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Aug

iRobot Roomba 960 Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Meet iRobot’s latest Wi-Fi floor cleaner, the Roomba 960.

iRobot

iRobot makes everything from household gutter cleaners to military-grade security and defense robots, but the company is best known for its Roomba robot vacuums. And as of right now, there’s a new Roomba in town — the $700 Wi-Fi Roomba 960.

In other robot vacuum news:

This clever, connected cleaner is Neato’s best yet
Dyson’s first robot vacuum is good, but not quite good enough
This bot leaves the competition in the dust
Best vacuum cleaners of 2016

You’ll only find the 960 in the US and Canada today, but the team plans to expand overseas later this year. At the current exchange rate, that $700 price tag coverts to roughly £525 in the UK and AU$920 in Australia.

According to iRobot, the 960 shares the same software smarts as its $900 980 predecessor, but costs just $700. But for all of its app-enabledness, the 960 doesn’t seem as clever as the 980 for two key reasons:

The 960 is outfitted with the same old motor you’ll find on the non-smart 800-series Roomba we reviewed in 2013
The 960’s lithium-ion battery is smaller than the 980’s and claims to have a shorter battery life

iRobot first announced its now-popular Roomba line back in 2002. Since then, brands like Neato and Dyson have swooped in with autonomous cleaners able to snatch up competitive amounts of the rice, sand, and pet hair we toss on our test floors. That makes all of these bots useful from a strictly you-won’t-have-to-actively-clean-your-floor-quite-so-often standpoint.

But robot vacuums are expensive and Roombas are no exception. That’s particularly true for the small, but growing selection of app-enabled self-cleaning vacuums on the market.

The connected Roomba 980 iRobot introduced in 2015 costs $900 and the similarly smart Dyson 360 Eye that made its US debut in 2016 will set you back $1,000. Neato is the one robot vacuum company that’s managed to maintain mostly-reasonable prices. Its app-enabled $700 Botvac Connected performed better than either the Roomba 980 or the Dyson 360 and costs hundreds less.

That price difference makes Neato appealing from a pure value standpoint, but the new Roomba 960 complicates things a bit. $700 is still really pricey, but at least it’s only Neato-level pricey.

You can start a cleaning run from the Android or iPhone iRobot Home app.

iRobot

Given that the older Roomba 880 performed better than the newer app-connected 980, the 960’s old motor might actually be a good thing. We’re tracking down a unit to test now, so we’ll be able to compare the 960 with the 980 and the Neato Botvac Connected. Stay tuned.

Aug

Polar M600 Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Polar, best known for its line of heart-rate chest straps and running watches, feels that taking fitness seriously is what other smartwatches have been missing. Its new Polar M600 will be available towards the end of September for $330 or £300 (which converts to around AU$435).

The M600 is designed for athletes. That’s evident from its bulky design. This isn’t like the svelte Huawei Watch or Moto 360 — you wouldn’t wear it to a formal event. Equipped with both GPS and its Russian equivalent Glonass, however, the watch can measure pace, distance, speed and other metrics when running and cycling. It’s also swim-proof and can withstand the elements better than other smartwatches.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Polar did something a little different, too, with the optical heart-rate sensor. Most companies use one or two flashing LEDs to light your capillaries and measure the blood as it flows past. Polar opted for six LEDs, which it has said will help with accuracy. Heart rate is only measured continuously during workouts, but you can read it on demand whenever you want.

As for battery life, Polar has said the M600 will last up to 48 hours on Android and 24 hours on an iPhone, which is pretty standard for most Android Wear watches. Meanwhile, with an activity GPS signal, the watch will run up to 8 hours 30 minutes.

Sarah Tew/CNET

The M600, as with other Android Wear watches, works with both iPhones and Android phones. It can display notifications and personalized Google cards for quick information on local weather and traffic.

