Top positive review
2 people found this helpful
It's a Lifechanger!
By BrianD on Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2013
I don't post many reviews with superlatives, but will make an exception here. This thing is just cool! Our house is about 2100 square feet, with about 2/3 of that laminate with some area rugs, the remainder carpet. We also have 5 dogs (including one Husky mix that sheds a enough to make a couple little dogs every day) and some cats. Needless to say, pet hair is an issue. Given that both of us work and we have a bunch of other activities, our vacuuming schedule wasn't (pre-Neato) as frequent as needed, maybe twice a week. Given the animals, that really wasn't enough, hair was a constant battle. We received the Neato about 2 weeks ago. It really has transformed the house. At first, I ran it while I was there, and dumped the dust bin every time it returned to the charging station. Yes, it was full every time. After a few days we started getting caught up; it still is "stuffed" but at least makes it through the entire house on one bin. It does take a few charges to do so. When I got him, I of course wanted to try it out right away...only to discover that it needed a charge. Plugged it in, gave it a few minutes and hit the magic button. It wanted a little more charging to do anything...after about 1/2 hour it was off and running. Very entertaining to watch it work. It starts by motoring off the base and "looking" around, I assume scanning the area. We have a large, connected "great room", it seems to parse it into several areas about 15' x 15' each. It motors around the perimeter, working into corners, around furniture and obstacles. When the perimeter is done, it moves on to a nice, back and forth pattern about the middle of the room. The very first time it only ran about 20 minutes...but has increased steadily to about an hour or a bit more on a charge now. That seems to be the norm, it takes a week or so to get to "full capacity" on the batteries. The programming and sensing of this thing is pretty amazing. It isn't consistent, one day it will come off the charger and start working to the left, another time to the right. Which is probably a good thing, if it hasn't finished the entire house on the last cycle. It's pretty amazing to watch it motor back to the charger, back up to it and recharge...then motor back out to where it left off and keep going. Is it absolutely perfect? No, not quite...but very close. It will get hung up on rugs/carpets that are worn and have loose threads. No big deal, after a couple days we had found and trimmed all of them. We have one odd transition from our laminate floor to a slate pad around the wood stove. It hung up once on that transition. One or two times it ran out of juice before it made it back to the charging station. I suspect that this was when it was in the "far" end of the house, on carpet. It sounds as if it works a lot harder moving on carpet than hard surfaces. No surprise there. I just close off that section and let it do the rest of the house while we're out, then run it in that area with the door closed. I have ordered more of the magnetic strip to keep it contained, rather than needing to close the door. It's a bit of an over-achiever-it motored outside and started cleaning our deck when we left the back door open. Will be adding more of the magnetic strip at the doorway too. The cleaning job is very adequate, at least as good as with "conventional" vacuuming. It gets LOTS of pet hair and dirt/dust. It's really nice to come home to a freshly vacuumed house. It's pretty amazing to watch it work around furniture, and especially chair legs or tables. If it can fit, it will find a way. Every few days I pull out the couch so it can get behind it (too low to go under). It seems to do a better job of sucking deeply embedded hair and dirt out of carpet than a conventional vacuum. I think it's due to it's fairly slow speed; it spends long enough to work the dirt up and out. The dogs and cats don't seem much bothered. Our bigger dogs are kind of lazy...and will just sit there while "Mr. Roboto" looks at them and tries to go around. Usually works...unless the dogs are laying in the hallway; in which case it gives up and leaves that area. Can't blame him for that. We have an open stairway and the "drop sensor" has worked perfectly. The noise level is very reasonable. It is a vacuum and is quite noticeable, especially if watching TV. But less so than a regular vacuum. You can program it to run at any time desired. I don't use that feature, I just push the button before heading to work. This ensures that I don't forget to dump the dust bin. We'd look for very few changes. A bit more battery capacity and faster charge would be nice. But...a higher end (Lithium Ion) battery would undoubtedly add cost. The other change I'd like to see...a bigger dust bin. With our herd, it's stuffed full even with daily cleaning. Like I said at the start, I usually don't make really strong recommendations, but do so here. This is a pretty amazing and effective product. I'm not really sure what those with negative comments (with the exception of failed units) would really expect. I figured this would be, at best, a "toy". But it has exceeded my expectations. Sure would like to see Neato come out with a robot lawn mower! If only I could teach it to cook dinner and put the dishes away...
Top critical review
5 people found this helpful
WAS incredible.. now it's junk.
