Neato Robotics - XV-11

10-12 years ago, I had a pair of Neato XV21s. They were fine. They were much better cleaners than my Deebot X1 Plus is. My Dreame D9 Max however, picks up better than the XV21s did, but I'm not totally wowed by how much better, so I don't think it's a lot. . I would hope that if you're talking about ones that are above the $200 mark, there would have been significant improvements since then. I can't find the specs on my old ones, but the D9 Max is rated for 4000 Pa, the X1 Plus 5000 Pa .. The X1 Plus's suction is *terrible* though in comparison to the D9. So I guess specs aren't everything. I had a Neato D8 that only lasted about 6 months (and the company offered to replace it, even after they had folded, but I couldn't find my receipt) that was rated for 2500Pa, and it was much better than the X1 Plus, too. With models out there exceeding 20k Pa on the top end, I'd hope there are improvements in the last decade!

I wish. The ones with LIDAR and particularly cameras are definitely smart _er_ but there is a tradeoff - they may get stuck less, but then they don't bother even trying to clean areas that look hard to them. The forest of chair and table legs under our kitchen table is a good example: The cheapo Eufy I bought for the MIL with no remote sensing gets stuck there every time. The Neato that normally lives upstairs that has LIDAR gets stuck occasionally but at least gives it a go. The combo mopping/vacuuming Roborock with both LIDAR and cameras that lives downstairs takes one look at the table area, decides it's too hard, and doesn't bother trying. So I have to manually clean it, or remember to pull out all the chairs. And it still gets stuck sometimes. I prefer the Neato behaviour. But it doesn't mop and Neato the company is essentially defunct.

Neato XV series for being awesome and being the first robot vacuum to feature a lidar sensor roomba 500 series, for a while they were the most popular robot vacuums ever made and still the most reliable, other than battery replacements they can last more than 15 years without issues Roomba 980, the thing is still a beast at cleaning and the navigation is good enough. No keep out zones or anything but it does its job well

No, they don't. We have 5 Neatos and they are great. Even our original XV-11 is still running daily, around 15 years later. Granted, it needs a bit of love (and oil) now from time to time, but it's easy to fix.