Ryobi Vs Ego | Battle of Self Propelled Battery Mowers

Ryobi vs EGO Mowers - We have recently reviewed the Ryobi 40 volt 20" Brushless Push mower ($299.00) and the Ryobi 40 volt 20" Brushless Self-Propelled mower ($399) and in all the comments on YouTube, there were multiple people who asked for the mower to be compared the EGO 56 volt Self-Propelled 21" mower ($549).  We sat down and came up with a fair plan to compare the two brands in a fair manner. First, The EGO 21" Self-Propelled mower comes with a 7.5Ah 56 volt battery that would give EGO an edge on runtime, but the 21" EGO Push mower comes with a 5.0Ah battery, so we decided to even the playing field and use a 5.0Ah battery when comparing the EGO to the Ryobi.  NOTE:  Because of our battery change, the runtime of the EGO 21" Self-Propelled mower will be less than normal. If you buy the kit, you will get better results. They Almost Look The Same! When you place the Ryobi 20" 40 volt mower next to the EGO 21" 56 volt mower, they look very similar.  LED lights seem odd on a mower and both of these units have them.  The battery compartments on each have a see through cover.  Both fold up pretty close to identically and also have a single lever that adjusts the mowing height.  Although the mowers seem to share some of the same features, they do not seem to share the same build quality.   The EGO mower has a dual wall plastic deck while the Ryobi has a deck that is reinforced around the front and back, but the sides are left as a thin single layer of plastic that is flexible.  We have rubbed up against a tree and had the blade gouge the inside of the deck on the Ryobi.  The Ryobi also has some loose wires where EGO has wires in a wire loom. How Long Do The Mowers Run? The battery runtime on any tool can vary, but on mowers we see a large swing in the runtime due to the height of grass cut, thickness of grass, species of grass, amount of weed, moisture content and temperature.  In our tests, we used open lots to allow for a constant speed of mowing along with cutting the same height and moisture content of grass.  One lot was recently cut with a normal amount of grass that needed to be cut and the other lot was let go an extra week, providing a lot of grass to cut along with some weeds. In the first round, while cutting normal grass one would if they keep up on their yard, the Ryobi was able to cut about a 1/4 acre of lawn and the EGO was able to cut just over a 1/2 acre of grass on a single battery charge. (Remember we used a smaller battery in the EGO)  This test was performed with no obstacles so more lawn would be cut in this test than a normal lawn. In the second round, we started mowing the taller grass that had not been mowed in two weeks.  Neither mower had issues cutting the grass, but both seemed to ramp up the speed of the blade to keep up.  Since the amount of grass cut decreased, we found it best to count the numbers of passes that were cut by each mower.  While cutting the taller grass, the Ryobi was able to make 14 passes and the EGO was able to make 41 passes.  There was again a significant difference.