Neato D10 intelligent robot vacuum
Buy now £547.55, Amazon.co.uk
Rating: 9/10
The D10 is average size for a robot vacuum, and comes with a compact charger. Although you need to have it based close to a mains plug, you don’t need a huge amount of space around it, which we liked. Space near plugs is always at a premium in our house.
Once powered up, you pair the D10 with your smartphone via an app, which we found easy to do and then you can set the vacuum off to get cleaning. During the first few cleans the D10 learns our floorplan, and after every clean it produces a map of where it’s been.
Using the app you can set schedules for your D10. We chose to run the robot every night after dinner, meaning we could put our feet up knowing come morning the house wouldn’t have that horrible crunch underfoot. But you can set schedules for it at a frequency you want.
You can also decide where you want your robot to clean. Set a zone, such as under the dining table or in the kitchen after dinner, and it’ll get to work and only clean that area. We found this hugely helpful when our kids made a mess in one room, but we didn’t want the entire house cleaning.
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If you have an area you don’t want your vacuum to clean – around the dog’s bowls, or where there are a lot of cables, you can set a no-clean zone. The D10 then steadfastly ignores this area. Both the spot cleaning zones and no clean zones were really easy to set. You do need to do it via the app, but it’s incredibly simple to do using intuitive maps.
CleaningThe suction power on the D10 is 2,500pa. This is a fairly standard figure for robot vacuums, but it’s not the only factor in how effective it is at sucking up dirt. We also need to pay attention to how it negotiates the area and how effective it is at scooping dirt.
If you’re an allergy sufferer, then Neato has considered you. The D10 has a True HEPA (which stands for high-efficiency particulate air, in case you’re wondering) filter to suck up nasty allergens. These filters claim to catch up to 99.8 per cent of allergens and fine dust particles.
HEP filters have to meet high standards to qualify for the title of HEPA. The result is your home should have fewer allergens and you feel fewer symptoms. While we don’t suffer ourselves, we found it gave us a nice peace of mind that everything that could be sucked up was.
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You can set the suction power of the D10 too. So if you want the battery to last longer, or just need a light clean then the eco mode is great for day-to-day. If you are after something more powerful, then the Turbo mode is your best bet. We used this on our carpets, and it worked really well, leaving pleasing tracks behind.
There is also a Max mode, if you need a really deep clean. Kids spilt glitter on the carpet? Just had a party? Max mode is your first port of call. And if you are lucky enough to have a furry member of your family, Pet mode digs down deeper into your carpet to suck out even stubborn hairs.
The D10 is shaped like a D, with corners. This is to enable it to get into the corners – something it was very tenacious about. We have tried many a robot vacuum cleaner, and we were thoroughly impressed by how the D10 got dirt in tight spots. A brush on one side pings dust and dirt into the path of the robot and a round brush underneath scoops it up and then slurp, it’s gone (note: it doesn’t actually slurp).
PerformanceWe found the D10 to be a solid performer. We liked that it has a massive battery life, and it wasn’t constantly returning to the dock to charge. We also liked the large bin, which meant we didn’t have to empty it too regularly. Sure, it doesn’t have the feature of automatic dirt disposal like some other vacuums, but it also has a more reasonable price tag for it.
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When Alexa actually listened to us, and we’d enabled the Skill in the app (a faff that is no fault of Neato’s), voice control worked well. You could ask Alexa to tell the D10 to clean a specific room, and then it whirred to life. Cleaning without lifting a finger, literally.
It’s brilliant that you can run the D10 on three different floors (you have to carry it between floors yourself, technology has not come on quite that far yet). We gave this a whirl and the D10 didn’t seem confused by a change of scenery, producing a fresh accurate map of where it had been without any fuss. You can buy extra charge bases for different floors if you want.
When it’s not running, the D10 has a small charge base which it returns to after cleaning, so it’s always ready to run when you ask it to. And, as we’ve already mentioned, you can control the D10 via a dedicated app or using Alexa or Google Assistant. There are also a number of buttons on the top that you can use to manually control it.
Noise levelsThe D10 goes up to 69dB. This is pretty average for a robot vacuum, to be honest. You can hold a conversation over it running, but you might need to crank up the TV a bit. Rest assured that it’s quieter than your average manual vacuum.
The verdict: Neato D10 intelligent robot vacuumWe were really impressed with the Neato D10. It’s a great addition to our home, lightening our load and leaving our house noticeably cleaner. The price point on this is significant, but compared to many others on the market it’s very reasonable for the functionality.