Samsung PowerBot-E

God I hate Samsung products – Picked up the PowerBot-E from Aldi for $400 during one of their sales, though I hardly call this a good price. Vacuum was faulty from the get-go. It would keep bumping into walls, constantly do the same place twice, and get stuck on the rug. Once I set up the phone app, it told me that there was a "sensor issue". Since my receipt got lost, I… Read more

couldn't return it, and on top of that, the several authorised Samsung repairers I called did not repair the vacuums.

From a smartphone and tablet, to a monitor and now vacuum. Every Samsung product I've ever bought has been cheap. Never again.

I plan on selling it on Facebook Marketplace for parts.

Regret of buying – I should have read all the reviews before I bought the PowerBot E...worst I bought 2 sets, one for my other family member. It has all the issues that other reviews listed. The device takes long time to return to the docking station. Sometime it really missed the station that I need to bring it back manually for charging. It does not clean… Read more

systematically, and it repeats the same areas many times till the battery run flat. It was sent back to workshop for repair and stay with the worksop for 2 months, the problem still unsolved. I was told that it is functioning well and nothing need to be done.

I will not recommend this product as it can not be work without supervision to make sure that it covers the whole house. Mapping is not available.

Would not recommend – After a year of use it will not charge. After 20 seconds on the charger it backs off the docking station. Unfortunately I did not keep my receipt so cannot get it repaired under warranty or return it. I thought being a Samsung product it would last. Sadly this is not the case amd I e wasted my money. Show details

good whilst it is working – Brush stopped working whilst still under warranty Samsung kept telling me would be fixed no prob well that didn't happen in the end denied it was a product fault

Definately not a good buy – Purchased in June 2021, wouldnt work on my carpet, should have taken it back then) only used to vacuum tiles. Would not link with my smartphone so no programing. Stopped working after 3 months, Aldi refused to take it back (they only offer 60 days). Absolute money down the drain. Show details

A great example of a cheap and nasty robot vacuum [Edit: returned when it went wrong] – We've been waiting for ALDI to do one of their specials on robot vacuums for a while. Our ten year old Samsung Navibot died about a year ago after two sets of new batteries and major surgery (by me) on one side brush and wheel. It eventually became paranoid and thought it was surrounded on all sides, bouncing off invisible walls everywhere - some… Read more

form of sensor error and beyond even my ability to repair. About two months ago ALDI came up with the goods with a Samsung POWERbot-E for $399. At that price we thought it should be ok for what we wanted.

We have two indoor Burmese cats which seem to be in a constant state of molt. During the day and when we're out they're locked in the back half of the house (with access to an outside run), but this results in colonies of dust bunnies breeding in the back, that rapidly migrate to the front half of the house once people comes home and the cats are released. To mitigate this, our bot was set to roam the back of the house shortly before we came home to keep the colonies down.

The POWERbot-E is a fairly typical looking device and came with the usual charging dock, remote control, spare brushes and (to our surprise) mopping attachments.

With the bot plugged in and charging, I downloaded the requisite app to my phone and set it up. This was an ordeal and a half in itself. Samsung, in their wisdom(!), have used a two factor mechanism on the registration which only gives you three minutes to get the code by email. As my internet that evening was playing silly games it took me almost an hour to finally get a code in time to successfully register in time. Why was it necessary to make registration so difficult? Three minutes is just too unnecessarily short.

Next came the arduous process of linking up the bot to the app. Time and time and time again I went through the steps on my phone and time and time again it failed. I write software for a living - if I can't get it to work, what hope had the average person in the street?!? Not one for giving up, I persisted and after another hour (and using two other phones) I finally succeeded and was finally ready to play!

Well, what a disappointment! This thing has as much intelligence as a brick (and a particularly stupid one at that).

Our original bot had an upward facing camera which allowed it to make a reasonable effort of navigating, it could understand things like drops (stairs), had a virtual wall mechanism to permit boundaries to be created and importantly could find it's charging dock. Admittedly the programmable modes weren't great but at least it was easy to use - just a remote and a top panel, no accounts and no app.

