Wondering what type of lawn mower you should buy for the best cut and the healthiest lawn?
In this guide, we’ve shared our top recommendation for the best lawn mower type for a high-quality cut.
We’ve also discussed the features to look for in a mower that produces the best cut, and the mowing practices you can implement to give your lawn the best finish.
✅ Key Takeaways:
Cylinder lawn mowers produce the best cut quality because they use a scissoring action that offers a cleaner, more precise cut than rotary mowers.
Features to look for in a mower that offers a good cut quality are sharp, durable cylinder blades, multiple cutting heights, a powerful engine, and a lightweight design.
Mowing practices to produce a high-quality cut include sharpening your blades regularly, giving enough time between your mowing sessions, and adopting the one-third cutting rule.
Table of Contents
🤷♂️ Which Mower Type Produces The Best Cut?
We’ve found that cylinder lawn mowers produce the best cut because they have multiple smaller blades that spin vertically and cut grass with a scissoring action, allowing for a neater and cleaner cut.
Most mowers for residential use use rotary blades. A rotary mower has a single blade that spins horizontally, cutting grass with a smashing action. This method of cutting tears off the ends of grass blades rather than cutting them neatly, which affects cut quality – though this usually isn’t noticeable to the untrained eye.
However, the rotary mower model has a few unique performance advantages, including a more powerful blade that’s better suited to lawns with uneven turf or long, thick grass.
For most people who just want to maintain their lawns, a rotary mower is fine. However, if you’re a gardening enthusiast who wants to maintain the neatest, healthiest, highest-quality lawn, consider upgrading to a cylinder mower.
🤔 Types Of Cylinder Mowers
There are a few different types of cylinder mowers, including:
💪 Manual Mowers
A manual mower, otherwise called a reel mower or a hand-push lawn mower, is the lowest-cost cylinder mower available. This mower doesn’t have a petrol engine or an electric motor, and it’s not battery-powered. Instead, it’s operated by the power of the person pushing the mower.
The advantages of this mower type are its affordability and portability, but using a manual mower requires more physical pushing effort, so we only recommend it for a small lawn.
- Brand: Bosch
Price: £
Power source: Manual
Cutting width: 38cm
Cut height range: 15-43mm
Weight: 6.9 kilograms
Grass box capacity: 25 litres
Dimensions (DxWxH): 54 x 49 x 38cm
Power: N/A
🏎 Petrol Mowers
The average petrol lawn mower for residential use will likely have a rotary blade. However, you can buy special petrol mowers that use cylinder blades, especially on commercial websites that sell to golf courses and other sports turf groundskeepers.
The great thing about a petrol lawn mower is that it has no mowing limitations, so you can take the mower as far from your house as you need without being restricted by a cord or a battery that’s running out. However, petrol mowers are loud, more expensive, and require more maintennce than most other mower types.
🔌 Electric Corded Mowers
The corded electric mower is the most popular mower type for residential use. Again, this mower is most likely to be sold with a rotary blade, but you can spend around £50-£100 more on a cylinder model if you prefer the look of a neat, manicured lawn.
The cost of a corded electric mower is typically cheaper than other mower types, and you get good power to the motor because it’s connected directly to mains electricity. But corded electric mowers are restricted by the power lead and are only suitable for a medium-sized lawn at most.
🔋 Cordless Lawn Mowers
The cordless mower, otherwise called a battery-powered mower, is an alternative to the corded mower that’s worth considering. As with corded models, most cordless mowers use a rotary blade, but there are some specialized cylinder mowers available.
A cordless lawn mower . However, battery-powered lawn mowers are somewhat limited by their battery lives, so they’re not ideal for medium lawns, and the motor isn’t as powerful as one powered by mains electricity.
Note: Robot lawn mowers have multiple blades, so they’re often mistaken as cylinder mowers. Howwever, these mowers actually operate on the principle of rotary lawn mowers, with blades that spin horizontally, not vertically.
📋 Features To Look For In A Mower That Produces The Best Cut
Here are the features you should look for in a mower if your main goal is to produce the highest-quality cut:
⚫️ Cylinder Blades
As we mentioned earlier, mowers that use cylinder blades produce the best cut because of their scissor-like cutting action. Opt for a mower with cylinder blades if a neat, even cut is your highest priority.
Be prepared for the fast that lawn mowers with cylinder blades need more maintenance because the blades require more sharpening.
✂️ Sharp, Durable Blades
The sharper your mower’s blades, the better it can cut your grass.
Blade durability is also important because you want the mower blades to offer a high-quality cut for months or years before replacement blades are needed.
Look for mowers with stainless steel blades, which are stronger, sharper, and more durable than cheap plastic mower blades.
