Vonhaus 171cc Petrol Lawn Mower review: a great-value wide-beam mower for larger lawns

Welcome to T3’s review of the new Vonhaus 171cc, an impressive and very keenly-priced petrol lawn mower for those with bigger landscapes to maintain.

While robot lawn mowers are all the rage at the moment, there’s still plenty of scope for petrol lawn mowers, especially if your lawn is on the larger side and you need to be able to mow well beyond the battery capacity of a cordless lawn mower.

Despite the low price, this new Vonhaus model has impressed me with its cutting power, low weight and ability to self propel itself so I don’t have to do any pushing.

Let’s take a closer look at its design, features and performance, and see if this is the petrol lawn mower for you.

Vonhaus 171cc Petrol Lawn Mower review: price and availability

Given its British credentials, the Vonhaus 171cc petrol mower is only available in the UK and from a multitude of online retailers, no less. The Vonhaus website sells this model for £279.99 but it’s also available from Amazon (£229.99), Tesco (£299.99), B&Q (£279.99), Debenhams (£299.99), Sports Direct (£299.99) and Frasers (£299.99)

Vonhaus 171cc Petrol Lawn Mower review: set up

Despite the Germanic-sounding name, Vonhaus is a UK brand based in Manchester with its mowers usually being made in China. The company’s latest petrol model arrives mostly assembled so all I had to do was attach the lower handlebar rakes to two brackets on the mower and screw on the speed control assembly, then slowly pull out the pull-start cord and attach it to the ring halfway up the handlebar for easier access when starting.

Like all petrol mowers, this model comes with a 4-stroke engine that can be filled up using standard unleaded pump fuel. However, pump fuel goes off after a year or so and the ethanol in it can play havoc with carburettors over a period of time in storage, which is why petrol power tool owners often need to get their mowers serviced the following year.

But I have a much better solution – use Aspen 4 fuel instead. Aspen 4 is a specialised ethanol-free, alkylate 4-stroke fuel that doesn’t absorb moisture like pump petrol and that means it won’t gum up a mower’s carburettor while in winter storage. Aspen not only contains 99% fewer harmful hydrocarbons but, more importantly, it lasts for up to five years in storage, even when sitting in a mower’s fuel tank. I can guarantee that a mower filled up with Aspen 4 instead of unleaded pump fuel will fire up with no issues after lengthy storage and you will save a ton on servicing costs.

However, there is a small catch with Aspen 4 – it costs roughly £5 per litre. Nevertheless, given that a petrol lawnmower runs for ages on five litres of pump fuel, chances are you’ll get more than a full summer’s use out of a five-litre container of Aspen 4. Given Aspen's Holy Grail properties, that's twenty five quid well spent in my book.

Now the fuel lesson is over, another thing you’ll need to purchase is a litre bottle of SAE 30 engine oil which you can buy at places like B&Q. Make sure you have a small funnel to hand and pour in no more than 500ml. In fact, to prevent overfilling it, I would stop periodically when filling to check the dipstick.

To start the engine for the very first time, slide the handlebar-mounted propulsion controller to ‘cold start’ and press the big red primer nipple on the side of the engine four or five times so the fuel is pumped to the carb. Now pull on the start cord four-to-six times and it should fire up, as it did with me. Once running, bring the propulsion lever back to your preferred walking pace and you’re good to go.

Vonhaus 171cc Petrol Lawn Mower review: design and features

The Vonhaus weighs in at around 26kgs and that’s pretty light for a 171cc petrol-powered model with wide 51cm cutting deck. Put another way, I have been able to pick it up and pull it up my garden steps with no issues.

The mower’s 171cc 4-stroke engine is branded a Vonhaus NP170 so I can’t tell you in which factory it was made, but I have been impressed by how well it has behaved when starting and when mowing. In fact, it’s one of the most faff-free engines I’ve ever used and it doesn’t make too much of a racket either – 98dB, according to the specs.

