Neato XV-11 Review
Cleans without the sweat – the new Neato XV-11 all floor covers all floors of your house even when you are away. This robotic vacuum cleaner is the only cleaner that cleans every inch of your floor using a simple user-friendly interface. You do not need to be skilled with the robotic technology to make it work. You only create a schedule for the robotic vacuum cleaner to clean while you are away to cover all floors and work around stairs and furniture.
A personal assistant without a salary
With this robotic cleaner, you find an assistant without paying salary and other add on benefits. This small sized assistant cleaner provides a pressure sensitive bumper on top of the squared off front command module. The laser scans the room to evaluate the layout of the place for plotting. Plotting is the process of taking on the outline of the room or house and develops the right approaches to clean through the floors. The robot can actually calculate speed to know how to go through cleaning the floor.
Fully secured cleaning bin
This has a fully secured cleaning bin that easily comes out of its container. This prevents the dust and dirt from spilling on the floor when you attempt to remove and empty the bin. The cleaning bin has a replaceable paper filter backup for better hygienic cleaning performance.
Charge and instruct your personal assistant cleaner
This comes with a two conducive strips charger. You can easily plug the charging stand into the wall and just leave it on the floor to charge. After charging, you can set the schedule for your robotic vacuum cleaner cleaning task by setting the on board LCD the task and the time. If you want it to clean the floor immediately, you may just push the orange button to get it started.
No falling – it can map out the stairs
This is cool to use and great in determining and avoiding obstacles. This very smart robot calculates distance well and does a great job doing obstacle avoidance. It will intelligently measure and map out your floor so as to plot the most effective path to avoid obstacles and clean the room effectively. This is different from other robots as this detects obstacles from intelligent mapping and not mere impact.
Speaking of an intelligent personal vacuum cleaner that can clean your house from set instructions, performs a 360 degrees scan, and track down dust and mites, you might want to look at the specs and prices here:
About Neato XV 11
We have gathered some of the reviews made by real users of this product.
Favorable Reviews:
- By J.Zimmerman (Lansing, MI)
I don’t typically write reviews on products, but I needed to with this one.
If you’ve tried roomba and it’s just not successful in your house for whatever reason, this one is might do the trick.
I’ve had many roombas, and was never 100% satisfied. They would get stuck, run out of battery, or many other problems.
I have lots of stuff on the floors in several rooms. This robot manages to go to each room and find it’s way around. It has an LCD screen on it to tell you want’s wrong instead of having to remember what beep sounds mean what. I like how it can come back from 4 different rooms and still know where it’s base is to charge.
It’s still not perfect, but with my experiences with roomba, this will work 10 times better, and I don’t need any stupid IR walls to keep the roomba in check.
I’ve had it get suck a few times, but most of those were my fault or could be prevented.
1) it’ll eat half a sock and get jammed.
2) it’ll eat my bathroom rug, but I think I can fix it by using carpet tape to sick down the edges.
3) it’ll eat wires like earbud headphones left on the floor.
4) it can change from hard surfaces to soft almost all of the time (hardwood to area rug etc), mine gets stuck when leaving the bathroom, going onto a high ply carpet. I think it’s just spinning it’s tires and I might be able to solve this with a little ramp, or preventing the xv-11 from going into that bathroom. by a little ramp, I mean one of those thresholds that go between rooms when changing flooring styles. The threshold that’s there now is very tall.
A few of my concerns are:
1) Will the battery last for more than 6 months (roomba sucks)
2) cleaning out the dust pan seems a bit dirty of a process (you need to shake it and then figure out how to clean the filter which my method of banging on the trashcan seems to kick dust in to the air)
3) you can only schedule one cleaning per day at one time.
Improvements I’d like to see: (I know I’m dreaming)
1) wi-fi connectivity option (maybe add a USB wifi card into an accessory slot) This could be used to set the schedule, get updates when the dustpan needs changing, and a lot of other hacking ideas allowing you to do some pretty neat stuff, like a camera accessory for remote home monitoring)
2) An easier cleaner way to dump the dust pan.. maybe hook your shop vac up to a port on the bottom or top that’ll just remove everything from it quick and dirt free.
3) An upgraded docking station that could auto empty the dust pan into a larger receptacle or a central vac system etc).
