Being a long-time Robotic vacuum user I’ve had my fair share of experience with products like the Roomba, not to mention the Scooba floor washer, and later the Braava and Braava Jet. This week I had the opportunity to try out Bissell’s version of a robotic vacuum cleaner, and since the Bissell name itself evokes a feeling of confidence in cleaning ability, I chose to give it a shot and report my findings.
In the box I found the vacuum, the charging base station and scheduler unit, power adapter, virtual wall, battery, and side sweeping brushes. It seemed to me the dual brushes would surely increase cleaning performance in comparison with other vacuums bearing a single brush, but we’ll find out. Looking at the vacuum’s underside, I discovered that the vacuum inlet is less than half the length of that of the Roomba with a short, stiff bristle beater brush. I didn’t see any quick way of removing the brush for cleaning other than two screws that may release the plate to access the brush. I installed the battery into the unit, prepared the home base and put the vacuum on the base to charge. Nothing happened. I switched the unit on, and got an error code and ominous beep. You can’t just put the unit on to charge, apparently according to the manual you must plug the power cord directly into the vacuum and switch the power switch on to charge it initially. I found this rather unintuitive.
Once the unit was a charged, I plugged the power adapter into the base station and tried to get the robot to dock itself. I was unable to find a send to dock button, and I found it very unintuitive having to look in the manual again for something as simple as docking. To dock, you have to find the correct numerical code in the manual to send the unit to the dock to charge. That is just silly, and I forgot the sequence after just half a day.
When it came time to start the robot on a cleaning run, I was confused by the odd choice of button icons on the vacuum, as I couldn’t find an “on” button. There’s a mode button, a timer button and a fan speed button. How do I turn the thing on? Well, that information can also be found in the manual, not by intuition as one might expect for something so simple as POWER ON. To turn it on, I had to find the numerical code for the length of cleaning time I wanted, oddly by pushing the timer button… immediately activating the brushes and startling the heck out of me. You have no time to select modes or anything else before the machine accepts your input and starts moving. You have to do some quick button presses just to get the thing going, which is a huge minus if for example I wanted to give this to someone not technically inclined or the elderly who would easily get confused with this machine.
As the machine moved about I watched it drive over dirt and after it passed, the dirt was still there. The dual side brushes had almost no effect on pet hair around the perimeters of the room where there was carpet.
On the subject of cleaning performance, with a name like Bissell you would expect nothing more than the holy grail of dirt extraction from a product bearing the name. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case here. I found both cleaning performance as well as navigation lacking in many ways.
The machine left a lot of visible hair and dirt on carpets even in turbo mode and after several passes. The machine spent more time on some places than others, as it switched between cleaning modes automatically. The unit has 4 different navigation patterns you can choose from - circular, perimeter, zig zag or random (if you have fast enough fingers to push the appropriate button before the machine takes off on you). You can try select from these but I found it impossible to make the robot stay on a single navigation mode. The vacuum encountered power cords along the baseboard but the two whisker-like side brushes were too flexible to tangle on them. It did however get stuck on a tassel and got hung up on a headphone cord.
After about an hour, I was satisfied it had cleaned the space completely, but the machine wasn’t smart enough to realize the room was clean and head to the docking station on its own so I went ahead and stopped the machine manually. But I couldn’t stop the unit even with frantic button presses, so I had to quickly switch off the power switch on the side to stop it. This is where a docking button would be handy. I had to put the unit on the charging base manually.
I popped open the robot’s lid and removed the dust bin to find it completely full, but as I lifted it up dirt fell out all over the place including inside the vacuum. The dust bin is more like a Tupperware container and when you go pop the lid off, dirt flies everywhere and most of the fine dust sticks to the paper filter, also making a huge mess around the garbage can. Now on to cleaning the brushes. The puny 3 inch long main brush was completely wound with pet hair and human hair, threads and dust. The brush did not remove easily for cleaning and requires a Philips screwdriver to remove the retaining plate.
Now some things I didn’t like was the messy bin design, the controls were unintuitive and you quickly forget how to use the thing. There is no HEPA filter, and the filter they’ve used here looks flimsy and ineffective. The machine was noisy, certainly louder than the Roomba. I couldn’t even figure out the scheduling modes. I could hardly even get the clock set. The unit got stuck on a curtain tassel and when I say stuck I mean STUCK. It wasn’t smart enough to reverse the wheel and release the tassel but wrapped the tassel so tightly I had to pull with all my strength to get it out.
To conclude, if your’e looking for a vacuum that is easy to use, intuitive and performs as expected, I regret to say that this unit falls short, and being priced the same as the cheapest Roomba, I would advise saving a bit more and getting a Roomba or Neato for some real performance and value.
Disclaimer: I was provided a free sample product in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Bissell Smart Clean Robot Vacuum
- Roombascoobatastic
- Magazine Editor
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- vic7767
- Robot Master
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Re: Bissell Smart Clean Robot Vacuum
Thanks for your thorough and informative / honest review.
- EYE063NOSYD
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Re: Bissell Smart Clean Robot Vacuum
Nice review, Bissell needs to work on a few things it sounds like, to make a solid product next round.