Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this vacuum as a replacement for my Neato Botvac, which I was mostly satisfied with except for a problem with the brush retention ring getting hot and slowly deforming the plastic that it butts up against, eventually causing its bumper to constantly think it was hitting something. I've had the VR9000 for a little over a week and have decided to go back to the Botvac. The Good: 1) Let's face it, the VR9000 is a sexy thing. It really looks nice and looks like it means business. 2) About the same noise level as the Botvac, with both robots being less than a Roomba. 3) FAST. This thing really moves, covering a lot more ground than the competition. This balances against the fact that its battery doesn't last as long (only about an hour), so on balance it accomplishes the same amount of cleaning per charge, but in a shorter time. 4) It finds its way back to the base consistently. But oddly, it does this by following the walls until it finally spots the base. It's not actually mapping the house. 5) The brush doesn't accumulate as much hair as on the Neato, so needs far less maintenance. Its mounting is a better design, as well, so that it won't ever develop the problem mentioned in my introduction. 6) The remote's targeting mode is pretty cool. You basically aim a laser-like target on the floor and the vacuum follows it. This is really handy for spot cleaning of selected areas. And as a bonus, if you have cats they'll be inclined to chase the target -- only to have the vacuum chase them. It's hysterical. The Bad: 1) At first, I thought it got more dirt than either the Roomba or Botvac ever has. That's not the case, though. The bin sizes on both the Samsung and the Neato are about the same, but the Neato MUST be emptied every other day. (I have three cats.) The Samsung can go three or four days before it needs emptying. 2) It can't see black furniture very well. My piano and bench are both black and I've watched the VR9000 consistently ram right into them, stumbling its way around the furniture like a drunkard and dragging against the surfaces in a way that's causing the piano stand to delaminate. 3) It has problems with area rugs. If there's any thickness at all, it won't drive right onto it. Instead, it has to attack the rug multiple times, from different angles. My bathroom has three rugs on the floor and I've watched the vacuum get trapped between them, spending several minutes getting back out again. 4) No ways to protect areas. iRobot wins this department with its virtual walls and lighthouses. Neato is still decent, if you don't mind laying a magnetic ribbon on the ground. Samsung's got nothing. The Ugly: There's really only one thing to mention here, but it's a whopper. The pathing is just terrible. You'd think that between the top mounted camera and the other sensors it would do an effective job mapping the house. You'd think this would let it be methodical in its cleaning. Hah! Let's start by describing how the Neato functions. When it enters a room it follows the edges, going into another room only enough to recognize that it IS another room before heading back. Once it has mapped the perimeter of the room, it methodically criss-crosses the space to get the whole area. It then heads for the next room and repeats. When done (or when it needs a charge) it turns off the vacuum and navigates directly back to its base to recharge. The Botvac is smart! Now for the Samsung: It heads into a room and makes a couple random crossings. It then sometimes goes methodically through the room before finding the next. Or maybe it'll do half the floor before going somewhere else. Eventually it may come back to the previous room (such as by a different room) and go over a couple areas again that it's already gotten, while still ignoring the areas that it had previously skipped. I've also seen it miss entire rooms, not just once but multiple days. Sometimes when it finishes for the day it paths directly back to the base. Other times, it keeps a wall on its left and just follows that wall like it's trying to solve a maze until it finally gets back to the base. If it gets hung up on a bit of furniture (which happens more often than with the Botvac), it stops and asks for help. When you start it going again it then sometimes decides THAT is the start of its clean cycle for the day and when it's done it goes back to that spot instead of the base. And the VR9000 gets stuck about as often as a Roomba, which is to say far more often than the Botvac. This means that you come home to find it on the base only about half the time. The other half you need to find wherever it got in trouble. Of course, that means that the floors didn't get finished that day. Even when it does get back to the base, I've only had one day where it went back to work after recharging. The rest of the time it decides it's done for the day even though it hasn't finished the house. The upshot is that while the VR9000 costs more than either the newest Roomba or Neato, it does a far inferior job of cleaning the floors. With the Neato, the rugs ALWAYS look freshly vacuumed. (Because they are!) With the Samsung, there are some rugs in the house that don't appear to have seen a vacuum in days, and some that have clearly only been driven across as the robot was on the way to some other part of the house. Daily maintenance is far less but the floors are also not nearly as clean. This then brings you to the fundamental issue: When you buy a robot vacuum you're doing so for the convenience -- but you still want your floors to look great. The VR9000 certainly gives you the greatest convenience out of all the robot vacuums I've had over the years. The trade off, however is that the floors are no cleaner than they were with the previous generations of Roomba. By comparison, the Neato does require more maintenance than its competitors but also delivers the cleanest floors of the lot. The Neato is the most consistent performer. Put another way, the VR9000 is like a high end sports car. It looks great and has a lot of speed. But you're buying a robot vacuum to do a job. You need that trustworthiness of the Ford F-150. The VR9000 looks great but it doesn't have the same dependability as its less expensive brethren. The result is that I'm sending mine back and getting a new Botvac. Sorry, Samsung.