Neato - robotic house floor cleaner

[stevehull]

I am not a big fan of the latest and greatest - but this one is a greatest.

You may have heard of the "Rooba", the so called "robot" floor vacuum cleaner. I had seen some reviews of it and it was an expensive disappointment to the reviewers. Pass.

My oldest son got another type of robot vacuum called the "Neato". He loves it and encouraged me to buy one. It is smart and outlines the house walls first, the does a very specific grid cleaning pattern. If it runs out of battery power, it returns to the home charging base for a fillup.

My son's routine floor cleaning has ended and he only has to do some corners and tight areas about once a month.

Looked it up online; a bit expensive at $350+ shipping so I decided to hold off.

Of course the smart ads found that I was looking. Then "Woot" offered me a refurbished "new" one at $150 (Signature XV). That got my attention and I ordered it.

Came a couple days ago, looked like new and the installation instructions are just one page. Turn on the battery power compartment switch, set it down positioned next to the charging base and let it power up for 12 hours. I set it to clean our guest house where I just installed about 1200 sq ft of laminate. I got REALLY tired of sweeping up the fine dust that comes in as you track in the sawdust.

It comes with a stock "beater" bar that has silastic paddles and brushes to maximally clear hard floor surfaces. It comes with another bar designed for homes with wall to wall rugs

Anyway, it ran around yesterday for about three hours and I had to empty the Neato dust bin four times full of fine wood dust that my brooms, upright vacuum cleaner and damp mop had all missed. I opened all interior house doors and closets and just let it go.

If it has a full dust bin, it stays in the middle of the room and flashed a red light with a panel that tells you to empty the bin. You do that and it starts right up where it left off cleaning.

This is no dummy . . . It has a small laser to guide it around, some sort of embedded positioning software and the 3 inch diameter wheels go over transition strips, lamp cords and such. Watching it return to the charging station and snuggle up to it for a charge is rather amusing. It came out of a closet, went across the room, down a hallway, into the kitchen, went around the island and "found" the charging station.

And it will not fall down stairs either as the laser will detect them.

Yes it does carpets and area rugs as well, but I was amazed at the quantity of dust/grit that it got off the floors. Very nice filter on it as well. I saw it going though bright sunlight and there was no dust debris spewing out of the exhaust port. Quite strong vacuum too. And not at all noisy. You know it is on, but FAR less noisy than a standard vacuum cleaner.

My wife and I are no neatos and are rather content (lazy?) with the debris that three dogs, three cats, two cockatiels and the debris that living on a livestock farm brings in the door. Dogs alone bring in an amazing amount of sand/grit on the paw pads.

Today it starts again and I will be interested in how much dust it gets this time.

Two thumbs up . . . . and I have no financial connection in any way to this company . . . .


Steve