RELEASED 2019.03REASSESSED 2026.08.07

Gardena

Gardena Sileno City

Name: Gardena Sileno City
Brand: Gardena

Wire-guided mower for the smallest urban yards. The boundary wire sets the limits, the onboard panel or the GARDENA Bluetooth app sets the mowing times, and SensorControl decides how often to cut from how fast the grass is growing. Sileno City asks little of the yard and little of the owner once the wire is down.

Superseded byGardena smart Sileno free 800

Autonomy Ladder

Why Level II.

One five-rung scale, every category, from acting only on command to working unsupervised anywhere.

VGeneralized AutonomyAny task, any setting. No consumer robot has reached it.
IVEnvironmental AutonomyHandles new obstacles and re-plans in real time; rare in consumer products.
IIIConditional AutonomyFinishes whole jobs in familiar spaces; struggles at the edges.
To reach Level IIIMost sessions finish without intervention. Rescue is occasional, not routine.
IIAssisted AutonomyThis robot

Gardena Sileno City runs preset routines on its own, and the owner is its recovery system.

Navigation and control
Boundary wire guidance with random-path navigation within perimeter
Why this level
- Perimeter wire-guided random-path cutting within a fixed boundary.
- The mower keeps its own schedule, set on the onboard panel or in the Bluetooth app or left to SensorControl, and returns to its station to charge without prompting.
- What holds it at Level II (Assisted Autonomy) is that the working area is defined by physical wire the owner lays and the cutting path is unplanned rather than mapped.
Autonomy dimension 40 / 100 · 2 sources reviewed
IManual AutomationOne action on command; no independent operation.

How we assign a level →

Behind the classification

Sources we reviewed.

Provisional2 sources reviewed

Enough has been reviewed to classify, but gaps remain across source types.

Sources reviewed

Specification sources2 sourcesReviewed

Pages the published specifications were read from.

Also monitored, nothing listed yet

Manufacturer documentationPending

Gardena Sileno City product documentation, specification sheet, and boundary-wire installation guide covering operational parameters and maintenance.

Press & video reviewsReviewed

2019-2026 lawn-care and robotics media coverage of Sileno City positioning in the ultra-compact segment and urban-market performance.

Owner reportsOngoing

Six-year owner feedback from garden forums, Reddit r/lawncare, and Gardena community documenting wire maintenance, blade durability, and reliability on small urban yards.

Longitudinal signalReviewed

Six-year market history (2019-2026) tracking City's field performance, component failure patterns, and sustained market position in ultra-compact category.

How we evaluate evidence →

Robovations Score

How this number was reached

69of 100

CapableAt or above 62% of the 355 robots we scoreand 53% of the 79 scored robot lawn mowers

DeficientLimitedCapableStrongExemplary

Held below its arithmetic73 → 69

Capped at 69: a Strong rating requires every pillar at 55 or above (ownership burden below the floor).

Measured on 8 of the 9 inputs10% not counted

Our assessment did not establish an independent source for edge-case recovery on this machine, so that input is left out of the score rather than guessed at, and the rest re-weighted to fill the space. A gap in what we have been able to verify is not evidence against the robot. Where it reaches 30% of the rubric we publish no number at all.

What moved itpoints gained or lost against a typical robot

Carried by

Field failure rate100+4.8
Support longevity100+3.7
Task completion78+1.0

Held back by

Routine maintenance43−3.0
Coverage and navigation52−1.8

Capability40% of the score67What it does without you.

Task completion16% of the score78

Evidence

PCMag's Schedule Wizard builds a work schedule from lawn size and the app reports only mowing or parked, so the wired main area runs unattended, but a detached second lawn is not scheduled at all: you pick the mower up, place it where you want it to work, and it mows there until the battery is depleted. Expert Reviews adds that the guide wire also helps the robot find its way home again when it has finished the job.

