Our old John Deere has gone tits up after (I’m guessing) 15 years of hard service. Our repair guy said for what it’d cost to fix it, we’d do better spending a few more bucks and buying a new mower. Naturally - because we don’t have enough expenses these days.
I’ve been reading sites claiming “Ten Best (or seven best or whatever) Riding Mowers for 2025” and many of them counter what our repair guy said regarding brands to avoid. I’ve also seen several electric models that intrigue me. (Quieter and no trips to the gas station to fill multiple cans.)
So, I turn to the Teeming Millions (or the Teeming Several who have riding mowers) for suggestions either way. One thing - it has to be compatible with our tow-behind sucker/mulcher for clearing leaves. The hose connects to the discharge chute of the mower. I await your responses.
Google is badly polluted with clickbait sites aggregating scraped content and promoting paid brands. You can assume any “best product” listicle pages highly ranked on google are untrustworthy bullshit, for any product category you care to imagine. Just part of our enshittified world. Anyway, that’s why the recommendations you are finding are so out of whack.
Standard mower with 48" deck and side discharge. I’d estimate it takes me 60-90 minutes to mow - if I let it go too long between mowings, some spots take 2 passes. But mostly I can do it in an hour.
I don’t know anything about electric riding mowers. But if it takes less than 1.5 hours to cut it, I would think an electric mower would be the way to go.
My husband is leery of electric mowers - I’m guessing because he doesn’t know anything about them and he’s pretty old-school about some things. My concerns are being able to mow it all on one charge (our yard isn’t perfectly flat, tho the slope isn’t excessively steep) as well as having it serviced/repaired - our mower guy is strictly engines.
Bought a Husqvarna riding mower a few years back that I was extremely happy with. I work with a lot of manufacturing equipment technicians who all work on their own vehicles at home and the only advice they gave me at the time was to avoid anything with a hydrostatic transmission. They said #1 you wouldn’t need it, #2 they are more expensive, #3 they are even more expensive when they break.
I bought a house last year with a huge (for me) front and backyard lawn. Since all of my neighbors have similar yards, I asked a few which mower they recommended since I’ve never owned a riding mower before. Each one recommended a Toro for reliability, so I got a mid-sized Toro at Lowes and it’s ran great for the last spring, summer, and early fall months. We’ll see if it lasts me 10 years with only minor servicing, which is all that I’m hoping for.
Sounds like you don’t need a zero turn mower, but be sure whatever you do get makes it easy to change blades. I have a zero turn and change to sharp blades about every third mowing.
We traded in our old John Deere a few years ago and got a Cub Cadet with a slighly wider deck. It’s been reliable. Oh, those sultry summer days riding on the back acreage, wind in one’s hair (what’s left of it), being dive-bombed by barn swallows eagerly gobbling up the flying insects stirred up by the mower’s passage…
Especially sites with “top ten”, “best rated” and suchlike in their URLs. Although it’s gotten shifty enough that it’s hard to trust recommendations from places like WIRED and Popular Mechanics.
In some areas, price is a decent indicator of quality. Mowers fall into this category, IMO.
A couple years ago I was looking for a new mower. I mow around six acres of rugged land and was wanting a ZTR. The ones at Lowe’s that were selling for around $4K just looked, I dunno… cheaply made. And I’ve learned the hard way to never buy the cheapest. I decided I wanted to make a long-term investment and bought a Hustler ZTR for $10K. It’s a machine… thick gauge steel everywhere, heavy-duty transmission, heavy-duty everything. Haven’t had any problems with it. But cleaning the deck is still a hassle.
The guy who’s been servicing our old mower warned us about getting the cheap mowers at Lowes and Home Depot. He said cheap doesn’t just describe the price. Ours did last a respectable number of years, but lots of things failed along the way, despite periodic servicing.
We went to the local John Deere dealership and looked at a higher end model - the difference is striking…
