My handy dandy helper

I mentioned last birthday, I requested for the most unromantic request. A robotic vacuum cleaner. 

Frankly I am tired of vacuuming everyday and feeling bits and pieces at my feet whenever I walked in the house. 

With 2 toddlers and 4 cats, the house can accumulate quite a pile of dirt and dust. So masa Maybank treats fair tahun lepas , I remembered I was absolutely transfixed at the Neato showroom. Tapi time tu macam malas nak beli sebab I don't know anything about the product yet and to throw down a lot of money on a whim is a little scary. 

So my birthday came, and I insisted to have a vacuum. Robotic vacuum cleaner would be more beneficial to my well being than a diamond. And make cleaning the house chores a bit faster . Anything that lessen house chores is a plus. 

So while my husband is ready to look into Ecovacs , I remembered that Neato booth and I remembered how I like that it is the 'smart' type of robot vacuum. My requirements goes like 

1. It can somewhat scan the room and run through the room. 

2. Can go up a few inches to vacuum carpet because everybody have carpets. 

3. Can vacuum corner reasonably because usually that is where the dust lies 

Why I choose the Neato? 

1. It fulfilled the above. 

2. Reasonably price. 

3. Great reviews. I always scoured reviews in the internet, and for a lot of the other brand it is kinda 50-50. But for Neato, it is almost overwhelmingly good. 

4. A clear place where to send if need for repairs. Need to make sure all the spareparts can easily be obtained kan. 

Went into Lazada to see what sort of Neato they have, because I have no idea where to buy it on a physical shop, found a few models on sale and show this particular model to my husband because it was going for under 2k at Lazada.  It is the Neato XV 11 . It is an old model, 4 years back I guess. But since it was cheap, and the reviews are good, eh why not lah.  

Neato XV-11 . Pic is from Wiki. 

The real thing. People call it ugly. I like its outdated Star Wars quality. 

So the vacuum is now in service at my home for months. 

( I have no patience to write down clear cohesive paragraph, so point form again ) . 

How do I find it? 

The good? 

1. It picked up the dirt and dust nicely. Like I said, I have 4 cats. The amount of hairball is unbelievable sometimes. I have seen cat fur rolling around the house like tumbleweeds. No more! There is some stray cat fur balls sometimes but prett ok lah. 

2. Open corner ( the one not blocked with tiny chairs or whatever, is always clean. 

3. OK battery lah. If it doesn't get stuck, it can vacuum the lower house and got back to its charging station in reasonable time. But my home not that big either. 

4. Easy display. It will show a message if the filter and dust bin is full.

It also have good manners. 

5. Scheduling . Can schedule for it to run to whatever time it pleases you. 

6. Easy to empty the dust bin.

The dust bin is a bit small, so we usually need to clean it after 3 to 4 days. But the amount of dust it picked up is amazing lah

The bad ? 

1. It can get stuck. It is not that predictable. Like usually it can goes around a chair reasonably well, but once it get stuck , it really get stuck, I will place it somewhere else, then it goes right back under the chair and start to get stuck again. I proceed to do the same again with same result! LOL. But it happened only sometimes la. Have to rearrange the furniture a bit. 

2. It sometimes persist in cleaning the same area a few times longer than other area. I have no idea why? Is it because it is way dirtier??? 

3. A bit noisy. Aziz will complain if the vacuum is running when he is watching TV. But not as loud as my old Dyson. 

4. Should have a child lock ( or i couldnt find it). During the first 2 or 3 months, Saif and Aziz were forever turning on the vacuum. Once on, Saif will cried and run to me because he thinks the vacuum is chasing him. LOL. 

Try nak bukak dust bin tu pulak. Nasib baik yang tu susah sikit nak bukak. 

Overall. Pretty good . I am quite satisfied on how it run, the house is less dusty. Cut down my vacuuming hours a lot. Have to run the old vacuum too sometimes to pick up places where the Neato might left out and the carpet. But the Neato picks up dirt and hair from carpet reasonably well too. Better than some Electrolux vacuum I had used I say. ( Dyson is best still. ) . So yes. I am satisfied with Neato. It can get stucks, but it doesn't happened often ( as long as you pick stuffs up) but overall it is better than I expected. A totally worth it birthday present. My friends say I am very practical. LOL. Maybe this year I will opt for an unpractical gift. 

Unfortunately I do not have any funny pictures or videos involving the cats! Damn it! LOL. The cats are quite wary of this moving weird thing, but they just steer clear of it. None try to chase it. Bobby did tried to pee on it. Jeez Bobby. 

One very good thing about having Neato in the house is that it forces me to pick up the kids toy and put it away every night no matter how tired I am because I don't want the Neato to get stuck. So it also forced me to tidy my house a bit. 

Edited: Change the video because I just realized it were unplayable before. So yeps... below are the Neato in action.