Types of Lawn Mowers: An Australian Guide

Key takeaway: There are four ways to sort the types of lawn mowers: by blade (rotary or cylinder), power source, how it moves and what it does with clippings. For most Australian buffalo, kikuyu and couch lawns mown at 25 to 50mm, a rotary mower is the right starting point.

The types of lawn mowers on sale in Australia look like a long, confusing list until you notice that every mower is really just four choices stacked together. A “self-propelled battery mulching mower” is a rotary blade, a battery, a drive system and a clipping setting. Work through those four in order, match them to your grass and your block, and the shortlist gets very short very quickly.

This guide is the starting point for everything on the site about mowers. It explains what each type is, how to tell them apart and which one suits which lawn. The detailed head-to-heads, like reel versus rotary, live in their own posts.

Types of Lawn Mowers at a Glance

Here’s every common type in one table. Read the left column as the question you’re answering, not as a list of products.

Choice	Type	What it means	Best suited to
How it cuts	Rotary	One horizontal blade spinning under a deck, cutting with a scything action	Most home lawns mown at about 25mm and above
How it cuts	Cylinder (reel)	Several spiral blades turning against a fixed bottom blade, cutting like scissors	Fine couch and zoysia kept short, often below 25mm
What powers it	Petrol	Two-stroke or four-stroke engine	Large or long-grass lawns, no power point needed
What powers it	Battery	Rechargeable lithium-ion battery and electric motor	Small to medium suburban lawns, quieter mowing
What powers it	Corded electric	Mains-powered motor on an extension lead	Small lawns close to a power point
What powers it	Manual	No motor; the wheels drive a cylinder as you push	Small, flat, short-cut lawns mown often
How it moves	Push	You supply the forward motion; the motor only spins the blade	Flat lawns up to a few hundred square metres
How it moves	Self-propelled	The motor also drives the wheels	Bigger lawns, slopes, heavier mowers
How it moves	Hover	Floats on a cushion of air instead of wheels	Banks and awkward slopes in small areas
How it moves	Ride-on or zero-turn	You sit and drive it	Large blocks, roughly half an acre and up
How it moves	Robot	Battery mower that mows on a schedule inside a set boundary	Owners who want little hands-on mowing, on gentle slopes
What happens to clippings	Catch, mulch or discharge	Collected in a catcher, chopped fine and dropped back, or thrown out the side	Depends on how tidy you want it and how often you mow

1. How It Cuts: Rotary or Cylinder

This is the choice that decides how short you can mow and how clean the cut looks. Everything else is convenience.

A rotary mower spins a single flat blade fast enough to slice the grass on impact. It’s forgiving, handles longer grass and copes with the odd stick. University of Florida turf advice notes that most rotary mowers cannot mow lower than about 25mm and do their best work higher than that. That suits buffalo, kikuyu and most home couch lawns perfectly.

A cylinder mower, also called a reel mower, uses a set of spiral blades that trap each leaf against a fixed bottom blade and snip it. The result is a cleaner, bowling-green cut, and it’s the type to use when a grass needs a low height of cut, like fine couch or zoysia. The trade-off is fussier maintenance and a mower that struggles once the grass gets away from you.

If you’re torn between the two, the reel mower vs rotary mower comparison goes through it grass by grass.

2. What Powers It: Petrol, Battery, Corded or Manual

Petrol mowers

Petrol still wins for big blocks, thick kikuyu and grass that has been left too long. Australian petrol mowers come in two-stroke versions, which run on a petrol and oil mix, and four-stroke versions, which take straight unleaded with oil in a separate sump. Four-strokes are quieter and usually smoother.

One thing most guides skip: since 1 July 2020, new outdoor power equipment supplied in Australia has had to meet the federal Product Emissions Standards. The standards cover new spark-ignition engines of 19 kilowatts or less, which takes in push and ride-on mowers. If you buy a petrol mower from an overseas website, you’re legally the importer, and the government’s advice is to confirm it’s emissions certified and correctly labelled before you buy.

Battery mowers

Battery mowers have taken over the suburban market for good reasons. They’re quieter, start with a button and need no fuel, oil or spark plugs. Runtime depends on the battery’s voltage and amp-hour rating, so compare the manufacturer’s quoted area per charge rather than the voltage alone.