Polar also added some extra goodies. A single press on the center key will open Polar’s built-in workout app. Here you can track an activity, start an interval workout and view information on past runs. The watch also syncs with the Polar Flow app on Android and iOS to view more detailed information.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Key specs

Android Wear 2.0 software
1.3-inch, 240×240-pixel resolution display, protected by Gorilla Glass 3
Dual-core processor
4GB of storage for apps and music
500 mAh battery
GPS and Glonass
Optical heart-rate sensor
Swim-proof

I only had a brief demo with the watch and haven’t had a chance to workout with it yet. We will have a full review of the Polar M600 in the coming weeks.

Aug

Blade Glimpse FPV review – CNET

The Good The Blade Glimpse FPV is a palm-size quadcopter with a good 720p HD video camera that can live-stream to your smartphone or tablet. Two flight speeds for beginners or experienced pilots. Strong enough to fly outside, but small and flexible for indoor flights.

The Bad The Glimpse requires a 5.8GHz Wi-Fi-capable smartphone or tablet for FPV flight. Slight latency in video feed. Its body and propellers break a little too easily.

The Bottom Line The Blade Glimpse FPV is a good way to practice flying by camera alone without the cost or concern of damaging a pricier drone.

Most toy quadcopters are piloted by line of sight, meaning you fly while looking at the drone. FPV or first-person-view flying is instead done by looking at a live video feed from an onboard camera, either on a screen or FPV goggles. It’s a necessary skill if you’re interested in piloting racing or higher-end camera drones and one you’re better off practicing with something like the Blade Glimpse FPV.

At $170 (£135, AU$260) it’s pricier than your average palm-size quad, but those typically don’t have good cameras — this one can record 720p-resolution HD video and 1-megapixel photos to an included 8GB microSD card — or built-in Wi-Fi to connect to a phone or tablet for a live view from the camera.

Turn on the included controller, connect the copter’s 3.7V 500mAh 25C LiPo battery and it will create its own Wi-Fi network. Once you connect to the network with a mobile device — it must support 5.8GHz Wi-Fi for it to work — you open the Glimpse app available for Android and iOS and you’ll see what the camera sees and you can start and stop recordings and take stills.

Blade Glimpse FPV is a tiny quad for first-person…
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The quad’s small size is perfect for navigating indoors and the landing gear does double duty as prop guards (though it doesn’t protect them from hard landings). The video downlink range is up to 80 feet (24 meters) and, while there is a slight lag, it’s still good enough to fly by in open spaces outside or around your house.

It looks and sounds like a small flying insect and although the motors are strong enough to fly outside, it’ll get blown around a bit in the wind. Otherwise, it’s very stable and getting it to hover is pretty easy. However, it will not hold altitude on its own, so you’ll need to constantly make micro adjustments to keep it at a specific height.

Battery life with video is average at about 6 to 8 minutes and will run you about $12 each for extras. Parts are reasonably priced and can be replaced with little difficulty. You’ll probably want to start by stocking up on propellers as they damage easily and tend to fly off when you crash.

Despite a bit of latency, the Blade Glimpse FPV is a good way to practice flying by camera alone without the cost or concern of damaging a pricier drone.

Aug

Skullcandy Ink’d Wireless review – CNET

The Good The Skullcandy Ink’d is a lightweight, affordable flexible collar-style Bluetooth headphone that offers decent sound and a comfortable fit. It performs fine as a headset for making cell phone calls and has reasonable good battery life.

The Bad It looks a little cheap, which makes you think it should cost a little less.

The Bottom Line The Skull Candy Ink’d Wireless is a better Bluetooth headphone than it looks.

When I first pulled Skullcandy’s Ink’d Wireless neckband-style Bluetooth headphone out its box, I had pretty low expectations. Frankly, it looks and feels a little cheap. And, to be fair, it is: it lists for $50, and we’ve already seen at least on sale at Best Buy (since ended) where it was selling for $40.

The first thing you’ll notice about the Ink’d Wireless is that it’s very lightweight. If you have a collared shirt on, you’ll barely feel it around your neck. The band’s got some flexibility to it, which is good, and while the cords that run from the neckband to the earbuds seem a little thin, some of LG’s Tone headphones have very thin cords (they’re retractable on some models) and I haven’t had a problem with them breaking or fraying over time.

