A couple of more examples (click for larger image):

These are a bit thicker in leaves than the first example. Here the Toro might have left a very minor bit but I think likely nothing. The Echo would have left perhaps 10% as much largely untouched as the EGO and what it cut would have been much finer.

BTW, I generally overlap about half or slightly less. I tried overlapping more and less with little change in results.

I like the other EGO tools (650cfm blower, string trimmer, etc.) and the battery system (sizes, shapes, charging, etc.) but with a battery system you need ALL of the tools to work at least somewhat well and in this case the most important tool is pretty much worthless.

Take a minute to double check that your blade is turning toward the sharpened edge when it spins. I lived with poor performance from a B&D battery mower for years before realizing the blade was upside down.

Other than that, I will agree that my EGO does not get every blade of my St Augustine lawn, but it might be only 1 or 2 blades per lawn (front/back). I don't get enough leaves to try mulching. My neighborhood has the interesting characteristic of continual wind blowing leaves everywhere, so nobody has leaves enough to rake/mulch. Otherwise, I love my EGO mower, blower, string trimmer, and chain saw. I have 3 batteries, so I'm never without power.

That. I...uh...once accidentally installed a Toro blade upside down. But since I was familiar with the mower and noted the performance instantly, I also realized what I had done quite quickly. :-) If it were new, I'd also be feeling pretty negative about that mower.

If that doesn't do it, take it back under warranty with complaints and let them look it over just to assure that the motor's up to snuff and spinning the blade properly. If it's moving slowly, or the battery is not at full power (below) it's not going to cut properly.

A battery with a borked cell is also a possibility. Can you check voltage? Fully charged voltage should be in excess of 12.6. If it's not, the battery may be at fault (close enough is usually good enough, but significantly off is an issue). New batteries usually top out higher, but it does depend on the charger used (one of mine does not fully charge the battery to preserve the battery's life; it will charge it more fully as the battery ages).

Batteries with dead cells in them work, but actively drain the battery as it's in use and never work quite properly. They feel weak, don't last as long as they should...and show poor blade speed and poor suction on things that are supposed to cut and suck things respectively.

If all else fails and you're in the return period, return the durned thing. It's clearly not your bag of tricks and that's OK.

Thanks all.

Blade was installed by the dealer (Ace Hardware) and I double checked it a bit later. I also tried the single blade just to make sure.

I've three batteries (7.5, 5.0 and 2.5) and have used all three with same results. Blower and string trimmer work well on all three as well.

My B&D blade was installed by the manufacturer, so mistakes happen. But if you already double checked, then that should not be the problem.

Blast and darnation, I was hoping we could help under warranty. I'd still take it in and have them look at it--the motor could be under-torqued for some reason. No, don't ask me how, maybe there's a minor short in the winding. I'm clueless when it comes to large electric engines, I only build tiny ones to run wee little toys and power tiny lights.

If not, and in the return period...get rid of the piece of...garbage. It's obviously not the thing for you.

I had an electric (a robot) but that thing worked like a charm. Alas, some oaf broke the carriage when replacing the gears, but...the suction was amazing, it never left a blade behind, it was just...dreamy. If a lawnmower can be dreamy. Heck with it, it was dreamy.

Yeah, there's no reason that an electric mower can't be as good or better than petrol. Just look at what Tesla have done and now all of the supercar companies are going electric because petrol engines can't do what electric can. I think almost all locomotive engines and many ships are electric drive.

This seems like simple bad deck + blade design. Or too low of RPM's. Or all of the above.

Sorry , but I told you Kobalt was the way to go . They have a service agreement locally so any necessary warranty work is done here . If you have any warranty in effect still , send it out and get your moneys worth . Otherwise bring it to a local electrical repair shop for testing , may be a simple fix ?

Which might explain why I liked mine; it was triple-bladed and ran close to 6,000 RPM.

Do that with a full-sized blade and the edge would spin too fast.

On the down side, sharpening my blades took a while...

6000 RPM 😲 Is that battery powered or gasoline??

Battery. The blade diameter was fairly small and it had three blades staggered across a 21" diameter. ETA: The blades were quite light in terms of weight; electrical motors don't have trouble spinning things fast if the weight is low. On the down side, it went through battery power fast in an overgrown lawn, so I always kept three fully charged batteries on-hand (60A, 1200W, total).

