Neato Botvac BV-80

Fantastic – We have a house cleaner fortnightly so we use our robot daily for the kitchen and living areas on the days inbetween. We have 2 small children so this is a lifesaver! We use it after breakfast and dinner everyday to pick up any crumbs from the kids. The vacuum does a good job, although I do feel it could be slightly quieter. It generally cleans well, although on some occasions I have to run it twice in the same room as it misses some things. That can be annoying.

Otherwise it is easy to maneuver and performs well. We use it on floorboards and nothing else. We do have a shaggy rug in the lounge which we have to roll up as he doesn't seem to like it!!!!

Short lived – Good vacuum while it lasted but broke by 8 months. Difficult to deal with company regarding warranty. Eventually repaired it but it broke again and is now out of warranty. Expensive for 16 months of vacuuming. Save your money and look elsewhere!!! I wouldn't recommend it to anyone for any reason as it is just a waste of money.

Issues – I have a xv 21 and a botvac 80 The xv 21 still works perfectly however the botvac 80 is having issues after 7 months. It keeps asking me to turn on and put the dust bin in. Spoke to customer support and they weren't a help asking me to purchase a battery but they weren't sure that would fix issue. Very disappointed that a simple issues can not be resolved quickly with this company. The botvac does perform very well when it runs

Botvac 80 review - can be applicable to all other botvac series – Pro: navigates quite well - 4.5 star, gets caught in thick pile rugs (just flick them up on the edges), and seat stools(hang them up on bench) otherwise really good, relatively low, bin capacity ok needs emptying regularly if you have pets. Very good battery life - 1 hour at least, navigates well, esp under table with chair legs, will keep trying to find its way out.

Cons: Lost the securing ring on my combo brush after 1 month, so purchased on ebay replacement pack including new filters. Blade Brush Shockingly loud, not recommended so avoid BV 70, took the ring from blade brush and fitted to combo brush - worked fine now. Filter seems poor quality, really dirty after 2 weeks.

purchased on AimTofind.

Even better than before! – My last Robot vacuum was a Neato XV-21 and most of my comments from that review apply to the Botvac In terms of behavior the unit appears to navigate very similar to the XV-21 so all my previous comments apply to the Botvac as well. FYI - my XV-21 failed after approximately 18 months (screen won't power on after multiple reboot attempts). I had given it a particularly hard run over its lifetime though; it would clean my entire house usually 3 times per week.

The main shortfall of the XV-21 was the lack of a side brush, which the Botvac now has. I was skeptical how effective it would be, however it does a great job even on carpet. No more two inch strip of dust building up! There are still small parts of corners that don't get touched, however this is likely to be a problem with most robot vacuums (i.e. the Roomba is round, so I imagine corners are a drama for it too!)

In operation, the Botvac is noticeably quieter that the XV-21 and the motor spins up almost instantly. The dirt-bin is larger and has a larger filter, I suspect this would help a great deal with airflow given the increased surface area (It's now almost double the size).

The brush design is improved as well and is now far easier to remove and clean (no messing around with that rubber belt). The main brush bearing is now larger and easily removable - hopefully this translates to a longer lifespan as I had a bearing fail on the XV-21 brush.

The menu is largely the same, however there is now a separate button for the spot-clean function which is nice. The start/finish speaker tones are also significantly louder now.

Battery life on the Botvac is exceptional - I have probably 50/50 tile to carpet ratio in a 20 square living space house and Botvac is almost able to cover the whole house with one charge. The Neato XV-21 would need at at least 1 charge, probably 2.

I purchased Botvac from ozrobots.com.au for $774 delivered. I had investigated ordering from the US as I had massive savings ($150-200) purchasing my XV-21, however after all taken in to account (including the Strong US / Weak AU dollar) I was going to save less than $100 ordering the Botvac from overseas.

If cost is an major factor and you're not worried about doing some touch-up vacuuming along the edges of carpet or sweeping the edges on tiles, I would probably still go for the XV-21 to be honest. With the exception of the edges, the XV-21 cleans just as well as the Botvac. For me, the addition of the side-brush, improved battery performance, and easier brush maintenance is well worth the additional cost for the Botvac.