One Segway mower series, three ways of knowing where it is — and only the cheapest one may end up with an antenna in your lawn

Segway-Ninebot now sells three robotic lawn mowers under one name, the Navimow i2. They look like a price ladder: i2 AWD from EUR 899, i2 LiDAR from EUR 1,199, i2 LiDAR Pro from EUR 1,599. Read the three user manuals side by side and they turn out to be three different answers to the same question — how does a mower know where it is in a garden? The cheapest machine has no lidar. The i2 AWD finds itself with satellite corrections delivered over its own cellular link, which Segway calls network RTK, fused with a forward camera that fills in the gaps where the signal fades. The middle model drops satellites and maps the lawn with a laser scanner and a camera instead. The top model, sold since 16 March 2026, is advertised as fusing all three: lidar, network RTK and vision. The consequence for a buyer is in the installation chapter, and it runs the opposite way to the price. The i2 AWD manual is the only one of the three that contains a section headed Install the Antenna. Where the network correction service is not supported in a given area, the owner has to plant the supplied reference antenna in an open spot with an unobstructed view of the sky and at least two metres clear on either side, or buy a mounting kit and fix it to a wall. The two lidar manuals have no such chapter, no antenna and — checked word by word — not a single mention of RTK anywhere in their pages, even in the model Segway markets as using it. Their installation chapters amount to switching the machine on, assembling the charging station and updating the software. So the marketing line about an antenna-free lawn is true of the whole series, but it is unconditional only on the expensive models. On the cheap one it holds inside the coverage map and not outside it. Buyers on the edge of network coverage are exactly the buyers most likely to be shopping at the bottom of the range. One further oddity emerged from the same manual. The store lists two i2 AWD variants, the i205 for 500 square metres and the i208 for 800. The manual specifies four, adding an i206 for 600 square metres and an i210 for 1,000 — and the store does sell extended warranty plans for both machines it does not otherwise admit to having. All three mowers are now in the catalogue, with the specifications taken from the manufacturer's own manuals.