Try that with a full-sized blade and you'll end up with vibration and...I'd have to calculate the velocity of the outside edge depending on the radius. It would give an impact on an object hitting the blade too much outward kick for me to be comfortable with.

That machine had a ton of safety devices. Lift the edges, it stopped dead. Bump the carriage, it stopped. Foul the blade, stop. Try to get your hand under it to reach the blades...difficult at best.

Opaone , in your 1st post you never mentioned if you bought the accessory mulching high lift blade . If you are using the standard blade you certainly will not have the same lift and cut performance of the mulching blade . Also for mulching the lower wheel position will ensure all , even damp leaves are lifted up for the second cutting by the blade , to avoid leaving the larger pieces you have mentioned . Often you must double cut to ensure all the leaves are cut to a fine mulch , even with a conventional gas mower . P.S. You are correct that Toro are the finest mulching mowers on the market , always have been . I see that ego claims a 5 yr satisfaction warranty period . Since you state you only have a few months on the mower why not simply return it ?

@adel, Mine does not cut grass well either. I leaves far more blades of grass uncut than either of my previous mowers (Echo electric and Toro). We have a fair amount of grass to cut so cutting twice or raking are not options - especially when other mowers do a good job w/ a single pass.

Whatever Toro (or others) can do w/ a gas mower, EGO should be able to do with electric. And for that matter, Echo did a much better job than this EGO. Electric motors are superior to petrol in torque and overall power. The thing holding electric back has been battery technology and consumer ignorance.

@ssewalk1, This is EGO's top of the line mower and came with both a dual hi-lift blade for mulching and a single blade for bagging or side discharge. I mostly had the dual mulching blade on but also tried the single blade just to see. (I thought I'd mentioned that but must not have). I've had a couple of conversations w/ EGO (both people were basically low level read-from-a-prepared-sheet customer service people who really were not much help) who said both times that the double blade on this mower is the best mulching setup they have.

Opaone , can you not just install the mulching blade separately . I think the addition of the regular blade is reducing the lift of the airfoil design of the mulching blade . I had similar experiences with Honda mowers with their tri-cut blade system . It worked well in regular side discharge or bagging function , however performed poorly in mulching . I added a single gator mulching blade and it performed great . Also as I said. , normally the lower the blade is to the grass or leaf surface the better the lift effect & turbulence to evenly distributed the grass and leaves to the dome of the mower deck to enable the multiple cut (mulching) that you desire. I realize your mower is the top of the line ego offers , my neighbour has a 60 volt Kobalt that mulchs almost as good as my Commercial 22" Toro 6 hp Kawasaki Kai , within 3" mulching cuts . Anyhow hope you resolve the issue ! 😉

This spring I purchased a LM2101 Lawn mower from a EGO authorized dealer. It seems that the mower has no Suction it cuts half my Grass and lays the other half Down. I had a Previous one from 5 Years ago. It cut beautifully however it came with a 2.0 AH battery and would only cut for 20 Minutes at a time. This one has a 5.0 AH battery and lasts an 1.0 hr however it does a terrible job cutting the grass I half to rake the uncut crass back up before I cut the grass the next time. Took the blade of and touched it up a bit but it was very sharp. It's like there is no Suction. Very very disappointed looking to return it

@Rick Laszlo, yeah, this is overwhelmingly the worst mower I've ever owned. Due to illnesses eating up a lot of time, Covid and EGO not being very interested in customer service we still have the mower. :-(

Toro's new electric stuff sounds pretty solid so I'll likely switch to that in the Spring and sell all the EGO stuff we've been stuck with.

Any thoughts on Stihl electric mowers? I'm about to purchase their top-of-the-line powered one (~$650). I'm not concerned with mulching, just need good performance on heavy grass, weeds, brush, etc. My current Toro "Personal Pace" works OK, but I can't deal with the failures and the noise of the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine).

Anyone ever try adding enough weight to the Ego mower so that it is more stable, sinks into the grass more and doesn't bounce up/tilt back as much - akin to the weight of a gas mower? I have heard some claim that they have more suction with the high-lift blade than their old gas mowers did.

Well, I did end up getting the Ego mower with powered wheels One thing I like about it, when compared with my former Toro Personal Pace, is that you can run the powered wheels without the cutter - like when returning uphill from the far end of my lot! It does have this quirk: When I am mowing the side of my driveway with the wheels are powered, when I stop to pull it back, the gearing of the wheels seems to be still engaged, even though that motor isn't running.

