Cheap and cheerful is what comes to mind after testing the Cobra M41C. It’s definitely not suitable for those with bumpy lawns, but it works like a charm on flat ground. It’s also lightweight and has some useful features. If your lawn is relatively flat, then this could be a great mower for you, no matter the size of the area you’re cutting.
Cobra M41C Petrol Lawn Mower[ SAVE 10% ]
- Ease of Assembly
- 5
- Design
- 4
- Power
- 4
- Performance
- 4
- Manoeuvrability
- 4
- Features
- 4
- Safety
- 5
- Value for Money
- 4
- Lawn Size
- Small to Medium
- Engine
- 98.5cc
- Cutting Width
- 41cm
- Cutting Heights
- 25-75mm
- Collection Bag
- 50 L
- Weight
- 19.6kg
- Drive System
- Push
The Cobra M41C is a hand-propelled petrol lawn mower designed for small and medium sized gardens. It comes with a lower price tag than many of its competitors, so I was eager to see how it would hold up in terms of quality, performance, and features. Read on to see how it did…
How I Tested
Read our product testing methodology here.
I tested the Cobra M41C in the same way that I tested the other petrol lawn mowers – on short and dry grass, on longer and damper grass, and on wet grass. I used it on both flat and bumpy ground, as well as on inclines. Each area of lawn that I used the Cobra M41C on was between 200-600m², since Cobra claims that this mower is suitable for gardens as large as that.
Ease of Assembly
Out of all of the lawn mowers that I’ve tested, the Cobra M41C required the least amount of assembly. All you need to do is assemble the handles. Other than that, the grass collection bag and the hook that holds the recoil start cable in place were both already assembled, which was instantly a huge plus point!
Unlike the other mowers that I assembled and tested, the Cobra M41C comes with a plug key. This isn’t needed for initial assembly, but it’s always useful to have in the future.
The Cobra M41C comes with a bottle of oil, saving you from having to purchase this separately. The oil chute is wide and easy to access – you don’t to use a funnel or tip the machine into an awkward angle in order to pour in the oil.
I was very impressed with how easy it was to assemble this lawn mower. The process only took about ten minutes, making it great for those who want a machine that’s pretty much ready to go after opening the box.
Design
The Cobra M41C definitely looks bright and cheery. It’s colourful, with red, grey, black, and touches of yellow, and this, combined with its polymer (plastic) deck, give it an almost toy-like quality. That said, the advantage to having a plastic deck is that you won’t need to worry about rust.
Although you can’t adjust the height of the handles on this mower (which is a shame when you’re petite like me!), the handles are rounded and comfortable. They’re also foldable, meaning easy storage.
At 50 litres, the grass collection bag is a decent size for small and medium gardens. However, if Cobra intends for this mower to be used on lawns up to 600m², a larger bag would have been more appropriate. I noticed that the mouth of the bag was much larger than with the other mowers I tested – this design feature means that the mower should theoretically be able to cope quite well with damp and wet grass.
All in all, there was nothing that particularly stood out to me when it came to the design of the Cobra M41C – either good or bad. Its design is pretty basic, but sometimes that’s all you need.
Power
With a 98.5cc Cobra DG350 engine, this lawn mower had the smallest engine size out of all of the lawn mowers that I tested. However, turn it on and you can’t really tell that there’s a huge difference – for small to medium gardens, a 98.5cc engine will get the job done.
However, if I was using this mower to cut a bigger garden regularly, I would probably look for one with a larger engine.
Performance
You’ll need to press the primer button a couple of times before you start the Cobra M41C, but after this it starts pretty easily. The recoil start requires a stronger tug compared to other mowers, but not in an uncomfortable way.
I started by testing the Cobra M41C on ground that was quite uneven. It was also beneath a row of mature spruce trees, so was littered with pine cones and twigs. It cut the flat areas well, and chopped its way through all of the pine cones without spitting anything back out at me. However, it seemed to struggle to make its way over bumps – it would need a really big push to continue moving. I figured that I needed to raise the cutting height, so I took the mower over to a flatter and more even lawn and did just that.