We got the plain black version, but the Ink’d Wireless is also available in other color options.

Sarah Tew/CNET

You’ll find the integrated remote on the left side of the neckband. I liked that the controls were large and easy to operate by feel. There’s a pause/play button that also doubles as a call answer/end button and volume controls that double as track control buttons. You hold down the volume up button to advance a track forward and hold the volume down button to skip back a track.

The buds themselves are all plastic — they’re very lightweight — and the headphone ships with two sizes of silicon eartips. With the larger “default” set, I was able to get tight seal and surprisingly secure fit. It’s very important to be able to get a tight seal or sound quality will suffer, particularly the bass performance.

About that sound quality — it exceeded my expectations. You don’t get the treble and bass push you get from a lot headphones these days (the sound is pretty balanced). And while there isn’t a ton a bass — Chairlift’s “Show U Off” sounds fairly subdued, for example– so this isn’t going to be the greatest headphone for hip hop and club music. But it offers decent clarity in the treble and midrange and measures up well against neckband-style Bluetooth headphones that I’ve tested that cost almost twice as much. (Don’t expect the world from the sound, but most people should be happy with it for the price).

Aug

Neato Botvac Connected Robot Vacuum review – CNET

The Good The Neato Botvac Connected is the best-performing robot vacuum we’ve ever tested. The new Neato app is well-designed and easy to use, and finally brings remote control functionality to the Botvac line.

The Bad At $700, it’s the most expensive Neato yet — $200 more than the previous generation. We also encountered a few usability quirks during testing.

The Bottom Line The Neato Botvac Connected is better at cleaning floors than any other robot vacuum on the market, and it costs less than its app-enabled rival, the iRobot Roomba 980. If you’re willing to live without remote controls, you can save some money by sticking with the previous generation of Neatos — but we think this one’s worth the splurge.

Before smartphones, before the cloud, before the Internet of Things was a thing, there was the robot vacuum. It’s a smart-home product that predates the app-centric Gordian Knot of platforms and standards that is the modern connected home. A robot vacuum’s definition of “smart” is simply to clean the cat hair off of your rugs without tumbling down the stairs in the process.

At least, it was. Now, a new crop of app-enabled “smart” robot vacuums is navigating into the picture, including the Wi-Fi-equipped Neato Botvac Connected. Pair it with its app on your Android or iOS device, and you’ll be able to start, schedule, and even steer it right from your phone — a welcome addition for a brand that, across all of its models to date, has yet to offer a remote control with any of its cleaners.

At $700 (or £549 in the UK), the Botvac Connected is Neato’s most expensive robot vacuum yet, costing $200 more than its unconnected predecessors in the Botvac D Series. However, it’s also $200 less than the connected version of iRobot’s Roomba — and it beat that Roomba in every test we ran. The same can be said for the app-enabled Dyson 360 Eye, which costs $1,000, but never bested Neato. In fact, in the majority of our tests, the Neato Botvac Connected beat out the entire field of robot vacs. It also features a new and improved lithium ion battery, a legitimate step up from the nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries of before.

Robot vacuums were brainy to begin with, and I wouldn’t blame you for scoffing at the addition of app controls (or the price increase). But make no mistake: this is the best robot vacuum Neato has ever made, and the best robot vacuum money can currently buy.

Neato’s new robot vacuum adds in app-enabled…
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Design and features

The Botvac Connected sticks with the design of the existing line of Botvac models, with only minor tweaks to the color scheme. It’s the same, D-shaped cleaner with the same brushrolls, the same accessories, and the same general approach to covering your floors.

That approach sends the Botvac out around the perimeter of the room, where it’ll feel its way along the walls with a side-sweeping brush to tidy up the edges. From there, it’ll use its laser-assisted navigation capabilities to sweep back and forth across the center of the room, nimbly dodging your furniture as it goes. When it’s finished, it’ll automatically return to its docking station for a recharge.

