Neato Robotics - Botvac D4 Wi-Fi Connected Robot Vacuum - Black With Honeycomb Pattern

This is my first robot vacuum. I always thought the devices like Roomba would be nice to check out but always thought they were overpriced. While the Neato D4 isn't cheap it does a surprisingly good job. We have a combination of hardwood and vinyl floors downstairs in our house. The dining room and walkway from the kitchen to the living room are wood and the kitchen area is vinyl. It is always a struggle to keep the kitchen floor clean so my hope was that the D4 would be able to help me out with this. Out of the box the D4 is fairly easy to set up. You plug the base into a wall outlet and connect the D4 to the charging ports. You download the Neato app and it takes you through the setup process, (connect to Wi-Fi, name the robot, etc.) Then the D4 starts by cruising around whatever room you put it in to map out the layout. The program for how it does this is a little strange as it doesn't just travel in straight lines until it bumps into something as you would think, it kind of zig zags all over the place. The first time I went through this process the D4 got confused by the wooden transition strip between the dining room wood and kitchen vinyl and stopped at the dining room so it only cleaned about 1/4 of the surface I wanted it to. The wife and I had to go grocery shopping so I left the D4 charging until we got back. About an hour later we returned and for some reason the D4 had gotten disconnected from my network so I had to go through the whole pairing process again. I called Neato customer service to ask about why the D4 didn't travel into the kitchen as I wanted it to. The Neato rep asked me if the wood on the strip was shiny. I said, "Not really". This gave me an idea so I decided to try the mapping process again, this time with the lights turned off in the kitchen, (it was day time). This seemed to alleviate the problem as the D4 had no trouble getting over the strip this time. But unfortunately this time when it turned down the wood walkway that leads into the living room it made a right and went on to the carpeted area of the living room where I didn't want it to go. After it got back to the wood walkway area I put a barrier down where the D4 had travelled on to the carpet before to stop it from going there. I think this freaked the robot out because it kept trying to go back there. I swear it wasted about 10 minutes bumping into the barrier I had put up. It eventually started to run out of battery and went back to its base without finishing the mapping process. I let it charge some more and then gave it another shot this time with the barriers already in place. Third time was the charm as the D4 mapped my downstairs properly just as I wanted it to. This think actually does a pretty good job of picking stuff up off the floor. Much better than I expected it to. Buy unfortunately it will not replace manual sweeping and mopping as it doesn't do a very good job of getting into the corners, (see my pic of the dead bug in one corner that I was hoping it would get) but I guess it will help to keep your floors a little more clean so that when you do sweep and mop there won't be as much to pick up.

Initial setup was very easy with no issues at all. First, I downloaded Neato app and placed device on charging station. Then I created account, added device to the application itself and connected Neato to wi-fi (which was super easy). All that took a few minutes only. I especially like the fact that it comes with laser which helps in navigation and turns, detecting opening (such as doors) and prevents device from hitting objects or walls. Shortly said, laser helps to prevent furniture or walls to be scratched, and protects vacuum itself from any damage as well (if “Gentle navigation” is important feature to you, please make sure that “extra care” is enabled inside of cleaning options settings). This device its truly learning about your home, and creates floor maps each time it finishes the job. Those maps could be used to set no-go lines for area that you want to restrict or to be skipped in cleaning. At one point my Neato got stuck and I immediately received message on my phone with exact location (with floor map) and status. Very helpful. Also, once it’s done with cleaning job this vacuum will return to charging base itself, you don’t have to worry about that part or to wait until is done with cleaning so you can send him back to charge. Neato D4 returns to base very quickly because it’s uses smart technology navigation instead of retracting steps backward. My only “problem” seems to be that battery life it’s not big enough for size of my house, and by the time it goes around all rooms and furniture’s - it seems to drain battery just a little bit before it finishes all the cleaning. Good thing is that charging does not take a long and this help a lot. Another great thing about this little fella is that he can be started from anywhere and clean your house while you are away from your home finishing your daily tasks. Neato can clean whole house or specific spot, depending which cleaning option do you choose and select. It also has two cleaning profiles, Eco (quieter longer cleaning run) and Turbo with faster and stronger suction. We have combination of hardwood floor, carpet and tiles but it seems to be doing good job on all of them. Overall, I would definitely recommend this product. Pros: Could be started from anywhere Intelligent and learning Laser navigation Floor maps Smart alerts Google/Alexa integration Waste box size Fast charge Returns to charge itself when cleaning its completed. Cons: Battery life (choose model accordingly with house size). Higher model has better battery life No spinning brushes which would help to reach area near walls or objects One floor map limit