At 2,850RPM, this engine has been powerful enough for my needs and I can tell there’s a lot more oomph under the cowling to ensure the cutting blade keeps turning even when faced with tall-ish, damp grass that often bogs down lesser models.

As mentioned, this model’s steel deck is equipped with a 51cm cutting width which is suitable for lawns up to 350m² in size, and that’s pretty a generous size for a mower in the sub-£280 price range.

You can use this mower in three ways: collection, side chute and mulching. For grass collection, fit its ample 60-litre fabric grass catcher on the rear and mow to your heart’s content in the safe knowledge that you won’t need to reach for a rake afterwards. Simply empty the cuttings into your green-waste council bin or dump them on the compost heap.

If your landscape is too large to keep running back and forth with a grass collector, opt for either the mulching or side-chute technique. For mulching, ensure the supplied mulching plug is pushed into the mower’s outlet under the rear flap and all the nitrogen-rich cuttings will be fed back into the lawn, fertilising it at the same time.

But if your grass is really long and you need rapid discharge of large volumes of clippings to prevent the mower from clogging and stalling, fit both the supplied side chute and mulching plug and all cuttings will be blasted to the side over a wide area.

Like all mowers, the Vonhaus is equipped with a variety of cutting heights (in this instance, 25-70mm) and these are easily changed by grabbing a big steel lever on the side and choosing your preferred height in one centimetre increments.

I’ve already mentioned this mower’s relatively low weight which is easy to push but you won’t even need to do that because the Vonhaus also comes with variable-speed self propulsion that takes the mower from a slow, leisurely walking pace to a brisk march. Simply grab the throttle lever and adjust the speed to suit your pace.

I should add that, like many petrol mowers, the speed of the blade speeds up and slows down depending on the speed of the mower. This is because both systems – the drive wheels and the cutting blade – are powered by the same engine and they both share its power output.

Don’t expect high-end Ego-style levels of build quality here because that’s just not possible at this price point. Hence, the handlebar assembly – while perfectly adequate – is on the cheaper end of the scale and its height adjustment is pretty rudimentary (simply unclip both side levers and move the bars ups and down). Also, I’m not sure anyone really needs a drink holder or, for that matter, what looks like a transparent container for one’s packed lunch.

Vonhaus 171cc Petrol Lawn Mower review: Performance

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by this model’s performance and especially how light it is to manoeuvre when performing a 180˚ turn or when negotiating wavy garden borders. For its wide 51cm cutting deck, it’s a very nimble sward swallower indeed.

I tested it on my main lawn, which wasn’t very long to begin with, but the mower was really easy to use and its self propulsion offered a wide range of walking paces. It cut the lawn exceedingly well in my opinion but I needed some longer grass to really tell. So I hoisted it up some steps to cut the much longer front lawn, which had areas of grass growing at around eight inches in height. This posed no problem for the Vonhaus which neatly cut through swathes of longer grass without ever bogging down – and I didn’t even have the engine running at anywhere near full pelt.

This was impressive performance for such a low-priced machine, and I put down it down to the extra bit of grunt provided by its 171cc engine (many mowers at under £280 tend to use smaller 140cc engines).

There is no specialised vortex airflow technology under the deck of this model so I can’t tell you how well it sucks up garden leaves in autumn because I’ve already cleaned them all up. However, I’ve been impressed by how well it has packed its 60-litre grass collector with finely-snipped cuttings.

All in all, I’d say that this model performed well above its price band and wide cutting width. Consequently, I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap petrol mower that does what it’s supposed to do. Nice one, Vonhaus.

Vonhaus 171cc Petrol Lawn Mower review: Verdict

The Vonhaus 171cc is a solid-choice budget petrol mower that offers great cutting power, a wide 51cm deck and self-propelled drive that reduces effort on larger lawns. Given its low price point, build quality is fairly basic, especially when it comes to the handlebar assembly, but overall this mower has delivered very dependable performance for the money. It’s well worth a gander, in my opinion.