This long-exposure shot of the Neato cleaning house with a glowstick taped to its head gives you an idea of how it finds its way around.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

Those navigation capabilities seem to be somewhat refined in the connected model. Older Neatos were too efficient for their own good, sweeping along the walls and then covering the center of each room in a single back-and-forth pass. In smaller rooms and spaces, the Botvac Connected is more thorough: it sweeps the center of the room in both rows and columns, and edges along the walls multiple times, too.

That gives the Neato ample opportunity to pick up any debris it might miss on a single pass, though cleaning runs take a little longer as a result. I’m fine with that trade-off — if the Neato is doing its thing while I’m away at work, I want it to take all of the time it needs.

Here’s a time-lapse of that pet hair test. Most cleaners have a pretty easy time with it on hardwood floors. pic.twitter.com/pRPr5tFwkh

— Ry Crist (@rycrist) October 26, 2015

Also new with the connected Neato: cleaning modes. In addition to the default, full-powered “Turbo” mode, you can now flip over into a power-saving “Eco” mode, too. You’ll lose a little bit of suction power, but cleaning runs won’t drain the battery as quickly, and the Neato will run a little quieter, too.

You can switch between modes or set up scheduled cleaning runs by tapping through the settings on Neato’s color LCD screen, but if you’d rather not hunch over, you can also just pull up the Neato app on your Android or iOS device.

Screenshots by Ry Crist/CNET

How about that app?

The Neato app is the shiny new addition to the Botvac experience, and a big part of why this vacuum costs $200 more than the previous generation. Thankfully, the app is pretty terrific. It’s clean-looking, it’s easy-to-use and it works like a charm.

You’ll start by activating the Wi-Fi radio on the vacuum itself. It’ll broadcast a signal that your smart phone can join up with — from there, you’ll jump back into the app, reselect your home Wi-Fi network, and watch as everything finishes pairing up. I got an error message during this last part on my first attempt, but as soon as I started the process again, things instantly synced right up. A tiny hiccup at best.

Screenshots by Ry Crist/CNET

With the vacuum cleaner tethered to your home’s Wi-Fi network, Neato will ask you to give it a name. I went with “Roger,” then told Roger to start a cleaning run. Roger got to work without delay, and when he returned to the charging station, he sent me a push notification letting me know he was finished.

Screenshot by Ry Crist/CNET

You can also log on to Neato’s website if you want to do more than just give your robot vacuum a name. You can register its serial number, for instance, or save a photo of your proof of purchase. That’s a handy way to be prepared in case you ever need to take Neato up on the one-year warranty.

Another feature in the app is a manual cleaning mode that’ll let you steer the Neato around like a toy car. The controls work well enough, and they might be a lot of fun if you can get your cat to climb aboard. Still, the feature isn’t terribly useful for much more than steering the Neato over to a messy spot, then switching it over to the automated spot-cleaning mode.

Despite the clean, easy-to-use interface, the simplicity of the app leaves room for improvement. For instance, you won’t find usage statistics that track how long each cleaning run takes (or how much of the battery each one uses). You also won’t see the specifics when things go wrong. If the brush is jammed or the robot gets caught on a piece of furniture, the app won’t let you know — at best, you’ll see the vacuum’s status listed as “error” if something is preventing you from starting a cleaning run remotely. In most cases, you’ll still need to hunch over and look at the vacuum’s LCD screen to see what that specific error is.

Ry Crist/CNET

Powerful performance

We run lots and lots and lots of cleaning tests when we evaluate robot vacuums. There are different types of floors to test on, different types of debris to test with, and different cleaning modes to test out. All in all, I sullied and cleaned over 30 floors with the Neato Botvac Connected, carefully weighing the results of each run. And I’ve come away convinced that it’s the best performer we’ve ever seen.

Aug

iRobot Roomba 880 review – CNET

The Good The iRobot Roomba 880 replaces its predecessor’s bristly brushes with rubbery “extractors” as part of the new AeroForce cleaning system. This brushless technology removes debris better than previous iterations and keeps maintenance to a minimum.