I've been looking at robot vacuums for a few months now, waiting for one combining the right features and the right price. The Neato D4 seemed to fit the bill, and I'm pretty pleased with it so far. Set up was incredibly simple, just plug the base in, place the botvac against the charger, and download the app to walk through the connection steps. The first thing you do is have the botvac run an extended cleaning cycle to map your house. It is important to clear all obstructions, because you have to start from scratch if it fails to complete the initial mapping. It was an hour into mapping my first floor, when it got jammed up on a wad of paper towels under the sofa (I hadn't checked before starting, so that was my fault). I moved it back to the base, and it resumed mapping after a brief charge. The completed map then shows up on the app and allows you to establish "No-Go" lines designed to keep the botvac out of certain areas, although I'm not 100% certain that these boundaries are always followed. I have my entire first floor mapped, but currently have boundary lines marking off the carpeted areas. Launching a cleaning cycle through the app is supposed to ensure the boundaries are in place, but I watched Carl (that's the name we've given the botvac) cruise right on into the living room when I launched a cleaning cycle a few days ago. You can also schedule cleaning times using the app, so that the botvac runs in the middle of the night or when you're away from home. The app also keeps track of when the botvac has run a cycle, how long it took, how many square feet it cleaned, and when it is time to empty the dustbin. We have a family of four and two dogs, and wanted a robot vacuum primarily to clean fur from the tile a few times a week. Carl has been a great help in this regard, and maneuvers effortlessly around piles of shoes by the front door, or dining room chairs that didn't get pushed under the table after dinner. There is a turbo mode, and an eco mode, that allow you to prioritize power or battery drain. We find the eco mode is just fine for getting fur and crumbs off of tile, however, there does seem to be a problem with flat objects; there was a plastic bread bag tab and a penny remaining on the kitchen floor after two cleaning cycles. Overall, we are very pleased with the vacuum for our intended use, but probably wouldn't recommend it to replace your regular vacuum in a house with carpet. Pros: No assembly. Fits under cupboard toe-kick. Easy app. Cons: Not very quiet in turbo mode. Has difficulty picking up flat objects.

This is my first robot vacuum, so there was a little learning involved on my part. First, you have to prepare the room the way the instructions explain. Get all the little stuff … wires and cables, toys and shoes … picked up. Any fringe on rugs has to be turned under or the vac will try to suck it up and stop. It’s just like with an upright vac, if there’s loose stuff laying around, it will try to swallow it. Also, if you want to clean under a table, the chairs need to be up and out of the way to make room. In other words, just like cleaning with any vacuum, you have to move things out of the way to clean. I know this rubs some the wrong way, but READ THE INSTRUCTIONS and watch the videos online. They will save you some frustration. With that said, let’s talk about using the Neato D4. First, set the charging base in an appropriate location and place the unit against it to charge. My unit was mostly charged out of the box, and this didn’t take long. Startup and pairing is next. This took me a couple of attempts, but I may have been too impatient. You need to have the Neato App on your phone or tablet and create a Neato account online. It will also require your WIFI name and login to pair up, go online and communicate with your phone. BTW, you have to give your Botvac a name. Pick a fun one since you can use Alexa to start cleaning. “Alexa, tell Dumbo to start cleaning”. Once this is done, it automatically calls home and registers itself. The D4 can only use the 2.4 GH band. Now the fun! Hit the start button on the app or unit and watch as it goes about its chore. At first it appears a bit random, but there is a method as it maps your room(s). It works its way around the perimeter by a combination of bumping and laser sensing. Wacky tight spaces makes for an interesting show, but it gets the job done. I believe it breaks the cleaning task up into areas of around 150 sq. ft. max, so you may think it’s not getting the whole room, but be patient. As an area is defined, it starts an orderly back and forth path while dodging any objects. (It’s fun to watch it circle table legs without making contact.) When an area is covered, it moves to the next and plots that perimeter. It will eventually get all the contiguous areas cleaned. Also, when it’s done, or when it’s low on battery. It returns to it’s charging station. If there was more to clean, it goes back after charging to finish what was left. Once the floor plan is plotted, Neato remembers it and doesn’t have to bump and grind its way nearly as much. Things I liked. It doesn’t just aimlessly bounce around like a pinball but sets up a pattern. It really picks up the dirt. It remembers the layout. It’s fairly quiet. You can set cleaning times and days, and let it do its thing. Things I didn’t care for. As an entry level model it doesn’t have side brushes, so it misses some dirt along walls and in corners. Also, the next model up (D6) can remember multiple floor plans, and I have a two story house. It’s rated at up to 75 min of cleaning, but my results have been less. Conclusion. A fairly “neato” device, but the base model lacks some features. I live in and old two story house with lots of offsets and things to navigate around. If your rooms are more regular and all on one level, this model would be great. Otherwise, consider the additional $200 and get the D6.

