Yarbo robotic snow blower review: A yard crawler for all seasons

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Yarbo’s modular yard robot was a hit at the CES show in Las Vegas in January 2025, but I must say I was skeptical of the concept. Once I had the opportunity to test the new machine with its snow blower attachment, one of the many accessories you can attach to this track-propelled robot, I changed my tune.

The Yarbo kit arrived in three large boxes and installing the machine is a project. It is absolutely not difficult thanks to the clear instruction manual. You get all the tools you need and each them, including the Allen wrenches, are labeled. Great!

Mikael Lindkvist

Specifications

• Manufacturer: Yarbo
• Equipment: Yarbo Core, snow blower module, battery, docking station, accessories)
• Weight: 134 pounds (61kg) (Yarbo Core, less snow blower)
• Battery: 36V, 38.4 mAh
• Working temperature range: -11.2 degrees Fahrenheit to 113 F (-24 to 45 C)
• Weatherization: IPX4 (i.e., not tested for dust ingress, protected from water sprayed from any direction)
• Towing capacity:

Control it with a smartphone or Yarbo’s handheld remote

After a couple of hours, the RTK antenna is in place on the facade of the house, the base station is nailed down and the machine is ready to start testing. On my first trip to Västerbotten, a province in northeastern Sweden, I didn’t have time to do much more than assemble the kit and manually drive the snow blower around. You can choose to control it with your mobile phone or with an included handheld remote that looks like it belongs to a game console. The idea is, of course, that you schedule the snow removal to save time, in addition to saving your back.

Mikael Lindkvist

Controlling it via your mobile phone is really easy, as Yarbo’s app is exemplary. But there is a lot to keep track of besides navigating the machine. You can set the power level of the snow blower motor itself in several steps as well as how deep it should dig and the angle at which it should eject the removed snow. That’s not so good if you’re throwing ice and maybe some gravel at your car or the front of your house. The snow blower is powerful, right up there with the better battery-powered snow blowers I’ve tried, so it has no problem tossing snow (and ice chunks) 7- to 8 meters (7.6- to 8.7 yards).

Mikael Lindkvist

I had more time to really test what the Yarbo was capable of on my second trip. Now, the best thing would of course have been to set up the machine at the beginning of the winter, not when half a meter (1.6 feet) of snow had thawed and then froze again. In terms of the snow on the ground, conditions were simply not optimal.

Studded tracks are a must in winter

The first thing I did, which I didn’t manage to do in the first part of the test, was to switch to studded tracks. Without them, the Yarbo Core just slides over icy surfaces. This is a fairly simple project, however, and the robot got around much better with them on. It was incredible to see how it maneuvered icy high edges.

Mikael Lindkvist

The Yarbo Core charges either while standing on its charging pad, or via an included AC charger. The included 36V battery charges fully in about 3 hours, but when its cold outside, it needs to warm up for 20- to 30 minutes before you can start charging its battery. A full charge lasts up to 4 hours according to the specifications. The robot cleared large areas in that amount of time, so the operating time with the snow blower should not be a problem unless you have huge areas to handle.

On paper, Yarbo should be able to handle up to 125,000 square meters (149,499 square yards); but of course, it depends on the job. The area I worked was only 700- to 800 square meters (837- to 957 square yards) in the form of a large driveway and a stretch of road. During the two test periods, the robot had no problems with navigation, needing a little help to get onto its charging pad only once .

Mikael Lindkvist

It’s very easy to plan your automated snow removal using the Yarbo app. If you’ve ever set up a boundary wire-free robot lawn mower, you’ll be familiar with the concept. You drive the machine around the edges of the area you’re mapping, during which you can mark no-go zones. It’s also important that you indicate indicate which direction the snow should be pushed. This is easiest to do after you’ve created your initial map. You can then schedule when you want the snow blower to run. You can also customize it to clear snow only after snow events.

Mikael Lindkvist

There are also some other smart features, including Smart Vision, which lets you look out through the robot’s onboard cameras while the robot is working. Another important feature is that the machine will recognize obstacles, including people. As soon as I walked near the snow blower, it would say “human detected” and pause until I was at a safe distance–around 4- to 5 meters (13- to 16 feet)–from the robot.

This robot can pull a trailer, too

It is of course difficult to judge the reliability of a machine like this in a few days of testing, but my first impression is that this is a really high-quality machine with stable software. You probably wouldn’t buy a Yarbo Core just for its winter utility (Yarbo offers a scraper bar ($59) and a snow plow blade ($159) as optional add-ons). Once you have the Core, you can choose between two sizes of lawn mower modules and a string-trimmer module for cutting grass in the spring and summer, and there’s a leaf blower module for clearing leaves in the fall.

DataNova

I imagine this robot will do a great job of mowing lawns, at least it won’t have any problems getting around. You can also tow up to 500 pounds with its trailer hitch installed, and opting for Yarbo’s $149 Back Brace Mount boosts that capacity to 3,500 pounds (with a 200-pound tongue weight). Finally, if you live on a large parcel of land, you can program it to patrol as a robotic security guard.

The Yarbo Core and its snow blower attachment are crazy expensive, but this is definitely one of the coolest products I’ve tried.

This article originally appeared on our sister publication M3 and was translated and localized from Swedish.

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