Samsung Powerbot 9000 Series

I bought this Vacuum on 17/12/2017 it is now 26/04/2019 and it has been in for repair on 5 separate occasions, I have just been told that the battery needs replacing and it only has a 6 month warranty so I have to pay $240 for a new battery, I would not recommend this to anyone.

Have had it for just over two years and in that time has broken down four times and required new batteries, new chargers, etc. This is the most unreliable piece of consumer electronics we have ever purchased. The unit does actually work fairly well but I reckon we've spent more than 8 hours driving to and from service centres and trying to fix the thing.

The machine does what it’s supposed to do, vacuum the floor but so do all vacuum cleaners! The User manual is designed for people who can extrapolate technical instructions because it doesn’t tell you much about Features and it’s very basic, it says things like “start button starts the Robovac, right button turns Robovac to the right” we all can understand the the basics but I’ve found that even when the machine doesn’t perform properly the error codes don’t show up and there’s quite a few in the manual but they never show up on the machine. I had to send this machine for repair after only 5 months of ownership. The robovac cleans my room then indicates it’s finished but continues to go around and around until the battery is flat or Until i turn it off manually. The vacuum seems to love the occasional power shot of suction against the skirting boards here and there, I don’t know what it’s thinking as many of the corners in the rooms have now accrued little piles of dust and the extra boost of suction is supposed to detect those extra piles of dust so my corners are left untouched and the extra suction against the skirting boards is a waste of time. When we purchased the unit we were told it will automatically adjust suction depending on the type of surface it is cleaning, eg hard surface = low suction and for carpet = high suction , well it doesn’t do that either. For a machine that we paid $1299 AUD it’s really upsetting and that was after a heavy discount, the unit was, supposedly, retailing at $1999 AUD. Sadly I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. The Samsung app is no better either, it also assumes you’re a master of software. It was extremely difficult to make the robovac map my home with, a feature that influenced me to buy it. The app is unforgiving and should I want to start afresh it’s very difficult to delete the settings and start again but there is no clear cut way to delete and start again, the instructions for the app are clumsy and certainly insufficient. As for customer service they’re quick to respond but the information they give also assumes that you’re the genius who knows all the solutions , their instructions to resolve an issue weren’t the best, their solutions were simply cut and paste from a manual they have. When I rang to have it sent away for repair The lovely lady gave me an address to a service centre near me but very sadly this was the only good experience I had with owning this unit! And if you think those lovely responses from Samsung about them sending a private email chat mean that something will be done about your problem, then think again as I never heard a thing back. Thank you!

I would NOT buy ANY samsung Powerbot. I purchased the top of the line 2 1/2 years ago for my wife. Now the battery is dead and it will cost me 235 dollars to replace. That is 1/3 the cost of over 800 dollars we paid for the entire vacuum. In two to three years Samsung no longer provides parts and was directed to a third party to get the battery. This is a TERRIBLE way to service a product nearing 1000 dollars which is not cheap (we paid 850) at the time. It worked well, but often gets stuck under things and you come home to a chirping for help, robot. (i guess thats why the battery dies!!!!!) I am NOT the type to moan and groan about everything that does not go my way, and hate those types of people but this battery situation sent me over the edge. DO NOT BUY from this manufacturer!!!!!!

It has a Powerful vac / Strong suction. Suited to / good on hard surfaces and large open areas
Relatively good at navigating / mapping our home
Average on Carpet (but better than some other brands, just dont leave any iPhone cords or loose string items on the floor as they get caught up in the wheel).

