Made to last?

[ilpirata]

Hi all,

what is your opionion on the Neato vaccum cleaners regarding the so called planned obsolescence[1]. Are they made to _last_ or die after 2-3 years?

Thanks,
ilpirata

[1] https://www.google.it/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... 4169,d.Yms

[vic7767]

Anybody still want the XV-11 ? It's 2 years old.

[Wing Nut]

Mine's 18 months old and running great, and I'd like to make it a matching pair - one with a pet brush for swapping between upstairs and down without the recent 'upgraded' charger mis-match hassle. But 2 years old ... hmmmm

[vic7767]

I don't think it's offered on the Neato website yet but it appears that if one could purchase just the newer power supply with the lower charging current then the same charging base could be used on the older model Neatos and probably provide a longer battery life.

[a4refillpad]

I'm still struggling to find one that will work....

[kamiraa]

I'm still struggling to find one that will work....

I just got the dreaded stuck wheel indication.

So far in a month . . with my two robots, two battery replacements (one each), now one return processed.
Hopefully these thing stand up to time, but so far, at least I can depend . . . . on the warranty

[Boomerang]

Hi all,

what is your opionion on the Neato vaccum cleaners regarding the so called planned obsolescence[1]. Are they made to _last_ or die after 2-3 years?

Thanks,
ilpirata

[1] https://www.google.it/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... 4169,d.Yms

I think it all depends on the workload they have plus the maintence you apply unless you receive a defective robot. I run my robots in one room at a time. I don't set it out to clean the entire house at one time. My iRobot is almost 5 years old....the Neato I just got a few months back and the Mint+5200 I got at Christmas. So far they are all working perfectly. I replaced the iRobot battery one time.

[ilpirata]

Thanks for the answer.
So we can hope for having these things working for something like 5 years...
I asked because I wanted to evaluate how good a similar "investment" can be. One thing is to spend 600€ and having to discard the robot after 2 years, another is being able to exploit it for 5 years or more...

ilpirata

[zurk]

made to last ? i havent found one lasting more than 3 months.
i doubt it will get better - too many parts and sensors have to work flawlessly and most are cheap and unreliable in harsh conditions (vibration mechanical shock, dirt)

[ilpirata]

made to last ? i havent found one lasting more than 3 months.
i doubt it will get better - too many parts and sensors have to work flawlessly and most are cheap and unreliable in harsh conditions (vibration mechanical shock, dirt)

I see however that neato makes available almost all the components, so in the end it should be possible to fix the robot, in any case!?

[glnc222]

battery life
It would be interesting to hear from users who have had one for a long time how many runs it makes before the battery has to be replaced. The shorter run times reported might be for increasing the battery life, reducing depth of discharge, but there's no data. Never got much more than 200 runs out of iRobot batteries. The cost of batteries appears to have declined over time with aftermarket supplies. These things are not cheap to operate with the cost of supplies, though it is coming down. Over years at least as much can be spent to run it as the original unit cost.

[zurk]

I see however that neato makes available almost all the components, so in the end it should be possible to fix the robot, in any case!?

yes you "fix" the robot by sending it back under warranty 5 times like i did. get a 5 year warranty from robotshop and buy a new neato every 5 years.

[tmnCA]

Well I haven't been as long-term Neato owner as some here, but as a former Roomba owner I can say that the Neato is definitely much more robust. Our Roomba needed daily brush cleaning to remove hair and lint from the brush ends to avoid it getting into the gears. Even with daily cleaning of the brushes the CHM lasted only about 3-6 months in our home. I even tried Vic' modded CHM and it didn't last much longer - my own long hair destroyed the Roomba CHM.

The Neato, I have never had to clean the brush and it does pull more debris into the dust bin, not left wrapped around the brush. All I have to do is empty the dirt bin. Everything about the robot seems much more solidly built than the Roomba I used to have.

I do think Neato has some QC issues and should spend more time/money making sure that the robots they ship out are perfect - but it is not so much a longevity issue as a mass production QC problem.

The newest firmware is definitely a huge improvement, too!

[glnc222]

Anybody still want the XV-11 ? It's 2 years old.

But the software supplied for it through updates is newer. When only cosmetic changes are made to hardware, older models can be good bargains if new or nearly so.