be clear: I\u2019m not a greenskeeper. My lawn is not perfect. It\u2019s not beautiful but it\u2019s better today than it was when I was this sole responsible individual for that lawn. If I missed a week, let it go too long, let the weeds come up, that was a negative impact on my lawn. Now the GOAT, or George as we\u2019ve called this one, replacing Gary, our old G1, is out there every couple of days trimming the lawns, doing his job, getting it done. Now it\u2019s also doing one more thing: the edges.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Edge trimming with the Ecovacs Goat A2000<\/p>\n

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Edge trimming on the ECOVACS GOAT A2000, to me, feels very similar to a lot of the mopping innovations that occurred in robot vacuums. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m proud to say that I\u2019ve used a lot of robot vacuums over many, many years and I\u2019ve seen the evolution of that technology. Every time we got a new solution to mopping as an example on the robot vacuum, it was excellent but now, looking back, I see how perhaps they weren\u2019t as great as you might have thought at the time.<\/p>\n

Fact is I think the edge trimming on the ECOVACS GOAT A2000 is exactly the same. It\u2019s an unbelievable advance in robot mowers but I think we can do better.<\/p>\n

First and foremost I think I should cover here the fact that my lawn is strange. I have a brick fence with a neighbour, I have a pathway up to my Hills Hoist washing line, I have a bricked barbecue area, and worst of all I have this sloping narrow backyard that slopes down to what should be maybe a garden bed. It\u2019s a rock retaining wall with uneven rocks at that. Frankly it\u2019s not a square simple lawn so actually getting to the edges is a bit of a challenge. In the end I had to mark off areas of the map to do that to ensure that the GOAT avoided those areas because it was coming unstuck too often on the sloped edge near a rock wall. Too many times we had to recover the GOAT and put it back into the grass.<\/p>\n

\"\"Poor George<\/p>\n

Along the clear and distinct edges it\u2019s having great success at trimming those longer bits of grass that it\u2019s not mowing on a regular basis. Is it the same as me getting out there with the whipper snipper? No. Is it close? Not quite.<\/p>\n

If I had a distinctly squared-edged, bounded lawn I think this would be a great solution and you\u2019d probably only use your line trimmer on a much more irregular basis. For me we\u2019re still a little way off with this technology. Little things like on a square corner the trimmer\u2019s not getting out far enough to actually get into the very corner when the GOAT makes the turn.<\/p>\n

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Probably not an issue for most people but whenever I got close to it to try and take a little video, for safety reasons it would shut off the edge trimmer. That\u2019s fine, I get it, it\u2019s detected a person within 1.5 meters it turns off the edge trimmer but can we maybe get it to stop driving? What happens is it keeps driving with the edge trimmer off so it actually misses a spot. Little things like that I think can be improved over time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Ecovacs App<\/p>\n

As someone who\u2019s used many robot vacuums from ECOVACS and, of course, the original GOAT, I\u2019m well aware of the ins and outs of the ECOVACS app. It is a great app to use with their products.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s actually not the app that I\u2019ve got any issues with here. I just think it\u2019s the simple things, like setting that no-go zone for the edge of my lawn.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m talking about a slightly sloped edge of the lawn down onto a garden bed on a rock wall. This is not an easy place for the GOAT to drive but it\u2019s grassed. I wanted to map it originally and then I wanted to draw a line and say, \u201cDon\u2019t go there anymore,\u201d because I realized it couldn\u2019t cope with it in the day-to-day mowing of the lawn. Unfortunately I couldn\u2019t just draw a line like a virtual boundary you can do in robot vacuum apps. I had to drive the GOAT over there and drive it into the no-go zone. I had to drive it into its least favorable driving conditions and then tell it, \u201cThis is where I don\u2019t want you ever to go again.\u201d They need to be able to set it so that we can just draw on the map and say yes and no to these areas.<\/p>\n

Other than that the app is outstanding. I\u2019m a big fan and I love the way it keeps me informed and how easy it is to use for anyone, whether you\u2019re experienced or otherwise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not our last review<\/p>\n

As I said before though, we\u2019re in the middle of winter. I can\u2019t really tell how much those edges have grown and how much it\u2019s getting or missing at this point. While I know the edge trimming isn\u2019t as good as it could be, it may be far better than I think. Once we get into summer and we\u2019ve got some real growth happening from the lawn, I\u2019ll know very quickly what it looks like in certain areas. I know certain areas that it will just not do well, especially those edges where it can\u2019t drive and I\u2019ll need to do. I think along some of the fences it\u2019s going to do a great job. That will play into who this is for and who can rely on it as an edge trimmer. For other people the traditional GOAT or the sibling GOAT, which is recently released and doesn\u2019t have an edge trimmer, might be the perfect solution. We will revisit this robot mower and others during the summer months when the lawn really jumps up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Should I buy a Robot lawn mower<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to lie. I love doing the lawns. I love getting the mower out. I love mowing the lawns. I love doing the edges. It\u2019s kind of my time. I listen to music. Hopefully it\u2019s a lovely day and yeah it all just works out nicely.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not reliable enough to mow the lawns to perfectionecovacs-goat-a2000-lidar-pro-review. That\u2019s where a robot lawnmower comes in. The consistency of continuously trimming your lawns, sending a mower out every few days, isn\u2019t just about showing off that you\u2019ve got a robot. It\u2019s about getting a better lawn. It actually produces a better-looking lawn. I think it\u2019s because the weeds never come up but I also think the grass is healthier because it\u2019s trimmed consistently at a set height.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s obviously not cheap. You\u2019re paying thousands of dollars for a device that doesn\u2019t really pay itself back because unless you\u2019re paying someone to mow your lawns, you\u2019re not actually saving any money. The time you get back to stand and look in awe of a robot that\u2019s out there doing the job that you once did is valuable in itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Web: Ecovacs<\/a><\/p>\n

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Trev is a Technology Commentator, Dad, Speaker and Rev Head.<\/p>\n

He produces and hosts several popular podcasts, EFTM,\u00a0 Two Blokes Talking Tech, Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars, The Best Movies You\u2019ve Never Seen, and the Private Feed. He is the resident tech expert for Triple M on radio across Australia, and is the resident Tech Expert on Channel 9\u2019s Today Show and appears regularly on 9 News, A Current Affair and Sky News Early Edition.<\/p>\n

Father of three, he is often found in his Man Cave.<\/p>\n

Like this post? Buy Trev a drink!<\/a><\/p>\n

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