The Bad The bin is supposedly larger than in previous Roomba models, but it still fills up too quickly when you’re dealing with dust and shedding pets. That, and it costs $699.

The Bottom Line The Roomba 880 is the most well-rounded, capable bot we’ve encountered so far, but the $449 Neato Robotics XV Signature Pro still wins the pet hair performance test on all flooring surfaces.

Much like Dyson brand vacuums, I had heard my fair share of iRobot hype before I began testing the Roomba 880. I even had visions of following in Tom Haverford’s footsteps and building a “DJ Roomba” of my very own. Sadly, my dreams of channeling “Parks and Recreation” were dashed when I unboxed it and began testing instead. Fortunately, though, what I discovered was a clever little robot vacuum that came in first or second place in every single performance category.

Colin West McDonald/CNET

The Roomba 880 is a new model for iRobot and the very first 800-series bot for the brand. At $699.99, it will replace the equally priced Roomba 790 that Katie Pilkington recently reviewed.

So what’s different? At first glance, not a whole lot. But, flip the vacuum over and you’ll see something entirely new: AeroForce technology. I’ll go into that more later, but it’s basically a design and feature upgrade that improves performance a lot.

Yes, I would recommend the Roomba 880 to anyone in the market for a luxury-priced robot vac. It performed better than the $699.99 Roomba 790, and much better than the $799.99 LG Hom-Bot Square, as well as the $349.99 Infinuvo CleanMate QQ5.

Overall, the 880 will be best for someone who appreciates gadgets and understands that a robot vacuum isn’t designed to replace all other floor cleaning. It also isn’t the best choice for someone only interested in vacuuming up pet hair. For that, the $449.99 Neato Robotics XV Signature Pro holds steady in the lead.

Unveiling the iRobot Roomba 880 (pictures)
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Design The 8.4-pound Roomba is a cute and capable robot vacuum. It has a height of 3.6 inches and a width of 13.9 inches. It’s finished in black (unlike the 790’s blue finish), and has a carrying handle so you can easily transport it.

Stylistically, the 880 doesn’t stray too far from iRobot’s existing design. It has the same rounded look, and that same large Clean/Power button in the middle. The company clearly wanted to maintain the Roomba’s unassuming, minimalist design and sturdy construction.

The iRobot Roomba 790 (left) and the new iRobot Roomba 880
Megan Wollerton/CNET

It comes with a removable dust bin with an easy-access release button, left and right side wheels, a removable caster wheel in the front, debris extractors, and a spinning side brush. Aside from the vacuum itself, you also get a Home Base, or dock, two Virtual Wall/Lighthouse sensors with four C batteries included, an extra HEPA filter, and a remote control with two AA batteries included.

Colin West McDonald/CNET

Features The most interesting feature offered on the Roomba 880 is iRobot’s newly designed AeroForce cleaning system. It includes two bristle-free extractors that rotate inward toward one another to speed airflow and increase suction. There’s also a high-efficiency vacuum, and a new XLife battery that claims to last much longer.

The display on the top of the vacuum includes the following buttons: Dock, Clock, Schedule, and Spot. Hit the Dock button and your Roomba will return to Home Base to charge. Select Clock and you can set the day, hour, and minute. Choose Schedule and you can program a specific cleaning routine for your Roomba to tackle every week. And the unique Spot option targets small cleaning areas — it rotates outward 3 feet from its starting point and then returns back to where it began to deep clean a particular section of floor.

Colin West McDonald/CNET

The 880 also has various indicator lights to communicate with you as it cleans or charges. Docked, the battery light will flash amber as it charges and it will maintain a solid green color when it’s fully charged. Solid red means that the battery is empty. A Dirt Detect feature senses debris and targets those areas for cleaning. A troubleshooting light will appear if there’s a problem, and an antitangle light will display when the Roomba is trying to untangle itself from something. A full bin light lets you know when the tray needs to be emptied.

