Review: Neato Botvac Connected uses iPhone, Apple Watch and lasers for an effective clean

With autonomous cleaning modes built in, and the ability to use iPhone and Apple Watch as a controller, the Neato Botvac Connected proves we are finally living in the future.

From industry leading products like Roomba to no-name cleaning robots, many autonomous vacuums clean by performing multiple random passes over a dirty area until their little battery hearts run out of juice. This works well when set to run at a time when users aren't at home, but tends to annoy the heck out of people expecting the efficiency of a human operator. 

This is where the Neato Botvac Connected gets human expectations right. Neato detects and patrols the perimeter of a room, and then within that perimeter makes back and forth stripes, moving over as each stripe completes. Making Botvac's navigation more impressive is the fact that a form of Lidar is used to map the room. The machine also includes a bumper, though its sees much less use than competing vacuums. 

Neato Botvac Connected works with both iPhone and Apple Watch. The iPhone app controls lets users start, stop, and change basic settings on the robot, like whether it uses Turbo or Eco mode for cleaning. It also allows the user to manually drive the robot. This, it turns out, is a huge success for kids 11 years old and under. 

The Watch application is less comprehensive, offering push notifications (battery, obstacles, etc.) and start/stop control. It's not very elaborate, but it doesn't need to be. Though it would be fun if users were able to remotely drive the robot from their wrist.

For years, iRobot's Roomba has been synonymous with autonomous robot vacuums. The Roomba is workable, if somewhat messy. The bin comes off the back of the Roomba bot, and in the old Discovery series, inevitably some dirt, hair and lint gets stuck above the carrier that holds the brush and beater bars. 

Is it unfair to compare the old robots with a brand new one? Absolutely, but the old ones were built like tanks, requiring little in the way of maintenance. Even the new versions mount the bin in a similar way. 

By contrast, the Botvac's bin detaches from the top of the robot's body. This method is a lot cleaner and a much more elegant —no dirt spills out of the canister or stays in the robot. Cleaning the filter is a lot easier, too. Since Botvac's bin is larger than Roomba's, the machine boasts a larger filter area to collect horrible things we had no idea were lurking in the carpets. 

If there's a downside, it's that the BotVac loses its side brush frequently. Most robots include a main brush and an ancillary side brush to get into hard to reach crevices. The side brush on a Roomba is screwed onto the motor shaft, but Botvac uses a magnet to secure its component. Hair often gets knotted in the brush spindle, displacing the part from its nook. We frequently find the brush some 15 feet away from the robot when the cleaning has finished.