Samsung - POWERbot™ Wi-Fi Connected Robot Vacuum with Visionary Mapping™ - Satin Titanium

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• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Best in its price range

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  This is not our first Robot Vacuum, but the first from Samsung. This review is after about two weeks of use. The vacuum itself looks the part with shiny plastic sides, a silver metallic painted plastic crown; where the top has a dark smoked plastic with a hidden LCD display, touch-sensitive controls on one side, and a video camera 'eye' on the front, with the dustbin an shiny silver painted plastic on the other side. It looks fine, but I wish it had more rugged materials. Painted plastic in appliances tend to scratch easily. Time will tell. The bottom has two large, hinged wheels and two small wheels that are not removable. On our older robot vacuum, the smaller wheel (which is four times as big as these) tends to get caught with hair and other dust, but it's removable, so time will tell how this vacuum holds up. The cleaning element is a large, single brush that goes from edge to edge, with an air barrier, squeegee-like ribbon on front that the vacuum lifts automatically on carpets and lowers on hard floors, which is clever. The dust goes to a dustbin, which has an internal 'cyclone' that's a bit hard to keep clean, where the dust gets trapped, and from there air goes to a dust filter and the suction fan is sealed internally in the vacuum. The internal section after the dust filter was already dusty with small particles after a few cleaning cycles. Out other vacuum has a simpler system where all the air flow elements are easy to clean. This vacuum is much more quiet than other vacuums we have, and it cleans about as well as regular vacuums. The front of this vacuum is flat, so its roller is larger than on round vacuums, which cleans better on corners. Round vacuums have a side brush, which is not needed here. Navigation in this vacuum is more advanced than earlier robot vacuums: Instead of going in random patterns, this tries to navigate in a grid attempting to cover the whole are. Also it's more aware of where it's supposed to be within the house but still misses several areas of the house on one cleaning cycle and goes through in others. It's very good in general at detecting objects. It does not fall over stairs. It backs off when it's front wheel looses footing. It also detects objects and either slows down or avoids them completely. Occasionally it can end up pushing a small box-sized object around but overall it works much better at detecting objects than older robot vacuums. If there is an area that needs to be avoided, it comes with a magnetic strip that's supposed with tape on one side that's supposed to be affixed to the floor. I was surprised that it does not use light beams like other vacuums. Since we didn't want to glue things to the floor, for now we have to remember to close the door to our kid's playroom. It comes with an IR remote control (of the type that have to be pointed at the thing, not RF like many new devices), which works fine for the purpose of manually navigating it around to clean a spot (As long as it's in line of sight) and for initial Wi-Fi setup. The Vacuum can also be controlled from a mobile phone or tablet via Wi-Fi with the 'SmartThings' app and a Samsung account to use with it: After creating the SmartThings account, add a new 'thing' and select the model, then the vacuum is set in pairing mode using the IR remote to set it in AP mode and switching the phone to that temporary Wi-Fi (I set it up with an iPhone, it might be slightly different with Android), then select the house's Wi-Fi, link it to the SmartThings account and then its's pretty much all set. Took me about five minutes to set up and found the process to be well documented. Note that it only works with 2.4 Ghz networks, it does not have a 5 Ghz W-iFi. Once it's set, the SmartThings app does all that the IR remote does and more. The interface is simple and well organized. It claims on the packaging that it supports Alexa and Google Home. We have both and since SmartThings integrates with pretty much everything I thought it was going to be simple, but I was mistaken. SmartThings does integrate easily with both Amazon and Google, but on both assistants the vacuum shows up as a light switch and telling either assistant to turn it on or off makes the vacuum beep but does not start. It looks like Samsung / SmartThings are not mapping the 'switch' to the correct actions on the vacuum, so after spending too much time trying to set it up, it's not working for me. Once the cleaning cycle completes, the history within the app shows what it's supposed to be an area map, but about the size of a coin, and every vacuum cycle looks slightly different, so this isn't very useful for now, and the mapping is way off. Also the LCD display never turns off. It can stay in the cradle the whole day and it continually displays 'Full', never turning completely off (The vacuum does have an actual mechanical switch on the bottom that turns it completely off). I could not find, and I'm pretty sure it does not have an option to make it dark when in standby mode. The battery lasts about one hour of cleaning and charges within 2 to 4 hours in its cradle. Also note that there is the charging cradle and a very large power supply, so if you're one of those like me that would prefer to hide all the cables, it's going to be tough. Another issue is that when it gets stuck, it can completely drain the battery, so once it's put back on its charging base, it can take some minutes before it starts responding again, so it can be hard to know if it's on the right spot to recharge. Besides its inaccurate navigation, and the lack of real integration with home assistants, it gets stuck a lot when running over small area rugs: The reason is the squeegee-like air barrier that it lowers on hardwood, and most of the time, it doesn't detect the transition to the area rug so it pushes the edge of the area rug and gets stuck in it. None of the vacuums we have ever had issues like this with area rugs. Out other robot vacuum might sometimes push a rug at the foot of the bathroom shower around a bit but wouldn't get stuck rolling over the rug. On the positive side, it does have better suction than other robot vacuums, while being quieter. Remote operation is reliable though the SmartThings app, which is good at sending notifications to the phone when the vacuum gets in trouble. For its price point, it provides a refined product with more refinements than others in the price range.

