Neato Robotics - D5 Connected

Neato D5, I used for about 6 years until the battery became totally useless, it was £80 for a genuine replacement which I didn't go for, figured I had been lucky so far that nothing ever broke on it. Bates in mind this is the price after the company has gone defunct so I imagined that the price increased as stock depleted. It's a shame they went under because I would have bought another easily, now using a cheap Eufy model that cost £130 and pretty happy with it, had it about a year now with no issues so far.

My old Neato D5 is now based in my garage and still does an impressive job.

One problem with D-shape designs is that it makes it more difficult to turn in corners and tight/busy spaces, and it tends to made the robot appear more clumsy.  This is one of the major drawbacks I won’t regret about my Neato D5. The black plastic of the robot left marks everywhere on my white-painted skirting boards as it was bumping against them quite a lot.  I suspect that while it has other advantages this is why most manufacturers aren’t going for a D-shape design. 

My D5 died recently (after about 8 years) and I was fine with it, not having tried anything newer.  But I have to say the Ecovacs T80 I got as a replacement is clearly better in terms of navigation (the Neato had a tendency to bump against skirting board and furniture and leave marks). And also the extra roller mop really makes a difference and my tiled kitchen floor looks visibly cleaner). Pure vacuuming performance seems pretty similar on my laminate and tile floors.  I do have lower expectations from the Ecovacs (and most other current brands) in terms of lifespan though, but honestly it clearly does a better job at cleaning than the Neato.  I definitely got value for my money with the Neato though!

I've had 2 neatos that have lasted a long time. both D5 models, basic but get the job done. Surprisingly even the batteries have held up. I would stay away from roombas, owned 2 in the past and they always had problems, also they have the worst tech and the highest price out of all the competition.

I have both a robo vac (Neato D5 that's going to get "jailbroken" to run without the app/cloud connection Neato shut down recently) and a basic robot mop that's basically just a swiffer wetjet that drives itself around (Braava Jet 240). They aren't going to replace deep cleaning, since an actual vacuum, mop and bucket, or even just a swiffer wetjet absolutely gets things cleaner than the robots. But that doesn't mean the floor isn't cleaner than it was before the robot did it's thing, and they only take a couple of minutes at most to set up/start. Basically they do a good enough job to keep things clean enough that you don't need to manually vacuum/mop as often. You can also just spend a couple of minutes manually cleaning the "bad" high traffic areas that the robot would struggle with, and let the robot do the rest.

I also have a Neato D5 for 6 years. Thankfully my place is quite small so it’s still powering through. My side brush kicked the bucket early on because of some tangled mess it was stupidly trying to clean. With the company going under, for a period of time I couldn’t create new floor plans which was challenging. Last I checked, the floor plan function is up again. Hopefully, the vacuum continues to work for a couple more years and the system continues to be a legacy support.

A used Neato D3 through D7. Should be on eBay for almost nothing since the cloud was turned off. They still work if you push the button and they have lidar. If you push the button and it doesn't start cleaning, open and close the dust bin. The dust bin reminder was cloud based so you wouldn't realize they are waiting for someone to check the dust bin.

I run 11 Neatos 90 minutes 5 days per week in our house while we swim in another part of the house. Been doing it for 10 years. Not always the same Neato's though they are very repairable and I've made many repairs on them through the years.

Neato was the first with lidar. It was D shaped so it got edges and the aggressive brush was full width. Unfortunately it was over engineered like they were building a rocket ship with all kinds of sensors to make sure everything was working perfectly and sometimes sensors went bad throwing an error stopping it from running when it was perfectly fine. Company was purchased by a German company that destroyed it and they went out of business 2.5 years ago but kept the cloud servers running until recently. They can still be used manually by pressing the start button. But lots of features are gone. We use 11 so they are all done while we are swimming. We are retired and don't want to listen to them running for 8 hours per day if we just ran 1 per house level.

Exactly our scenario! With three dogs back then, sweeping every night to get the dog hair up was such a burden. Got our robo vac (a Neato D5 back then and a Roborock currently), which made things much easier. Just pull the Dyson out on the weekends and call it a wrap!

Bought a Neato back in 2020, only for them to shut down in 2023. Parents gave me their old Roomba when they got new flooring earlier this year, and now Roomba's on the rocks. I am the kiss of death for robot vacuum companies. I will accept no other explanation.

Sadly today is my last day using my neato connect. The company went under a year or two ago and last night the app finally went dark and with it so did my favorite robot vacuum. Woke up to it bricked this morning. The little guy had an amazing 5ish year run and was still in its prime. With that said, im now on the hunt for a new fancy robot vacuum. Ive been looking at the switchbot s20. Kinda like the idea of having a water line and drain line to streamline the mopping. Anyone out there have one or feeling on the brand and model? Id love to know how long the water lines are. I was thinking I could set it up in the laundry room and attach it to the washer's water and drain.