Neato Robotics - Botvac Connected App-Controlled Self-Charging Robot Vacuum - Black

I've owned / own an XV-11, XV-21 and Botvac 80. I've been a big fan of Neato since they came out with their first product and I still believe in the quality of their LIDAR system to map the room before cleaning. I bought my unit the very first week (Oct 14), but I've held off posting a review until I could work through all of the issues I've had with the unit. Let's start with the positives: - I like the new captive touch interface. Takes a second to adjust to when coming out of the other robots since it's more sensitive. - Nice color screen - easy to read. - Being connected, the day / time automatically gets set for you. - Finally they ditched the Pb batteries and went to Li-ion. I can attest to the fact that in Eco mode, the batteries really do run 2 hours. I can now clean 2000+ sq ft on one charge in Eco mode vs. 2.5 charges with the prior robots. - I don't see a lot of difference between Eco and Turbo modes. Mostly Turbo is a little louder (haven't done the measurement's but probably 5db more) than Eco. Eco picks up dirt just as good as my XV-11. - The new filter is awesome. A quick swipe of the finger gets all the junk off of it. No more vacuuming my filter after every cleaning cycle. - Controlling the robot with my iPhone is nice. Just have to remember to get all the stuff picked up so not to confuse / block it. Messaging when it's done is nice as well. - Side brush works well. Nothing is ever going to get a corner perfect, but this helps. Now for the negatives that drag this down to 2 stars: - All shiny black = shows every single fingerprint. If you want your robot to look as clean as your house, be prepared to wipe the dust bin down constantly. - It took me 4 tries to get the robot connected to the Neato servers. 1st time I let it try for 36 hours with no success - could never link up to the Neato server but was on my wifi network quickly. 2nd and 3rd tries the robot would not connect to my wifi - yes you have to start from scratch if it won't connect to Neato's servers. 4th time it actually connected fairly quickly. I sent an e-mail in to Neato the 1st night I had it about the connection issue - they never responded. Had to call in about another issue to even get an answer. - Once you get the robot connected to the Neato servers, you have to go online to complete your profile setup or you will not be able to get notifications from the robot. And this means giving them info about where the robot was purchased, not just name and e-mail. And BTW, they know there is a problem with their website with some browsers. I actually had to use my phone to do the registration as I could never get it to work on my computer. Pretty sad for a "connected" robot. And BTW - nothing in the documentation tells you that you have to do this for the notifications to work. - The only notification you'll get from the robot is that it's done. There's no warning that I've seen if the robot gets stuck or has another issue. - No matter if you've selected Turbo or Eco as the default on the robot itself, if you use the app to start the robot, Turbo is always the default, even if Eco has been used before. So if you forgot, you have to life with more noise and shorter battery life. Silly that you can't set a default for Eco in the app. - Here's the real kicker for me that dropped this to a 2 start product. The units are built wrong. The 1st minute I put the dust bin into the main robot I noticed that it did not sit flush with the robot. And the left side (looking at it) sits higher than the right side. I'm not talking about a little bit, I'm talking enough that if I put a light inside the dust bin, I can see it shining out between the robot and dust bin lid. I contacted Neato more than 5 times and included pictures to show them exactly what was going on and the best they could do is send me a replacement dust bin. Even after multiple e-mail confirmations of my shipping address and a phone call in over 1.5 weeks, the replacement bin still never got shipped out. Had to spend 30 minutes in online chat with them to actually get the replacement sent. And I told them I didn't think this would fix the issue and sure enough it didn't. Another phone call to them and the best they could tell me was that this is the way the robot is built. Seriously - for $700 you can't build something where all of the pieces sit flush with each other? See the attached pictures and be warned than your spanking new robot that's 2x the price of their 1st robot is going to be flawed and Neato thinks that's okay. - Even though Neato customer service by phone has a special button press just for Neato connected owners, it doesn't seem like they really care that you bought their flagship model. Like buying an Audi and getting treated like you bought a VW. Unknowns: - The robot comes with a USB adaptor for doing software upgrades. You can look at your account online (but not through the app specifically) to see if there are software updates available (none right now). But the real question is will the updates be done over the air like they should be for a connected product or are you still going to have to plug it in to a stupid PC (sorry no Macs) to do the update? Would I buy this units again knowing all this issues - no. Would I wait for the 2nd generation of the Neato Connected - yes.

