Neato Xv 11 All Floor Robotic Vacuum System - Review

Neato XV-11 All Floor Robotic Vacuum System - I Pick This One

Designed to meticulously clean floors on a daily basis, the Neato XV-11 All Floor Robotic Vacuum Cleaner covers every inch of your floors, smartly seeing and working around furniture, stairs, and more. And its simple user interface allows you to schedule the XV-11 to clean your rooms while you are away.

The Neato XV-11 cleans all your floors--carpets, rugs, hardwood, laminates, tile, and stone.
Click here for a larger image.

 

The laser-based Room Positioning System sees
everything in the room and avoids bumping
into walls, furniture, and other objects.

Neato's laser-based Room Positioning System gives the robot vacuum a full 360-degree view of a room so it can create a map of the room, detecting walls, doorways, furniture and other obstacles. Using its map, the Neato XV-11 avoids most obstacles that other robots can only detect by impact. Just press the Start button and your Neato determines the best cleaning path to clean the floors using its unique, methodical straight-line pattern.

Once it finishes cleaning one entire room, the XV-11 drives through one of the "recognized doorways," to start cleaning the next room. And, with its powerful vacuum suction, it picks up all your dirt, debris, and pet hair on your floors. Schedule it to clean every day with just a few button presses. Your home will always have that "just cleaned" look.

It's Smart

The Room Positioning System (RPS) is the proprietary technology that makes Neato as smart as--sometimes smarter--than a human housekeeper. It sees 360 degrees, maps out your room, and then methodically vacuums every square inch, carefully avoiding any furniture, obstacles and stairs. Go ahead and rearrange the furniture: Neato will adapt its course without missing a beat.

Additionally, if running low on power, the XV-11 returns to its charging base, recharges, and then returns to where it left off and finishes the cleaning job--making it a great choice for houses larger open floorplans.

The laser vision and mapping system of the Neato's RPS Technology.

It's Powerful

The high-performance vacuum inside your robot works in a precise back-and-forth motion, picking up even tiny specks, and easily sliding under sofas, tables and beds. It works on all floor types--carpet, rugs, hardwood, Pergo, and tile--so you never have to clean another floor, even in your bathroom.

It's Simple

Just charge it up, press the Start button, and watch it work. Once it's finished in one room, it will begin working in the next--or return automatically to its base for recharging and resume cleaning where it left off. Schedule everyday cleaning with a few simple button presses and your house is always ready for guests, even when you've been out all day.

Neato Innovations

Some of the other innovative features and benefits of the Neato XV-11 all-floor vacuum cleaner include:

• Scuff-free navigation: At the vacuum's core is a centrifugal compression impeller that follows jet engine airflow principles. It creates sustained high-powered suction, allowing the Neato XV-11 to thoroughly pick up dirt and debris.
• Low-profile access: The robot's RPS technology constantly updates its internal map so it can accurately detect objects greater than four inches in height and carefully clean around them without damaging furniture and walls.
• Smart design and large dirt bin: The robot vacuum cleaner's low profile (less than four inches high) allows it to clean under beds, sofas, and toe-kicks in the kitchen.
• Self-docking to re-power: After completing its cleaning, it returns automatically to its base to re-charge itself. By utilizing the charging base, the robot is charged and ready to go when it's needed most
• Cleaning scheduler: With its easy-to-use interface, consumers can schedule the robot to clean every day, resulting in a more spotless home.

What's in the Box

Neato XV-11 robot vacuum, charging base, power adapter, batteries, boundary markers, filter replacement package, quick start guide, user guide. Backed by a 1-year limited warranty.

Reviews of Neato Xv 11 All Floor Robotic Vacuum System

I am now a believer in robotic vacuums!
Rating by : M. Pearson,

For months, no years, my wife has been asking for a robotic vacuum. She does most of the house work and I do most of the fixing. I have followed the progress of the Roomba and decided to have another in depth look at the reviews and how it performed to date. What follows is NOT a Roomba/Neato comparison. I have never owned a Roomba nor do I think I ever will, but who knows. I purchased a Neato Robotics XV-11 about four weeks ago. What follows is a detailed look at what the Neato XV-11 is and how it performs. I will try to be as objective as possible and share my journey of how I decided which robot vacuum to buy.

