Neato XV-11 Vacuum & iRobot Scooba 230 Reviews

The Neato XV-11 robotic vacuum offers a laser based room positioning system to move around the room more efficiently while the iRobot Scooba 230 can thoroughly wash your floors with its ingenious water holding system. Kevin Pereira and Candace Bailey review both the XV-11 and Scooba 230 for its cleaning features.

Neato XV-11 Robotic Vacuum: What You Need to Know

• The big difference between this and other robotic vacuums is that it uses a laser-based room positioning system to get around more efficiently, rather than just bumping into stuff
• It turns out to be pretty fast at covering large spaces
• The problem is, it gets caught on things that are lower than its laser
• It also only found its home base about 50% of the time
• For best results, you'll have to empty the dust bin after every vacuuming, which is easy to do
• You may still have to vacuum in addition to using this, though
• It's also nice to have the little LCD
• On the vacuum, it let's you schedule cleanings
• It also tells you when the dust bin needs to be emptied, whether the brush is stuck, or if it needs a charge
• It's much stronger than any other robotic vacuum we've used, but still not strong enough
• You'll also have to babysit it when it's cleaning?
• We're not quite convinced that this is any easier than just vacuuming

Price

• $399

Overall Rating

• 3 Seals of Approval Out of 5

iRobot Scooba 230 Floor Washing Robot: What You Need to Know

• All you do is pour warm water into its bladder, then add some cleaning fluid
• It'll use the clean water to scrub, then, when it mops up the dirty water, it'll move that dirty water into the other side of the bladder
• It takes about 40 minutes to clean an average bathroom floor, but it's extremely thorough
• It also helps to vacuum the dust off the floor before you start, but you don't have to
• Since it does take so long, you'll need to give it a full charge every time you use it, which takes about 8 hours
• You obviously have to clean the robot after every use, which involves just dumping out the water and rinsing it; you also have pull the bottom off and rinse that, but that's it
• You have to use iRobot’s cleaning fluid
• They only give you four of these little cleaning packets, which means you'll have to buy this bottle for $12
• The bottle lasts for a year
• It never gets stuck, it's pretty quiet, and easy to maintain
• If you have this, you might never have to clean your floor again

Price

• $299

Overall Rating

• 4 Seals of Approval Out of 5 (How do we rate gadgets?)

Want something reviewed on Gadget Pr0n? Email us your suggestions to gadgetpron@g4tv.com.