I rarely feel the need to write reviews, but because my experience has been so negative I've decided to do so now. I purchased this robot vacuum over others in this very competitive marketplace after doing intensive research and seeing that, for the price, this one seemed to be the best bang for my buck. I consider myself technologically fluent and setting up the vacuum was not the best. The vacuum had trouble finding my wifi network but after about 15 minutes I was able to get it to connect. Fairly easy overall but not as simple and straight forward like products from Nest or other home electronic devices I've set up. I bought this vacuum in May of 2018 for the house we were planning on purchasing in July. It stayed in the box, unopened and unadulterated until we moved into the new house in July. After setting up the vacuum, it had difficulty the first couple of cleanings and would get stuck, but after moving it to a better place, it seemed to do a great job of cleaning and didn't get stuck again... that is... for two weeks. Roughly two weeks go by and the vacuum is performing as expected. I'm a bit of a neat freak and cleaned the vacuum and it's brush every week and emptied the bin when the vacuum alerted me. Then, one Saturday when I was out, I set the vacuum to clean. Upon returning, it barely was 3 feet off the dock and said "Clean my brush". So I cleaned it. Same error. After being perplexed and trying to do a hard reset, soft reset, doing a factory reset (twice) I still received the frustrating "Clean my Brush" error. Okay, I did everything I know to do, guess I have to reach out to customer service. I explained my situation to the rep, he walked me through a few more steps and we still had the same error. He explained to me, since it was only in use for two weeks, that Neato would send me a brand new unit and that I would just send my broken one back. This REALLY surprised me, because I thought it was incredible customer service. I wasn't irate, or demanding, but I've had poor customer service in the past, and I truly appreciated Neato proactively sending me a new unit so that my house would stay clean. After all, that's why I bought it, to keep my house clean, and I was excited that Neato cared enough to help with this. This is where my experience takes a turn. I filled out the paperwork that they sent to me to send me a replacement. After a couple of days, I receive an email stating that I am outside of the 45 day warranty for the product and that I'll be required to send my vacuum for repair and they'll either repair it or send it back. While a company offering to repair an item for free still counts as good customer service, this is not what I was told by the rep. Confused, I call back and coincidentally get the same rep on the phone that helped the first time. He explains that the reason he told me that they'd replace the vacuum was because he thought I was in the first 45 days of purchase. I explained that I was transparent on the first call as to when the vacuum was purchased, when I set it up and when it stopped working. I think this policy is ridiculous. What if I purchase a vacuum for a loved one, wait 3 months to give it to them and it breaks within the first day? Neato doesn't care. Your warranty starts from the purchase date. Too bad, so sad. After emailing the manager (I missed his call because it was from a restricted number), he explains that there was absolutely no flexibility on sending me a new vacuum regardless of what the rep had initially told me. Warranties start from purchase date and I can get bent. Sorry not sorry. I will be returning this vacuum to the store I purchased at and NEVER buying another Neato vacuum again. Additionally, when I will go out of my way to recommend ANY other product to anyone I hear discussing these types of products. Mine broke in two weeks. Customer support rep lied to me, management didn't care. If you buy this vacuum despite my diatribe just pray it doesn't brake. With actions like these from customer support, who knows what you'll be in for.

