Top 6 Reel Mowers for Bermuda Grass: Expert Picks

Customer Review: Okay first of all, I’d just like to say that I am autistic, and I absolutely LOATHE mowing the lawn. The mower is too loud, the vibrating of the handle makes my arms go numb, and I can never quite pull on the cord hard enough to get it started by myself. The smell of gasoline gives me a headache. So I finally decided to see if any old-fashioned mowers still existed, because I would much rather deal with something slower and time-consuming if it meant I wouldn’t have to deal with using a normal lawn mower. Imagine my surprise when I found that there are /new/ manual lawnmowers, and I can just order them from Amazon! So I decided I had nothing left to lose, and I would give it a try. Best. Decision. EVER. NOTE OF ADVICE: If you have difficulty putting it together (specifically, attaching the handle to the blade part), find someone with more upper-body strength to help you. They’ll get it done in two seconds. Also: it only cuts while you’re pushing it forward, so all you have to do to move it when you’re not cutting is to pull it along behind you. As for cutting grass? I love it. It works perfectly, aside from a few snags on branches that I didn’t notice. If you move it forward and back a few times, you can cut even tall weeds! Much easier than pulling them out by hand in the areas that the normal gas mower can’t reach. It’s not silent, but it’s also not the deafening roar of a gas mower. If I had to describe the sound, I’d say it’s a whooshing sound, and much much quieter than a gas mower. Plus, you don’t have to deal with your arms vibrating or constantly having to turn the mower back on! No more buying gas, no more struggling to pull on the cord hard enough to turn the mower on, and no more complicated wire-pulling to turn it off. All I have to do is push forward, and the grass gets cut. Stop walking, and it stops cutting. It’s easy to maneuver, and it’s not so heavy that I can’t pick it up and carry it up a flight of stairs to my porch if I need to. I’m never using a gas mower again.

Customer Review: My husband did not want to buy this and thought it would be so dumb to have a push lawn mower, that isn’t motorized. But we have a small lawn so there’s really no point in Us having a huge lawn mower that takes gas or electric. So finally I talked him into it And this thing is great the first time you use it if you haven’t Mowed the lawn in a while It will be difficult to mow because of the height of the grass. But after some upkeep, you’ll be fine. The other thing to keep in mind is if you get stuck on a clump of grass. That’s kind of thick. It does take a bit to get it cut but it’s really not bad. Personally, I love mowing the lawn because of this thing. It’s a good workout and it’s quiet, and you can do it at any time of the day, so you’re not disturbing anyone. It’s also light, so if you’re living in a place where you’re in a row home and you’re in the middle this way you can carry it through your house to the front or back. And it’s not too heavy to carry. That way, you don’t have to walk it down the alley or figure out something else. It’s honestly really nice and such a good workout like I said, and it makes me really enjoy mowing the lawn. As a short woman it’s not very hard to push. I am pretty strong but I’m also really short. So big things are kind of hard for me to move if they’re too tall but it’s not bad for me. I’m very much an outdoor person. So I like taking care of the yard and I also love being independent so this way I don’t need to constantly ask my husband who’s super tall to help me pick things up or move them. And I can just do it on my own. I wish we never got away from using lawn mowers like this. It really is great, especially if you have a small lawn, but even if you had a big lawn and you like being outside doing yard work and just working out in general, it’s such a great workout, so you should try it. I will say you will need someone to help you put it together if you need a lot of upper body strength. So my husband helped me put the rest together. Because I had a hard time hooking the blades in but it was great. It didn’t take long to put together either.

Customer Review: Works great. It’ll take some elbow grease the first time, if you’re grass is already tall. Then every week, after that, just stay on top of cutting the grass, and it’ll be easier to maintain. It’s not that quiet, imo, I was expecting quieter. I think I’ll spray some oil, or I may try Evinrude engine tuner and spray the contact points to see if I can get it a little quieter. Blades are sharp, and cuts the grass very well. Edit: you have to adjust the four chrome flathead screws in the back and that moves the one long blade that sits in the back/bottom. It’ll move it far back enough to where the metal blades are no longer touching and it’s completely quiet. I adjusted mine so they touch but not too much. And it is a lot quieter. I feel like having them not touching wasn’t cutting the grass as nice. Maybe just personal opinion.