First, a bit about me. I am an avid Amazon buyer and use them heavily for both personal and work related purchases. They are simply the best at the online experience and I typically only purchase items that they ship. They have the best pricing on a regular basis and ship promptly with a great online experience. I have only had two issues with Amazon and they recovered nicely. I am a former network and systems engineer in the field of technology. I am now a science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) teacher and a coach. I have coached sports, but mostly coach middle school and high school robotics team. Suffice it to say, I do my research on techie stuff and push the envelope in robotics.

The environment: a family of four (two boys) and a yellow lab (2yrs). I will leave the bird and rat out of it...no...I won't actually. They get rat nest and bird seed all over so they are included too. We live in a single floor house of about 2k sq ft. The floor is a combination of wall to wall carpet, tile, hard wood floor and rugs on top of the hard wood floor. There are a myriad of transitions for the Neato to traverse between tile and hard floor, between rugs and the hard wood floor. We also have floor to ceiling windows with no trim at the bottom of the window. We also have some furniture that inclines backward to the ground. Meaning the opening in the front is higher than at the back.

After researching the Roomba I looked at what else was available. I could not get over that you have to clean the Roomba vacuum brushes a lot, especially for those with dogs. I also could not get over 50 minutes to vacuum a room of say 12X12. The Neato had some complainers about its performance, but I was the head of a Quality Assurance department in a past career and know you get some people that want the world and complain if they do not get it. While I do not think the public should beta test, that is the reality people. Lots of beta testing can happen and does happen prior to a product shipping, but until you have experienced a product build cycle you will never understand that all testing cannot be done to exacting standards. Especially with a new company with limited resources. If you don't believe me, look at Apple and the iPhone 4 antenna. I digress. I took a leap at the Neato due to its intelligent mapping system and the fact that Amazon has a great return policy.

Here is what I found:
1. The neato cleans my 16X12 den in 11 minutes on average. It is wall to wall carpet and full of obstacles and dog hair. I empty the easy to remove from the top dust bin. It did say on two of the cleanings that its brush was stuck and I disassembled the brush on the bottom. Basically it is like a regular vacuum brush, but has squeegee like brushes so no hair gets into a "brush." It turns out that it was in fact not tangled with something in its brush. My dog and sons playing had broken two loops of carpet and the Neato had found them and tried to vacuum them. one end of the loop was still attached. Now I know to look out for these and not take the brush off when it happens. The brush is easy to take off and put back on.
2. I can push the big green button and off it goes...to clean the entire house. It comes back and recharges as necessary and then goes back to where it was working and finishes. I have noticed it does not always restart exactly where it was, but it does get all areas at least once and often twice. Just now it returned to base, bumped into something, but got around it and is charging.
3. Not much to maintain. I think we will be replacing the filter and I imagine the belt for the brush eventually, but it pretty much just gets emptied by us. We are not doing the scheduled cleaning as the house needs to get picked up by teenagers first and that requires some whip cracking on my part.
4. My wife loves it. In the beginning she followed it around and would report back frequently on where it was and how it was doing. "This is the best birthday present I have ever gotten!" If we could just figure out how to get it emptied automatically. A docking station with a vacuum that sucks the Neato dust bin dry would be cool. Come on Neato troops...you can do this!
5. It traverses the carpets, throw rugs, various transistions perfectly. I put the magnetic strip down around the problem couch with underside that slopes to the floor. It actually went under one piece of furniture and disappeared vacuuming...only to emerge a minute or two later.

One thing to consider is where to park it. While you could bring it out only when you need it and place it in a room and then hit the green button (this will clean that room only and then return to where it started) that does not use it to its full potential. To use its full potential you need to put the little base station next to a wall somewhere in the house so it can travel back and charge up etc.

After four weeks, we love our Neato and have no regrets. I will check in again six months from now and update. I am also going to update a little video.

UPDATE:
One week after this review the Neato started making a strange noise. Kind of like a grinding roar. Very loud. We called support and they said they would send out a new Neato at no charge. They did ask for a credit card to go on file in case we didn't return the original. Access to support was very quick and the new Neato arrived in two days. We actually continued to use the original Neato which, aside from the noise, did a good job. The Neato arrived and we did not miss a beat. I can only speculate what the problem was. We are now on month three of our experience with robot vacuuming and our Neato is awesome!

