I was a semi-satisfied owner of an LG HomBot for years. This one did quite well in my old house, except that it got stuck under a cupboard, chair or doormat quite often. But in my new house (with smooth floor and some rugs) the LG kept crashing and was therefore not used as often. Ordered a newer LG generation from Coolblue, with the same result; sent it back (here the great Coolblue service is worth mentioning again).
Months later and I couldn't resist the temptation. Once you are used to a robot vacuum cleaner, manual vacuuming is a crime. So a new robot: the Neato Botvac Connected. Reasonably high purchase price, but with all the features I want. In particular, the magnetic separation options are a plus.
Installing the robot and base station was easy. In addition to the vacuum cleaner and the base station, the box also contains two extra filters, an extra brush, extra rotor, a USB adapter cable (for upgrades via a USB stick), 2 meters of magnetic separation and a cleaning comb.
Neato recommends charging for 12 hours for the first time. Set up the WiFi while charging and this went fine (via an Android phone). Incidentally, I immediately upgraded the software to the latest version, because it also provides a cleaning folder option in the app.
first run:
The first start up (via the app, what a pleasure) gave me a little bit of a shock. The sound of the robot (especially the sucking) is many times louder than my old LG. Then the Neato went looking for the nearest wall and followed it. The first obstacle, a chair, turned out to be just too low for the Neato to drive under. It just got through, but collided with the laser part (the elevation on the device) against the bottom. This three times before the Neato went around it.
Then the Neato had to go over my rug (that rug that the LG got stuck in). No problem for the Neato. Then another obstacle, this time a bench, where the Neato kind of got stuck in a “deadlock”. It didn't stall that much, but kept bouncing for 5 minutes (again with the laser boost). The sofa is diagonally in the middle of the living room, so perhaps that was the reason. Here the magnetic strip offered a solution: quickly put it down and the Neato went around it. After that, no more obstacles.
After cleaning, the Neato returned neatly to the base station to charge. Then take out the dust container and clean it (this is easier than with the LG) and enjoy the amount of dust that has been vacuumed (even after we manually vacuumed the house yesterday).
The App:
The app is simple, but effective. The nicest feature is the cleaning folder that shows where the Neato has been. This gives a good impression of the routing software that the Neato uses (and where you can move some things around your house to make the Neato better cleaned). In addition, the app offers options to start, stop, pause and return the vacuum cleaner to its base station. Programming a cleaning schedule is also possible, with the downside being that the entered cleaning time applies to all days that you enter.
Conclusion:
Based on the first impression (I will adjust the review if necessary) I am extremely satisfied. Yes, the device is expensive, but it performs well (unlike the LGÂs, for example). So highly recommended. The accompanying screenshot shows the cleaning folder. You can see the contours of the chair, sofa and table (the Neato doesn't fit well here because of all the chairs).
