Everybody likes a deal, so we couldn’t resist trying the inexpensive Zoombot RV500 robotic vacuum. The Zoombot is made by Applica, the parent company of Black and Decker among other household brands.  It’s the most affordable robotic vacuum cleaner on the market and sells for $99 or a bit less at places like Amazon.com, Target and Walmart. For better or worse, you do get what you pay for: we found that the Zoombot couldn’t compete against its nearest price competitors the Roomba ($179, but may be discounted heavily) , Roomba Discovery Red ($149) and the Sharper Image e Vac ($299).

Zoombot lacks the cleaning power of the other vacs. It simply doesn’t suck (much). The vacuum motor is quite small and is located up top, far away from the dirt inlet which makes for low suction on the floor, where it counts.  Though Zoombot is larger than the competitors at 14" in diameter by 4" tall, its dirt intake opening is much smaller and the dirt compartment capacity is about the same as Roomba Discovery models and the Sharper Image e Vac.

While traditional and robotic vacuums have beater bars, Zoombot has none. Two spinning side brushes are included in a bag, and you can attach these to improve corner and edge cleaning.  These brushes are actually 4” plastic combs that aren’t as effective as the side spinning brushes used on Roomba. This is the only robotic vacuum that comes with a swiffer cloth sort of system. You get three of these anti-static cleaning cloths and a plastic plate to hold them on the bottom of the vac. Put these on to help Zoombot get dirt off your hard floors, but do not use them on carpets (you already figured that out though).

The side spinning brushes,
not shown, attach to the two "circles"
on the left and right sides of the Zoombot's underbelly. Note there ain't much under there compared to the other robot vacs we've reviewed: no beater bars or long brushes and only a small vac inlet.

While the competitors’ dirt bins are made of sturdy plastic and even house some electronics in Roomba’s case, the Zoombot’s dirt container is made of a thin translucent plastic that seems about as sturdy as a re-usable plastic beverage cup. The dirt bin sits in a cavity on the top side of the vacuum, and is easy to remove and empty. Like other robo-vacs, there’s a filter in the basket which you should clean when it gets very dirty. It’s made of a thin paper material and no spares are included in the box.

Zoombot has ~2.5”  hard plastic wheels with sturdy tread, one center non-swiveling castor near the front and another at the back. The top half of the wheels are concealed under the vac housing, so it’s hard to determine how much or little hair may accumulate in the wheel wells. The housing (or body) is made of a candy apple red hard plastic and the front spring loaded bumper is made of a resilient and gentle plastic that doesn’t mar or damage furniture. The NiCad battery pack lives under a cover in the top housing and charges in about six hours. The unit can run about 45 minutes to an hour on a charge. Note that other robotic vacs use NiMh batteries rather than NiCad batteries because NiMh batteries offer twice the power for the same size battery and don’t suffer memory effect problems nearly as much as NiCads. With other robotic vacuums, you simply drop the pack into a cavity underneath. Zoombot's battery goes under a plastic door on the top rear of the unit and you must connect an electronics-style pigtail connector at the end of the battery pack's wires.

None of the robotic vacuums are speed demons, and that's a good thing since most of them are designed to collide (gently) with obstacles. Zoombot travels noticably slower than other robo-vacs when cleaning, and it does take a while to cover a room completely. It's too slow, in other words. For you robotics hackers, yes this is the cheapest mobile robot with touch sensors; but if you have a need for speed (relatively speaking) Zoombot might not be the ideal platform for your robotics project.

Like other affordable home robot vacs, the Zoombot uses touch sensors and several patterns to navigate around a room. The unit bumps into obstacles such as furniture, your foot and walls gently, then turns around to continue cleaning. Zoombot uses several cleaning patterns including widening spirals, wall-following, zig-zagging and a random pattern. The cleaning patterns and navigation were quite good for a robot in this price range, and it did a reasonably good job of covering the floor, though it did favor some areas while leaving one or two others untouched. Unlike the more expensive vacs, it did get hopelessly stuck in a corner area between an easy chair and a table leg, though I still say "good job" for a vac of this price. It fares well with area rugs and fringes and a stray electrical cord or two didn't phase it.

As do most all robotic vacuums, the Zoombot has cliff sensors under the bumper to detect drops such as stairs and ledges. This prevents the little fellow from committing suicide from small or great heights. One sensor is located dead front center, and the other two at 45 degree locations from  front center. There don’t appear to be any rear cliff sensors, so be careful if you use the included remote to make the vac go in reverse near stairs or ledges. The drive wheels don’t have elevation sensors, so the Zoombot doesn’t know if one wheel is spinning freely or is off the ground. On a few occasions it got itself stuck on the landing along our stairs with one drive wheel spinning over the ledge. It continued to spin until we rescued it. The unit will turn itself off after 10 seconds of inactivity, so at some point it might have given up and turned itself off. However, after 30 seconds, I didn’t have the heart to watch it struggle and I was concerned that it might eventually spin itself off the landing sideways. The non-drive rear wheel is the only wheel with an elevation sensor, and it seems to function to tell Zoombot that you’ve picked it up. If you do pick up Zoombot, it will turn itself off after 10 seconds (other robotic vacuums turn themselves off immediately). If you press this wheel up toward the body however, the unit will keep running, so don’t depress the rear non-drive wheel when you pick it up.

Zoombot comes with a small remote control and two AAA batteries (hey, iRobot, when are you going to include batteries for Roomba's remote in the box?! Even the $99 Zoombot comes with batteries). The remote has buttons for left, right, forward and reverse. There's a button that puts into a spiral cleaning pattern, another labeled "Auto" which starts a regular cleaning and a vac on/off button. The remote uses IR to control Zoombot, as do other robotic vacuum remotes and your TV remote.

Above, the Sharper Image e Vac, Roomba Discovery and Zoombot

But how well does it clean? Not very well. If you’ve used a  Roomba, you will be disappointed. If you’re new to robotic vacs, you’ll still be disappointed because it leaves dirt behind on hard floors and doesn’t impart that just-vacuumed look to low and medium pile carpets. When I placed my hand over the inlet, I felt little suction (you can keep the vacuum running upside down to test suction by pressing the wheel with the sensor, as mentioned). The suction is on par with a Dust Buster. I sprinkled some dry potting soil on a Pergo hard floor and it picked up some but not all of the dirt. On close inspection, we could find cat hairs on the surface of our low-to-medium pile carpet and it couldn't pick up kitty litter from the rug. Robotic or not, a vacuum should do a better job removing these kinds of modest messes.

Conclusion

You get what you pay for. While the Zoombot’s robotic intelligence and floor-covering algorithms aren’t bad, Applica has skimped on a few key areas that make this a less than stellar robotic vacuum. The vacuum motor isn’t powerful enough and the unit has no beater bar(s) to lift dirt from the floor. The unit needs more wheel sensors so it will know when it’s hanging off a ledge, has lost traction or is being picked up by its owner. Do consider the new Roomba Red Discovery model for $149 or the original gray Roomba which should soon be discounted heavily as the new Discovery series models hit the market.

Applica hasn't created a web page for this product, however their site is www.applicainc.com.

Roomba Discovery Review: http://everydayrobots.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=7&Itemid=

Original Roomba Review: http://everydayrobots.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=2

 Discuss this review at: http://everydayrobots.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7