Update 8/15/2011:

Time for another update. Unfortunately, I do not have more to say other than the Neato has passed the test of time! We continue to use the Neato in this fashion:
1. Pickup stuff on floor (no robot for that yet).
2. Double check magnetic strip under our couch that inclines to floor. It sometimes gets bumped by humans. This strip prevents the Neato from going into what I call a furniture wedge where the sofa bottom slopes to the floor.
3. Double check that the Neato dustbin was emptied after last time.
4. Open doors to rooms that I want cleaned in entire house (our house is one level). Neato will find the doorway, finish the room it is in, go back to the doorway and enter the room to clean it. Multiple doorways? Not a problem, Neato will clean each one and go back to recharge if necessary.
5. Press the big button to turn on.
6. Press the big button to start cleaning house.
7. Go away or continue to be in house and be careful not to walk on robot.
8. Neato finishes and returns to base and I empty dustbin.

A commenter recently asked about cleaning the brush. Another commenter already responded and I will add that I have only had to dig thread and hair out of the brush twice in about 100 operations. Keep in mind that each time I run the Neato it is usually cleaning about 1500 square feet of house.

At one point, I was going to connect the Neato to the Internet to see if there was an update. Do I really want to? Not sure. Why would I fix something that works great already? Maybe I will take a look at their website.

Go Neato!

Update 4/11/2012

Neato died. Or, started making noises that were not Neatoish and we humans got concerned. It was scary, thinking of life without Neato. My wife called Neato central support and described what was happening to our Neato. I apologize for sounding so corny, but the whole crisis started out feeling so Orwellian. Neato support responded with a new Neato on its way. Almost as if the little robot was phoning home or being watched by a rescue squad.

This is now our third Neato and I am happy to report that robots do in fact evolve. We have the latest firmware and Neato continues to zig and zag through our busy lives vacuuming up all kinds of crud. We have gotten lax with our pickups lately and the little cleaning bot does not care. It will bump around shoes, push electrical cords out of the way (this I may have to video, can't figure out why it does not get tangled), dodge yellow labs, and take ownership of a room. I actually hate it on when I am home, my wife tends to put it to work regardless.

The third bot was a refurb and free of charge. We ended up with a new brush (more like a rubber rotating squigee). I figure a brush is good for at least 350-400 cleaning sessions of about 1500 sqft. Maybe more. After pressing for the proverbial "why?" our Neato had a close encounter with death. I was told some had a gear not quite right.

I have built my share of bots and the fact that such a device, with so many moving parts, can last many times longer than your average $150 upright simply amazes me. Not to mention that you don't do the pushing.

Neato, and the support team, are our vacuum heroes!

1/27/2013
Sad news on the vacuuming front. A vacuum has passed away. Our upright! Our Neato continues to vacuum automagically! Our upright is still needed for occasional deeper cleanings, especially in furniture, corners etc. The Neato is great, but we still need an upright. In my quest for a new upright I looked high and low. I am sick of paying lots of money, but also sick of buying a new vacuum every 2-4years. How hard can it be right? And what of these pricey vacuums from Electrolux, Miele, etc. etc.?? Suffice it to say, I decided to go past the $200 price point and see if these pricey machines really do last five times longer and do ten times the job. The vacuum story continues in an upcoming review of a Miele. Go check out the review if you are in the market or just want...the rest of the story.

Very efficient & effective robot
Rating by : Ryan Mckenney,

I really like this robotic vacuum. It cleans a ridiculous amount of pet hair and dust from my carpet! I used a Roomba, which was fairly good but the drawback was it couldn't navigate to other rooms and back as well as the Neato does. The other drawback was it couldn't figure out how to get onto area carpets without the spinning brush on the front getting stuck. For the Neato, this is no problem at all. Instead of bouncing all around looking for light houses it will detect doorways and move from room to room in a more logical fashion.

The suction and cleaning ability is amazing. I would place the suction power closer to an actual upright vacuum. The noise level is a bit quieter than an upright and maybe a little louder than the whine of a Roomba. There is significantly less bumping, which overall, makes the Neato quieter. It still bumps into things (mostly table legs) from time to time but nowhere near as hard or as frequent.

