Hom-Bot Square Robot Vacuum Cleaner Dual Eye Mapping System 7 Smart Cleaning Modes 14 1/10" x 3 1/2" 17 3/4" W x 20 3/4" H x 6 1/8" D 9 3/5" x 5 1/5" x 7 3/5" Weight: Product / Shipping 6.6 lbs /12.3 lbs Dual Camera Visual Mapping CV-SLAM : Celing Vision Based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping OFS (Optical Flow Sensor) 7 Modes (Cell by Cell/Spot/Manual/Zig Zag/Turbo/My Space/Repeat) Yes (up to 2,6,12 hours) Vision, Optical Flow, Ultrasonic, Infrared, Gyro, Accelerometer Auto Docking and Recharging Cleaning Path Width (Without / With Side Brushes) 7 2/5" / 14 3/5" Side Brush Set, Filter, Carpet Brush Body : 2 year, Battery : 6 months View LrV790R Product SupportElectronics giant LG just released a new robot vacuum, and we had the chance to test it in the same labs where we've put best-sellers from iRobot and Neato through their paces. While LG has sold robot vacuums worldwide for more than five years, the LG VR65502LV Hom-Bot (MSRP $749) is the company's first foray into the U.S. market.

It features a square design for improved corner cleaning, two cameras for obstacle sensing and room mapping, and seven customizable cleaning modes. We spent a week with it, and found that LG has created a worthy competitor to some of the more established names on the market. The Hom-Bot not only looks great, but it has excellent dirt pickup, is easy to use, and can even clean tall carpet—a task a lot of the competition struggles with. However, it lacks some of the basic features that less-expensive models boast. If you ascribe to the KonMari method of living simply—as outlined in Marie Kondo's best-selling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up—you may have reservations about buying a new gadget that will always live on your floor. However, the Hom-Bot may still fit with your style. Its handsome, ruby-red exterior has won design awards, and with over an hour of battery life, this LG can easily cover an entire open-concept floorplan. Unlike other robot vacuums, you don't even have to tip it over to empty the dustbin.

And when—not if—the vacuum gets interrupted, it automatically picks up cleaning where it left off. rainbow vacuum cleaner technologyThat's easy for the Hom-Bot, since it has a learning mode that memorizes obstacles in a room in order to avoid them during future cleaning sessions.vacuum cleaners vax We're a bit puzzled by a few of the Hom-Bot's features: Yes, it lets the user choose from different cleaning patterns, but it lacks any virtual barriers. stirling robot vacuum cleaner reviewsUnlike iRobot, with its Virtual Walls, there's no way to keep the Hom-Bot from exploring your whole house. That's a pretty serious omission in a vacuum that costs this much. If you want to keep the Hom-Bot from bumping into your dog bowl or out of the playroom, there's no way to make that happen.

Over the course of one cleaning session in our robot vacuum test lab, the Hom-Bot suctioned up 10.3 grams of dirt. That might not sound like much, but since you can set the Hom-Bot to clean daily, that could add up to around 72 grams of dirt each week. It doesn't matter where that dirt is hiding, either. The LG Hom-Bot joins a distinguished group of robot vacuums that weren't tripped up by a high-pile carpet. As you can see in our video of the test, the Hom-Bot reached the summit and got back down again without the need of a sherpa.It made loud screeching noises during the climb, likely due to the automatic engagement of the high-powered Turbo function. Normally, we wouldn't harp on sound quality, since the best practice is to run your robot vacuum while you're out of the house. However, since LG advertises how quiet its machine is, the noise is worth noting. We should also mention that we observed the Hom-Bot getting caught on an obstacle meant to simulate a transition between two different kinds of flooring.

Eventually, we had to step in and free it. This is an attractive robot vacuum with good cleaning performance and innovative technology. However, a $749 sale price and an odd list of features might make the LG Hom-Bot a tough sell for some consumers. In fact, despite its many benefits, the lack of any virtual barriers is what keeps the VR65502LV from earning our highest recommendation. Its dirt pickup is neck-and-neck with our top rated robot vacuum, a Neato that features a WiFi connection and barriers, and sells for $699. If you're on the fence, we'd wait a few months until a new generation of robot vacuums debut. In addition to hotly anticipated models from Dyson and Panasonic, new LG and Samsung robot vacs will be able to memorize your home's floorplan, travel from room to room, and double as security cameras. Until then, we're impressed with LG's debut offering, and look forward to what else the company's robots can do. LG HOM-BOT Robot Vacuum Cleaner Dual Eye Mapping system

