After you’ve tried more than three or four robot vacuums (which I have), you become acutely aware of how hard it is to innovate within such a limited set of constraints.
Robot vacuums all tend to be around the same size and shape. The dust bin and the ports are usually in the same place. Maybe the app looks a little different, maybe one has better mapping capabilities. Maybe one has sacrificed a little suction power to have longer battery life.
Not so with the Powerbot R7065. Even from the unboxing, it looks different. It just looks cooler than any other botvac around (cool enough, in fact, to look like Darth Vader). I appreciated its novel design, but more than that I appreciated its efficiency, navigation capabilities, and suction power.
But first things first: The setup for this botvac was the worst of the ones I’ve tried. I felt like I was flying blind throughout the process. For example, the docking station has no indicator light. Is it on? Who knows! I crossed my fingers and put the Powerbot on its dock's power ports. But after an hour, the bot showed no signs of life, either.
It took a few minutes of fumbling, cursing, and an extra hour to find the emergency reset switch, flip it, and finally get the botvac charging.
The companion Samsung SmartThings app is also annoying. First, it kept kicking me out. Once you’ve managed to sign in, you have to go through a complicated rigmarole of inputting different passwords and using the remote to follow arcane instructions (“When ‘AP’ shows up on the display, hold the ‘Clock’ button for five seconds…”).
The setup felt more like trying to conjure up a genie than it did setting up a household appliance.
But, once it was up and running, the bot itself did not disappoint. Controlling the Powerbot with its app is easy—you can start or stop the botvac or direct it manually; schedule the vac to run once or daily; repeat a cleaning cycle; check the battery life, or activate spot cleaning.
You can also select the level of suction power. I measured the “quiet” level at 60 decibels, which was quiet enough to run after dinner while cleaning up and talking to my spouse. “Turbo” topped out at 70 dB and “normal” ranged from 65-68 dB.
The Powerbot took 1.5 hours to charge fully, which resulted in one hour of cleaning time. That was sufficient to vacuum between 300 and 500 square feet of kid-, dirt- and dog-hair-cluttered house. I let the botvac run on auto mode. After one hour, the botvac returned to dock with zero battery left in the status bar.
Unlike every single other botvac, the dustbin is a clear compartment on the top. You can easily see when it needs to be emptied, and it pops out with the push of a button. And instead of side brushes, the botvac has what looks like little cat ears on either side to dig into edges and suck in dirt. I found these special ears to be much more effective than side brushes, which seem just as likely to kick away dustballs and dog hair as they are to sweep them in.
An onboard wide-angle camera and nine sensors helped the Powerbot navigate through our house, with a facility that beat all other botvacs except the Roomba 980’s. It was only the second botvac to not require any help from me during a cleaning cycle! The botvac did come with a physical barrier—a thin roll of magnetic tape. However, its navigation was so sure-footed, I didn’t end up needing it.
In auto mode, the botvac makes a methodical, side-to-side trip around your house (spot cleaning is, like competing vacs, done in a concentric circle). Under the history tab in the app, you can look at a record of past cleanings, and check a rudimentary map that traces the botvac’s path through the house. The map is not nearly as detailed as the Roomba’s, and it doesn't attempt to estimate the square footage cleaned. But I’ll take it as an indicator that the botvac traveled where it was supposed to and did its job.
After each cleaning cycle, I checked our trouble spots, like the bare wood of our gritty, pine-needle-y front entryway, the dog-haired carpet, and the assorted crumbs and grit on the linoleum under where my children sit at the kitchen table. Everything was free of debris. After each cleaning cycle, I couldn’t scratch up any leftover dog hair or dirt out of the low-pile carpets, which was remarkable.
The speed at which all of these different types of dirt reappeared is, unfortunately, a totally different story.
In an ideal world, you would never watch your robot vacuum operate. It would emerge mysteriously and vanish, leaving your floors clean and clear without you having to give it a second thought.
But if you like watching robots work, observing the Powerbot is a real treat. I watched it thread its way slowly through a forest of wooden table legs, carefully navigating its way out without touching a single one. When it edge-cleaned, it carefully probed each corner with its pointy cat ears.
The upward-facing camera helps the robot navigate through a world filled with tall, moving things, like dogs and people. It was the only botvac that backed off when it came near my feet while I was moving around in the kitchen.
Even its return to the docking station seemed more precise than that of the other botvacs. Most robot vacuums circle and re-circle, looking for all the world like a bush plane trying to find a clearing in the Alaskan wilderness. However, the Powerbot slowed down and returned home as quietly and easily as someone pulling into a familiar driveway.
The Powerbot isn’t perfect. As with many other robot vacuums, it’s blood-chillingly expensive (although not as expensive as Samsung's Turbo line). Setting it up can make you want to smash it with a hammer, especially since the kind of people willing to spend hundreds on a robot vacuum don’t typically have a lot of spare time and energy.
It’s taller and bigger than the other bots—a pound heavier than the Roombas and a half-inch taller. If you have really low furniture, this might not be the greatest pick. An hour’s run time was sufficient for my tiny house, but might not be for a larger residence. And to empty the dustbin, you have to pull the top off, rather than pop it open with a button. This seems like an inconsequential design decision until you're in a rush and accidentally Hulk out while opening the bin, scattering debris all over yourself and floor.
Finally, looking downward into the glass eye of a camera can be unnerving, especially if you’re wearing a skirt.
But on the whole, the Powerbot R7065 is a very solid pick. I appreciated the attempts to innovate, with its clear dustbin and cat ears. It navigates expertly through the house and leaves even the tiniest corners grit- and fur-free. If you have the Samsung SmartThings hub or any other Samsung smart devices, this is a no-brainer purchase.
Heck, if they came out with a BB-8 Powerbot instead of a Stormtrooper one, I'd be pretty tempted.
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