First off, we have approximately 2200 sq.ft. of floor space which includes 9 rooms and 2 hallways. The floors are wood, carpet and throw rugs. Along with that two cats which comes into effect for picking up hair. We've used the vacuum now for little over a month, vacuuming twice a week. Battery Life and cleaning time: The battery does need one additional charge before completing the whole home which seems to be around 1 to 1 1/2 hours to complete the charge. So including the charge time it takes about 3 hours to compete the entire home. Though it may take longer to vacuum you do have the time to be doing other activities in the home while the robot takes care of the vacuuming. Cleaning: All in all we were surprised at how well it picks up cat hair and other debris on both surfaces mentioned above and under counters. The vacuum dirt bin is small but seems to hold enough for the size of home it is being used in, only having to empty the dirt bin between charges. At this time we can't really determine if it does a deep clean on the rugs but there is no evidence that it isn't. There were pine needles from the Christmas tree on the rug and the vacuum had no problem picking them up, well I'd say it got 99% of them. On the wood floors there isn't any evidence of scratching and the vacuum is getting under the lips of the counters and along the kick boards well. Another nice ability is that the vacuum gets under the beds, which is hard with a regular vacuum, where there is a lot of dust that accumulates. App, instructions and programing: We have not used the app for manual control of the vacuum but hope to do that in the near future. The app has been easy to use plus with the larger screen on the Tablet makes it easy to set the robot up. Instructions are a little lacking. But was able to work through any questions we had. An example would be the magnetic strip that goes on the floor to prevent the vacuum from entering specific areas. How much do I need to place? I also wonder how well the magnetic strip will hold on carpeting which I haven't had to do. The downside of the initial programing is the screen on the machine is small which makes hard to read. So use the app whenever you can. We have programmed a schedule for cleaning, using the app, with no problem. The unit starts up right on schedule. General: The vacuum has only got stuck twice, once on an item that isn't usually on the floor and once under a TV stand, which it got under once before but must have gotten a big ego and didn't make it the second time. Noise level is comparable to a regular large vacuum though may be a little louder when on a bare floor. I researched all brands of robotic vacuums on the internet and decided on this one for two reasons. 1) The square head seems to be logical for getting into corners better and 2) the app for manual control if you want or need to use it. Summary: I would recommend to a friend and have not found any real downside to the unit at least yet. Since it's only been a month of use I can't give it 5 stars. If it continues to operate at it's current level 5 stars would probably be reached. As for the cats, they seem to tolerate the unit better then the regular vacuum. They seem more interested in watching it then running away from it.

I've owned the Dyson 360 Eye and just recently purchased the new Roomba i7, after having returned this one for being so horrible. My Dyson began dying on me after 2 years and Dyson seems to have given up on it, so I started my search for a new robot vacuum. Both my parents and step brother talk gushingly about their Neato Connected and how awesome it is. It happened to be the Deal of the Day, so I decided to pick it up for $380. I probably wouldn't pay $3.80 for it. The vacuum is constantly stuck, it can't figure out rooms and map itself, it can't return to it's dock. It's only saving grace, is that it sucks, literally. It's a good at being a vacuum, but it's awful at everything else. It couldn't figure out the kitchen chairs. It wasn't small enough to fit underneath, but apparently the chairs were just tall enough for it to believe it could. We would constantly come home from work and it would have moved the kitchen chairs all around the room. Except for one time, where it got stuck under the kitchen chair and burned rubber for an hour and a half until the battery died, because it believed it was still moving, even though it and the chair weren't budging. I actually have it recorded on my security camera footage. It got to be so bad, that I would actually remove the kitchen chairs and place them in another room, and shut the door so it couldn't get stuck. There were plenty of times where I would come home and it would say it was stuck, with nothing in front of it, in the middle of the room; I'd hit the start button twice and it would continue on. The maps are never even close to what the actual house looks like. I kept it for 30 days, in hopes that it may learn, but each time it came out of the dock to clean, it was like it had never seen that room before. After 30 days, I was officially fed up, returned it, and purchased the Roomba i7, which if you're paying full price for the Neato, is the same price at $699. That vacuum is amazing! Don't waste your money or your time on this. And as an FYI, all my firmware was up to date and the app was up to date.