Total Clean Sweep + Vacuum + Mop Battery Charge Docking Station 7 2/5" (Without) / 14 1/5" (With Side Brushes) Dimension - Product (WxH) 14 1/5" x 3 1/2" Dimension - Home Station (WxH) 8" x 4 9/10" 17 1/2" x 6 1/4" x 21" 7 lbs. / 12 lbs. Bare Floor, Tile, Carpet 4 Cleaning Modes - Auto: Zigzag and Cell by Cell / Manual: Spiral Cleaning and “As 1 – 12 Hours 7 2/5" / 14 1/5" Ceiling Vision based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping View LrV5900 Product SupportLG's newest robot vacuum, the Hom-Bot Square (pronounced "Home Bot"), sets itself apart from the competition by offering a wide array of customizable cleaning modes designed to put you in control of the cleaning process. Like most robot vacuums, you can set it and forget it if you like, letting it run automatically on the default settings. To really get the most out of it, you'll want to experiment with the different cleaning modes. This isn't to say that the Hom-Bot is high-maintenance, but it's definitely better suited for users who want to take a more active role in their robot vacuuming, tweaking the variables to maximize cleaning efficiency.

Fans of the television show "Breaking Bad" might remember that slacker homeowner Jesse Pinkman is a Roomba owner. The Hom-Bot, on the other hand, would be a better fit for a control freak like Walter White. Fortunately, the Hom-Bot makes fiddling with the different modes about as easy as it gets. Just press a button on the handy remote to turn any one of them on. The Hom-Bot will offer a vocal acknowledgement of the change, then display an icon on the machine to help you remember what it's doing. Once the machine has determined that it's finished, it'll automatically return to its charging station and sing a little victory song. And yes, there's a mute button on that remote, too. There's no question that the Hom-Bot will do a decent-enough job cleaning your home, and it sports some undeniably cool features that the competition can't match. However, the thing costs $799.99. That's $100 more than a top-of-the-line Roomba, and $350 more than the Neato XV Signature Pro, which, after over 40 hours of testing, was our decisive winner in terms of performance.

I like its overall polish and its tweakable settings, but without better vacuuming performance (or perhaps a price cut), the Hom-Bot Square is a difficult robot to recommend. The Hom-Bot has an attractive and durable red casing with a sleek, rounded-square design that LG claims helps the Hom-Bot clean corners more effectively. The true implication is that the Hom-Bot cleans corners more effectively than the Roomba, and indeed, much of the Hom-Bot's design seems specifically intended to one-up the Roomba wherever possible. The Roomba has one sweeping brush -- the Hom-Bot has two. The Roomba has one primary cleaning mode -- the Hom-Bot has two, plus five additional modes. Features like these might look good on paper, but it's worth noting that none of them seemed to give the Hom-Bot an actual leg up over the Roomba in terms of cleaning power. It certainly wasn't as effective as the top-performing Neato XV Signature Pro, either. LG's other design features are more worthwhile. I'll take the Hom-Bot's small, simple remote over the Roomba's bulky touch pad any day, especially given that the Hom-Bot remote nestles neatly and conveniently into the charging station, while the Roomba's will inevitably spend most of its time as a high-tech paperweight on your coffee table (the Neato, on the other hand, doesn't have a remote at all).

The Hom-Bot's HEPA filter-equipped dust bin was another plus. The cavity that houses it pops open with a gentle push; then, you just grab the bin's handle and lift it up and out for emptying. It might sound like a little thing, but it's actually an important upgrade over other bins you need to jerk out of their respective machines, often coughing out clouds of dust in the process. I also appreciated that the Hom-Bot is as quiet as it is, operating with a gentle hum that's much less noisy than the competition. As with most robot vacuums, getting the Hom-Bot going is easy. Just press the start button to wake it up, then press it again to set it off on a floor-cleaning quest for crumbs. But the Hom-Bot deserves a few extra points for usability, as its remote puts a plethora of cleaning modes into the palm of your hand. The default is Zig-Zag Mode, in which the Hom-Bot will bounce around somewhat randomly to figure out the space, then zigzag back and forth across the room. Press a button, and you can switch over to Cell by Cell Mode, which causes it to divide the room into a grid, then aggressively sweep back and forth and left and right within each square of the grid for a supposedly more thorough cleaning.

In our tests, we didn't see much of a difference in performance between the two modes, but it's certainly worth experimenting within your own home. Other settings were noticeably more useful. Repeat Mode will prevent the Hom-Bot from deciding that the job is done, forcing it to keep on cleaning the space until you tell it to stop. You can activate Turbo Mode to rev the robot up past its default speed for maximum suction (the Hom-Bot will do this automatically when it's cleaning carpet). Best of all might be My Space Mode, which lets you use the remote to steer the vacuum around a small area and manually define its cleaning boundaries. From then on, the Hom-Bot will remember those boundaries and go straight to that spot whenever the mode is activated. Maybe you want to vacuum the cat's litter box area every day, or maybe it's the holidays and you want the Hom-Bot to pick up pine needles as they drop off of your Christmas tree. Whatever you use it for, it's a remarkably handy feature, and one that seems obvious in hindsight, yet the Hom-Bot is the only robot vacuum to offer anything like it.