Customer Review: It won’t cut tall grass but shorter grass it’s great. I will do a picture later.

Customer Review: Purchased this so the kids could mow a small section of the yard that’s fenced off and I can’t get the riding mower into. They love having a mower they can use themselves, and it does a great job cutting a variety of grasses (Bermuda, misc. local grasses, and even taller, thick St. Augustine) but it may take several passes in different directions for the most uniform final product. It is easy and smooth to push though, so that works out fine. Seems to stay sharp and when oiled regularly after use, and stays in great shape. The grass seems healthier and happier after being cut with this mower, and I love that the kids (11) can do it without my help. Great for use in a smaller space or yard – wouldn’t want to cut a half-acre or more with it (at least not of our thick mix of grasses and weeds), but is fantastic for our lush extended chicken run. Would highly recommend for someone who wants a quiet, conventional mower that doesn’t need fuel, will give you a healthier lawn, and will last a long time.

Customer Review: I bought this to mow my new installed Bermuda turf… (It’s hard to crank though… LOL!) it was extremely easy to assemble and the blades were sharp from the factory. I found it very addictive to mow with despite having an expensive Zero Turn mower and a new rotary mower. Obviously the noise level is much lower than a motorized mower and the gas savings are a plus. It is light weight which was perfect for my newly installed turf. I am mowing approximately 3200 sq ft around our house (I use my Zero Turn for the rest of my 3 acres). I have yet to have to sharpen the blades or to adjust the bed knife. IF it ever wears out, I would buy another one immediately!!! My wife is 5’2″ and barely 100 lbs and she has NO PROBLEM mowing with it… it is easy to push. When I finish mowing, I WD-40 the bed knife and then run the blades over it by pulling it along my concrete drive to distribute the WD-40 on all the blades. Great mower for the price!!!

Customer Review: Anyone can put this together in less than 5 minutes. All’s needed is a fraction of upper body strength in order to snap on the handle bar assembly. No tools required besides your bare hands. Best Mower I have ever owned. Period. I no longer worry about an extension cord getting in the way, gas not keeping the thing oiled besides using wd40 to keep the rust off and things running smoothly. People suggest it’s a work out, well I say it’s equivalent to owning a rotary manual push lawn mower (The ones with a loud motor). Takes just as much force and energy! I have seen an 80 year old push Reel mowers easily.. If your Grass is so long use weed eater first then reel. Watch for rock as hitting one can knock the bed blade out of alignment but easily fixed. So far after my first cut it seems to be holding together! Someone said the tires are rubber but that’s not true more of a soft hard plastic but even in slight dry mud it maneuvered extremely well! I didn’t see a lot of people using the bag so I wanted to say the bag works great with some minor adjustments to the clip strap I was able to mow my entire yard by pushing the clipping to the back and filled the bag all the way to the top! My yard is large. Went through crab grass, weeds easily. Cut quality superb much better than any rotary! After I was done I wiped it down best I could, clean it and hit it with some wd40 including the blades. Highly recommended! By the way 1 reviewer said his stopped moving…Thats because you probably hit a rock and the blades are hitting the bed blade to much causing it to lock.. you need to actually read your manual there are 2 screws you need to find on the sides and make minor adjustment to fix that!

