We tested the Worx WG743E cordless lawn mower on different lawns and loved its powerful cut

If you have a lawn bigger than a postage stamp, you are going to need a lawn mower to keep your grass in check. And for many, a new cordless mower will be top of their wish list.

Unlike traditional electric models with their restrictive cabling, or heavy petrol mowers that need careful maintenance, cordless lawn mowers are easy to manoeuvre, easy to look after and have powerful, reliable batteries that can be replaced without you having to buy a whole new mower, meaning they're arguably more sustainable.

The Worx WG743E cordless lawn mower promises to be an excellent workhorse that's perfect for medium-to-large lawns up to 500 sq m. It's powered by two 20V lithium-ion batteries, has an impressive seven cutting heights, and collects up to 45 litres of grass in the supplied bag. It will also mulch when the provided attachment is inserted.

But would it, ahem, 'make the cut' as one of our best lawn mowers on test? We put it through the ringer through some very changeable spring weather conditions to find out.

Worx WG743E cordless lawn mower specifications

• Battery: 2 x 4.0Ah Lithium-ion batteries
• Coverage: Up to 500 sq m on a single charge
• Charge time: 70mins
• Voltage: 40W
• Cutting height: 20mm-80mm (7 cutting heights)
• Cutting width: 400mm / 40cm
• Cutting options: Rear discharge, mulching, and cut and collect
• Grass collector: 45L
• Deck material: Plastic
• Dimensions: ‎1440mm x 450mm x 1050mm
• Weight: 15.2 kg (with batteries); 13.9kg (without batteries)
• Warranty: 3 years (registration required)

How we tested it

My partner and I tested this on four different lawns – our front garden, our neighbour's front garden, our back garden and a friend's back garden. We rated it out of five stars for each of the following criteria to get to our final grade.

• Ease of assembly: Did any parts need to be attached, and if so, was this a simple job?
• Ease of use: Could we easily operate the mower? Was anything fiddly or overly complicated? Was it easy to attach extra parts like the grass collection bag? Was it easy to change the mower height?
• Performance: How well did the lawn mower cut, mulch and collect grass? Did it struggle in longer grass? Did it give even results on shorter grass?
• Noise: How loud was the mower?
• Battery charging and life: How long did the batteries take to charge? How long did they last?
• Storage: Did the lawn mower fold up for easy storage? Was it easy to collapse and fold out?
• Maintenance: Could the blades and batteries be removed/replaced easily? Was any other maintenance required?

We also directly compared it to our current day-to-day cordless lawn mower, the Stihl RMA339C cordless lawn mower, which we've owned for a few years. It is available at a similar price point and covers slightly less ground on a single charge at 400 sq m.

Unboxing the Worx WG743E cordless lawn mower

The Worx WG743E cordless lawn mower comes in a large orange cardboard box with most of the parts wrapped loosely in bubble wrap to protect it in transit. Everything is packed in quite tightly, the handle coming in three parts.

Inside the box is the mower's body, the handlebar in three sections, the 45-litre grass collector, a cardboard box containing the two batteries and a double charger, and a small bag of bits for set up.

The bag contains several bolts for attaching the handle to the body of the mower, the handle for the grass collector, and two clips that can be used to secure the power cable that links to the safety key and bail handle to the handle frame, so that it doesn't get in the way. It also contains a 20-page instruction manual and a warranty booklet.

A small amount of assembly was required. This was relatively simple – probably a one-person job, although my partner and I did together and having the extra pair of hands did come in useful. Most of the steps are intuitive and we found ourselves taking only cursory glances at the instruction manual.

The main issue to make sure we weren’t putting things on the wrong way. One thing we did initially get wrong was clipping the handle onto the grass collector – we had it the wrong way around and it wouldn’t slot into place.

Once corrected, it needed quite a bit of of force to get it in. I would question why it wasn’t attached at the factory. Possibly because it might get damaged in transit? But I feel it was quite tricky to attach if you didn’t have much brute strength.

Attaching the main handle bar was easy enough, though it did help to have two pairs of hands – one to hold the bar sides to the correct height while the other screwed the bolts that attach the top of the handle. There is a choice of two holes, so you can adjust the height by a couple of inches to one that suits you best.

You'll also need to tighten two more screws at the base of the handle, where it attaches to the mower. These come attached to the main mower unit, so need to be removed beforehand.

Overall, unboxing, assembling and setting up for the first use took us around 15 minutes. One last little issue we had was that we nearly forgot to clip the edges of the grass bag to the metal bars. It’s an easy step to miss unless you read the instructions carefully.

Mowing the lawn with the Worx WG743E cordless lawn mower

Before you start using the Worx, you have two jobs to do. The first is to insert your batteries. Now there are two, which take fractionally longer to load than our Stihl, which has just the one (compatible with other tools in Stihl's AK range).

Worx explains that this is because they can be used in their wide-ranging Powershare system, either singly or together, so you don't need to keep buying (and storing) lots of different batteries.

One thing we really liked was the power test button, which allowed us to check the remaining charge before we started mowing and without needing to remove the batteries. If you've finished the back lawn and are wondering if you have enough juice to do the front, too, this is super handy.

Your next job will be to set the cutting length. This is done by pulling a lever by the front wheel. This again needs a little strength to do, but I managed fine, though it’s a two-handed job.