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  Posted 7 years ago by emiliosic

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Keeping up with the dog hair!

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  We love this robot vac. Only down side is it has gotten stuck on a large rug I have. Doesnt happen everytime though. We love that it syncs with Alexa. It leaves lines in the carpet which I love. Makes my house feel clean every day and is keeping up with our dog that sheds a lot.

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  Posted 7 years ago by Alyssa

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Absolutely incredible

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  I had heard mixed opinions about robot vacuums from friends of mine, but since I have three indoor cats, when I got the chance to test this Samsung POWERbot R7065, I jumped at it. I've been using it for about 3 weeks and I love it! Unpacking and set-up were simple; the hardest part was deciding where to place the docking station. I also had some issues with the app; it took a bit for it to find/recognize the vacuum (not sure why). The whole process took about 15 mins, and then I let the bot charge. Once fully charged, I pressed auto-clean on the app and watched as the bot rolled around the house, cleaning as it went. The app allows you view the status of the bot as well as set the cleaning mode and amount of suction power. You can even drive the bot using the app, but the response is not as crisp as the remote. I actually use the remote more than I do the app simply because it's easier to drive the bot if need be. I've been running the bot on quiet mode, which I assume is the lowest amount of suction, and it cleans just fine... it runs for over an hour, cleaning about 1000 sq ft. The pathing is a little suspect at times, and occasionally the bot will decide it wants to stay in one room for longer than usual. For instance, one day it kept going back into the bathroom. It would've probably gotten to the living room eventually, but I wanted it to spend most of it's battery in the living room, so I had to manually drive it and then turn it loose. The bot cleans carpet, tile and hard wood equally well, but it doesn't always play well with all area rugs; stiffer area rugs are fine, but thinner, more pliable area rugs sometimes have their corners flipped up, and then the fun begins. I've never seen it get stuck on an area rug (it is rather adept at escaping tricky situations), but I have seen it spend several minutes trying to figure out what's going on. As a matter of fact, that's one reason I don't have the unit set up for a scheduled cleaning when I'm not at the house; I'm afraid it might get stuck and just waste battery power trying to escape. It's not a huge danger because the machine will turn off it it REALLY gets stuck and an alert gets sent to the app. Once in the kitchen, the bot was cleaning under the bottom of the cabinets near the kickplates and it manged to get wedged between the bottom of the cabinet and standing cushion that's infront of the sink. It shut down and sent an alert to the app... basically yelling for help. I now make sure that cushion is in the middle of the floor to avoid that happening again. Other than those few minor incidents, the bot has been cleaning like a champ. Again, I have 3 cats, so the main 'dirt' for any vacuum in my house is fur, and this bot has had no real problem with that. The only thing I would mention is that hair/fur tends to collect at the 'exhaust point' instead of falling into the collection area of the bin. It doesn't really seem to affect the suction, but I usually dump the collection bin about half-way thru the cleaning just to be sure. It would be great if the collection bin could be redesigned so that a majority of the hair/fur would fall into the bin, but emptying the bin is super easy, so it's not a huge problem. Also, I should mention that the bot doesn't really pay any attention to the boundary marker. I've tried placing it in several different places and it usually just rolls over it like it's not even there. I'll probably call support when I have time, but it's not that big of deal for me right now. Overall, I'm very impressed with this vacuum. The lower level of my house looks MUCH cleaner, which I must admit surprises me. I honestly didn't think a robot vacuum would deal with fur as well as this one has. This thing has GREATLY reduced the amount of time we spend vacuuming.... it's a true work horse. I would recommend this vacuum to anyone looking to cut down on the time they spend cleaning their floors.

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  Posted 7 years ago by Chuck