By GK on Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2012
I just want to preface this review with two remarks: 1) This machine does not work flawlessly, but if you really expect a machine to float around your house perfectly with no hiccups at our current level of technology, you're expecting too much. 2) What this machine is capable of doing is nothing short of amazing (my opinion, of course). I live in a rambler-style house that is somewhat large (5,500 sq ft), and very spread out with the entire house (sans one room) being located all on one floor. Even more, our house is very segmented, meaning the layout is not open and each room is basically walled/doored off from the next. This made our previous Roomba a nightmare to use as anytime it found a door, it was off to the next room and never again finished the last room it was in. I thought this would pose a problem with the Neato - WRONG! I'm constantly amazed by the Neato's awareness as to where it's located. Every time I think it's going to miss an area, it winds up going back and getting the spot it glossed over on the first go. How it knows where it is, and where it hasn't been, is actually a bit shocking to witness. Only one or two times has he found a door, and then not realized what it was and returned to its base before cleaning that room. I'm not sure what happened to cause that to take effect, but I've only seen it happen one or two times in the 30 times I've run it. Not only is his room mapping fantastic, but his ability to dodge/go around objects, adapt to changes (a door being closed), and his (we named him Alfred) ability to traverse terrain changes (we have some big transition pieces between a few rooms) all work without major hiccups. I haven't really used him on carpet, but his suction is fantastic and he doesn't leave anything behind (except corners/edges, we'll get into that in a minute). Noise level is a pleasant surprise. I read many a review on here complaining about how loud this thing is. After firing Alfred up for the first time, I just had to shake my head and laugh a little. For a vacuum, the noise level out of this thing is perfectly acceptable. It's not even loud enough to disrupt watching TV. I can't help but wonder what noise level people expect out of a machine that has bristles slapping the floor at thousands of RPMs? Use some common sense, have reasonable expectations, and you will surely not be disappointed with the noise levels from this robot. Now, as pleased as I am with the Neato, it's not a machine without faults. My first one died (wheel "stuck") after about two weeks of use. Neato Robotics was excellent - shipped me out a brand new replacement ASAP as well as a return label. The cornering abilities and edging abilities of this machine are lacking to a point of frustration. When he encounters a corner or edge, he misses quite a bit of it in an attempt not to get stuck against the wall. It'd be nicer if he went fully into the corner or whatnot, and then backed out a few inches and made the turn. His edging abilities flat-out stink. My entire home is hardwood, and as you can expect, at least 60% if not more of the dirt on my floors is along the edge against the wall. The neato misses just about all of it without having some sort of edging brush that the Roomba has. I almost deducted a star for this, but I knew it going in. It's a simple work-around to judge run a broom along the edges of the room before using it, but hey, if I'm going to have a robot vacuum my house, it'd be nice if he did the entire thing without assistance. As for his navigation, I have a really hard time faulting this. There are a few times where he has missed a room, or just been flat-out confused by something. But, with how confusing the layout of my house is.. I'm blown away by how well he navigates it. Look at my other reviews, I'm not easily impressed and I will judge harshly when I find fault with something.. but it's hard to fault the level of excellence that the Neato performs at. So, without wasting anymore time, my final comments summarized: * Excellent (and I mean excellent) navigating/location awareness, even in a confusing house layout * Great cleaning/vacuum suction * Low noise for what it does (quiter than my Roomba Discovery) * Fantastic customer service from Neato Robotics * Very poor edge cleaning ***********Update 2014************ Unit broke for what.. the third, fourth, or fifth time. I can't even keep track of how many times I've sent it back to Neato and gotten a new one now. It broke about 2 months out of warranty. I called up Neato, explained my situation, and they graciously offered to send me a new one even though the warranty period was up due to all of the issues I had. They asked for my name/number/email and said they'd get in contact with me. Never did. Multiple calls back to them and now they just want to troubleshoot it but won't take it back. $400 for a piece of junk, essentially. When this thing works, it's fantastic, but the quality of these are so hit or miss that I could never recommend someone purchase it in its current state. Update 2015: I got yet another replacement from Neato. They eventually did send me another one out of warranty, but charged me $50 and sent me a lower-end model and it was refurbished. It lasted about 3 months of very, very, verrrrry light use before the batteries on them went bad. Seriously, Neato.. the batteries you provide in this thing have really poor life cycles, and you provide a previously used one in your refurbs? Glad I got about.. 20 uses out of it before it became unusable. Shame because this Neato is actually working! I would go out and buy new batteries, but given Neato's track record, I suspect this one is about 5 uses from death.
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