Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have to admit - I was super psyched to own one of these. My last robotic vac was a Roomba from 2010, so I know technology has moved on since then. I mean, come on - I got my Roomba a month before the very first iPad was released! That's ancient! First impressions of the POWERbot R7070 are quite positive. It's packaged really well, and is really just a case of removing some plastic film, plugging in the base, and sitting the main vacuum on said base. Let the thing charge (which didn't take very long at all - a couple of hours at MOST from a completely dead battery. Pairing the R7070 to my Samsung account/new Samsung account was pretty simple. With the app downloaded to my iPhone 7 Plus running the latest version of iOS 10, I was able to log in and add the vacuum to my account. It's a very simple process that's started by holding down the "Clock" button on the included remote while following the instructions in the app on your phone. And... that's about the best part of the experience... And now for all the bad stuff: 1.) The app is pretty barebones. Sure, it works, but it was disappointing to see it's not even an iPhone 6 Plus/6s Plus/7 Plus native app, which means it's a little blurry because the app wasn't designed for the larger iPhones. This is poor considering the larger iPhones have been out for nearly 3 years at the time of this review. Come on, Samsung. 2.) The vacuuming: Now, given the tech blurbs about this vacuum, I had pretty high (though not unreasonable) expectations. I did, however, expect much superior performance to my 7-year-old Roomba, and I guess this Samsung vacuum delivered in that regard, - but only just. The middle floor of my house is one, long, 1,000 sq/ft area. It's all wood flooring, with a sofa, a lounge chair, an area rug, then a dining room table and chairs, and then a really simply-laid out kitchen with four bar stools. It literally couldn't be easier. It's one long rectangle of living room, dining room and kitchen, with fairly significant swathes of space in between. Easy work, you'd think. ESPECIALLY after you read the tech blurb from Samsung. I mean really, - read this! "Visionary Mapping Plus and FullView Sensor 2.0 Onboard digital camera and nine individual smart sensors help create an optimal cleaning path by scanning the layout of your home and its surroundings. You won't need to worry about furniture or objects on the floor. Simply turn it on, and let it do the job for you." Wow. Sign me up! I set the vacuum to work, and it straight away smashed into the sofa. Bear in mind the legs of my sofa are a bright stainless steel, so I thought to myself it was just a fluke, since SURELY this vac can "see" the sofa. Nope. Smashed into the sofa again, and again. Then it proceeded to sort-of trundle around the living room (not well, and not fully covered), before heading into the dining room area and crashing into every chair - and the table itself. The chairs are black, which may have caused an issue, but that also didn't seem to make a difference with the stainless steel sofa, so who knows. And my floor is oak, so the difference in color should be easy for a vac to deal with in terms of obstacle avoidance. I will say the vacuum did recognize every wall in the room because it would slow down as it approached the wall, and on the display it would say "EDGE". So there you go - if you have white baseboard trim like I do, the R7070 can recognize that and won't slam into it. Even though the R7070 could fit in between the legs of the dining room chairs (so it could potentially get to the crumbs under the dining room table), it never did, or at least - never tried to. Thanks for nothing, POWERbot! What about the kitchen? Well, it slammed into all my bar stools (it actually moved one into the middle of the kitchen area, which was equal parts funny and annoying to watch). It got itself wedged down the middle/between the legs of one of them, and spent 2-3 minutes extricating itself. To its credit, it did make its escape. It then slammed into the corner of a door opening. It slammed into my Shih Tzu (he stood staring at me with a "huh?" look on his face. He's old and doddery that way). The good stuff? I was impressed that it made it onto the living room rug, though, since it's a little thicker than your standard throw rug. That's a positive. And I had no issues changing the motor speed/noise from High, to Normal, to Quiet, - either in the app or included remote. Quiet is reasonably quiet for a robot vac. Normal is already pretty noisy, and High is run-for-the-hills loud. It also went back to base just fine (well, after slamming into the sofa a few more times). But here's the thing. I could zip around this main floor in about 10-15 minutes with my Dyson V8 Absolute (or any other cordless vac - I just love my V8). I can get in between the chairs and under the dining room table. I won't slam into my sofa, bar stools or Shih Tzu, and I'll do a much better/precise job. But... but... you may say - that's not the point of a ROBOT vacuum! Well, what IS the point, currently? If it's slamming into everything, not doing a full-coverage job, and it's going to either damage itself or my furniture or kill the dog (though to be fair, the dog really needs to wise up and not just watch the vac quizzically as it collides with him), I really don't see the purpose. Where's this advanced mapping that Samsung is letting me think is taking place here? I'm not seeing it. It's at best misleading, and at worst - false advertising. Bitterly, bitterly disappointed. 2 stars out of 5. Only if you really, really have to.