Treat the battery with some respect. SafeWork NSW advises using the charger designed for that battery and not leaving it charging unattended. Store packs somewhere cool and dry, and never put a dead lithium-ion battery in the household rubbish or recycling bin. Small, undamaged batteries go to a battery recycling drop-off with the terminals taped.

The full trade-off between the two power sources is covered in petrol vs electric lawn mowers.

Corded electric and manual mowers

Corded electric mowers are light and cheap to run, but the lead limits you to small lawns near a power point, and it’s always somewhere under the deck. Manual push reel mowers have no motor at all. On a small, flat couch lawn mown every few days they’re quiet, tidy and surprisingly quick. On long kikuyu they’re hopeless.

3. How It Moves: Push, Self-Propelled, Hover, Ride-On or Robot

Push mowers leave the walking to you. Fine on flat suburban blocks.
Self-propelled mowers drive their own wheels, which matters on slopes, on bigger lawns and with heavier petrol machines. Rear-wheel drive grips better going uphill with a full catcher.
Hover mowers float on air, so they glide sideways across banks where a wheeled mower would slide. They’re a niche tool for awkward slopes, not a main mower for a large lawn.
Ride-on and zero-turn mowers make sense on large blocks. A zero-turn steers with two independently driven rear wheels, so it can turn on the spot around trees and beds.
Robot mowers mow a little and often on a schedule, then return to their dock to recharge.

Ride-ons carry the biggest injury risk of any mower. Product Safety Australia reports an average of 2 deaths a year associated with ride-on mowers, mostly from tipping, falls and reversing over people. It says children under 16 shouldn’t operate one, and that you should check the gradient your model is rated for before mowing any slope.

Robot mowers have their own limits, and slopes are the big one. Husqvarna, for example, publishes a maximum slope for each model: across its Automower range that runs from 25% to 70% inside the mowing area, and only 10% to 50% at the boundary. A 25% slope is a 25cm rise over 1 metre. Most robots also leave a narrow uncut strip along fences and garden edges, so you’ll still own a whipper snipper.

4. What Happens to the Clippings: Catch, Mulch or Side Discharge

Most rotary mowers sold here are “3-in-1” or similar, meaning you can switch between modes. Here’s what each one is actually for.

Catch collects everything for the green bin. It’s the tidiest finish and the best choice before a party or when the grass is long.
Mulch chops clippings into small pieces and drops them back into the lawn. Fine clippings break down quickly and return nutrients to the soil. It only works if you mow often, because long, wet clippings clump.
Side discharge throws clippings out the side. Useful for rough, long grass on big blocks, and messy anywhere near paths and beds.

What to do with the clippings afterwards is covered in the guide to mowing heights, wet grass and clippings.

Which Types of Lawn Mowers Suit Each Australian Grass?

Grass type narrows the choice faster than anything else, because the height you mow at decides the blade. The heights below are the ones our guide to mowing your lawn properly recommends. Not sure what you’ve got? Start with how to tell what grass you have.

Grass	Typical mowing height	Mower type that suits	Why
Buffalo (e.g. Sir Walter)	40 to 50mm	Rotary, catch or mulch	Thick, soft leaf mown high; a rotary handles it easily
Kikuyu	40 to 45mm	Rotary, petrol or a strong battery model	Grows fast in summer and punishes weak mowers if left
Couch (home lawns)	25 to 30mm	Rotary, or cylinder for a finer finish	A rotary manages this height; a cylinder gives the cleaner cut
Fine couch and zoysia kept short	Below 25mm	Cylinder	Rotaries struggle below about 25mm
Fescue and ryegrass (cool-season)	50 to 75mm	Rotary with a high top setting	Check the highest deck setting goes this high

How to Choose a Lawn Mower: A Decision Path

Work through it in this order and stop when the answer is obvious.

