Does the Einhell FREELEXO CAM need any wire at all?

Not around the lawn, but there is a short cable by the charging station. Most budget robot mowers need a wire pegged round the whole lawn; the Einhell FREELEXO CAM doesn't. Einhell does, however, supply a 12 m guide cable that you lay around the charging station to help the mower dock.

To find the edge of the lawn, it uses a camera that recognises grass by colour and texture, with ultrasonic sensors for walls and hedges and a shock sensor for anything it touches. For areas it can't tell apart by sight, such as a flower bed that runs straight into the grass, Einhell includes 5 m of magnetic tape to lay down as a barrier.

That approach works best on a lawn with clean edges: paving, gravel, or a clear cut edge to a bed. Where grass fades into borders, long grass or ground-cover plants, a camera mower is more likely to wander or stop short, and you may end up laying plenty of magnetic tape anyway.

Check the slope too. Einhell rates it for 25%, lower than the wired FREELEXO models, and for 500 m². Our navigation guide explains how camera mowers compare with RTK and LiDAR.