I spent many hours reading the reviews on multiple sites for the Neato Connected and Roomba 980. What ultimately swayed me to the Neato was the ability to work in the dark, the suction power as reviewed on CNET, and the $200 lower price tag. Many reviews on the Neato indicated that you need to 'Neato proof' your house-- some reviews even claimed the product is not ready for prime time. I decided to purchase but wasn't expecting the Neato Connected to work s good as the product suggested. To my pleasant surprise, it works excellent! I have a 2 story home and thanks to my wife, I believe the floor plan is on the more complex side as it relates to furnishings and placement thereof. The only 'Neato proofing' I did was pick up the dog toys. Out of the box 'Rosie' scanned the first room and began to work. She completed 3/4 of the main level and then returned to her station to charge (about 2 hours) and then resumed right where she left off. Since then, she has cleaned about a dozen times and only didn't complete twice when she stumbled on some dog toys- obviously not her fault. I cleared the obstruction, pressed resume, and off she went! For reference, my BotVac Connected was running software version 2.0 out of the box. From my experience thus far, here are some tips: - when setting up, if the WiFi process hangs at connecting to your network, simply restart the process a second time and all works well _ base station placement should be at least 3 inches from any obstacles or furniture-- If too close, Rose may not see the station and may not make it back when she re-enters the room to dock - 'Neato proofing' just needs the floor to be clear of obstructions like dog toys or other things that could be sucked up - obstacles like furniture, pillows, dog mats, rugs, etc are fine - if you pause her or clear an obstruction, make sure you put her in the same spot/direction as you found her-- this way she'll still know where she is at - adjust any furniture placement to allow Rosie enough width to enter otherwise, of course, she won't be able to clean that space Two observations: - if the floor plan changes during her cleaning, i.e., the wife decides to close a door to a room that Rosie hasn't yet made it to, chances are that Rosie saw that open room during her continuous scanning and she will spend a bit of time trying to figure why she can't go there due to the new wall that appeared. - we have some angled/sloping legs on some of the furniture and sometimes she will ride up on to them. This generally then causes her to appear to regain her location... She does circles for a few minutes and then resumes as normal All in all, I have no complaints with the Rosie. The app is, however, limited. No stats available -- only basic settings. Alerts seem to only be active for finished cleaning. I have the full dust bin and others turned on, but haven't got any. If she does get caught and you are not at home, you can open the app and see she has an error. When you click on the error you can see she is asking her brushes to be cleared-- this should be sent via text.

Pros: -Vacuums Really well as a vacuum. -It seems to have a system when cleaning and not just randomly going everywhere. -Picks up stuck items like play-doh or small candies. -When the battery is low the robot go back to charge station by itself, then go back to the area it was and continue cleaning. -Side brush will pop off if it gets snagged on something. -Will work in low/no light (which is convenient during the fall) -Works great on hard wood, carpet, and tile. -Does a good job picking up pet hair (for the most part) Cons: -You have to "prep" the cleaning area. -Filter is not washable. -Side brush will pop off if it gets snagged on something (I cant find mine). -It doesn't seem to pick up medium size to large hair balls from pets This is my first robot vacuum. I have been using this robot as a primary vacuum for a few months now and has been working extremely well. The vacuum seems to pick up everything, with the exception of some dust in curved corners. It cleans under chairs and couches too. The first time I used it it came back covered in cobwebs (like a Halloween decorated robot). I have a kid and it works really well picking up items that are stuck to tile floor like play-doh or a small candy. You do have to pre-check the area to see if their are items that the vacuum will get stuck to. Things like pulling out the chairs in the breakfast area or picking up toys. The vacuum has tank tracks and is able to tilt if it get stuck. However, if you leave something out like a toy, the vacuum tends to go over it, freak-out, and get stuck. Also it does not work on very high pile carpet. I have a "shag" rug and it jams on that rug. But I had other vacuums jam in that rug as well. Neato includes a magnetic strip to prevent the vacuum going into an area of your choice. However the strip does not hold very well and I'll notice the robot moving it around before realizing it's the magnetic strip. I have built a little fort for the shag carpet and use the strips when I need to do a specific area. The filter is not washable but it last a very long time. I let my friend try it out and he seemed to like it as well. He has multiple pets with carpet as his primary flooring. It picked up a large amount of hair. It didn't pick up some hair balls that were on the service of the carpet. However he told me that most vacuums he used were not able to pick up that type of dog hair. He only is able to get that pick up by a Dyson Animal or a high quality pet vacuum. Even with all the small issues, it has saved me so much time when cleaning around my house. Maids/Cleaning services charge $50 minimum for a basic cleaning per session (vacuum the house and wiping down counter tops). Even with replacement filters, it pays for itself in less than a year compared to getting a maid to come by twice a month for vacuuming.