Not the POWERbot-E. This has no such luxuries, it will roam endlessly until it hits or nearly hits any barrier, slowing down only if the object is large enough - at least it doesn't throw itself down the stairs, though the manual seems to worryingly suggest you don't trust the drop sensor! It also appears to have no fancy collision detectors other than basic infrared and the usual bump cushion at the front.

So once I had it setup in the app I decided to give it a whirl. The app permits the suction power to be set - low, medium or high, each will have a relative effect on the battery life of a charge - and for the type of cleaning pattern to use - automatic, zigzag, edge or spot.

Spot - pretty obvious, it cleans just a small area. Edge - sends the bot to run round the edge of the room(s) which should be useful in a house with mainly hard floors (much of the debris tends to gather round the edges). Unfortunately the bot keeps too far from the edge and leaves a delightful strip of dirt and debris varying one to two cm wide. Zigzag - as it suggests, zigzags side to side through the area it can access, makes a fair job but again misses some on the edges. Automatic - a totally pointless "random" mode which simply ensures some areas are multiply cleaned and others missed.

You can start the bot remotely with the given settings in the app, our with the remote, and off it goes. Sadly, because of the lack of mapping sensors the bot seems to have no idea of when it has finished cleaning the area it has been given to clean and seems to just run for some indeterminate time or until the battery is low before returning to its charging dock. It also seems to regularly lose any idea of where its dock is and wanders aimlessly trying to find its way back, often running out of power before it gets there.

Anyone who understands maze design knows that you pick a wall and follow it continuously, eventually you will reach the end - if the bot did the same it would eventually locate its charging bay. Unfortunately this bot hasn't got a clue about maze design and seems to have totally inadequate capabilities to perform such a basic function, despite having a clearly functional edge mode. It also has a crazy habit of reversing to get away from non-existent obstacles but reversing up things behind it (including walls!) so hard that it ends up lifting its wheels up to a point that they lose grip and it can't move any more. Without decent sensors the unit cannot properly detect obstructions and it regularly tries to get past low things it should avoid - on average I have to pick it up one day in three and send or return it to its charging bay.

Lacking the basic sensors means that the bot has a tenancy to try to get under things it should avoid, like our treadmill, the rowing machine and one of the sofas. The treadmill and rowing machine in particular regularly trapped the bot underneath while leaving long scratches on the top of the device. Unfortunately, once trapped, the bot was generally unable to free itself and would be unable to complete its cleaning cycle or return to its dock. Shame it can't just avoid such awkward places, that might be a good idea. Oh right, that would require additional sensors and some basic intelligence.

The app does provide a joystick function, similar to the remote, but really it's quicker to just pick the thing up and put it back in the dock. The app also provides the facility to setup scheduled cleaning, this allows the user to configure multiple cleaning instances across multiple days - the unit will then clean at the set day/time. While it is possible to set the suction power for each schedule, for some stupid reason it is NOT possible to set the cleaning mode, despite the screen suggesting that it should be possible. This is ridiculous! The app is clearly capable of sending the necessary instructions, but doesn't. What is the point in that...? It's just lame! At least the default mode for schedules is zigzag, though I'm actually quite surprised. It also has no indicator or notification to inform you that the dust bin is full so it just keeps driving round, pushing the hair and car litter around until you happen to notice it's full.

Of course, it could also just be that we have a particularly stupid bot (i.e. faulty). I have watched it on a number of occasions sitting in the middle of the floor, brushes and suction running, not moving at all or even rocking back and forward, sometimes right in front of its dock, while trying to find the dock! A quick tap on the front bumper seems to bring it out of its stupor and it usually resumes its hunt for the dock.

However, in my opinion this thing is not faulty, Samsung have simply done a pathetic job on this bot, the software is clearly lacking, the unit has the absolute bare minimum sensors - it's total rubbish! For a negligible increase in cost, Samsung could have at least added a magnetic reed switch in the front which would have allowed users to create invisible barriers with magnetic strips - I could do the fix myself for about $1 and that's at retail prices.