Customer Review: I’ve been using a reel mower for a few years now, and I can honestly say it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made for my lawn. Initially, I was a bit intimidated – I’d only ever used rotary mowers – but it turned out to be much easier than I expected, and the results are truly impressive. The biggest advantage is the cut quality. A reel mower slices the grass blades cleanly, like a pair of scissors, rather than hacking at them like a rotary mower. This creates a much healthier lawn that’s less susceptible to disease and pests. The grass looks incredibly lush and even, almost like a golf course. It’s a noticeable difference. Beyond the aesthetics, I also appreciate the eco-friendliness of a reel mower. Mine is a manual push model, so it requires no gas or electricity, making it completely emissions-free. It’s also much quieter than a gas-powered mower, which my neighbors appreciate. Even the electric reel mowers are significantly more energy-efficient than traditional gas mowers. While there’s a bit of a learning curve, mastering the reel mower is surprisingly easy. The key is to mow frequently, taking off only a small amount of grass each time. This prevents the mower from getting bogged down and ensures a clean, even cut. It also encourages the grass to grow thicker and healthier. Some people might think reel mowers are only suitable for small lawns, but I’ve found that’s not necessarily true. While they’re certainly great for smaller yards, I’ve seen people use them effectively on larger lawns as well. It just might take a little longer. Overall, I’m thrilled with my reel mower. It gives me a beautiful, healthy lawn, it’s environmentally friendly, and it’s a great way to get some exercise. If you’re looking for an alternative to traditional mowers and want to take your lawn care to the next level, I highly recommend giving a reel mower a try. You might be surprised at how much you love it.

Customer Review: This mower took down 3 foot tall weeds, natural grasses, clover and grass that was over 5 inches tall. It was also soggy out since it never stops raining here during summer. I always wait for dry spells but sometimes have to mow in less than ideal conditions. This little mower keeps up and performs better than promised. I use a paint brush to clean damp grass off the blades, dry the whole thing, add grease and that’s all the maintenance it needs until it’s time to sharpen the blades. My gas mower gets choked out by the lawn when the turf is wet and I’d rather use muscle occasionally than keep ruining motors. I consider the hard work as a workout and skip the gym after a mow. Great product and me and the kids assembled it in under 5 minutes. Do it!

Customer Review: Since I received my new reel type mower from American Lawnmower Company, I have mowed my yard three or four times, and I have not started my “normal” power mower a single time. I had a reel type mower decades ago, rented a house, and no mower. A neighbor still had an antique reel type mower in his garage, and never used it. He offered to give it to me. I mowed a yard twice the size my current one with that mower. It was so old, it didn’t even have rubber or plastic tires. They were all metal wheels with nubs on them for traction. It still worked, but the blades were only 12 inches wide. It took a long time to mow that size yard and it finally got to too dull to cut well anymore. Now I have this nice new one, 16 inches cutting width, and it does a really nice job. My wife laughed saw what I bought, saying that thing is so old-fashioned! Our lawn looks better than before, it’s quiet, no gas to mess with, just push the thing and it cuts the grass. I can push it with one hand except you can steer easier with both hands. Never have to pull a rope, just grab the handlebars and push. Nice! Ask anyone from a golf course, I’ve been told that the only kind of mowers they use are the reel type. Those are wider, with several ganged up behind a tractor to cover more ground per pass. They want nice, even and cleanly cut grass. My gas engine mower might end up kind of lonely and neglected. I have a new favorite! I no longer feel like “I’ve gotta go mow the yard again”… all the noise, and exhaust is gone, I can even enjoy music thru the earbuds again, this thing is quiet!

Customer Review: I am so delighted we went with the Ecovacs Goat. Some pertinent background; we live in Florida and let me tell you with our daily summer rainstorms our grass needs to be cut every 5 days or so. We only have grass in the front and on the sides of the house. The grass covers just under 1/4 acre. Set up out of the box was intuitive and pretty easy, in my opinion. I should note I do not consider myself exceptionally tech savvy either. I was able to sync with my home WiFi in under a minute. The unit updated for about 10 minutes and then it was time to sync with the satellites. The process was simple, the first time it only synced with 19 satellites but it was super easy to restart the process. The second time around I made sure I was more than 2 feet away. Worked like a charm! Once I had the unit synced with satellites. It was time to map our property. I found the process rather intuitive and honestly quite quick for what was taking place. After mapping was complete I let the robot charge to full and decided to run it for a cut. The robot did a beautiful job. Our lawn looked as good as if we had used the push mower ourselves. I really like that this ecovacs model doesn’t have a perimeter wire. I can’t imagine how time and energy intensive installing a perimeter wire might be. The real time GPS navigation is working flawlessly for us. Another cool feature is the LiDAR to detect obstacles and the subsequently avoid the obstacles. Our oldest son had left a hose out during a mow that we missed. The ecovacs robot avoided the hose thus saving us an expense replacing it. The ecovacs robot is surprisingly quiet, magnitudes upon magnitudes quieter than our push mower. It also has a zero cutting edge which actually works, we definitely will not have to edge every time we mow with how good this robot mows edges. The app is amazing and so easy to use. I can customize zones and schedule mowings all from the comfort of my house when I have a spare minute. Battery life was more than enough to finish mowing our whole lawn in one charge. Overall I am beyond delighted with the performance of this robot mower for all the reasons mentioned. I really did not find anything worthy of a complaint.