4) A more advanced cleaning schedule system. I’d like mine to have a motion sensor and only start if some conditions are met, like there has been no motion in the house for 2 hours and it’s a weekday when I should be at work)
5) Can it cook me dinner? 
Overall, this is the best investment I’ve made in cleaning my house. I have two cats who shed a lot and I hadn’t run the vacuum in 6-8 weeks before I bought this thing. After 3 passes it looked as good as if I had used a real vacuum. If I run it daily which I do, it looks fresh everyday. This thing does a great job getting the lose cat hair on the hardwoods as well (not blowing it around like some vacs do)
While this unit feels expensive compared to some other units, it really is worth it.
- By Burly Gorilla
I’ve wanted to buy a robotic vacuum for years now but I never pulled the trigger until I saw videos on Youtube of the neato XV-11. I thought it looked like the coolest thing I have ever seen. I received it yesterday (10/06/10) and charged it immediately. I hit the start button and off it went. It navigated our entire living room, dining room, and kitchen. It didn’t get stuck once.
Even when I thought it got itself to into a precarious situation, it managed to get itself out. I thought it was so cool I even video taped it. After about 35 minutes, it finished our entire first floor (about 1000 square feet) and went back to its base.
After it was done charging, I took it upstairs to do our two bedrooms and two bathrooms. I left it up there in total darkness and it finished it without a hitch. I should mention that the upstairs is about 900 square feet and it probably finished a little quicker. I’m very happy that it cleaned under our beds which are areas that don’t get a lot of attention.
These are the first two times that have I run the robot. I should also say that it did get stuck on a loose cell phone charger cable which is my fault. It politely asked me to free it and it continued. I was also very impressed with the amount dust and hair that it picked up. We have no pets. It filled the container both times.
Bottom line is that I am very happy with my purchase and would recommend this product to anyone who does not enjoy vacuuming and wants a piece of cutting edge technology in their home.
Not So Favorable Reviews:
- By Daniel
Neato is indeed smarter than the Roomba. It tries to figure out the shape of the room and find a sub-optimal path to covert it. It also has the trash container on the top, which makes it so much easier to take out and clean. And it doesn’t have a brush where dirt can get stuck. Yay for that.
Unfortunately, Neato has a real talent in getting itself stuck in various pieces of furniture, even more so than the Roomba. If you have a chair or armchair with a flat bottom rather than 4 legs, forget about it. Neato will simply climb on the chair leg and then get stuck there. So does the Roomba 560. The only automatic vacuum that can deal with these chairs is the old Roomba 4000 series – that one is too weak to climb on the legs and does a great job in moving around these types of obstacles.
Using the magnetic strip to block it out worked fine for an Ikea Poang armchair, but not for my design chairs in the kitchen.
Sometimes it gets confused and just goes around in random patterns.
It is also way louder than the Roomba (probably more powerful too). When it starts up, you have the feeling that a jet airplane is taking off from your floor.
In short, I think Neato has a bright future ahead, but this is the first version and hence it has it quirks. If you are an early adopter, you’ll be able to deal with it (I still love it, despite its faults). If you want something that just works, either make sure there’s no place where it can get stuck, or just wait until the next version comes out.
- By dabouv “dabouv”
I would give this a 4 for effectiveness and it exceeds my expectations. It is odd that it doesn’t take the same route each time we use it and sometimes will not go in a room but that is an easy fix, take it in and it seems to finish the job. It sometimes gets stuck and can navigate home for no clear reason but overall, it is very worth the money and the house cleaning has been much easier.
It amazes me how much it picks up. We had it just under a month when the battery showed a critical error. I am sure that neato would have replaced the battery but I purchased at Costco so had a return guarantee and ordered another. If it turns out the battery was a fluke, then this is a 4 star item.
A little improvement on the navigation and it would be better. It even goes under the bed and under our oven which is really nice. I was always shocked how much stuff I’d clean from there when I tackled those tasks.
Knowing these things that people say about a product is a great thing – this will make decision making a whole lot easier.
Best Deal You Can Find:
Note: There are links on this page that are sponsored affiliate links in which the webmaster makes commission for every purchase. The owner is not a user of this product but has researched thoroughly and provided his personal views.
