After reviewing a few dozen robotic vacuum cleaners, we’ve come to the conclusion that as long as you’ve got a few hundred dollars handy, someone in China will make a robot for you and sell it on Amazon. However, the fact that it exists doesn’t mean it’s going to be worth buying. There are a lot of bots out there that will spend more time “cleaning” the same section of your kitchen than they ever will in the rest of your house. If you want a reliable robot that cleans intelligently and effectively with a battery that won’t die almost immediately, there are really only a few good options on the market below around $500. In this price range, we like the Roomba 890, Botvac D5 Connected, and Botvac D80 if you can live without smart phone control. Today we’ll look at another Botvac sibling, the Neato Botvac D3 Connected Robot Vacuum. Our highly technical ten second summary is that you’re buying the D80 with Wi-Fi (yay!) and a much smaller battery (boo!). Our full review is below, and you can buy it here.
Pros, Cons, and Key Features of the Neato Botvac D3 Connected Robot Vacuum
The Neato Botvac D3 Connected is one of a handful of smart but confusingly-named Botvacs Neato has sold in the last few years include the D80, which is almost identical to the D3 Connected we’re reviewing today, the D5 Connected, an advanced version of today’s Botvac, and the Connected, which itself is more advanced than the D5 Connected . If this doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry; there’s also the D7 Connected, which is the most advanced Botvac that’s essentially unavailable to buy anywhere. And this is why Roomba’s army of less intelligent but better marketed robots have the majority of the robo-market share today.
At any rate, regardless of how confusing Neato’s marketing strategies may seem, they’re making the smartest robots on the market right now. All Botvacs feaure real-time laser-guided maps to help them navigate through your home. Essentially, they use invisible (and harmless) laser beams to create maps of your home and learn from them each time they clean. It’s space-age technology right in your home, and it’s far more human-like than the “three-blind-mice”-esque brains programmed into virtually every other robot on the market.
The Botvac D3 Connected is the cheapest current Botvac, slotting right behind the D80. Besides its laser-powered brain, it can clean up to 1,800 square feet per cleaning cycle (3 cleaning runs and 2 automatic battery recharges). It has 2.4GHz Wi-Fi compatibility and you can program it from your smart phone or tablet, although you can also do so from the robot itself. It uses a Lithium-ion battery that delivers around 43 minutes of battery life (Neato claims up to 60; this is inaccurate) and needs 3 hours to recharge. It requires 4 inches of clearance for cleaning and has a 13 inch cleaning radius while weighing 8 pounds. Unboxing it, you get the robot and charging base, a filter, and a brush. You also get the same crummy one year warranty found throughout the robot vacuum industry, and the uniquely poor six month Neato battery warranty.
What’s the difference between the Botvac D3 Connected, D80, D5 Connected, and the Roomba 890?
The primary differences between the Botvac D3 Connected and D80 are smart phone compatibility and battery life. To put it simply, the D3 Connected can connect to a smart phone or tablet through your home Wi-Fi network, letting you start it, stop it, pause it, and spot clean with it. You can’t do any of that (except for spot clean) with the D80, although you can program both Botvacs. The battery life is also much better in the D80 at around 70-75 minutes vs around 40-45 in the D3 Connected.
Compared to the D5 Connected, the differences were greater. While both had Wi-Fi, network reliability was much greater with the D5 in contrast with the D3, which has an unfortunate reputation for dropping signal and requiring hard reboots. The battery life gap increased dramatically as well, with the D5 Connected averaging 100 minutes vs the 40-45 in the D3 Connected.
Finally, compared to the Roomba 890, the D3 Connected was definitely the smarter robot; it navigated rooms more quickly and accurately with its laser-mapping brain. It also had the ability to resume cleaning after recharging its battery while the 890 would simply go back to home base and fall asleep when it realized it had a low battery, regardless of whether it had finished a cleaning job or not. Battery life was better in the 890, however, at 60 minutes compared to 40-45 in the D80, and the battery was also a far more reliable one as evidenced both by user reviews and by the one year Roomba warranty. Like the D3 Connected, the Roomba 890 was compatible with smart phones and Wi-Fi.
How thoroughly will the Neato Botvac D3 Connected clean carpets, hardwood floors, and pet hair?
We’ll skip most of the details here because we’d just end up repeating what we wrote about cleaning in the D80 review, which was already similar to what we wrote for the D5 Connected review. Suffice it to say that cleaning power is ready and available for hardwood and other bare floors (e.g., tile, laminate, and concrete), as well as for low-pile carpets and rugs. It also cleaned up after our golden retrievers with ease and made short work of their long, golden dander.
The biggest flaws we noticed in comparison to the D80 were that the D3 Connected had a much shorter battery life as noted above, meaning it went scurrying to its charger far more frequently; cleaning jobs took longer as a result. And while we didn’t notice Wi-Fi connectivity issues, we know others have, and that can make using the D3 a frustrating experience, especially since the D80 cleans just as well and for far longer and for the same price without Wi-Fi headaches.
As with the other Botvacs and robotic vacuums in general, remember that the D3 Connected isn’t designed for medium- or high-pile carpets. To tackle those, you’ll want to have a quality canister vacuum like the Miele Soft Carpet or Electro+ in your closet.
Why buy the Neato Botvac D3 Connected?
The Botvac D3 Connected, like the Botvac D80, are the two cheapest entryways to the Botvac universe. While these vacuums aren’t perfect, they’re ultimately the smartest robotic vacuums on the market right now, and for those of us who like a sense of orderliness in the ways our robots clean our homes, the D3 Connected (or any other Botvac) will do a far more logical and efficient cleaning job than pretty much any other robot you can buy today. The D3 Connected in particular cleans low-pile carpets and hardwood floors just fine. Its biggest flaw is one it shares with all the Botvacs: an unreliable battery, followed by a somewhat unreliable Wi-Fi connection. The Wi-Fi in particular seems to be a luck of the draw affair; some D3s never have an issue, while others never seem to be able to hold a signal.
If you don’t mind replacing the battery if it goes bad (there are lots of 3rd party batteries online) and want Wi-Fi, get the D3 Connected. If you don’t want Wi-Fi but do want more battery life, get the D80. If you want Wi-Fi and much more battery life, get the D5 Connected. And if you don’t need nearly as much brains but want a more “set-it-and-forget it” experience regarding reliability, skip the Botvacs altogether and get either the Roomba 890, which offers decent battery life and brains, or the Roomba 960, which is significantly smarter and more blessed in the battery department. Both will offer the kind of reliability we hope to see from Botvacs someday.
You can buy the Neato Botvac D3 Connected here on Amazon, the Neato Botvac D80 here, or the Roomba 890 here. For added battery life and functionality, you can buy the Neato Botvac D5 Connected here or the Roomba 960 here.
Canadians can buy the Neato Botvac D3 Connected here on Amazon, the Botvac D80 here, or the Roomba 890 here. For upgrades to the Botvacs or Roomba, buy the Neato Botvac D5 Connected here or the Roomba 960 here.
If you find our research on PMC helpful, you can follow our efforts to keep maniacally reviewing home cleaning tools by shopping through our links above. We promise to keep fighting the good fight against every horror children, animals, and grown, yet messy humans can inflict upon a clean home.