This robot vacuum is probably one of our very favorite items in our home and we've had it now for 7 months, so I feel very confident in this review. I have highly recommended to many family and friends who want to know our 'secret' of how we keep our house clean. We schedule our robot to run automatically a couple of times a week. Our main floor is about 1800 sq ft and the vacuum does beautifully on both wood and rugs, without missing a beat. Even though we have two furry/shed-y dogs, by having the vacuum run at least twice a week, we keep things nice. We only have to empty the bin once a week, and this regular schedule also cuts down on dust build-up. Here are a few features I think are noteworthy: PROS: The shape of this vacuum is a huge PRO. Because of the way it is designed, it easily cleans corners and other tighter areas, instead of kicking the dust and debris into the corner. There is a little brush which sticks out a couple of inches and rotates and that gently cleans the quarter-rounds of our baseboards. For this model, there are magnetic strips which could can put down to block off any area you don't want cleaned. We have two spots we use these on, under antiques, because we don't want the vacuum to get stuck. The strips are very simple and we just have them tucked under all the time - guests don't even see them. The newer model, I believe, allows you to specify areas to not clean, but the strip method is very effective and simple. I also LOVE that the vacuum sends me a map of everything it did when it finishes. The maps are amazing, because they very, very closely resemble the blueprints for our home - and it's all done just with sensors. Very accurate! Finally, As I said earlier, this vacuum rolls over tile, wood, carpet, and rugs with ease and no intervention from us. We use the combo brush and there are no marks left on our wood or anything else from the vacuum. We have five different rugs on the main floor, with different pile levels, including two which are fairly shaggy. The first couple of times, the little round brush got caught on the shaggy rugs and we had to free it. But now, perhaps with regular cleaning, the vacuum has no issues at all. It's nice to not have to move anything but dog toys! (The dogs do sometimes sabotage us, but the vacuum will gently roll right around the toys - it's pretty funny.) CONS: Like any technology, sometimes the vacuum gets 'angry.' For this device, she will let out some squawks or beeps to let us know she's angry. She might have a message that she needs her bin cleaned, and on rare occasion - she's clearly lying to us. Ha! I've found if we just do a full restart and put her on her base, all is good. Just like your cellphone or computer, you do need to reboot once in a while. I honestly love this vacuum so much and it has been a huge time-saver I didn't know I needed. It is kind of stunning to see how much dirt and hair get picked up. Before we had this vacuum running regularly, we lived in a home with mostly carpet. I'd say we maybe vacuumed once every week (if lucky!) but more like every other week. I'm a little disgusted now recalling that - even if you don't see hair and debris on your carpet, it's probably there. We have baby nieces and nephews who come over and I feel so much better knowing they are crawling around on a clean floor. One other note: the instructions say not to, but we keep our vacuum and charger under the master bed. There's nothing else under there and it has worked absolutely fine doing this. Just an FYI in case you want to keep it out of the way. It's fun when we tell our Alexa to have Neato clean the house - we hear this little tune like a cavalry bugle from under the bed and out comes Neato! Charge! (Oh, and all dogs are different, but our dogs do not mind Neato at all. My parents' dog, who barks incessantly at the regular vacuum, does not mind Neato, either.)

My unit arrived on 08/11/2017 (3 days ago). Since then I have used it for house cleaning (entire floor) and spot cleaning (under the bed, kitchen floor after meals). On the positive side: when the robot works it is a good vacuum cleaner. Turbo mode did well with dry food crumbs, standard household dust/dirt and human hair on both tile and carpet. The combo brush is better for carpet and the spiral blade brush is good for tile. Also the D shape is pretty good at getting close to the edges. Overall it's not as good as a Dyson upright (I have one of those as well), but I highly doubt any robot is. The negative (see attached photos also): 1) The robot refuses to start a job if the battery level is less than 50%. That is a total waste of 1/2 a battery charge! If a job is already in progress, it will go until about 5% and then look for the charging base but if you're moving the robot between rooms or floors and it happens to be less than 50% then you're out of luck and have to charge it up before continuing. Waste of time! 2) If your 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi networks have different SSIDs and your mobile device is on 5GHz, then you won't be able to use the Manual Clean (remote control) mode. The Neato app is not smart enough to realize that you are in fact on the same network. The unit only works on 2.4GHz. 3) In the past 3 days since I received the robot, it has dropped off the WiFi network at least 4 times. And this is NOT an issue with my home WiFi router. I have plenty of other devices on 2.4GHz and 5GHz without dropping issues. The software on the unit is 2.2.0 (current as of today). This is one of those cases where a product looks better on paper than in practice.