Things started off well, but, again, the mower would stick whenever it came to a small bump, even if this was just a larger clump of rough grass. For some reason, whenever you try to push the mower over a bump, the wheels raise up, which causes the body to dig into the grass. After clumps of grass were gouged out a couple of times, I ended up lifting the back of the mower each time I came to a bump, meaning that patches of grass were left uncut.
For this reason, I wasn’t able to accurately test the mower on larger areas of lawn, as I didn’t have 600m² of bump-free grass! Chances are that few people do, which is why I wouldn’t recommend this mower for large lawns.
Aside from that, the Cobra M41C handles both dry and damp grass well, filling its bag fully. This means no wasted time emptying half-loads. While the machine does choke on wet grass, this is unlikely to be an issue since most people only cut their grass when it’s dry.
Manoeuvrability
Thanks to its plastic deck and smaller engine, the Cobra M41C is quite a light mower – 20kg to be exact. That said, the Mountfield HP41 petrol lawn mower that I tested was even lighter than this at 19kg, but had a significantly larger engine.
Still, 20kg makes this lawn mower easy to manoeuvre. It handles corners well, but, as mentioned, sticks on tougher clumps of grass – you can forget about using this one on uneven ground!
Features
One of my favourite features on the Cobra M41C was the single lever to adjust the mower’s cutting height. The other mowers I tested had two, and even four, levers that needed to be adjusted – this isn’t an issue if your cutting height always remains the same, but it can get a little annoying if you need to change the height multiple times in one mowing session.
This lawn mower offers seven height settings, from 25-75mm. Its cutting width of 41cm (16”) makes it suitable for both small and medium gardens.
One feature that the mower is lacking is an indicator to tell you when the grass collection bag is full. Even if you lift the plastic flap over the bag, you still can’t see into it. You’ll need to remove the bag to actually check, meaning that you’ll probably end up emptying it too, even if it isn’t full. Not a huge deal for a small lawns, but you could end up wasting quite a bit of time doing this when cutting larger areas.
Safety
All lawn mowers need to be equipped with a dead man lever – if you let go of this while using the mower, it cuts the engine, which helps to prevent accidents. Just like the other mowers that I tested, the Cobra M41C had a dead man lever that worked well.
Again, just like the other mowers on this page, the Cobra M41C is peppered with safety stickers. However, there seemed to be many, many more of these on this mower than on the others. Some featured row after row of symbols – I have no idea what most of them meant, and I doubt that anyone would actually look them all up, so they seemed a little pointless.
Value for Money
The Cobra M41C is the cheapest of the lawn mowers that I tested, but it actually has more features than some of the pricier alternatives. Its lower price is probably down to its smaller engine size, which won’t really affect you if you have a small garden. =
This lawn mower also comes with a two year domestic warranty, which covers defective parts.
In some ways, the Cobra M41C offers fantastic value for money – its variety of cutting heights, along with the single lever to adjust them, are features that you would expect to pay more for. However, if you have quite a bumpy garden, then this machine won’t cope, and therefore wouldn’t offer value for you.
Overall
Cheap and cheerful is what comes to mind after testing the Cobra M41C. It’s definitely not suitable for those with bumpy lawns, but it works like a charm on flat ground. It’s also lightweight and has some useful features. If your lawn is relatively flat, then this could be a great mower for you, no matter the size of the area you’re cutting.
Cobra M41C Petrol Lawn Mower[ SAVE 10% ]
- Ease of Assembly
- 5
- Design
- 4
- Power
- 4
- Performance
- 4
- Manoeuvrability
- 4
- Features
- 4
- Safety
- 5
- Value for Money
- 4
- Lawn Size
- Small to Medium
- Engine
- 98.5cc
- Cutting Width
- 41cm
- Cutting Heights
- 25-75mm
- Collection Bag
- 50 L
- Weight
- 19.6kg
- Drive System
- Push
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