Open almost any robot mower and you find the same architecture: two driven wheels at the back, a castor at the front, a plastic shell over the top. It is cheap, it is light, and on a flat, dry, well-drained lawn it is perfectly adequate.
Tracks are a different answer to the same question. Here is what actually changes, in both directions.
Ground pressure: the same weight, spread further
A wheel touches the ground over roughly the area of a postage stamp. A track touches it along its entire length. Take the same machine weight and spread it over ten times the contact area and the pressure at any one point drops by the same factor.
Two things follow. The machine is far less likely to sink into soft or waterlogged ground, and it is far less likely to leave ruts where it turns. Counter-intuitively, this means a tracked mower can be heavier than a wheeled one and still be gentler on your turf.
Traction: grip that does not depend on staying dry
On a slope, a wheel has to generate all of its grip through those two small patches. Wet grass reduces the friction available at exactly the moment you need more of it, which is why wheeled mowers slip on banks after rain and why their quoted slope ratings assume dry conditions.
A track spreads the load along a long contact line and bites with a repeating tread pattern. Grip degrades far more gracefully as the surface gets slick. That is the reason the LYMOW One Plus is rated to 45 degrees rather than the 20 to 25 typical of wheeled machines.
What tracks cost you
This is the part the marketing tends to skip.
- Turning. A tracked machine steers by driving its tracks at different speeds. Done carelessly, a tight pivot scuffs turf. It has to be managed in software — wider arcs, fewer spot turns — rather than ignored.
- Weight and complexity. Tracks, idlers and tensioners weigh more and have more parts than two wheels on two motors.
- Debris. Tracks pick up more material than wheels, so tool-free access for cleaning stops being a nice-to-have.
- Cost. It is simply a more expensive drivetrain to build.
So when are wheels the right answer?
If your lawn is broadly flat, drains well, and you are not mowing at dawn on heavy clay, a wheeled mower will do the job for less money. There is no virtue in over-buying.
Tracks earn their place when at least one of these is true: you have a real slope, your ground stays soft after rain, you have areas that a wheeled machine has already got stuck in, or your lawn is big enough that a single failed run costs you a day.
The short version
Wheels optimise for cost and simplicity on easy ground. Tracks optimise for traction and low ground pressure on difficult ground. Neither is universally better — but if you have already had one robot mower beach itself on the same bank three summers running, you now know which side of that line your garden is on.