Coverage and navigation10% of the score52

Evidence

Expert Reviews describes coverage as wire-defined rather than mapped: a perimeter wire corrals the mower and a separate guide wire, spliced into that circuit, exists to ensure the mower can get to difficult-to-reach areas such as a lawn connected by a narrow corridor of grass. PCMag confirms there is no map, only a schedule generated from lawn size and a starting point per zone, so how much gets cut depends on run time.

Edge-case recoverynot countedno source verified32

Evidence

It halts cleanly and shows an accurate fault on a 2.1 inch onboard display, which is real reporting rather than a silent stall. But Bluetooth reaches 10 metres and the record states there is no access from outside the garden, so a mid-week stall is discovered by walking out to it. Nothing documents self-extraction from entrapment, and a wire break stops the machine until a person finds it.

Operating envelope4% of the score60

Evidence

Wire guidance makes canopy and darkness irrelevant and at 58 dB it is quiet enough to run at night, which genuinely widens the working window. Against that it needs a simple, regular, near-flat lawn: owner reports and press coverage document traction loss and navigation uncertainty above 10 percent on wet grass against a 25 percent rating, and the record excludes narrow passages, disconnected zones and organic boundaries.

Dependability40% of the score88Whether it keeps doing it.

Field failure rate16% of the score100

Evidence

Six seasons in market from the Husqvarna Group's garden brand, with a longitudinal record marked complete, four press items and a substantive owner-report base across garden forums, Reddit and Gardena's community boards. No recall, no systemic defect and no pattern of job-stopping mechanical failure. Short of the isolated-failures anchor because the evidence is owner-community grade and no warranty-handling data is on file.

Software stability14% of the score65

Evidence

Updates ship: a firmware channel runs through the Gardena Bluetooth app, delivered from the garden rather than over the internet. Nothing records their effect. No changelog, no release notes and no independent account of update behavior exists for this model, and no owner reports an update breaking a working function. That silence asserts neither stability nor instability. Having no cloud to fail still earns nothing here; the score reflects the absent record, not the absent cloud.

Support longevity10% of the score100

Evidence

A strong support case, and one the framework names directly. Gardena publishes long parts programs with catalogs and exploded diagrams, runs a dealer and service network across Europe and North America, and this model is still in the lineup seven years after launch with commodity blade sets. Off the top only because no support term is published in years and there is no software-update commitment.

Ownership burden20% of the score54What it asks of you.

Routine maintenance12% of the score43

Evidence

The binding item is deck and blade clearing after every two to three uses, which on a machine cutting once or twice a week is a near-weekly job. On top of that sit monthly wire and dock contact inspection, a 6 to 8 week blade interval, and an annual full-loop wire audit with break repair. Seasonal deployment itself is five minutes and the machine is light enough to handle one-handed.

Consumables8% of the score71

Evidence

The record puts blades at $20 to $30 a set on a 6 to 8 week interval, roughly $100 a year, and lists the short interval as a con. Worth noting against that figure: the sibling Minimo record prices the same style of Gardena three-blade change at about $5 from a nine-blade kit, so the true running cost may be far lower. Scored as the record states, with the discrepancy flagged.

middle half of the databaseits medianthis robot

Reported, not scoredneither measures how well the robot works

Five-year cost$1,319

Lower third for robot mowers. $699 at purchase with boundary wire and pegs supplied in the box, which the record confirms, roughly $500 of blade sets across five years at the price this record states, an allowance for wire spares, and one battery pack toward year five. No subscription, no gateway and no account of any kind. If the sibling record's Gardena blade-kit pricing is the correct figure, the five-year total drops by roughly $400.

Data postureLocal

Core function needs no account and no network.

What leaves the homeNot documented

Read the full methodology →

FIT CHECK

Will the Gardena Sileno City work on your yard?

Describe your yard using the controls. Each choice reads the spec sheet for you, flagging where the Gardena Sileno City is built for your space and where it isn’t.

Yard size

Terrain

Grass type

Boundary setup

A classification of fit for the conditions you set, not a recommendation. Verdicts describe engineering design intent, not test results.

SPECIFICATION

The full spec sheet.

Priced below the category median, with every figure charted against the category below.