📏 Multiple Cutting Heights
A mower with multiple cutting height adjustments will give you the flexibility to tailor the cut height based on your initial grass height.
Even a budget lawn mower should have at least two cutting height options. Ideally, look for a mower that has 7-5 cut heights, so you can achieve the perfect cut based on your personal preferences and your original grass length.
Using a mower with multiple cut heights also means that you can safely cut long grass short without overwhelming the motor or tangling the blades. You can adjust the cutting height several times and mow your grass in stages, gradually making it shorter and shorter.
🦾 Powerful Engine
A mower’s engine power also affects the quality of cut because it influences the cutting speed of the blades. The higher the engine power, the faster the blades will spin, and the cleaner the cut.
On the other hand, a low-powered engine will cause the blades to spin slower, meaning they’re more likely to tip and tear the ends of the grass blades rather than cutting them cleanly.
A lower-powered engine will also struggle on longer grass or thick grass, which may lead to uneven patches.
We recommend corded electric lawn mower models because they have powerful engines thanks to their direct connection to the power source. Petrol lawn mowers are the best cordless choice for engine power.
While you can still achieve a quality cut with a cordless mower or a manual mower, the motor power in these mowers doesn’t quite compare to corded electric and petrol models.
🏋🏻♂️ Lightweight Design
Less likely to leave wheel ruts, which affect the quality of the end result.
🕵️ Tips To Achieve The Best Cut With Your Lawnmower
Even if you own a mower that offers the best cut quality, that doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed the neatest cut and the healthiest lawn.
There are a few things you should do as the mower operator to ensure the highest-quality cut and to sustain a green, healthy garden:
📐 Use The One-Third Rule
Even the best lawn mowers can produce a poor-quality cut if they’re used incorrectly. If you want your grass to grow healthily, adopt the one-third rule: never cut off more than one-third of the original height of the grass blades.
Using the one-third rule means you won’t stress your grass by cutting it too short (scalping). A good lawn mower should have multiple adjustable cutting heights to allow you to choose the best height of cut based on your initial grass height.
🌧 Don’t Mow Wet Grass
Mowing wet or damp grass won’t just negatively affect cut quality – it’s bad for your entire lawn.
Your garden is more likely to be damaged from wheel ruts caused by pushing your mower along damp, moisture-heavy soil, and your grass roots will be more susceptible to being torn out by your mower’s tires.
Frequently mowing in damp or wet conditions will leave your garden looking muddier and more uneven than in its healthiest form. Wet grass is also harder to cut, which puts more strain on your mower.
In short, avoid cutting grass that’s wet unless you have no other choice. It’s best to wait for a clear, bright day, even if it means allowing your grass to grow longer than usual.
🧰 Sharpen Your Blades Regularly
Blunt blades are one of the biggest causes of a poor-quality cut, so make sure to keep your blades sharp to enjoy a clean, even cut throughout the year.
The average mower needs its blades sharpened about twice per season, or roughly about 25 hours of use.
You might need to sharpen your blades more often than this if you use your mower more frequently than average, you have particularly long, thick, or rough grass, or the mower blades are poorer-quality.
📆 Don’t Cut Too Often
Keeping on top of your lawn mowing might make you feel productive, but cutting your grass too often can have a detrimental effect on your lawn quality.
Getting your mower out more often than necessary will stress the grass and reduce the available surface area on the leaves, which decreases the rate of photosynthesis. Your grass may start to turn yellow or brown as a result.
Aim to mow your lawn once a week in the height of summer, and once every two weeks in early spring and autumn.
♻️ Consider Mulching
Some mowers have a mulching function, which chops grass into tiny pieces and distributes them evenly over your lawn as you mow.
While mulching won’t affect your cut quality, it will help your grass to grow thicker and greener by acting as a natural lawn fertiliser, so we strongly recommend making use of your mower’s mulching feature if it has one.
Mulching as you mow will also save you the hassle of emptying grass clippings out of the grass box, so it’s a win-win for mowing productivity and grass health.
🔁 Look For Mowers With Rear Rollers
Rear rollers also don’t make a difference to your cut quality, but they can improve the overall finish of your cut grass by producing lighter and darker lawn stripes.
Most of us would agree that a stripy lawn has aesthetic appeal, and the good news is that it doesn’t require any extra effort from you. If you have a lawn mower with a built-in rear roller, you can simply mow in back-and-forth laps as you normally would, and the roller will stripe your lawn as you go.
🏁 Final Word
The best lawn mower for a high-quality cut is a cylinder mower, but most people won’t notice the difference in the end result whether they use a cylinder mower or a rotary mower.
It’s worth considering your budget since cylinder mowers are around £50-£100 more expensive than comparable rotary models. But if you’re dead set on achieving a neat, manicured lawn that could belong on a golf green, a cylinder mower is your best option.