I had the Samsung Powerbot 9300 for about 8 weeks and it was working OK. The mapping feature is useless. It doesn't map properly, but the cleaning was pretty good - good suction. After about 8 weeks of use the vacuum cleaner suddenly started doing odd things like stopping after a few minutes on a scheduled clean, missing heaps of areas, unable to navigate the rise between my floorboard areas and carpeted areas (which it had previously done without a problem) and going around in circles then stopping in the middle of the floor and not returning to base to recharge. I tried everything to reset the Powerbot but nothing worked. I turned it over to see if there was maybe something stuck in a wheel and one of the wheel motors had melted! Touching it when I turned the cleaner over burnt my fingers - it was boiling hot! For no apparent reason the motor just melted which on carpeted floors I would imagine is a high fire risk! I've returned the cleaner to Harvey Norman where I purchased it and it's gone to Samsung's authorised repairer. They're saying they think I've used the cleaner "as a skateboard" (i.e. standing on it) or that it's been dropped, fallen down stairs etc. None of these things have happened. The unit was scheduled to clean every day and I let it do its thing. Nothing has changed in my house, no new furniture, no stairs suddenly built etc. Nothing! I've had an iRobot Roomba for years without any issues until I replaced the carpet in the house and the Roomba didn't like brown carpet so I bought the Samsung. Big mistake. This unit isn't worth the money I spent on it and two weeks after returning it for assessment I am still no closer to having it replaced or my money refunded as this little cleaner is, in my opinion, a fire risk if the wheel motor melts during normal use. Note: the Powerbot was cleaned regularly, wheels checked, wiped with a soft dry cloth etc - everything the User Manual tells you to do to care for it, I did.
Don't waste your money on the Samsung Powerbot. It's overpriced and my one has proved very dangerous. I'm lucky my house didn't catch fire as I'm not always home when it does a scheduled clean. This time I was and thank goodness I turned it over or the melting wheel motor could have caused way bigger problems than a dead vacuum cleaner!

I've had this unit for just over 18 months now, so I feel that I have had enough experience to provide an informed review.
General use - In general, it manages to navigate its way around your home and do its job without too much fuss and without requiring to much intervention, which is good. When on full auto, I have noticed that it does randomly miss some areas of our home. I am unsure why this occurs, but we just manually send it back to the area to clean. One of my pet hates is that it sometimes gets lost when returning to the base station, it usually finds its way home, but it can take the scenic route or not get there at all. If like us you have lounges / furniture that is low to the ground, the unit will not navigate under it (even though it may physically fit). This is not a deal breaker for us, but may be for you. Another thing that I found somewhat frustrating is that the orientation of the base station can impact the direction and the way the unit aligns itself to walls and how navigate its way around the home. As strange as this sounds, it seems to impact the of the cleaning path that unit it takes and ultimately its cleaning speed / efficiency.

About The Samsung Smart home App - The app is used to map your home and to direct the vacuum around your home. It's good, but it does have some limitations and can be a little buggy to use. Android devices were easy to setup and connect to the Powerbot, but it was a little more difficult to connect my wife's IPhone to the unit. I found that it initially took a few attempts to map our apartment accurately as it seemed to miss some area's on the initial mapping passes. It did eventually got it right. Once the App is up an running it's fairly easy to use and it's got a nice feature where it will let you select specific areas of your home to clean if you don't want to do the whole home at that time, but it does require that you allow the unit to map the layout of your home.

Pro's
Powerful vac / Strong suction
Suited to / good on hard surfaces and large open areas
Samsung Smart home App is Relatively intuitive to use
Relatively good at navigating / mapping our home
Average on Carpet (but better than some of its competitors)
Saves you time.

Con's
Reliability (of our unit) - 3 service calls to date
Randomly misses parts of our home on auto
Poor corner / edge cleaning
Not suitable for rugs with shag pile or tassels (will tangle in the roller and stop the unit from cleaning)
Occasionally gets lost when returning to the base station
Alignment of the base station can impact cleaning path / efficiency
If the unit gets stuck whilst cleaning, there is no resume option

Performance and customer service is unacceptable!! Purchase a Roomba... they at least work as promised and half the the price!! I bought one on Craigslist for $250 that lasted me 12 years!!! And... I bought a second one for my friend to try!! She's loving her Roomba... and I'm hating my Samsung Powerbot!!!

I bought the Powerbot 9200 because I have shoulder problems, and using a manual vacuum cleaner is very painful. I chose this model because it was highly rated by Choice for its vacuuming power on carpets and rugs as well as hard floors, and couldn't be more satisfied with its vacuuming power. It cleans my carpets better than my old Miele Cat and Dog vacuum, which was a very good vacuum, and is particularly good at getting rid of all traces of animal hair. It also copes well with moving from the floor to the thick rug, rarely gets stuck, and has a wide vacuuming "mouth" at the front. Even when the floors look clean, if I run the Powerbot again, it always picks up more dust and debris in its vacuum chamber, so I know it's a powerful vacuum. This does also mean that if your floors are very dirty, the vacuum chamber fills up quite quickly and needs emptying, but once your house is clean, as long as you run the vacuum regularly, this isn't an issue.