Customer Review: The media could not be loaded. After mowing my own lawn for 20 years, I’m finally taking a break. This mower is not just plug in and run. It takes some setup but this mower does a great job as long as you take the time to set it up correctly. I’ve run this mower 4x in my backyard and am pretty happy with it overall. SETUP: So there is a little bit of setup and planning required to set up this mower. The app will walk you through setup step-by-step which makes it easy. Essentially you leave this mower docked outside all the time. There are some screws to secure the dock to the yard, or you could dock it on concrete if it can drive easily to the yard or there is a small ramp. After that the satellite sensor needs to be plugged in and run to the halfway point in the yard. At first I was worried about the mower running over the cable but there are hooks to secure it low to the ground and out of the way so the mower can go over it in the yard without any issues. I made the decision to put the sensor up when I’m not using it, but that is a personal preference. SETUP IMPORTANT NOTES: I had a few issues that I had to go back and fix before it mowed without missing spots. Map well, ensure the satellite sensor is not leaning, and my personal recommendation: Set the mower speed to Delicate, not Quick). Also, it isn’t going to tear through really tall grass, so make sure it is at a reasonable height before expecting it to keep your yard looking great. Since there is only one sessor I haven’t tried running it in my front yard too, but I suspect you would need to map the front and back all at once then split it into sections. MAPPING: TAKE YOUR TIME MAPPING. I used the manual mapping (although there is an auto-map function) and ended up doing it again after rushing it the first time. It recommends leaving space between the fence when mapping, but I’ve found that staying right up against the edge of the yard works best. You don’t have to have it right next to the yard since you can drive it to the starting point when mapping but it will need a clear path from the dock to the yard. I have some holes in my yard it got stuck in and was able to add “no-go” areas after the mapping was complete. You can either mark it directly on the map through the app, or even drive the mower to the no-go area manually. You can also split the yard into sections, mark sidewalks, etc. which will help with mowing large areas, certain sections, or generally scheduling mowing. MOWING: After fixing the issues mentioned above it did a fantastic job mowing my yard. I didn’t turn it over until the 4th run of mowing my backyard and realized the blades are small but VERY sharp, so be careful. This makes the mower extremely quiet to the point where I wasn’t sure if the blades were running until I saw the mowed grass behind the robot. You still need a weed-eater for edges against the fence and stuff like that (which is to be expected since you do that with a normal mower too.) I expected to have some issues with wet grass, but it did a surprisingly good job, although I don’t plan to run it right after rain. There is a setting to delay running until 3 hours after rain which is nice for scheduled tasks. APP: The app is helpful for setup, seeing the areas that have been mowed, etc. There are not a ton of settings, but there are some helpful things like auto-resume, obstacle avoidance sensitivity (flat ground, normal, high grass) and mowing direction. You can set it to mow along exact boundaries or edge mowing if you don’t map exactly it will get closer to edges (do not recommend it if you don’t have a fence separating your neighbors yard). There are also sensors for rain and pets that will automatically stop it. There are some extra settings that I don’t use but are nice to have like an anti-theft alarm and adding the location to Google maps. Overall this is a great little lawnmower compared to others that are 2x or 3x the price. It isn’t perfect and takes some time to set up but is worth it once it is up and running!