I was pleased to see that the level didn't drop when mowing, which I've experienced happening on other machines in the past. It seemed to hold in place securely.

Our back lawn isn't in great condition and we are due to reseed it in parts, but had grown quite long. We took it quite short – level 3 (40mm). Our neighbour mows her lawn more frequently and doesn't like to have it too short, so we kept it at level 5 (60mm).

There are three options for discharging your grass clippings from the mower – they can be dumped straight out of the mower, dispatched into a 45-litre grass box or mulched and dumped onto your lawn, again from the back.

We tried all three options. To switch you need to remove or add either the grass bag or the mulching wedge insert, seen below. This is all easy enough to do – but as we say, just make sure the bag is clipped up together properly or it won't attach. It's not, however, as simple as flipping a switch, which some premium mowers allow.

We were super impressed with the power and precision of the Worx, which sliced through grass and some stubborn weeds with ease. We were particularly impressed with its edge-to-edge performance, meaning we didn't need to reach for the strimmer to tidy up the tricky borders beside our raised beds.

We found the Worx to be as loud but a little more high pitched than our Stihl, but certainly no louder than neighbouring mowers.

In our medium-sized back garden, we emptied the grass box twice in total, which was comparable to our existing mower but we would have liked the bag to have been bigger.

Ease of Use

Starting the machine was probably the thing we liked the least about it. To do so, you need to plug in a key. This is attached to the mower with a nylon loop. Holding this in place while simultaneously holding the handle down to operate the mower didn't feel natural and took a fair amount of coordination.

Another concern here is that if the cable were to snap or accidentally be cut off, it’s an easy thing to lose. Also, if the key was to snap, you would be unable to use the mower. It’s a small potential vulnerability that we’d be mindful of, especially if you don’t tend to be that careful with your lawn mower.

I found manoeuvring the lawn mower relatively easy. It's quite lightweight for its size and was easy to run up and down a tidier long lawn in a straight line. It was a trickier proposition on a smaller front garden as you couldn't really build momentum in your mowing action before needing to turn. Therefore, I'd say this is definitely a better choice for a medium to large garden, rather than a plot of under 50 sq m.

And while we avoided cutting wet grass as much as possible, due to very poor weather conditions, at one point we had no choice but to cut grass that was slightly damp. This didn't seem to be too much of an issue for the Worx. Grass clumped a little but not badly around the blade and over the deck, and was easy to pull away.

Storing the Worx WG743E cordless lawn mower

The good news is that the Worx WG743E cordless lawn mower folds down for easy storage. The not-so-good-news is that it's a bit of a faff, in all honesty. You have to unscrew four wingnuts that hold the handle in place and then collapse the handle down in two movements. This was fiddly and we also felt that doing this every couple of weeks over the summer would weaken the handle and the bolts over time.

The handle flailed around a bit as we put it away – we had to find the right balance. We also worried that the loosened bolts might fall off and get lost while in storage.

We much prefer the mechanism on our Stihl lawn mower, which has a lever that releases the handle to fold. There’s no tightening and untightening, and the handle and parts feel just as secure folded as they do fully constructed.

That said, we were impressed at how compact the Worx was once folded down – certainly smaller than the Stihl, with the ability to stand upright, making it an excellent choice if you've got limited space.

Batttery performance on the Worx WG743E cordless lawn mower

Battery life on the Worx was excellent, though we will put that in the context of our six-week testing period. Over time, the performance of lithium-ion batteries can drop, so we'd need to test for longer to be confident. That said, we were able to mow all four lawns once on one charge, which was hugely impressive.

The charging time, too, was better than expected. The manufacturer's spec lists a charging time of 70 minutes for the two batteries, but we noticed that the batteries fully charged in under an hour. So if you are panic mowing before rain arrives and need to recharge the batteries, you won't be waiting too long.

How does the Worx WG743E cordless lawn mower rate online?

We checked Amazon to see what customers thought of the Worx WG743E cordless lawn mower. Of 359 global ratings, it scored a fabulous average of 4.3 stars. Customers liked the lawn mower's battery life and the fact it is lightweight and easy to move around the lawn. They also seemed impressed at the evenness with which it cut the grass, build quality and its choice of mowing heights.

Negative reviews often mentioned poor battery life (contrary to what we found), items arriving damaged and the fact the machine made a higher-pitched noise (something we noticed) than other lawn mowers, which they found irritating.

Should you buy the Worx WG743E cordless lawn mower?

We recommend this lawn mower to anyone with a medium-sized lawn of 150 to 400 sq m. It's great for long, narrow gardens as you can get a great rhythm as you mow up and down. We also like that it cuts to a nice clean edge, so you can use it to cut against a raised bed or border. In fact, it's exceptional in this regard.

It's harder to move around a small lawn due to its size, though it does fold down small, so it is good if you don't have much storage space for garden equipment.

We did find you needed good coordination to use it, holding the key and handle down at the same time, so it may not suit anyone with a lack of strength or dexterity in their arms and hands. We also found folding it down for storage fiddly.

The Worx WG743E cordless lawn mower is a good, robust buy that will please many garden owners. However, our slight niggles with operation and storing it mean it's not convinced us to part with our existing Stihl machine in its favour.