Jumat, 25 Februari 2011

my little buddy

Neato Robotics Automatic Vacuum Cleaner

Neato Robotics Automatic Vacuum Cleaner

This is the only vacuum cleaner you will ever watch for entertainment. It is the only vacuum cleaner you will name. It is not perfect, but it is wonderful.

Let's get the criticism out of the way. It isn't great at edges, it leaves some debris along walls, thresholds and the like. We have a few thresholds it gets caught on. We have some chrome base barstools that cause it to get hung up. We have an antique prayer rug with intensely frayed edges we had to pick up because the loose strings got caught. If full sunshine is streaming on glossy hardwood floors it is sometimes confused and sees it as a wall.

Neato can be scheduled to clean when it is convenient for you. It is hard to describe the joy of arriving home to find Neato hard at work. The controls are very easy to understand and to use.

Neato does an excellent job of vacuumming. It maneuvers around obstacles, finds it way around with aplomb. Some have complained about the noise. Actually Neato makes much less noise than the Panasonic canister vacuum we bought because Consumer Reports said it was quiet.

Emptying the dustbin is easy. It has never gotten hair tangled around its beater bar. The difference in cleanliness at our house since this purchase is really astounding(maybe even embarrassing).

The first day of ownership I contacted Neato customer service beause my little buddy wouldn't go into the kitchen. The response read like an email from a concerned best friend trying to help you solve a problem. (The problem was sunshine on a glossy floor) It was the best customer service for an electronic gadget ever. It is customer service on the level of LLBean, excellence.

Buy a Neato, do yourself a favor. You will smile more than once.

Get your Neato Robotics Automatic Vacuum Cleaner Now!

9 komentar:

  1. This machine is my new best friend! It is friggin amazing. I received it for Christmas and if I had known how much it cost I probably would not have taken it out of the box! Thank goodness I did because it is worth every penny! It is so smart, doesn't get stuck in tight spaces, goes under my bed for all the dust bunnies. It talks to me via its LCD screen. Only thing I have to do is pick up where I want it to clean and let it go. When it needs to be charged it goes back and docks itself and then returns where it left off! So, so cool! Thank you for the technology. My life just got a little easier, because of this product!

    BalasHapus
  2. I received my Neato this week and have already used it twice (2 very fuzzy cats). It does a great job covering every square inch of my downstairs in a single charge - light still glowing the green fully charged color (only about 800 square feet). It sections off the downstairs on it's own and then proceeds to vacuum each section in straight lines. When it's done with one section, it moves to a new section. It transitions well between carpeting, tile, and rugs. The vacuum is replacing an old, heavily used Roomba 530. In comparison, I enjoy the straight vacuum lines (unlike the crazy lines of the Roomba). In addition, I used to have to stop the Roomba half way through my downstairs to remove some of the cat hair from the brushes or it would stop working. I do not have that problem with the Neato because the spinning brush is more of a rubber, squeegee style. Right now, the vacuum seems much more powerful, but to be fair, the Roomba was old. I did notice, however, that the Neato is louder than the Roomba was, especially when it is first turned on. It sounds a bit like a plane backing out of the gate, but it quiets down some once it gets vacuuming.

    Overall, I am happy with the vaccuum. I was able to purchase the Neato at a huge discount through Woot which was fantastic!

    BalasHapus
  3. What a time saver! I bought this for my wife for Christmas fearing she would think it a horrible gift. She loves it and thanks me everyday. She even named it "Rosie" after the Jetson's cleaning robot. It does a wonderful job and navigates flawlessly in, around and under furniture and through a number of connected rooms . We have a dog, cat and a kid who has friends over constantly and our white carpet needed attention everyday. Now it gets it. We come home from work and the floors are immaculate and my wife loves the traffic pattern the Neato leaves on the carpet. It does a better job than our Miele canister vac. It is slower and more precise and does a deeper cleaning. I only wish I had ordered the White version. I can't recommend it enough!

    BalasHapus
  4. I got my Neato (we call him Newton) to try to pick up a bit after the dogs. They shed like crazy and sweeping up behind them every day is a chore I would rather avoid. My house has never been cleaner. The dog hair is nice, but honestly I just love that there is almost no grit on the floor from dirt tracked in on shoes and dog feet.

