Of the five most adjacent neighbors to my house, three of them are borderline obsessive about their lawns. The other two maintain their lawns pretty conventionally, but are a lot less obnoxious about it. I live in the suburbs, and I believe the local ordinance requires that the grass be cut to under 8 inches. My relationship with my lawn for the majority of my home ownership is best described as adversarial. I have also steadfastly refused to own a gas-powered mower (although I have borrowed one on occasion.)
When I was younger and in better shape, I used a reel mower. I eventually gave up on because it was taking up too much time and energy. My reel mower did not work well on tall grass, so falling behind made things even harder.
My next mower was a battery-powered but otherwise conventional push mower. It used sealed lead acid battery packs that were approximately the size and weight of a 12V car battery. The runtime wasn’t great, so I had to have two packs. The charging time also wasn’t great, and the packs were very sensitive to over/under charging, leading to reduced capacity over time. I felt like I was spending too much time managing batteries and too much money replacing them.
My third mower was a plug-in electric push mower. It traded the battery management for cable management. It seems petty, but it’s annoying to have to keep moving the extension cord out of the way as you mow, and the appropriate gauge for it makes it particularly stiff and heavy to deal with. I’ve been putting up with that for several years.
My latest mower is another battery powered push mower, but this time it’s using high-voltage lithium-ion batteries that are much lighter and faster to charge. It runs for about and hour, and takes about that long to charge. I tested by using just one battery, but there was too much downtime between charges to be ideal. I waited a bit and managed to get a second battery on sale, so I should have effectively unlimited runtime now. It’s also one of those systems where the battery packs are interchangeable with other tools, so I may be able to get more versatility from them over time. 
It’s worth mentioning that all of the above mowers are quieter and lower vibration than any gas-powered mower I’ve ever used.
As to the grass itself, my interest in maintaining it as-is has always been low, but I’ve mostly left it alone over the years. That changed several months into the pandemic when I fell behind on mowing and was reported to the city government, probably by one of the three neighbors mentioned above. I am now slowly replacing the grass in my lawn with clover. This has most of the advantages of the plants mentioned by others (flowers, drought resistance, tolerant to foot traffic, etc.) while also being relatively inexpensive. It brings me a small measure of joy to imagine my neighbors seeing my spreading seed and thinking that I am somehow still losing the battle to the weeds.
I have nowhere else to put this, but I want to mention that the closest thing to an altercation I’ve had with my neighbors is the result of my lawn. On the day after Thanksgiving, I heard a lawn mower outside, and I realized that it seemed closer than I would have expected from one of my neighbors’ yards. I went outside to discover my neighbor was mowing my lawn. I explained to him in no uncertain terms that what he was doing was not cool and not okay and that he should stop immediately. I asked him if it would be okay if someone mowed his lawn without his permission, to which he replied “Cleaning up? Yes.” In reality, I suspect that he was doing it because I was not clearing the leaves from my yard, some of which were likely blowing into his yard. His motivations were selfish at their core. I made a point of leaving the leaves in place until spring. Spite is a powerful motivator.