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Wife gave me a mandate. Look for another robot vacuum that we could have running daily that is not as noisy, and use the Roomba for deeper cleaning. We also needed one that could empty its dust collector a few times because our upstairs bedroom carpet sheds a LOT of fiber every, single time. Roomba's i7+ was way too expensive at $1,000, and I got the Neabot on sale for less than 3/4 the price. Do we like it? Yes and no.
PROS
- Very quiet operation
- Picked up a lot of trash
-- Works on carpet, laminated wood, and tile flooring
- Good suction power except for deep carpets
-- Multiple suction modes. When it reaches a deep carpet, it turns up its suction strength (but still makes less noise than Roomba 980)
-- Wish it sucked harder on carpet
- Cleaned most of the house, though its sweeping algorithm looks random compared to Roomba's methodological sweeping
-- It appeared to first randomly move about the house to map the area, and THEN it would announce "Cleaning" and actually clean. Roomba cleans while it maps in a controlled, zig-zag pattern
- Emptied itself after each clean. Can be turned off to never empty
- Stair avoidance to prevent it from dropping
- Entanglement detection. Stops when it is stuck on a cord
- Good battery life
- Looks very nice and high-tech. I much prefer its look over Roomba's
- Voice prompts with adjustable volume
- WiFi enabled
-- Can be controlled remotely via an app (start, stop, schedule)
-- Visually maps cleaning areas like the Roomba, but there appears to be some bug in the software in how it draws out the floorplan
- Apple iOS and Android app support
- Self charges (finds its own charging base when done)
- Mopping functionality works, but is rudimentary
-- You fill the robot with a cleaning solution in a separate compartment and attach the microfiber part to mop
- Robot locator function through the app
- Additional accessories included, such as brushes and filters
- Setup was easy
- Object avoidance seemed better than Roomba's
-- Roomba bumped into things to know that something was in the way
-- Neabot uses lasers (visible by pointing phone camera at it) to avoid objects without bumping into anything. It would later map in more detail by indeed bumping into objects too. This meant that when I walked in front of the robot, it immediately detected my presence and located an alternate path to travel
CONS
- My first Neabot kept stopping a number of times while cleaning for a variety of reasons
-- Returned it for a replacement. New one did not have the issue
- Cleaning route appears to be random instead of methodotical and predictable like the Roomba
-- Seems to first be mapping the room and THEN clean instead of doing both at the same time
- Mopping functionality was rudimentary
-- Cleaned some parts of the tile floor, but not as well as manually doing it by hand. To be fair, Roomba's Braava mops are not any better either
- Voice prompts are initially too loud. I configured the volume to be lower
-- Voice prompts woke us up in the middle of the night twice because it was performing an update and rebooting. I told customer service they need to NOT have the robot say something while it's upgrading, especially at night
- Side sweeping brush kept coming off when the Neabot went over cables
- Software seems to need more work. Customer service said that they continuously make improvements and that it will get better over time
Overall, once the robot has been set up, things worked very well. I wish that it cleaned while mapping to save some time, but perhaps the engineers will improve on the Neabot's programming over time. I asked the wife: Roomba or Neabot? She liked how quiet the Neabot was, that it did a decent job vacuuming, and mops up light messes. Me? I prefer the Roomba, but for the lower price, we decided to stay with the Neabot.
