Kress 60V Max 46cm Self-Propelled Lawn Mower KG757E.9 Review
A large mower for the pros, with headlights and a battery that just won’t quit
Verdict
A huge, self-propelled mower with an apparently bottomless battery that’s also extremely expensive and aimed at professional gardeners looking for an update to their petrol-powered lawnmower. It offers a smooth mowing experience, and thicker weeds aren’t going to stand a chance, but it’s best paired with a grass trimmer, as it can’t cut close to walls or other garden features.
Pros
- A large mower for large lawns
- Excellent battery life
- Wide cut
Cons
- Heavy
- Expensive
Key Features
- Battery lifeThe 2Ah battery provides enough power for 600m² of lawn, the 4Ah battery for up to 1200m².
- Cutting widthThe huge 46cm cutting width makes short work of large lawns.
Introduction
Some mowers are compact, light, and fold up nicely in the garden shed. This is not one of those mowers.
The Kress KG757E.9 is rather like a luxury yacht: it’s got presence, poise, and size, even when the handle is folded over the top for storage. It’ll take you with it too, as the self-propulsion is powerful enough to pull you along if you’ve set it to go too fast.
This is a large, heavy, self-propelled mower with the largest battery I’ve seen yet on a garden implement. It’s designed for professionals who mow a lot, or for someone with a very large lawn but who doesn’t want to buy their gardener a ride-on. It even has headlights, so you can carry on mowing when the sun sets.
Design and features
- Large and heavy
- Good folding handle
- Charger fan can be noisy
The Kress KG757E.9’s size is certainly one of its most noticeable features, but the way it’s built stands out too. There’s a lot of hard, chunky, black plastic at work here instead of a metal frame, and there are some really helpful design choices too.
Take the handle. It’s fairly complicated at the top, with one pull-bar for the mowing blades, another for the self-propulsion motor, an analogue selector to choose how hard it pulls, a button to turn on the headlights for night mowing, and a start button.
It’s complicated, kinda clunky, and needs a pictorial instruction panel to tell you what’s what.
However, it’s also permanently joined to the mower body via a metal joint, and has a release button that folds it beautifully over the top of the mower for storage. The same button adjusts the height, which can be adjusted through a range that will suit the tallest gardeners as well as those of more modest growth.
There’s a neat little handle, with a release switch, to change the cutting height too, which goes up and down smoothly – no jerking it between heights.
Most mowers we review have 36- or 18-volt batteries, and they’re small enough to slip in your pocket to carry back to the charger. Not so the Kress, which uses an enormous 60V power pack that’s about three times larger than the standard Bosch-type mower battery.
It comes with a similarly-sized charger that can power it up quickly, but has a cooling fan that means it’s probably better off being used in a garage or storage shed rather than the kitchen.
There’s a choice of two batteries: the 2Ah battery is good for up to 600m², while the 4Ah battery is good for up to 1200m² of lawn.
Performance
- Battery lasts forever
- Self-propulsion a bit finicky
- Doesn’t mow right to the edges
The Kress mower’s enormous battery really shows its worth when you begin mowing. I managed to completely cut a suburban lawn, using a minimum of self-propulsion, without making a dent in the battery life indicator.
This was very impressive, and what you’d expect from batteries that are nearly £200 each, but it does drain more power once you start using the self-propulsion – I found it a bit awkward to set the right sort of pace using the chunky analogue selector. Either you’re pushing it along, or it leaps away like an enthusiastic great Dane, pulling you behind it. Finding the comfortable middle ground was tricky.
Still, the cut is good, with an easily adjustable height thanks to that dedicated handle. The large 46cm cutting width means you’ll make fewer passes, but I found it doesn’t cut right up to the edge, and is probably best teamed with one of the best cordless trimmers. The sheer size of the mower also means it’s not ideal for making quick turns around garden features you can’t just mow straight over.
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Should you buy it?
You need a lawnmower with long battery life:
If you’re lucky enough to own an enormous lawn, or need to mow all day, this is for you.
You have a small garden:
It’s overkill for most suburban lawns.
Final Thoughts
You’ll know if you need a mower like the Kress KG757E.9. It’s not something you’ll pick up on a whim at the garden centre because you’d like to try it out. But if you do, its enormous battery life and broad cutting width mean you’ll be able to keep on mowing lawn after lawn into the evening, and be able to try out the headlights.
For more modest uses, the Stihl RMA 248, with its dual batteries, may be a better buy. For alternatives, check out the guide to the best cordless lawn mowers.
How we test
We test every lawn mower we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Used as our main lawn mower for the review period
Used on a variety of grass lengths to see how well the mower cuts
Tested to see how easy the mower is to push, turn and store
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FAQs
With the 2Ah battery, you can cut up to 600m² of lawn; it’s 1200m² for the 4Ah battery.
There’s an analogue control that sets the motor speed.
Full specs
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