Colin West McDonald/CNET

You can control those things directly on the Roomba, but you can also initiate regular cleaning and spot cleaning from the remote, dock the Roomba, or steer it around using the arrow buttons. And if you want to block off a particular room for cleaning, the Virtual Walls act like invisible fences; the 880 won’t move past them. You also have the option of turning your Virtual Walls into Lighthouses. Position them throughout your home and your Roomba will be able to follow them around to clean room by room and get back to Home Base without getting lost.

Colin West McDonald/CNET

Usability This vacuum is very simple to use. Set it on regular clean, spot clean, or create your own schedule in advance, and let it go. You can also rely on different accessories like the Virtual Walls and the Lighthouses mentioned in the Features section above to keep it from leaving a room or to help guide it throughout your house and back to Home Base. The 880 requires very little effort and interaction from you (possibly even less than the Neato, since the Roomba has a remote for increased accessibility and the Neato doesn’t).

Colin West McDonald/CNET

The 880 also senses how long it needs to clean a given space and it will return to the dock to charge when it thinks that job is done. It doesn’t get much easier than that. However, you can’t exactly estimate how long it might take the Roomba to clean a room — especially when you first get it.

So if you’re in a hurry, a robot vacuum is not the most efficient cleaning method. Sure, it follows algorithms that cover as much ground as possible, but if you want to clean something fast, watching a Roomba run is a bit like waiting for water to boil. While ease of use is high, speed of use is a bit less predictable.

Also, while the dust bin is easy to remove, if it isn’t positioned correctly it will dump everything it just cleaned all over the place. And because it’s small, you will need to empty that bin and shake out the filter pretty much every time you use it. It’s also recommended that you replace the filter about six times a year and clean both debris extractors every four months (even more if you have pets). The sensors need to be cleaned periodically, too.

Megan Wollerton/CNET

You don’t have to do much (or anything) with this robot vacuum while it’s in use. But when it isn’t running the upkeep makes this low-maintenance Roomba seem a bit high maintenance. Since it’s so small and easy to lift, though, cleaning isn’t nearly as involved as it would be with a larger, more traditional upright or canister vacuum cleaner.

Performance So, how did it do?

First, all of the built-in sensors performed flawlessly. The cliff sensors that keep the Roomba from taking a tumble down a flight of stairs knew every time it got near an edge, stopped, and changed direction. The Virtual Walls and Lighthouses I set up also did a great job either confining or leading the Roomba where it needed to go to clean around my house. And when I tested it in my living room, it fit underneath a pretty low arm chair, the media center, and the coffee table without objection. Now that’s dedication.

Aug

Shark Rotator Pro Lift-Away review – CNET

The Good The Shark Rotator Pro Lift-Away is a veritable master of versatility. It comes with so many attachments and accessories that you are pretty much guaranteed to have the right brush for the job at hand.

The Bad It didn’t lead during performance testing. Then again, it costs $450 less than some of its competition — and in many cases the results were only marginally worse.

The Bottom Line The Shark is a very good vacuum with solid construction and intuitive design. Other models may have performed better, but none of them can match this sweeper’s value for the price.

The $199 Shark Rotator Pro Lift-Away vacuum cleaner really had a lot to prove at the outset of this review. It claims to “clean carpets better than the Dyson DC41” on the box. So I tested it against the $649 DC41 (and the $499 DC50 for good measure). To diversify a bit more, I also compared it to the $399 Oreck Touch and the $309 Electrolux Precision Brushroll Clean.

The $200 Shark is the least expensive of the five models and makes pretty lofty performance claims. So, is it really better than a Dyson? Well, yes and no. I would recommend it over either Dyson because it is a more well-rounded machine. It offers good design, usability, and performance, and it has excellent features. Both Dysons struggled in the design department, while the more expensive DC41 outperformed the Shark (on carpet and everywhere else) and the less expensive DC50 performed on par with the Shark.

And in comparison to the Oreck and the Electrolux, it’s much more a matter of preference. The Shark is a fantastic budget vacuum that holds its own against these two in usability and features, albeit with slightly lower performance marks. Still, I would highly recommend this vacuum. It offers the best value of any of the models and its multitude of accessories will delight the more thorough cleaners among you.