    I have the Neato scheduled to run 4 days a week while I am at work. On occasion I will come home and it will be stuck somewhere, usually in between the legs of the chairs in my Dining room. This only happens once a week or so, and I can just send him back to his base station and let him try again the next scheduled day. Most days though, I just go and empty his bin. Now that I have a Neato cleaning several days a week that bin is not nearly as full as it was the first few times it ran.

    On the down side, my sofa is just exactly the wrong height for the Neato. It thinks it fits underneath, but it doesn't quite. Hopefully I can raise the sofa a little at it's feet and the Neato will fit underneath nicer. The Neato handles that pretty well though. It unsticks itself pretty well. I have only had to free it once.

    In my bedroom I have carpet. I am not sure if my dogs shed more in this room, or if the Neato is still trying to catch up for my lax housekeeping over the last couple of years. I put the Neato in my room just about every day and let him go while I fix dinner or take the dogs for a walk. The bin is almost always full when it gets done. It has some major suction power. My carpets have never looked cleaner than they do with almost daily vacuuming.

    I had one major problem that turned out very nicely. The original Neato I received had a "critical battery error." I was so disappointed because after one amazing day I had a broken Neato. I contacted their 1-800 number and they shipped me a new Neato and a shipping label to return my defective one. The new one is running like a champ!

    I have had a maid service before. She did a MUCH better job than the Neato, however she only cleaned my house 4 times before costing as much as this Neato. I get to make the Neato clean for me for a long time for that price. I will have to follow up in corners once in a while, and vacuum my own stairs, but both of those will be cleaner longer because the Neato is always cleaning up after us, making sure we dont track stuff all over the house. I really do love how well it works.

    BalasHapus
  5. This is a must have for anyone building out their robot cleaning army!

    Backstory:
    I recently purchased both a Roomba 560 and Neato XV-12. Having not properly done all my research I assumed the Roomba would do a better job getting room to room (our house has 4 rooms separated by hallways). The top end models have a "lighhouse" feature that aids in helping the Roomba deal with multiple rooms but I can't really speak to this). Anyhow, in a house with lots of people who don't like clean, a robot seemed like the perfect maintenance tool. Unfortunately scheduling was basically out of the question since the roomba really needed babysitting (closing doors and doing a room at a time) to actually do a decent job and not get lost somewhere away from its charger out of batteries.

    So I started looking around a found the Neato. Other reviews talked about some negatives of the Neato:

    1. it getting stuck more often than a roomba
    2. it misses corners
    3 it doesn't clean carpet well (vs roomba's back and forth action)

    here's my take!

    1. getting stuck - FALSE - in my experience over the past month the roomba gets stuck far more often than the neato, I've watched the neato get out of some pretty sticky situations--- so long as its not dryer sheets on the floor (it hates dryer sheets!!!)

    2. missing corners - TRUE - the Roomba has a little brush that extends beyond the robot's body to sweep stuff out of corners, this works brilliantly in hard floors to actually get crumbs out of corners. The neato doesn't have this and it should. The square front is good at getting real vacuuming power close to corners, but it's still not close enough in some cases (an inch or so away) so depending on the kind of crumbs you have, it will miss them.

    3. cleaning carpet - FALSE - the robot actually does a pretty darn good job on a carpet (as evidenced by all the stuff it gets in the bin). It actually has decent suction (unlike the Roomba) that gets some of the deeper stuff to come out -- plus it leaves a nice pattern behind. And hey it's a robot, so you can just have it make multiple passes if you really want to get stuff clean.

    Honestly this thing is great, and apart from the sheer amazement that comes from watching it do its work and precisely navigate around, it does a pretty good job as a maintenance tool--- just make sure to send the roomba out to get those corners. (or get off your lady bum and clean em yourself).

    Now I just need a scooba and some sort of stair cleaning robot!

    BalasHapus
  6. I picked up the Neato XV-12 to replace my Roomba 530. In my opinion, it's a much better product than Roomba.