The main downside of this vacuum is that the software that runs the vacuum is TERRIBLE. The app crashes frequently, the vacuum loses connection with the internet regularly, it's not easy to reconnect, and really all you can do with the app is make the vacuum stop and start, which you might as well just use the remote to do. The documentation that comes with the vacuum is poor, but seems to suggest that some models should be able to show you a map of the rooms, and perhaps even direct it to certain rooms, but I've never been able to work out how to do this. The vacuum sometimes only cleans a portion of my house and then thinks it's finished, and the only way I can get it do other rums is to run it again, and hope that next time it covers the areas it missed previously, and block off the areas it's done before. This solution works, but it means that you can't just run the vacuum without supervision and come home to a very clean house, it needs some supervision, and might end up cleaning some areas more than once, to get the whole place vacuumed.

Overall, I still love this vacuum, because it is such a powerful vacuum, and when it actually does its job properly, it's brilliant, 5 stars for cleaning. It's transformed my life, in not needing to do manual vacuuming. However, it does have its frustrations in using it, which means the overall cleaning experience can only be rated as four stars.

I purchased the Samsung 9250 PowerBot in Sept 2017 to add to my smart home controlled by Smartthings. In April 2018 the machine stop working and took it to Samsung’s nominated repair centre. The machine spent 2 months there and after chasing it up every second day Samsung finally agreed to refund my money back. They promised they will send me a form to complete within the day, after 3 days I had to escalate the issue as no form was sent. Got finally the form 4 days later, filled out straight away and send it back. They told me the refund will be 14 days after collecting my old unit, I wrote on the form very clearly the unit was ready for pick up from their Service people. 2 weeks later I checked and the unit was still not picked, screamed at Samsung Customer Service and they arranged pick up next day. I was still told I had to wait 14 days feom that date even though they stuffed up. It is today 15 business days since they picked up and still no money back. Case has been referred to NSW Fair Trading. Stay away from Samsung!!!

I’m a new mum with lots of new things to do at home, I have no time for vacuum cleaning but this little gorgeous helps me every single day, it’s an expensive model in the Market but it’s a good value for money when you get the fantastic result, highly recommended

The good: terrific suction. As good as my conventional vaccum.
The bad: the software is horrible. If it gets stuck, there is no resume option. It can only go to auto clean mode and cannot continue on area clean mode. It also fails to find its way back to the charger if it gets stuck somewhere. The app is also horrible. Very frequently it shows the vacuum as being disconnected and just won't connect again.

This vaccine is a great to do area with no furniture as it gets stuck on everything and seems to not sense hitting walls mine has been repaired twice now in two years I dont think they are worth spending that much money on, I wouldnt buy this product again

Absolutely worth product ever purchased. Instruction is bit hard and boring. Happy with it. It even cleans heavy dirt also. Really enjoying it's performance. Worth buying. Sometimes it strucks but still it does a great job. After few hours it becomes very hot. Otherwise one of the best product from samsung.

I am very happy with the product. It is too high though to go under lower furniture which is a nuisance. It works on polished concrete and does a great job. The computer went. Not sure if this is a common issue but it is now being fixed under warranty which is great. If I had a choice I would go with a flatter Samsung. Very happy with Harvey Norman service.

Purchased the Powerbot and plugged in and set up. Instructions are a bit vague as they are more focused on the remote control and app function than the actual unit itself.
After hours charging the battery is good for maybe 30 minutes. In that time one of two things happens. Either you enclose the Bot in a small space or let it wander around the house. The problem if you have a large house is that once the bot gets too far from its base it runs out of power and cannot find its way back so you have to pick it up and carry it back.
So if you enclose it in one room (we have large rooms 6M x 6M) then it might clean one room before running out of charge. At least it does go back to base and start the painfully slow recharge again.