Battery life is adequate. About an hour to 90 minutes I've seen. I have several large rooms for it to work on and it doesn't do them both in a single charge. The nice thing about the Neato is it will recharge itself (2-3 hours) when the battery runs out then it will resume exactly where it left off to complete the job.

Coverage is very good. It does seem to miss very small parts of the room but nothing major. I have debris from a litter box for it to clean up and it does get nearly every single scrap that comes out. I have it scheduled to run nightly and it picks up way more dust and fur than the Roomba.

If you don't want the Neato to go somewhere your only choice is to close the door or place down a black magnetic strip. Very ugly compared to Roomba's lighthouse solution.

Another thing to mention is there is no option for it to clean a small area. It has to do the entire job.

I've taken a star off because the customer service is HORRIBLE. Mine was broken from day one due to a known defect (the battery is buzzing and not charging when connecting to the dock). I spent FIVE days and FIVE CALLS on the phone with customer support and it got me NOWHERE. First they said they'd give me a next day shipping label which sounded reasonable. That never came. After more and more calls getting nowhere they then wanted me to ship it ground and CHARGE MY CREDIT CARD AGAIN FOR ANOTHER ROBOT??? Again, I still don't know if I would ever get a shipping label. Truly frustrating.

Neato is better than Roomba - I have had 6 different Roombas so I know
Rating by : Amazon Addict,

I have had the Neato vacuum robot for a few weeks now and I am just now getting the time to write a review. I don't write reviews for everything I buy just the things I think people need to be warned about or things I think people should really buy.

Compared to Roombas
I have owned 6 different Roombas starting with the original red one. The thing about Roombas is they don't really know where they are or where they are going they just start going and when they come to a wall or furniture they change course. They travel in a pattern that is designed to cover the whole room but is some cases where there is an odd shaped room or furniture in the room they can end up going around in the same spot and not covering all areas evenly. Also the pattern that is left on the carpet looks like someone gave a monkey a vacuum and let it loose as there are lines going everywhere. Roombas don't always get all the rooms in the house either and if they do get into a remote area of the house they often don't find their way back to their charging base and you have to play hide and seek with them and start looking under beds and furniture to find where your Roomba died. In my case this happened about half of the time.

Neato -The Good
The Neato is different with its laser eyes it looks at its surroundings and plots a course and cleans in straight lines and covers all rooms completely. My house is large enough that the Neato is not able to clean the whole house in 1 charge but it returns to its base and charges up and then finds its way back to where it left off and finishes the job. It has a stronger vacuum and has picked up more dirt than the Roomba did. I find the dirt bin to be easier to empty and holds more dirt. When I first got my Neato I scheduled it to run everyday. The first week the dirt bin was packed full and backed up into the brushes. I even emptied it between on its break when it was recharging to clean the whole house. Since then I haven't had to empty it on its break and it is not even completely full when it is done but it still finds dirt. I am not sure where since everything seems to be spotless now but the dirt is still out there somewhere. The Neato also only uses a rubber type brush like the one that is on the roomba and it doesn't have a bristled brush like the Roomba has but I like this feature as I spent way too much time cleaning hair and carpet out of the Roomba brush. The Neato still picks up my cats hair with its powerful suction.

Neato - The Bad
I think the Neato creates a map of the room and then stores this map and references it to navigate around so any changes to its orientation is not handled well. Let me explain. When the Neato first starts up it does a little dance looking left and right and you hear a whirling sound. This is the laser spinning around on top of the Neato. I think it is creating a map when this happens and it knows where it is on this map and moves accordingly. If you pick up the Neato and put it back down and it is facing a different direction then its reference to itself on the map has changed and totally freaks the Neato out and it starts to cry for help says it is unable to navigate or something like that. The only solution I have found is to hold the big button down until it powers off and then start it back up again. This clears its map and allows it to create another one. The down size is if it had already cleaned half the house it doesn't know that it did anymore and will start all over. I had this happen when I emptied out its bin a couple times as well so it seems very sensitive to orientation changes so don't touch it when it is cleaning just let it do its thing. If you don't touch it this rarely happens. That is really the only bad thing that I have found with the Neato and it is not so bad that I don't like it I just can't give it 5 stars because it is not perfect.

Overall the Neato is a great vacuum robot and does a good job at cleaning my house and I would recommend it to anyone.

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