Great looking design, nice dark grey. Sports a distinct “D” shape and moves a relatively quick speed. Sound while vacuuming isn’t exactly whisper quiet, but it’s reasonable and quieter than most full-size vacuums. The charging base is relatively unassuming and tucks up against a wall without being too much of an eye sore. As far as the hardware is concerned it seems to work really well. It navigated my home and sucked up a startling amount of hair and dust. It worked great on both hard surfaces and carpet. Being able to manage it from my phone is a nice touch and at first use it seemed like the perfect robotic vacuum. Getting connected the first time seemed to take a couple attempts. Once it was set up, things seemed to work well. The first run took about 90 minutes and did a pretty great job mapping my home. It had to recharge itself once but resumed right where it left off. After the floor plan is created you can setup your “no go” zones, or boundaries where you don’t want the Neato to go. Then you can setup a schedule and have the Neato do its thing. The Neato isn’t perfect, from time to time it would return an error indicating that my base station had moved, and I would have to reset the unit and rebuild the floor plan. I’m not sure if this is common, but it does happen from time to time. A note should also be made regarding the unit’s height – be weary of furniture that is exactly tall enough for the front of the unit to slide underneath, but not tall enough for the back of the unit. The unit would attempt to keep going as it would get jammed underneath my table and just eventually give up. Overall, the unit performs well and does a great job on pet hair and dust. I’m hoping a future firmware/software update will solve my reset issue – once that gets corrected, the Neato Botvac D4 will be one of the best in my book.

When I was a kid the Jetsons was a favorite cartoon I watched every Saturday morning. While mostly everything the Jetsons cartoon predicted hasn't come true (yet), George's robot house cleaner named Rosie has begun to evolve. As an early adopter in gadgets of all sorts, I purchased one of the first robotic vacuum cleaners the first year they were introduced. It was very cool, and worked pretty well. But that brand and model was very unreliable. That was my biggest complaint about that old model made by a different manufacturer. I repaired that thing so many times I eventually gave up on it, and it went in the trash like all of the dust and dirt it collected over time. Almost a decade later I decided to give these things a shot again, and after a month of using it I am still impressed. The BotVac D4 has been extremely reliable, and does a terrific job keeping my house clean. My home is half wood floors, and half carpeting. I've had excellent results on both, and was impressed by the amount of debris it picked up. The D4 does not have a spinning side brush, like my original iRobot vacuum had. But that's actually not a bad thing. I remember that with the old model with the spinning brush would literally bat debris all over the place. It was rarely useful. What this new D4 has going for it is a much better vacuuming system, an easier mechanism to remove for the dirt collector and to empty. A filter system that actually works, and a thoughtfully provided comb to give the filter a good cleaning. It all works very well! What makes a huge difference from the old robotic cleaners is the ability to map rooms and set no-go zones. With my old model you needed to set up these little towers on the floor which were there to turn back the cleaner. These are no longer needed, instead the D4 can map out the area it cleans on a connected smart device (a tablet for instance). Once it has been mapped you can go back in and very easily modify the map to block out areas you don't want the cleaner to go. It worked quite well, though I was happy to just 'Rosie' go wherever she wanted to. I had a lot of fun watching the D4 clean the carpeting. Why? Because it left a trail wherever it went. The imprints it left on the carpet were really cool geometric patterns (akin to crop circles come to think of it. Hmmmm). All joking aside the patterns it created demonstrated to me the work the engineers had done writing the algorithms to figure out the space and environment in which the D4 was 'learning'. It still does what most robots do these days, and that is they bump into things. Robots are still not as smart as your average cat, or fly for that matter. But they're coming along... The D4 starts off by pulling away from it's dock, spinning around to look at where it came from - then heads off on it's journey into "the unknown". The D4 uses laser mapping to elegantly deploy it's algorithms and moves itself as gracefully as possible throughout the space. Being the geek I admittedly am I watched for probably 30 minutes as it found its way through the downstairs. I watched and appreciated the movements it was making, I could tell how it was mapping and then deriving the next steps and course and direction. It was better watching than most TV shows! Why? Because it was demonstrating logic that some very smart engineers figured out. I can imagine these engineers going through scenarios that their robot would encounter in the real world, and how to solve each of those problems. I know I'm getting a bit off course (no pun intended), on the subject of a vacuum cleaner. But it's what this new robotic cleaner is all about. It is a very special demonstration of technology, repurposed to clean my floors. There is more processing power, and I bet lines of code in "Rosie" than was used to put the first astronauts on the moon and get them back home. It's the juxtaposition and absurdity of this notion which puts a smile on my face. It will be many years before we see anything like the Rosie the Robot house cleaner that George Jetson employed to clean his cool futuristic sky high pad. I probably won't see anything like that in my lifetime I'd bet. But this is an early glimpse. It's more than a vacuum cleaner, Rosie has become a part of my household - and you might not be surprised to hear me thanking it for cleaning my floors while I was away at work all day (definitely not at Spacely Sprockets)! Get one! Good Job Neato!