What height does your grass need? Below 25mm, look at a cylinder. At 25mm and above, a rotary.
How big is the lawn? As a working guide, not a rule: under about 100 m², a manual reel or small battery mower; 100 to 600 m², a 42 to 53cm battery or petrol rotary; 600 to 2,000 m², a self-propelled 53cm or wider; beyond roughly 2,000 m² (half an acre), consider a ride-on.
Is it sloped? Gentle slopes, self-propelled. Steep banks, a hover mower or a whipper snipper, never a ride-on beyond its rated gradient.
How often will you mow? Weekly mowers can mulch and can get by on battery. Fortnightly or longer, you’ll want catching and more power.
Do you want to mow at all? If not, a robot, provided your slopes sit inside its rating.

A quick sense check on size, since one competitor guide converts an acre to 13,277 m². It isn’t. One acre is about 4,047 m², so half an acre is around 2,000 m².

Worked example: how long will a 400 m² lawn take?

Mowing time comes down to cutting width, overlap and walking pace. The formula is: area ÷ (effective cutting width × walking speed).

Take a 46cm deck with about 5cm of overlap on each pass, so the effective width is 0.41m. At an easy walking pace of 3km/h, or 50 metres a minute, you cover 0.41 × 50 = about 20 m² a minute. A 400 m² lawn is therefore around 20 minutes of actual cutting. A 53cm deck (0.48m effective) brings that down to about 17 minutes. Turns, edges and emptying the catcher add more, which is why a wider deck matters more on big, open lawns than on small, fiddly ones.

Safety and Compliance Before You Mow

Noise hours are local. Mowing times are set by state rules and your council, and they differ. NSW EPA, for example, points residents to time restrictions for domestic equipment. Our state-by-state guide to when you can mow has the details.
Fire danger days. A blade striking a rock can spark in dry grass. Check the rules for total fire ban days in the mowing and wet-grass guide before you mow in summer.
Children and pets inside. Clear the lawn of people first and check behind before reversing, as Product Safety Australia advises. Children riding as passengers is one of the injury causes it lists, so the answer is simply no.
Batteries off the bench. Charge with the supplied charger, don’t leave it unattended, and recycle dead packs properly.
Read the manual. Slope ratings, blade removal and maintenance steps are model-specific, and the manual is the instruction that counts.

What the Marketing Won’t Tell You

A bigger battery voltage doesn’t automatically mean a longer runtime, because amp-hours matter just as much. “Mulching” mode doesn’t make a lawn greener if you only mow once a month, since long clippings just smother the grass. And a robot mower doesn’t mean no mowing jobs at all: edges, steep corners and the area around the dock still need a person.

The single biggest factor in cut quality isn’t the type of mower anyway. It’s a sharp blade. A blunt blade tears the leaf and leaves frayed, browning tips, so learn how to sharpen lawn mower blades whichever mower you buy.

How many types of lawn mowers are there?

There are four main choices rather than one list of types: blade (rotary or cylinder), power (petrol, battery, corded or manual), movement (push, self-propelled, hover, ride-on or robot) and clippings (catch, mulch or side discharge). Most mowers are a combination of one option from each.

What type of lawn mower is best for buffalo grass?

A rotary mower. Buffalo is mown at around 40 to 50mm, which sits right in a rotary’s comfort zone, and the thick leaf is easy work for either a battery or petrol model.

What are old-style push mowers called?

They’re called push reel mowers, cylinder mowers or hand mowers. The wheels turn a set of spiral blades against a fixed bottom blade, so there’s no motor at all.

Is a battery mower strong enough for kikuyu?

Usually, if you mow it often. Kikuyu grows fast through summer, and a battery rotary copes well with weekly cuts but will labour through grass left for weeks. If you regularly let it get long, petrol or a high-voltage battery model is the safer choice.

Can I buy a petrol mower from an overseas website?

You can, but you become the legal importer. New petrol engines of 19 kilowatts or less must meet Australia’s Product Emissions Standards, so confirm the mower is emissions certified and correctly labelled before you buy, or it may be seized.

Do robot mowers work on slopes?

Some do, within limits. Each model has a maximum slope rating, usually lower at the edge of the mowing area than inside it, so measure your steepest section and check it against the manual before buying.

From here, the next step depends on where you are. If you’re choosing, the best lawn mowers in Australia narrows it to specific models. Already own one? How to mow your lawn properly covers height, frequency and pattern. Edges are a separate job, explained in line trimmer vs whipper snipper. Everything else on mowers is in the mowers hub.

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