In both of Mammotion's compact mower lines, the cheaper variant is not a smaller machine — it is the one that swapped lidar for a mobile signal

Mammotion's 2026 catalogue names its compact mowers after lawn area: LUBA mini 2 AWD 1000 and 1500, YUKA mini 2 800 and 1000. The numbers suggest the only difference is how much grass the machine is rated for. Read the manufacturer's own product pages for all four and a different line appears, and it runs through the sensors. In each line, the more expensive variant carries a 360-degree lidar. The LUBA mini 2 AWD 1500, listed at EUR 1,699, positions itself from lidar and two cameras and needs no network connection of any kind. The YUKA mini 2 1000, at EUR 1,099, is sold under the headline "Ultimate 360 LiDAR" and the flat statement "No RTK, No Cable". In each line, the cheaper variant has no lidar at all. The LUBA mini 2 AWD 1000, at EUR 1,399, fuses three cameras with NetRTK — satellite corrections delivered over 4G or Wi-Fi instead of from an antenna in the garden. The YUKA mini 2 800, at EUR 899, does the same with three cameras and Mammotion's iNavi service, which the company advertises as free for the life of the machine. That is a real difference in what the buyer has to have at home, and the model name does not carry it. A lidar machine measures the garden itself and works the same whether or not the phone network reaches the far hedge. A camera-and-NetRTK machine has one absolute reference, and it arrives over the air. Trees, walls and dusk are handled by the cameras in both cases; a dead spot in mobile coverage is not the same problem for both. The wording on the cheaper pages is worth reading closely for the same reason. The YUKA mini 2 800 page says "No RTK, No Cable, No signal issue" and, a few sections later, offers lifetime free access to a network correction service that works "without the need for a physical base station". Both are true in the narrow sense the manufacturer means — there is no base station to install and no antenna to mount — but a reader who takes "No RTK" at face value would conclude the machine ignores satellites altogether, and it does not. None of this makes the cheaper machines bad buys. They cost EUR 200 to EUR 300 less, they install in minutes, and Mammotion throws in three years of mobile data on the YUKA mini 2 800 precisely because the link matters. It is a straightforward trade, stated plainly here because the product names state it nowhere: in this catalogue the price step is not a step in lawn size, it is the step between a mower that measures the garden and a mower that is told where it is.