Customer Reviews

Black & Decker RV500 Zoombot Remote-Control Vacuum

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

After reading the reviews for this product, I expected alot more. It didn't do anything, it didn't suck up anything, and it doesn't have brushes on the bottom to fluff up the carpet and at least make it LOOK like it did something. It didn't suck up anything on hard floor either. Target store took it back just fine, but I still had to repackage it and didn't get a refund for shipping. I don't know who said that this product works, but they need glasses. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY.

I found that the Zoombot worked on our kitchen floor, but not well at all on carpeting. We will be returning this to the store we purchased it at tomorrow.

I didn't expect too much from this device, nor would I from any of these first-generation RoboVacs. However, this thing is a particularly pathetic, albeit interesting, attempt - even with consideration of a highly-discounted price. It is quite noisy, ineffective, obtrusive, and died less than half an hour into its 40-minute "Medium Room" routine - half of its rated 60-minute battery endurance. Despite "prepping the room" of obstructions, etc., the Zoombot's patterns seemed inefficient as it moaned along, picking up precious little of the (unfortunately!) abundant debris. Save yourself the time and hassle of returning it, and don't buy it at all. We can put people on the Moon (Or did we?!) - Why can't a manufacturer take this basic idea and create a REAL, HOT ROD of a RoboVac???

I bought the zoombot as an alternative to buying the $250 roomba. Well I'll bet that i'm not the first person to tell you that this robotic vacuum doesn't work due to its lack of power, no roll brushes, and the short battery life. Do yourself a favor and give up a little more $$$ and buy a Roomba. I bought a roomba and I love it.

Basically our experience is the same as that as everyone else. We got this as a gift for my FIL, who found it didn't work on his carpets at all. We took it back to try it on our hardwood, though, and it was fine there. Adequate, at least. There are some thing about it I don't like, such as the fact that the vacuum chamber has a paper filter that it is hard to completely clean without ripping.

When we got the unit back from him it had a problem, though. No matter how long you charged it, it would only run for 10 minutes. Maybe a "memory" issue in the battery? I called the maker, which wasn't really B&D but their parent company. There was a date code on the plug prongs that estabhlished that the unit was under warranty, so I just had to cut the electrical plug off and send it in. In not much more than a week I got a complete replacement unit via FedEx. So I give the customer service people kudos. If it were me, though, I would probably still buy the Roomba for myself even if I only had hardwood.

I was jsust slightly disappointed with it's ability to pick up debris, but basically it was okay. Could use a stronger motor. It's a godsend for me because I have arthritis and it's hard for me to do chores. It's very simple to use, and so lightweight. Does pick up some stuff, so it's worthwhile.

The effectiveness of the cleaning does drops off considerably as the battery loses full charge. That's just a learning curve for the human assistant.

It's pretty easy to spot the biggest trouble. Zoombot is not for carpet. My house has some short pile indoor/outdoor carpet in a enclosed porch. Just for grins I ran it there and even with the minimal nature of the carpet, zoombot seemed less efficient -- but it did successfully suck up dirt. If you have carpet, unless you just want it for a toy, I'd wait a couple of engineering generations for a future product.

Except, there are so often those small uncarpeted spaces. For $50.00 this thing could still be great.

Years ago I had an apartment roommate who was just a paragon of roommate virtue -- among other thing she LOVED to iron the way I love to muck out barns and burn stuff so my look was never again so crisp. She had this one habit though -- her mysterious personal grooming habits made the bathroom a weird place. Not only did she take showers every day for an hour and a half with a whole nearly ritual series of turning the water on and off (enviromentalist) once out of said shower she dusted herself so liberally that every morning the bathroom looked like my kitchen after a weekend of baking bread with 5 year olds. There was a layer of white dust EVERYWHERE. Yeah, it smelled great (unlike the flour) but it was thick enough on the floor to leave visible footprints. We ultimately dealt with the issue by moving to a different apartment with separate bathrooms. Zoombot would have been IDEAL for that special application. It's amazing on dust and small particles.

Zoombot's supposed to stay in one room, but it just wanders freely through my house. If there's a setting that would keep it in one room, I haven't found it. I don't mind that, but for those with control issues . . .

It's noisy, but not as noisy as "real" vacuume cleaner. That's the thing -- it's not a "real" vacuum -- it runs around on it's own and picks stuff up in it's tiny little dust bin -- but for real cleaning, you need real cleaning equipment. Think broom (or for some of us industrial strength shop vac) for serious cleaning. Still, this is just the first generation of these little bots, so I'll bet better days are a'commin.