The Neato Botvac D4 is an amazing vacuum. Packed with some of the latest technology, and a powerful motor - it surely is very unique. The set-up was pretty straight forward, up until I had to use the app to set the botvac up to my network. The app was very glitchy and wouldn't connect the botvac to my network. It took me 2 failed attempts, before I realized that you have to be on a 2.4ghz network and not a 5.0ghz. This would have been nice if they would have included this in the instructions or somewhere on the app... After I finally got my Botvac connected to my network, it needs to do a test run to map out the floor. This was quick and easy. I am really amazed how accurate and responsive the sensors are on this machine. It starts by drawing an outer line of the room to map it out, then once it gets that, it proceeds to vacuum in the area. The vacuum itself is very strong and works wonderfully. It switched from floor to tile without a hitch and picks up almost anything in its path. After it has completed the area, the Botvac returns itself back to the charging stations and docks itself. The Botvacc can be programed to clean on specific days and times of the week, using the Neato app, where it will send you a detailed floorpan of where it has cleaned. This is a very useful feature, as it comes in handy if you're not home and want to vacuum the house. The Botvac runs on a rechargeable battery, that recharges on the docking station. My only complaint about this, is the battery goes dead while it's sitting on the charging station. When it came time to run a cleaning cycle, my Botvac's battery was dead and needed to be recharged. I'm not sure if this is supposed to do this, but mine does. It's very annoying, especially when half way through the cleaning cycle it stops and needs to be recharged. Overall I would say that the Botvac D4 is a great vacuum, with some impressive technology built in it. The powerful motor and flawless transition from carpet to tile, makes for a great vacuum. My only complaint would be that my Botvac doesn't stay charged while sitting on the charging station for a day or 2. Hopefully this can be an easy fix. I would definitely recommend the Botvac D4 to any who wants to save some time and have a robot do all the vacuuming for them.

I have owned multiple robot vacs over the years. I've gotten the chance to see the technology really improve. This is my first Neato product and I gotta say that I am a BIG fan now. At first, I didn't connect it to the app and wifi network. It still worked like a charm. Then, after conquering my laziness and using the app, I fell in love even more. It's super versatile and customizable. You can set up start times. You can set up the mode that you want whether Eco or Turbo. Turbo is more aggressive and Eco is quieter and uses less battery. As it cleans, the D4 maps your house. I'm pretty sure alot of the vacuums these days do this, but to see it on the app is pretty darn cool. Especially when you can choose where it should clean and where it shouldn't! What I was impressed with was when it runs out of power, it goes back and recharges and then goes out automatically to finish the job! That was awesome for me. Another thing that I think distinguishes this vacuum from the other robot vacs is the algorithm for cleaning. This makes a box and cleans within that box in the traditional zig-zag pattern rather than going all over the place like traditional robot vacs. This gives me peace of mind that it cleans thoroughly and doesn't miss any spots. The suction is great. I really do think it has one of the strongest suction of any robot vacuum that I have used. I have a dog that sheds year round. Since I got the Neato, I really haven't seen any balls of fur around which I assure you is a BIG accomplishment. That being said, it is on the louder side. It is definitely quieter than any manual, but it is something to watch out for if that is a dealbreaker. All in all, I am a big fan of Neato. They really came up with a high quality product that I absolutely love.