After 4 years of hard work, our LG HomeBot was ready for a quieter life. That's why we sent him on a (work) holiday upstairs where there is less hair and carpet.
Because we have several long-haired people in the house (dogs, children & women), a replacement was necessary. After a lot of searching and comparing I ended up with the Neato D-series, namely a D5 or D6. Thanks to the sales it eventually became the D6 ;)
How does he do his job?
We can be brief about this: excellent. I found the LG HomeBot to do a good job, but this is a completely different level.
The device navigates around furniture with very fine motor skills and rarely collides unless the object is smaller than 4 cm. Since the aircraft's recognition capabilities are located at the top in a kind of round bunker, it uses the bumpers at the front to find its way.
The carpet that our dogs love to play on looks as clean as if we had vacuumed it 'manually'. I think this is quite an achievement for such a small device. The disadvantage of such a small device is that the waste container can fill up quickly. However, if the device does its rounds periodically, this is not an issue and the collection container is sufficiently large (unless you forget to empty it).
Functionalities
What I find very nice and useful is the application to control the Neato. By pressing the 'Play' button, the device starts cleaning, regardless of where you are.
Various settings are possible, including an extra careful navigation and a turbo mode. The latter provides extra suction power, but comes with a heavy sound. Fortunately, the device already delivers excellent results in standard mode with a slightly more moderate volume.
After every clean-up you get a nice overview of what has been done: number of m² vacuumed and a visual plan where the appliance has been.
If desired, you can also define 'No-Go' lines in the application, then the Neato ensures that it does not exceed these. Extremely useful if you have preschool and toddler toys lying around in certain areas of the house.
Also handy is that the robot notifies you when it has tried to eat a toy that it did not like! You will immediately receive a visual localization of where it got stuck.
Battery
Where the old HomeBot at the end of its career had problems cleaning even half of the living room, the Neato sweeps the competition under the table here.
Without any problem, the latter does the entire downstairs and the upstairs before he wants to take a small siesta. After an hour or 2 he is ready again full of energy.
It is funny how the device sometimes returns to its docking station. Because he knows the living space and knows various routes to his home, you occasionally hear him take a quick sprint. If a dog is in his way, he will also have a heart attack from this, but the Neato handles it nicely. Once arrived he docks with his station by, as my daughter puts it, 'shaking his ass'.
Life-prolonging
A big advantage of Neato, certainly compared to LG, is that you can find replacement parts quite easily: brushes, filters & battery. While the parts are not cheap, they are cheaper than competitors such as Philips & Samsung and at the same price point as its biggest competitor iRobot.
Conclusion
I am very pleased with our newcomer in the house. If this one has to retire in a few years, I will definitely consider a Neato again. Since spare parts are also readily available for Neato devices, this means that he may have to work a little longer than his predecessor before reaching retirement age.
