Samsung - POWERbot™ Wi-Fi Connected Robot Vacuum with Visionary Mapping™ - Neutral Gray

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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Awesome purchase, don’t know how we lived without.

  • Incentivized
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  • My Best Buy® Member

  I’ve been using the POWERbot 7040 for about a week, it really does a great job picking up the hair of our two labs and a cat. I’m not sure how we lived without it. It has done a flawless job of mapping out our 2800sf 4 bed 3 bath house. When it rolls over the carpeted areas it increases the suction power automatically. When it runs out of battery power it always finds the charger and upon completion of charging picks up where it left off. It does it as many times as needed to complete the entire job. The 7040 model is quiet enough to run while watching TV or at night when sleeping. Absolutely an amazing addition to our home. I vacuumed with my upright after 3 days and was only able to produce about 1/8 of a canaster of dog hair and dirt, usually I empty at the minimum of 2 canisters every other day. I’m pretty sure people are tired of hearing me talk about how wonderful the 7040 model is and I’m certain two of my friend have already placed orders for theirs. I could in fact become a new or used vacuum cleaning sales man for Samsung.

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  Posted 7 years ago by MikeD

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  A vacuum that gets smarter with automatic updates

  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • My Best Buy® Elite Plus Member
  • Top 25 Contributor

  Pros Short enough to get under most furniture Edge cleaner Very quiet on normal mode Sound is not unpleasant even on max Large easy to clean and washable dust bin Washable/reusable filter Brushes don’t tangle easily Room mapping means more consistent vacuuming Integrates with Smartthings Integrates with Alexa Capable of vacuuming higher shag carpets than most Automatic recharging WiFi connectivity for remote status and control WiFi connectivity allows for automatic software upgrades and improved intellegence Automatically recharges and continues Mapping camera works in the dark Doesn’t require any remote sensors Can be set to automatically clean when you are away via SmartThings Doesn’t easily get tangled Doesn’t randomly bump into furniture to determine when to stop Vacuums around items left on floor instead of trying to run over them Cons Low slope on front often means transitions between surfaces are awkward Sometimes misses spots of a room or entire rooms No sensor to report full dust bin No dirt sensor to improve cleanup of heavier spots Tiny secondary wheels can build up hair and are hard to clean Cleaning brush has a bearing which can get clogged with hair and is hard to clean Instructions are not comprehensive and are partly in book and partly online Instructions for connecting to SmartThings at the time of review are incorrect Limited scheduling at time of review. No unique daily options or Normal/High suction programming Recommends an open 6-foot area for base station Not recommended to have base station under furniture for discreet storage Rams into black furniture Sometimes tries to edge clean corners diagonally Sometimes randomly loses app connection for short periods Short run time before needing recharge Sometimes acts as if it is avoiding obstacle that isn’t there in the middle of a room Can miss half a room if the door is in the middle No option for random vacuuming to bring up carpet fibers No handle to pick up Picking it up while charging during cleaning cancels the cleaning Robotic vacuums have been around for many years now and each year they seem to get even closer to replacing the need to manually vacuum. The Samsung Powerbot R7040 is a long way towards that goal. It doesn’t require any special remote sensors or excessive rearrangement of a room to function, although a light pickup of items on the floor wouldn’t hurt. It has a cleaning roller that, although not self-cleaning, requires little cleaning. There are no regular maintenance parts to replace as the filter is washable. The one issue with maintenance is there are some rollers that don’t come apart that hair tends to get stuck in. The Powerbot R7040 uses multiple sensors to navigate your house and has a base station to return to when it is time to charge. Vacuuming only has the options of S pattern or spot clean spiral. There is no option, at least at the time of the review, for a random pattern to help with your carpet getting matted. Where it stands out is with the included edge cleaner. When the it detects an edge, it can extend a brush to help get more out of the crease. This really helped in getting dust at the joint of the baseboard and floor. It offers a remote like many others as well as app connectivity as more do but it also includes SmartThings and Alexa integration. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this review the instructions for connecting to SmartThings were incorrect as it instructs you to press a button on your remote which does not exist. Once this issue is corrected you should be able to leave your house and SmartThings will automatically tell the Powerbot to clean your house. Until then, you can just open the Smart Home app and say goodbye. Alexa integration instructions were not included but possible. Connecting to Alexa does not function through the app or any modern browser. In fact, the connection only worked when performed using the Alexa app website and Internet Explorer. The Samsung pairing website failed to function on other browsers tested including Edge and Chrome. This does not appear to be an isolated incident as the overall rating for the Smarthome App for Alexa is 2 stars with multiple complaints about pairing devices and browser support. Once connected to Alexa, you just tell it to turn on the Robot Vacuum and off it goes. Strangely, when activating via Alexa the Powerbot only cleaned one room. Hopefully, with an automatic internet updates this could be corrected in a future update. In fact, some issues have already been resolved since the vacuum was first installed. Initially, the vacuum would only run for one single strip and the moment it tuned around the brushes would continue but the vacuum turned off. After leaving fully charged overnight to update, the next day the Powerbot got some smarts and could navigate and vacuum correctly. It has taken a lot of the day to day pickup out of the to-do list and is quiet enough to run while in the house. It is best to keep in mind that just like other robotic vacuums, there will be oddities of randomly missed spots and small amounts of debris sometimes missed. Typically, the next time the vacuum runs it seems to find those missed spots. If you have black furniture or other black items you may run into some issues. Normally the Powerbot senses furniture and gently comes up and cleans near it without bumping it. In testing, it would come full speed to black furniture and ram into it. It also ran on top of a black floor scale and became stuck. This can be prevented in most cases by using the boundary marker that is unfortunately not included. The Powerbot takes a lot of the small cleanup out of the daily routine. A standard vacuum would still be a good idea for periodic heavy cleanup. Although capable, the Powerbot doesn’t have the brush strength of suction power of a manual upright to get the deep cleaning. Even though it can automatically adjust suction power depending on surface it does not have a dirt sensor so generally expect a single pass over dirt no matter how thick. Using turbo mode can help pick up more but be prepared for it to spend more time charging than vacuuming. What it does do is allow you to extend the time between deep cleanings and enjoy an overall cleaner house day to day. This is especially helpful where small bits of dirt on a tile, laminate, or wood floor can make for an unpleased barefoot experience. It is also nice to see carpet less matted down between regular vacuuming. Hopefully Samsung will leverage the automatic WiFi updates to further improve the intelligence of this smart vacuum in the future. If you are in the market for a relatively affordable smart vacuum and features such as SmartThings integration, low maintenance, and automatic cleaning based on what you do then this might be the one for you. Assuming Samsung continues improving the software, which they usually do, this rating could be a 4.5 stars considering the price versus features. Just be sure to give it a night or two on the charger to update before passing judgement as it seems the shipping software has some bugs but the updated software is much better.

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  Posted 8 years ago by CraigB

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  The R7040 App Robot Vacuum is really good.

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  • Owned for 3 weeks

  I really love this vacuum. I was surprised it went over throw rugs and did not stop. It went under my bed where I really can't clean. I am older and find this a little miracle. I have thick wall to wall carpeting in the living room and bedrooms and it is terrific on that. On the floors it is good but not as good as the carpet. It really operates best by itself if you put it on auto clean. It knows to go back to its home which is a kick. I had no problem syncing it with the Galaxy S10 phone which was a real plus. In short, if an 81 yr old can operate this, anyone can.

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  Posted 5 years ago by Elaine