Why is a barrier function important, you may ask? Ignoring the obvious possible stairs issue, the other problem is the mopping function. I gave this function a cursory try out but saw little benefit in trying it properly because we have no areas in the house where there is not a mix of hard floor and carpet. Without the ability to restrict it to or from areas, the unit will of course do its best to mop the carpet as well as the hard floor - not a great idea.

So would I recommend this bot to anyone? In a word... NO!

Not even at $399 (down from $599), this unit is absolutely garbage. The app is the worst kind of generic solution which is supposed to be your Samsung appliances hub but simply fails to provide access to all the necessary functions and the bot is a (not so cheap) cheap and nasty entry level attempt which will only succeed in making people annoyed and wishing they'd paid a bit more for a decent unit.

[Edit:] The unit finally lost the plot completely and started doing a weird backwards square dance whenever it was started. ALDI were as accomodating as ever and refunded the device without question - they really are excellent.

Samsung customer support it worthless – Paid $400 for this at Aldi new, after opening advised Samsung that it had no English manual or quick start only a selection of other languages. Was missing both brushes and the fabric mop. Their support keeps saying the will post the manual out then they tell me they haven't. It took two weeks to get Samsung to admit that a robot vac and mop needs… Read more

the mop. It's eight weeks later and they are now refusing to send missing parts and have told me to deal with Aldi.. even though multiple managers confirmed parts can and would sent.

Never buy Samsung

Poor Value – Purchased at Aldi for $399, the app is no good doesn't remember mopping water output auto sets to minimum every time, robot also always gets lost, very inferior to the deebot I previously purchased at Aldi (smaller tank / waste, more expensive, crappier app). It has also leaked all left over water all over my tiles after cleaning a few times, if I… Read more

picked it up and moved it back to the charger without keeping it perfectly steady. I would have just settled for it until I saw the same / similar Samsung product on ebay for $152.99 with free delivery, so annoying as the reason I purchased it from Aldi is I thought I could rely on them being priced at good value. Hopefully they'll accept the return.

Returned after 6 months. Became noisy – The mop function wasn’t great. The app was terrible. Every time you wanted to wash hard floor you had to go into the app to make sure the water output wasn’t on min. It has dimentia when it comes to finding where it lives. Easy to clean good with dog fur however after 6 months makes now makes a huge grinding noise on carpet. Returning it.  Show details

Wont work on dark carpet – Purchased this product to vacuum the carpet and it can't even do that. I have charcoal carpet and according to Samsung I am exceeding its limitations. Samsung wont accept any responsibility and deliberately do not list this design fault on the product packaging. Cant even get a refund as "there is no fault found". Show details

Pleasantly surprised! – Works great! It's very easy to use, from connecting to the app and scheduling daily cleans. Obviously doesn't offer all the same features as higher-end robot vacuums, ie. no room mapping etc, but for the price it does an excellent job of picking up dust and dirt on our wooden floors, tiles and rugs. Just make sure there's nothing on the floor that… Read more

it can get tangled up in, like phone chargers or cables.

Sometimes we'll need to move it to a new room if it's been bouncing around for too long in one area, but it generally does eventually make its way through the entire house. It sometimes struggles with finding the dock when it needs to recharge but we just move it closer. We also initially had trouble with the brushes falling off when it was cleaning the rug, but that's because we hadn't clipped them in properly.

Not good – It cleans hard floors ok. Not all the dust goes in, you can see the rotating brushes flicking dirt from the floor across the room instead of picking it up. On carpet it barely does anything. I will try and attach a video I took of it going over some fluff on floor and it not picking it up, and it went over it like 3 times. It gets stuck on even flat rug edges and if the mop attachment is on it gets more stuck.  Show details

Samsung Power Bot E Review – Basic model, cleans OK but no radar detection and the unit gets caught on small objects Home function is slow and the robot gets confused and takes a ling time to find home When it does get back to the charger on 50+ percent of the times it does not go onto the charge station straight and then takes minutes to adjust itself With the mop on the… Read more

unit it struggles on the carpet (normal carpet Not shag or anything long) Cannot set zones with the app to setup mop only areas or vacum only areas The smarthings app drops of the vacum from the app Intermittent app issues on Apple device, Android phone OK, but not tablet There are better laser mapping devices for similar prices out there.