Dimensional drawing

Key specificationsManufacturer-published

Footprint: 21.3 × 15 in · 9.5 in tall
Weight: 15.9 lbs
Battery: 100 Wh · Li-ion

Where it lands · ranked across 91 robot lawn mowersThis robotMedianTypical range

Runtime70min

30 min240 min

Near median

Price$723.28

$451$5,999

Bottom of range

Noise58dB

50 dB82 dB

Near median

Charge time60min

30 min300 min

Near median

Weight15.9lbs

11.9 lbs134 lbs

Bottom of range

Position shows where the figure sits across the tracked category, not a quality judgment.

Official referencesManufacturer site

OWNERSHIP

Living with it.

Six years of field data show stable mechanical operation; boundary-wire integrity and blade dulling are the primary maintenance burdens.

Market presence since 2019 shows reliable cutting performance once deployed. Wire breaks from ground settling or weather are occasional. No major firmware issues (no firmware exists). Blade replacement demand is high due to frequent use on small yards.

Owner effort~50 minhands-on per month

Consumables$100replaceable parts / yr

Reliability trend Stableowner-reported arc

What goes wrong · 3 documented · 0 self-recover

Common

Blade wear and dull cuttingUneven cut, patchy coverage, higher motor load.

Owner fixBlade replacement every 6-8 weeks during season; cost ~$20-30 per set. More frequent than larger mowers.

Occasional

Boundary wire break or corrosionNavigation halts; mower cannot distinguish yard from out-of-bounds.

Owner fixLocate break via visual inspection (urban yards are small). Repair via splice kit (~$10) or segment replacement (~$20-30). Labor 15-30 minutes.

Occasional

Wheel slip on wet grassNavigation drift; uneven cutting or boundary overshoot.

Owner fixAllow yard to dry before operation. Urban yards drain quickly; rarely a sustained issue.

Step-by-step fixesBoundary Wire BreakCutting Uneven or Scalping the Lawn?Blades Not Spinning or Not Cutting?All robot mower guides

Upkeep routine

Monthly12×/yr

Inspect visible boundary wire for breaks or corrosion damage. Check dock contacts for dirt.

Seasonal4×/yr

Deploy mower, verify boundary wire integrity (visual walk-through), test dock connection (5 minutes).

Yearly1×/yr

Full boundary wire inspection and repair of any breaks. Deep blade maintenance and dock connector check.

As neededno fixed schedule

Inspect and replace mower blades ($20-30 per set). · Clear deck and blade area of grass clippings and debris.

Cost over time · past the sticker

PurchaseRunning cost

Year 1

$823

Year 3

$1,023

Year 5

$1,223

$723 to buy, then about $100 a year for the replaceable parts below. Over three years that is roughly $300 past the sticker price. Excludes electricity and any repairs.

What you replace

BladesEvery 6-8 weeks (during season)$20–30

Replacement cadence from the maintenance schedule; prices shown where the source documents them.

Safety notes

CautionBlade engagement near perimeter: Blades spin during perimeter tracing. On compact urban lots, neighbors' property may be close; ensure boundary wire placement respects shared-space proximity.

NoteUnderground wire electrical hazard: Boundary wire carries low-voltage signal. Avoid cutting wire with metal tools during garden work or yard maintenance.

RECORD

How the assessment has moved.

Every announcement, release and reassessment behind the current classification.

Coming soon

Just launched

Active updates

Settled

Discontinued

Feb 2025 · NewsSileno City price moves to $649 as Gardena urban tier repositions
Jul 2026 · AssessmentRobovations Score recorded at 64 of 100
Jul 2026 · AssessmentRobovations Score revised 64 → 67
Aug 2026 · AssessmentRobovations Score rescored under v4.0: 67 → 69
Aug 2026 · AssessmentRobovations Score rescored under v4.2: 69 → 69
Aug 2026 · AssessmentRecord status: Verified → Provisional

Editorial comparisons

Common questions

What people actually ask.

5 answered

OperationDoes the Gardena Sileno City work without a boundary wire?