"the gearing of the wheels seems to be still engaged, even though that motor isn't running."

Well known and irritating problem. This was fixed in later mowers but Ego doesn't have an easy way to update the firmware in the older one's nor do they seem interested in providing any other kind of solution.

All their other tools are pretty good and the battery system seems good. It's too bad this mower is such a dog.

"I have heard some claim that they have more suction with the high-lift blade than their old gas mowers did."

Curious where you heard that. In my experience it's the worst of any mower we've ever owned. Toro SR4 was overwhelmingly the best and the new Toro electric is supposed to be better than the SR4 (on order but likely won't get ours until late summer or fall).

There is a reddit thread on this issue. Here is a link to a specific comment whereas the user claims such: https://www.reddit.com/r/egopowerplus/comments/v0dj91/comment/ias6eef/

My own observation is that grass type/state and deck height also make a significant difference on cut quality.

As I commented on the reddit: I think the grass type and condition is one of the variables. A fine fescue or kentucky bluegrass type grass especially if a little overgrown (which the Ego seems to promote since most settings, in my experience, cut 1/2"-1" higher than the manual says it's supposed to - possibly because the light weight doesn't allow the mower to "sink" as far into grass and add stability to prevent the breaking of the "suction seal"), in hotter weather, if starved of water/some nutrients or if it's just wet, seems to have a higher likelihood of becoming matted down by the mower deck, wheels and foot traffic. Once matted down, these grasses in certain situations described above sometimes will not stand back up and it sometimes takes more suction than possibly even some modern gas mowers have to stand it back up and cut it.

I couldn't cut mine in such a situation until I went to the lowest setting on my Ego 2100SP with a high-lift blade. (1-2ft tall grass, fine fescue and kentucky bluegrass, wasn't completely dry at first attempt cutting, grass might have been stressed.

In fact, I live in a suburban subdivision (6000-10000 sq ft lots) and my neighbor directly across from me has a beautiful front lawn. Looks perfectly even (mind you, I haven't inspected closely). I think he has a turf type tall fescue grass. Also, he has one of the newest Ego mowers. Anyways, I had overseeded my front lawn a while back and let it get overgrown while the seedlings established. He thought I was busy and didn't have time to mow and surprised me one day by mowing my lawn (didn't hurt too much as most of the grass was already established). I have a lot of fine fescue in this lawn as there is a tree in the center of the lawn and his mower left some patches/strips uncut - it was matted down by his mower deck and footsteps but uncut. Similar situation happened in my backyard with kentucky bluegrass and my own mower. In both situations though, the grass was not thoroughly dry when mowed and the grass may have been stressed by the weather. As I lowered the deck more and more, it cut a higher and higher percentage of this uncut grass until I finally went with the lowest setting as described above.

Ultimately, the difference between the neighbor's lawn and my lawn: I usually cut mine at a 6 and I have more fine fescue and kentucky bluegrass. He seems to have TTTF grass and cuts at about a 3. His cut seems to look much better than mine.

EDIT: Obviously, I just mean different grass types will be more erect than others especially at different heights or when under certain stressors (heat, drought, etc). We are in a Denver, CO suburb.

Regarding the drive wheels engaged: if you release the drive lever before you stop walking forward, the wheels will release and you can pull it backward. It's so trivially easy to deal with I wouldn't complain about it. I have not read the manual recently, but I think that's in there.

I've had my 21" Ego for about 2 years now...and I think I have tried just about everything to get a decent cut. I have installed new blades, in various combinations; tried walking slow, walking fast; checked and rechecked the wheels and deck - but still get uneven cuts and if I lift the front of the mower to change direction I ofter get crop circles or gouges down below the cut level. My neighbor has exterior cameras and has mentioned he can see the mower deck boucing all over when I'm cutting like the mower is too light to hold its footing. I have had the lawn leveled twice but it is still quite uneven. Any suggestions...I would appreciate it as I'm about ready to go back to a gas powered mower.

I ordered the EGO 2142SP (self-propelled) mower here, and have just completed my second season with it. This is far and away the best mower we've ever owned. I have a nearly 3/4 acre yard and it only misses grass blades on runs when the grass is damp.

Like previous posts, I would question the installation of the blade(s) being set in the proper direction to lift and cut the grass, and whether yours came with the mulching blade set as mine did, or relied on a non-mulching blade.