Neato Robotics D10 Intelligent Robot Vacuum Cleaner–LaserSmart Nav, Smart Mapping, Cleaning Zones, WiFi Connected, 300-min runtime, Powerful Suction, Max Clean, Edges, Corners & Pet Hair, XXL Dustbin, Alexa

tl;dr: Neato appears to be have become a company run by business men maximizing margins instead of the innovative engineering company they were years ago.After owning the D6 model for many years now, I was in the market for an upgraded robovac for my upstairs floor. With the competition looking pretty good, my decision came down to not wanting to install multiple apps and try to keep all my vacs in 1 place. That was my first surprise, you see the D10 doesn't work on the "Neato" app, no you need the "Neato" app with the white background. So I found myself having to use 2 apps anyway. While it was annoying, I decided to just go with it since the D10 is an upgrade from the D6 I love, right? Right??From the photos it definitely looked like an upgrade in quality from the D6, very shiny metallic look to it. However, upon unboxing, it looks like they just spent the effort in making it appear better quality while downgrading every aspect of it from the D6, but I'm sure at least their margins got a bump.Fast forward 2 months into ownership; We come home to a weird noise upstairs during the vacuums scheduled time. We find the Neato had mounted a blanket and was stuck, but just repeatedly attempted to drive off the blanket for what I'm guessing must have been over an hour as there was rubber dust everywhere and burned rubber in the carpet where the wheel was. Contacted support and initially they told me the wheel has to be free from debris to operate, after a few attempts I finally got the tech to understand the wheel was the debris. Instead of sending me a new wheel however, they informed me I would need to send the vac in for service with the instructions that the Neato would have to be clean of all hair and dust or they wouldn't service it...6 weeks go by and we finally put the Neato back in service. Now every time it snags the smallest piece of cloth or cable or literally anything (and sometimes even nothing but driving on a carpet), it stops with an error that can only be reset with a full reboot. Forgot 1 sock on the floor? That's 5 minutes gone rebooting the entire bot. The days of just removing the sock and returning the Neato relatively close to where it was like the D6 are gone.On the positive side: The suction appears to be very good, and the battery life is phenomenal. While our unit isn't the biggest, the D6 (with degraded battery from years of operation) usually uses around 80% of its capacity to do the same Sq ft. as the D10 in 20% usage.Neato was a leader in the past, but with competition caught up and Neato going backwards, I will not be purchasing their products ever again.Summary: The Neato D10 vacuum has fallen short of expectations compared to previous Neato models. The company's focus on maximizing margins seems to have come at the expense of innovative engineering. While initially drawn to the D10 as an upgrade from the D6 model, I have encountered various issues and inconveniences. The use of two different apps for different Neato models was unexpected, and the product's actual build quality was disappointing despite its shiny metallic appearance. Additionally, the vacuum got stuck on a blanket, and was damaged. After weeks of waiting for repairs, the vacuum still experienced frequent errors and required constant reboots for minor obstacles.

The whole experience with the Neato D10 has been very impressive. It starts with the unpacking: the vacuum robot and base station look and feel like high quality material, and it's very easy to set it up and get started. The App that controls the vacuum robot is also very nicely designed, intuitive to use, and has some cool features. As the robot starts cleaning it makes a detailed map of the house which you can actually see on the App and use to create virtual no-go areas or to designate specific areas for cleaning sessions. Of course you can program timed cleaning sessions for specific days and times or you can start a session remotely. What impressed me was that it was so easy and even fun to use.I also have to say the robot cleans very well. I normally keep the house pretty clean but the robot still picks up a lot of dust and hair each time. It's very easy to empty the collection bin from the top and it has some kind of Hepa filter to contain particles (and it comes with spare filters).Overall, what makes give a five star rating is that everything about this vacuum robot just seems very well designed and thought out. They really succeeded in making it feel 'high end': nice unboxing, high quality look and feel, easy setup, useful and innovative App, easy to empty and clean, and it does a great job cleaning the house.

The media could not be loaded. I have an aging Neato BV-85 robot which does not support a phone app or maps. I THOUGHT the D10 would be very helpful to be able to declare No Go zones.But it's dumb as a post. As a software engineer I've observed the search and clean algorithms of the BV-85 for 6 years and the D10 is FAR worse.1. The most attractive feature of the D10 is the ability to declare No Go zones, which work as advertised once you let it do a full house cleaning to generate the lidar map of the house. Note, however, that you need to take a board or something with you and follow the D10 around the house while it does that first cleaning to block it from getting stuck in the No Go zones it doesn't yet know about.2. The second most attractive feature is the ability to do single room cleaning. Here is fails miserably. If you look at my house map the D10 docking station is at the top left in the TV Room. When I asked it to clean only the Kitchen (at the bottom), the Dining Room (just above the Kitchen) or the Master Bedroom (top right), in all 3 cases the D10 got hopelessly lost in the TV room navigating into one dead end corner of the room or another. In fairness, i had told it that if it couldn't find a matching map to Continue Cleaning. But if that's the case how did it "think" it could find these rooms if it didn't find a matching map? It went nowhere near the door of the room in all 3 cases and never declared "I can't find a matching map". And yet if I asked it to clean the TV room itself or the Living Room (dead center), THOSE worked fine.3. When navigating the D10 has a large tendency to do random turns (sometimes twice all the way around) and rarely navigates in a straight line when traveling to or returning from a room. When navigating to a remote room it rarely takes the straightest path and often follows a circuitous route (under the sofa and around a chair and THEN to the remote room). That's a sign of poor software design. See attached video.4. The D10 has a lidar sensor up top and a side proximity sensor, but it seems to ignore them much of the time. When turning a corner and trying to find the new wall it is awful at doing so - FAR worse than the BV-85, which would usually find the wall on the first try without bumping into the wall. The D10, however, seems to ignore its sensors and bumps into the wall 3-4 times before really finding the wall. When navigating it often approaches a wall at a 45 degree angle and bumps into it, despite having a map and despite having lidar.5. Sometimes when trying to find a doorway it is completely incompetent and keeps bumping into the wall again and again and again. See attached video.6. Tech Support was not helpful at all, other than to tell me that the docking station had to have 3 feet of total clearance around it and nothing within 10-15 feet is allowed to have moved since the map was generated. I have no such place in my house. And if I did I wouldn't put a D10 sticking out like a sore thumb there. I want it docked out of the way and mostly out of sight.I returned the D10 after weeks of trying to get it to work as advertised. It was just too much effort and never did succeed at single room cleaning. It's sad - I had been a huge Neato fan but now I'm going to buy anything BUT Neato.