No. A perimeter wire must be laid around the yard’s edge. Manufacturer specs specify 1-3 cm burial depth. Installation on compact urban lots typically takes 1-2 hours.

CompatibilityCan I schedule the City to run on a timer or via mobile app?

Yes, three ways. Mowing times can be set on the onboard control panel and its 2.1 inch display, or through Auto Schedule in the GARDENA Bluetooth app, and SensorControl adjusts how often the mower cuts according to how fast the grass is growing. No push-button start is needed for a session.

OperationWhat is the typical cutting time for a 150 sqm yard?

Gardena gives a typical mowing time of 65 minutes per charge, with charging taking about the same. A 150 sqm yard typically requires one to two sessions per week during growing season.

OperationHow often do I need to replace the blades?

Manufacturer lists blade replacement every 6-8 weeks during active season. Replacement blades cost approximately $20-30 per set. Shorter interval than larger mowers due to smaller blade size.

OperationIs the Sileno City suitable for narrow garden passages or tight spaces?

City is compact, 55 x 38 x 23 cm (21.7 x 15.0 x 9.1 in), and well-suited to narrow passages and tight urban gardens. Owner reports confirm easy manual repositioning between cutting sessions if boundaries prevent continuous coverage.

Availability

Where it's sold

We may earn commission from qualifying purchases. This does not influence classification.

Amazon Checked Aug 9, 2026 $736.41In stock

Cite / Embed

Reference the Gardena Sileno City classification.

Embed the Autonomy Ladder™ mark or copy the citation. The mark is served from this record rather than saved as a file, so it always shows the level we currently hold. If we reassess, it updates on your page by itself.

<a href="https://robovations.com/robots/gardena-sileno-city/?ref=badge" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://robovations.com/badge/r/gardena-sileno-city/seal-light" width="268" height="124" loading="lazy" alt="Autonomy Ladder classification for Gardena Sileno City, assessed by Robovations." /></a>

The mark must link to this record. An unlinked mark is not authorised.
No recolouring, cropping, rotating, restyling, or re-typesetting. Scale proportionally only, up to 2×: the seal to 536px wide, the standard to 224px.
Leave clear space equal to half the numeral tile on all sides: 32px on the seal, 22px on the standard.
The mark states a classification, not an endorsement. It may not appear beside language implying Robovations recommends, rates, or approves the product.
Hot-link the image from robovations.com. Do not download, self-host, proxy or re-upload it: a saved copy stops updating, and a mark that has stopped updating is a claim we no longer stand behind.
The mark is live. It reflects the classification on this record as it stands. If we reassess, it changes on your page automatically. If we withdraw the classification, it stops rendering. Nothing is required from you either way.

Citation

Robovations. "Gardena Sileno City: Autonomy Level II (Assisted Autonomy)." Autonomy Ladder™, assessed August 2026. https://robovations.com/robots/gardena-sileno-city/

Where to next

Three ways to keep going.

For evaluators

Compare with a peer.

See the Gardena Sileno City and Husqvarna Automower 115H side by side: autonomy level, Robovations Score, readiness, and price. Classification, not a verdict.

See the full comparison

Or compare with Husqvarna Automower Aspire R4, Gardena Sileno Life 750, McCulloch ROB R1000.

For browsers

See every Level II.

Every robot we’ve classified at assisted autonomy. Sorted by readiness, score, and price. Filter by category, manufacturer, or release date.

Browse the database

Updated weekly with new entries and reclassifications.

Gardena Sileno City

Will the Gardena Sileno City work on your yard?

The full spec sheet.

Living with it.

How the assessment has moved.

How Gardena Sileno City compares.

Small urban lawns: is a simple wired robot mower better than RTK?

Do robot mowers need a subscription or cloud connection?

What people actually ask.

Other robot lawn mowers we have classified.

McCulloch ROB R1000

Ambrogio Twenty Elite

Gardena Sileno Life 750

Husqvarna Automower Aspire R4

Where it's sold

Reference the Gardena Sileno City classification.

Three ways to keep going.

Get the next reassessment.

Compare with a peer.

See every Level II.