Neato Robotics  Neato XV-11 Robotic All-Floor Vacuum System

I do not think I will ever buy another Neato product again after my current experience with this company. I purchased a Neato XV-11 in March of 2012 and the robot worked fairly well initially. I have a small house with very little furniture, mostly wood floors, rug underneath my bed and no pets. In general, I would say I have a very simple house for a robot vacuum. However, despite the house's simplicity, I consistently had problems with the XV-11 robot. It initially worked well, completing a full vacuum around the house and returning to the base without my intervention. However, after a few months, the vacuum began experiencing navigational errors (the RPS errors that many people report). The robot would stop in the middle of the floor for no reason, would not return to its charging base, and make erratic movements. The problem got so bad that I called customer support after 9 months and they replaced the robot. The new robot was actually an XV-12 but this one experienced navigatio

Kid friendly

Just a note to all on the fence about buying one. I have advanced emphysema and am on the notional transplant list so the Neato is so much more than just a Vac it is Heaven sent. Well maybe not heaven sent but cleans my floors vinyl, cermanic, and carpet with ease. I did have a small problem with my first and the company sent me a new one at no charge. The funny thing was in the few days waiting for the replacement I show my old one to a friend and it no longer had the problem, just might have been something I was doing. All in all it does a great job and would recommend to any one even a healthy person! lol---  BTW fun to watch while it cleans but now I have to rename my new one!

The dopey engineers think it's OK to send out a brand new product without it having the latest software update (necessary for improved navigation & docking, both of which we necessary since it wouldn't get more than 4 inches from the docking station when returning to gas-up. So, I dutifully called 1-800-Neato and they answered pretty quick and agreed to issue a prepaid label to pick it up to do the update or I could do it myself. Silly me, being a computer power-user, I thought this would be like shooting a deer in the headlights...not so fast, Jack! I should have opted for the label, pickup, let them do it, and send the thing back when ready to report for duty. Can you believe this? It won't work on VISTA, or a Windows-7 machine (w/o an INTEL CPU -What??) That brough me all the way back to the 1980's when the issue was, "How IBM-compatible was your PC?" UBF!! A SW UPDATE THAT COULDN'T BE DOWNLOADED ON A NON-INTEL PC??? In this day and age?? Fire those engineering idiots! Not only was the DL effort a hassle, but they don't send you a USB with mini-plug cable to gidder done, either! You have to BUY one. All this was discovered after trying THREE PC's to do the update, then calling customer service to find out (after being put on hold) this little detail. Oh yeah, so it vaccuums pretty well. Big house; seems to go over and over the same spots/areas, but hey -- beats doing it yourself. And it collects fine dust, tells you when to empty it, and does (now --after the update nightmare) find its way back to the gasserupper station. I use it on hardwood flooring mostly, although it gets along my short-pile rug pretty good, too. Only had it for a week and I was solicited for this review. Used it precisely three times thus far. We'll see. Had it worked right out of the box, I'dagivenit a 5-star review, but once again -- dopey product support engineers. Too bad engineers are so stupid these days, huh? You'd think someone would figure out they should be sure their product works right out of the box.

Vacuum works great. I've been using it every couple of days with no serious problems.

My life just got a whole lot easier.  The Neato vacuum automatically vacuums either an entire floor of your house or a spot/area.  It has a base battery charger that you position about 3 ft. from a corner.  After charging, you can tell it to vacuum your entire floor, in which case it will remember where the charger unit is and return to it to be recharged, then will continue vacuuming where it left off.  For each room, it scopes out the room before it begins, first vacuuming around the perimeter and objects in it, then going back and forth in the remaining areas.  Somehow it remembers where it has and hasn't vacuumed.  It's had no problem vacuuming tile and hardwood floors and thin and thick pile carpets.  It even vacuums shag rugs, though it slows down noticibly when working on a really thick shag.  You can also just vacuum an area or spot at a time, quite useful for the entrances to rooms or areas in the kitchen.  Since it only weighs a little over 8.5 lbs, it's easy to carry from one place to another.  It does an excellent job of picking up pet fur and is slightly less noisy than a regular vacuum.  It senses where stairs are and somehow avoids falling down them, while vacuuming along the edge of the top step.  I love my Neato!