It can't pick up big stuff -- something else has to get the twigs and crumpled paper broken bits of old leather and metal filings. That said, it does remarkably well coping with said obstacles that would clog or jam a low end upright vacuume. It's kind of cute how it all plays out -- since part of the bots charm is that it works it's way under the couch and under the bed and other small wrench-eater sort of spaces, the bot handles dust bunnies like the cowboys at spring gather collectinig longhorns on the ranch and in much the same way pushes the collected dust bunnies herd out in front of it. If you don't intercede (I was testing after all and letting problems run to their QA extremes) it will eventually run itself and it's "herd" into a corner and back away, leaving the herd stranded for it's human assistant to pick up. In the process, with the aide of the special dust bunny herd support attachment, it actually collected and corralled wads of full sheet paper. I just wish it would fit under the refrigerator and behind the stove.

And yes pet owners, there is an animal issue, but it's working out amazing well.

It took quite a bit to convince the dogs that it was not okay under any circumstances to kill and eat the zoombot. Not even if it inticed them with mysterous sounds from under the bed. Not even if it coyly teased them by flipping up the couch skirt and then backing away -- repeatedly. And by the way dogs, we know it's part of all of your genetic code, but no fair herding the Zoombot just because you no longer have goats and cattle to herd around. Yes, said Zoombot does appear to respond to herding behavior since it moves off in the other direction when it bumps into your obstructionist dog legs, but it's not actually capable of LEARNING herd behavior. No excuse that this triggers your geneticly encoded compulsive behavior and that intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful kind. NO! OUT! Leave the Bot Alone!!!

The cats were unconcerned about Zoombot as long as the dogs were obsessively monitoring it. Nothing says "obsessive" like a triggered dog with herd/chase instincts. In border collies it's actually hard wired in their brains. The cats have lived with these dogs on the ranch. Apparently if they could trust their well being to dog protection with hawks, eagles, racoons, coyotes, bobcats, possums, and stray dogs -- well, whatever that damn thing That Woman has brought into the house is no problem. The cats just transferred vertically 2 - 5 feet. They know enough to stay out of the dog zone when the dogs are obsessive compulsive. Nothing personal, but it's so easy to get stepped on and so hard to extract an apology.

Now that the dogs have mastered the art of No! Out! Down! reltive to Zoom, the cats sense of comfort and fundamental well being has come into question. They're taking turns casually and surrepticiously monitoring it's actions. There always seems to be one cat in whatever room the bot's working, somewhere up high and feigning indifference. Since we have a full range of cat capacity here, I can say that the most timid of them remove themselves only one room away when the bot enters. In a true sense of threat -- say Ross knocking on the front door -- the more spookable cats normally rocket out the cat door in the back, cower inside a box inside a set of shelves inside a closet in the most removed area of the house. Or they do that cat thing were they invoke the dimensional portal and vanish entirely from this material reality to another plane of existance. Anyone who's had experience with the need to consistently shove a pill down a cats throat knows all about that secret dimensional portal after about the third dosing. All of which is to say that since this is only the third time Zoom's been out and about and operational, for some reason it's not all that scary. Watching the cats, I think it's the slow and steady progress of movement that makes it safe.

Short version:

If you like to run a vacuum and enjoy cleaning as part of your regular daily rounds, Zoombot's probably superflous and silly.

If you like a REALLY clean house and do dilligent weekly cleaning, running Zoombot while you're gone on uncarpeted floors will make you happy. It really does a great job of collecting the loose dust that inevitably accumulates.

If you know some toy oriented geeks who seem alien to the concept of houscleaning, acquire this immediately. There's nothing like the introduciton of a new toy . . . um . . . novel technology . . . to reorient behavior patterns for the better.
It's actually FUN to pick up the house now, in anticipation of our new robopet's vacuume dedication.

This vacuum cleaner is mostly for use on bare floors -- it does an okay job. However, on carpets/rugs it doesn't do as good. After letting it run on my carpet for a good while, it still didn't get all the fuzzies & dirt that an uprite would.
All in all, I rate it "okay."

We just recently installed new hardwood floors. We have two dogs and lots of dog hair. This vacuum is very good at cleaning hard wood. In a matter of minutes the floor is barefoot clean! It's not as loud as a regular vacuum. It comes with only 3 electrostatic cloths but once I used all of them I just put those Swifter cloths on and they work fine. The little filter fills up pretty quick with dog hair but it's easy to clean. It's probably not the best choice if you want to hurry up and clean for company but it's great for everyday maintenance.

We bought ours at a Target store apparently before they were available anywhere else. Right out of the box, there was enough of a charge for us to get an idea of what to expect from this type of vacuum. It has about the same pick-up power as any other rechareable type of vac, but the idea of it running when we leave the house is what sets it apart.
Our pattern is to run it about the same as we do the dishwasher and clothes washer, leaving all of them running when we walk out the door in the morning. We were somewhat disappointed that it only had a NiCad battery as opposed to the now less-expensive LiIon we use in practically every other device. That said, we have to let it run all the way down before charging so as not to burn in a "memory", shortening our overall battery life.
Since it is more or less automated, we run it every day, starting it in a different portion of the floor each day so as to get maximum coverage.