    1. It cleans in a methodical manner, which means it cleans quickly.
    2. It cleans an entire room before moving onto the next. Roomba was completely random and seemed like it had no direction.
    3. Neato doesn't get stuck like Roomba.
    4. Neato doesn't run into things like Roomba (Neato actually detects stuff so it doesn't hit it).
    5. It can actually clean the entire house, where as I would only use Roomba in a single room because it was so random in its cleaning and would usually get lost.
    6. Maintenance is easier. I had to manually clean the bristle brush on the Roomba after each cleaning. Neato just requires me to dump the contents. I do have to check for "long" hair and clean it off the brush.
    7. Cleans better. The vacuuming power is much stronger on the Neato so it actually picks up more.
    8. I'm actually inclined to run it almost every day because of the amount of dust/dirt it picks up!

    Some will say the price is a little steep for a robotic vacuum, but in my opinion, I think it's worth it.

    BalasHapus
  7. This is the only vacuum cleaner you will ever watch for entertainment. It is the only vacuum cleaner you will name. It is not perfect, but it is wonderful.

    Let's get the criticism out of the way. It isn't great at edges, it leaves some debris along walls, thresholds and the like. We have a few thresholds it gets caught on. We have some chrome base barstools that cause it to get hung up. We have an antique prayer rug with intensely frayed edges we had to pick up because the loose strings got caught. If full sunshine is streaming on glossy hardwood floors it is sometimes confused and sees it as a wall.

    Neato can be scheduled to clean when it is convenient for you. It is hard to describe the joy of arriving home to find Neato hard at work. The controls are very easy to understand and to use.

    Neato does an excellent job of vacuumming. It maneuvers around obstacles, finds it way around with aplomb. Some have complained about the noise. Actually Neato makes much less noise than the Panasonic canister vacuum we bought because Consumer Reports said it was quiet.

    Emptying the dustbin is easy. It has never gotten hair tangled around its beater bar. The difference in cleanliness at our house since this purchase is really astounding(maybe even embarrassing).

    The first day of ownership I contacted Neato customer service beause my little buddy wouldn't go into the kitchen. The response read like an email from a concerned best friend trying to help you solve a problem. (The problem was sunshine on a glossy floor) It was the best customer service for an electronic gadget ever. It is customer service on the level of LLBean, excellence.

    Buy a Neato, do yourself a favor. You will smile more than once.

    BalasHapus
  8. I first saw this at my brother's house. He showed me how it worked and told me I could get it from Target. I went to Target and bought it. I have 2 cats and this vacuum is great for pet hair. It saves me so much time and it is just amazing. I love the way it lifts itself up to move to carpet. It can easily go from hardwood floors to carpeted floors with no help from me. Once it got caught and just shut down with a message on its LCD screen saying "please loosen my right rear wheel". Too cool, I loosened it from the fringe on my throw rug and it went about cleaning the floors. I just love it and so glad I have it.

    BalasHapus
  9. OK so jewelry is a better option but after other great birthday/Christmas gifts for my wife (laundry sorter, cookware, etc). I decided to try the Neato xv-12 as a special gift after I got my bonus. While the initial enthusiasm was a little lacking it did not take long for her to realize this thing really worked. When she saw how much dirt was collected in such a short time she was convinced that the vacuum that she got last year for mothers day was a piece of junk.

    Pros:
    1. We have hardwood floors that go to thick pile carpet. It raises the back wheels as it makes this change and does a great job with the transition.
    2. It goes slow on the thick pile carpet and though it takes a long time to clean our house, it picks up everything. Our carpet has never felt this clean before. We were amazed at what it picked up the first day.
    3. Our house is 3000sf and it is best if the charger is placed in the middle of the house.
    4. It is not that loud, you can still watch tv while it is in the room.
    5. When it is out of charge it returns to the charger and 2 hours later it returns to the exact spot that it left off.
    6. Very entertaining for cats, ours can't decide if she should attack it or just stalk it.

    Cons
    1. It vacuums at a fifth of the speed of what one typically vacuums a room.
    2. You have to pick up the room before it starts. Not a con to us because that seems like a no brainer. It is not Rosie from the Jetson's.
    3. If it travels too far away from the charger, it might miss an area. It comes with a barrier so if you need to separate the house into cleaning you can do it in a couple of phases.
    4. Every now and then it will need help. It chokes on small cords and will need the Heimlich maneuver when this happens. Also watch out for bed skirts.

    BalasHapus