Then there is the problem of its very illogical cleaning pattern. If like us you have a cut pile carpet then it will leave its tracks wherever it cleans which is rather RANDOM and you end up with unsightly lines where it has been on the carpet.

Whoever is in R&D needs to focus on battery capacity, range, and developing a LOGICAL cleaning pattern that it does once and not goes over and over and it does as if you or I were to vacuum - IE up and down up and down with small deviations around objects.

The APP and remote control are not what one buys this device for. It is purchased to alleviate the drudgery of vacuuming. Frankly this is a toy. At least not too noisy a toy.

And Samsung needs to focus on product performance first and foremost and forget the trinkets and add ons.

Was happy with it, however, it stopped working and had to take it to the service center. Never heard from the service center on whats going on and had to ask for a refund, must say that refund process was easy and swift.

Will look for something reliable and also with good service center. It wasn't good in the corners though, otherwise it was strong and had a good suction for carpets too.

My wife borrowed a Robovac vacuum last year and was very impressed with how it worked. The only problem was that it was round and wouldn't go into corners very well. She said she would have one if it was square at the front.
So I looked on the internet and saw that the Samsung Powerbot seemed to fill the bill. I reluctantly forked out the $1,272.95 to Harvey Norman and bought her the top of the range model for Christmas.
You'd think that, having paid that much, we would have a machine that was relatively easy to use (like the Robovac) that would come with some detailed instructions. But no! We've got a real lemon with practically no operating instructions that make any sense.
The thing has been in use for just on one month. But we have never had it finish the house. The floorplan mapping is virtually useless. Sometime it gets halfway through the mapping then it can't find its way back to the charging station, so it switches itself off. When it switches itself off it seems to disconnect itself from the server. There's nothing in the instructions to tell you how to rectify this.
My wife received an email from Samsung VOC NSW on 2 February telling her that the matter had been referred to the 'Technical Support Team' and to keep her line open to hear from them. Well the line has been open for five days now, so when will she hear from them?
We are having trouble today, so we ring up your help line to see if we can get some decent instructions and we get a girl who obviously is reading from the same inadequate manual that we have. She can't advise us, so she tells us that we have to take it to a service centre. I'm pretty sure that there is nothing mechanically wrong with the machine – it’s brand new. It's just that there is no-one who knows anything about operating it and who can advise us. So what's the point in taking it to a service centre for them to tell us that the machine is working properly.
Today we had it drawing a new floorplan. Seems like a simple task to ask it to undertake, after all that's one of its selling points. But after a while it got hung up on a 1cm rug. We've had this before and were told to switch the emergency switch off, move the machine to a clear area and switch it on again. Okay, we did that using the emergency switch and nothing happens. The app on the phone says it's disconnected from the server. How do you reconnect it to the server and get it to resume mapping. Doesn't seem a lot to ask of the support centre. But could they answer that? NO!! INSTEAD THEY WANT ME TO TAKE IT TO A SERVICE CENTRE. What a waste of time.
I want someone from Samsung who knows something about this machine to either show us how to operate it or to provide a lucid comprehensive set of instructions.
By the way, when we first tried to get the machine to make a new map of the house, we rang your help and the person there said it wouldn't work unless we removed all the furniture from the house. What a ridiculous proposal! Where are we to store the furniture? On the lawn?
I don't often write complaints. But, as you can see, I am thoroughly fed up with this useless piece of junk. If I can't get any satisfaction I'll be reviewing it wherever I can.

This is a great robot that th can out on to do a quick vacuum. It is noisy though. It doesn't get into corners or along edges very well but great for big open areas. It likes to try and eat anything it comes in contact with so you need to make sure you pick up everything off the floor. It comes with a virtual wall which is great to block off areas. It senses is great as it has never fallen down the stairs. Has a spot clean use with a remote which is great at cleaning up spills.

Wonderful robot if you have no dark floors or rugs with dark edges. Samsung Australia just confirmed this for me as I was about to buy the VR9300. I had to dig for this information as it is not displayed in a prominent position, e.g., on the product box. Such a pity! This issue may account for some of the vac's mapping confusion.