Neato Botvac 80 (Scratch & Dent) Price: $199.99 Shipping Options:: $5 Standard OR $10 Two-Day OR $20 One-Day Shipping Estimates: Ships in 1-2 business days (Wednesday, Jun 07 to Thursday, Jun 08) + transit Condition: Factory Reconditioned
Hey there! Just to reiterate what’s noted in the features, these scratch & dent units may come with a different color cover than shown here. It will be the Botvac 80 insides.
I have an original Neato XV series vacuum, which still works and does an amazing job cleaning.
It’s so good at picking up dust, pet hair (I’ve got 3 cats that shed like crazy) and cat litter that I can vacuum a room with my push vacuum, then run the Neato, and it’ll still come back with a full dust bin it picked up.
I’d love to upgrade just to get the nearly double size dust bin these newer models have. It’d mean I can let it clean multiple rooms without having to empty it half way through the job.
Unfortunately, this one on Woot is still old enough that it doesn’t have a lithium ion battery. The NiMH ones need replacing every few months or it has to return to the charging base mid-vacuum more and more often.
Oh well. TL;DR:
Neato makes great robot vacuums.
Neato vacuums clean faster than Roomba because they clean rooms in back-and-forth lines like a person, rather than by driving in random directions and bumping into everything.
Neato vacuums clean better than Roomba or even most push vacuums, with really good brushes and suction.
Only the newest Neato vacuums have lithium ion batteries, which last longer and run more consistently than these older models.
$199 is a great price for this. Compare to $350-ish new or $250 refurbished at Amazon.
Regarding the battery comment, actually the latest batteries for these units hold a ton of juice. The replacement battery I bought 6 months ago seems to run almost twice as long as the original. The only problem is that charging also takes a long time so if you have a giant house, it may still be running when you get home from work. Also these appear to be retrofitted units to fix the bearing issue they had with the original design. Thus there is a wide gap on the underside that is not touched by the brush.
I bought a Neato from last woot offer, and have used it three times. It wasn’t as good at picking up dirt. I went back to my upright vacuum, and left the Neato at its home charger for a month hoping I would eventually use the unit when I would have to leave the house. I didn’t, and felt bad the Neato wasn’t getting any attention it deserved. So I tried running the Neato. Unfortunately, nothing responded. It just has its usual green light on and would not move.
I had one of these and knowing the track record of Neato, having owned 3 due to warranty replacements, I got smart and took advantage of Costco’s no questions asked return policy and bought the Bot 80. Sure enough, had to return it, the LIDAR quickly failed. Am now the very happy owner of Roomba 880 which cleans well, has dirt sensors (very important) and a battery that just won’t quit after 2 years of use.
I hope your Roomba doesn’t have the same navigational sense the Scooba 440 has. Had the 390 and just under 2years, it died. It would run but wouldn’t put down water nor pick up water I would spray myself. Replaced it with the 440. OMG… what a joke. It sprays, then goes back to scrub, then goes back to attempt to suck up water, which it doesn’t. And it has no clue where it is or where it’s going. It’s all over the place and will wash the same spot 2 or 3 times and totally miss others. It’s not just my unit. Seems this is the “norm” for iRobot products. Hope they improved your model. I retired a XV21 to my basement (carpet) because every two or three runs, it has a “right wheel is blocked” error. But it still covers the floor so once a month, I have to go and find it, return it to charge and turn it loose again. I put a Samsung VR9000 on the 1st floor. That thing rocks. My big issue is, it has no boundaries, except closed doors. It’s very quiet and fast as hell. On super suck mode, it grabs stuff that an inch away from it’s side (nice since it doesn’t get up against the toe molding like the neato did. Think I’ll pick up another neato for the basement. Worth the 200 bucks.
I have had the refurbished Neato I bought on Woot for several years now. Before that I had a Roomba. The Neato has been a wonderful buy for me and I only recently had to buy a new battery for it. I do not know how the new Roomba’s are but going from the old Roomba that randomly bumped around to the very precise Neato was quite a step up. I would love to get a newer one and use the current one in another room and would not hesitate to buy one.
Can these easily navigate room to room in a somewhat open first floor? I’m looking for something to cover the first floor of my home – but it would have to move between wide doorways without getting lost.
I have purchased two Neato XVs and have been a big believer in replacing the stock nickel batteries with aftermarket lithium units just as soon as you get the bot. They are readily available on Amazon for about twice the price of the nickel batteries but last over 4 times longer (800 charge cycles for lithium vs. 200 for nickel). They also maintain better voltage control, which in turn fixes a lot of the problems the XV units originally had (short time between charges, getting lost, confused electronics, etc.).
I also recommend getting the Pet and Allergy replacement brush bar - it runs much quieter and smoother, especially over hard floors like tile.
If I wasn’t already invested in my XV I would spring for this Botvac 80 in a heartbeat - if for nothing else than the larger dirt bin!
Every robotic vacuum has its quirks, its fans and its detractors. None will ever replace a traditional upright but for us the Neato does extend the amount of time between turns with the regular vacuum, and with two dogs (one who is into competitive shedding) it helps keep the dirt levels in the house under better control.
I love mine. It takes some time for the bot actually to learn your floor plan and for you to learn what needs to be moved or picked up out of its way. Ours does our whole first floor. 7 rooms. It recharges 1/2 way thru. Ours runs everyday. Now that the carpets are clean I only empty the dirt once a day. At first it took several times each cleaning. You do need to be around to help if it has a problem but I’m always doing something else while it is running. Very happy with the purchase.
I bought the Kobot RV337 last September from Woot, and have found it consistently gets hung up on the ridge where my living room meets my hallway. Does this fare any better on uneven floor surfaces? We would be talking about a 1/4 to 1/3 of an inch height difference.
It should easily handle 1/3 inch ridge. If it doesn’t, it means there is something wrong with the bottom plate. I had a Botvac that did not handle thresholds as well as an older Neato XV-21 and when I complained on Neato’s Facebook page, they sent me a new bottom plate which fixed the problem. I think in some of the bottom plates the plastic squeegee was either slightly too long or too stiff and they caught on things that they shouldn’t have. There is a lot more precision in manufacturing these things than most people realize.
Difference between Ibot and Roomba is each “new” release of Neato means the same bod but in a different drag. Roomba makes improvements with each new release so when you talk Roomba you must talk the model number, not just that it’s a Ford. Like I said the 880 is amazing with a battery that will go for an hour and half before needing to be charged.
The charger on the Neato is not designed for lithium. You have to have the right match.
I respectfully disagree, on all points for the most part. The Botvac is most certainly not the same as the older XV models; the only similarity is the programming as you can expect it to be just as regular and methodical as they’ve always been. While the very early XV units did tend to only change color with model numbers, by the end of the XV series there were some significant internal improvements made and Neato has not been stagnant.
Now compare that to the improvements made to the Roombas, where the two biggest changes (more powerful suction and a methodical cleaning pattern) were copies of what the Neatos already had been using for several years. This is very much like Apple bragging about the larger screen on a new iPhone when other smartphones already had them for years.
As for the Neato charger, it is nothing more than one for a laptop computer and handles lithium batteries just fine. That is an old rumor. Again, the very early versions were slightly less powerful but so long as the output voltage is what is required there is no secret sauce that makes these chargers applicable for only one type of battery.
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