Samsung Powerbot VR9000 review

We've been eagerly awaiting the first robot vacuum that could fully replace a traitional cleaner, and Samsung's VR9000 could be one of the closest we've seen to date. It's a cylinder vacuum with variable suction settings that should be able to keep your floors clean while you're out of the house, without getting lost or having to re-do tough spots.

The VR9000 is fairly sizable vacuum, taking up as much floor space as a sofa cushion and with a height of 135mm that makes it too tall to fit under most furniture. It weighs 4.5kg, so isn't particularly heavy should you need to move it between floors. It looks quite sleek from the top in glossy black with gold accents, although we aren't fans of the white plastic undercarriage. There is a more fetching black model with blue accents available, but the glossy finish is a dust magnet in either colour, so you'll need to clean the cleaner if you don't want it to start looking grubby after a few weeks of use.

Underneath, a 311mm brush bar spins to aggitate carpets and remove the most amount of dust possible. As with all robot vacuums the VR9000 can't get completely into corners, but the square design and wide brush means it can get within 35mm of a wall. When it comes to crevices and edges, you'll still need a traditional cleaner to catch what the robot can't.  

The 0.7l bagless bin sits locks into the top of the vacuum and lifts out with minimal effort. It unclips neatly for clean emptying, too, with a self-contained filter that can be removed and cleaned or replaced. The VR9000 will alert you when the bin is full, so you can be sure you aren't sending it around the house without space for more cleaning. We emptied it every few days with a daily cleaning schedule, although naturally this will vary based on the size of your house.

You can activate the VR9000 from the unit itself using the three touch-sensitive buttons on the back, which also tell it what floor surface to expect and whether to return to its base unit for charging. You get a lot more control with the bundled remote, however. This lets you set spot cleaning, for a more thorough clean (ideal if you've knocked over a plant pot, or sent a box of cereal scattering across the kitchen floor), manual control should you want to drive the vacuum yourself, and Max performance for more powerful suction. Finally point cleaning, which is designed to catch any areas the cleaner might have missed on its standard patrol, uses a red LED built into the remote; you hold down the button and the vacuum follows the light around the room until you're happy it has covered everything.

You can also turn off the rather irritating high-pitched beep it makes every time it registers an input, activate the dust sensor to engage the vacuum whenever it detects a buildup of dust rather than run it constantly, and set a schedule for automatic cleaning when you're not in. You can set either one time or a daily schedule, although there's no way to set different times for different days - meaning what could be handy during the working week will end up waking you up from your weekend lie-in.

Your changes and settings are displayed on a mono LCD display built into the top of the cleaner; it's fine for the basics but now that Dyson's 360 Eye robot vacuum has it's own smartphone app we're beginning to expect a little more detail when it comes to visual feedback.

The top-mounted camera is just one of the sensors used to help the cleaner navigate your house. It also has cliff detection sensors in the underside of the unit to stop it from taking a tumble down the stairs, an IR detector for spot cleaning, and something Samsung is calling a FullView Sensor for detecting obstacles like furniture. This worked well in practice, slowing down for table legs and coffee tables rather than bashing into them at full speed to avoid damage. Rubber bumpers around the edge of the vacuum will also soften the blow.

Like any robot vacuum it will take some time to learn the layout of your home, and during this settling in period you'll likely need to dislodge it from anywhere it gets stuck, but after a while it was perfectly comfortable cleaning our living room, hallway and bedrooms. We did have some trouble getting it to locate the kitchen, but after a few passes of the living room and bedroom it was happy enough to venture further afield.

Our main irritation is there's no way to see a map or visualisation of the VR9000's route, to see if there are any sticking points or problems with your furniture layout that are causing it to trip up when cleaning. We came home one night to discover it had trapped itself on a clothes horse, and another to find out it hadn't actually made it into the kitchen at all - despite all the doors being open and there being no obstructions on the way. A smartphone app could alert you to these errors, or even give you manual control over the internet to help it get back on track. This could possibly be something for Samsung to consider for 2015 and beyond, unless the company wants to fall behind the likes of Dyson.

Once it does eventually learn a sensible route, you may need to stop it from entering a particular area. Thankfully Samsung also includes VirtualGuard IR emitters in the box; as the cleaner detects stairs automatically, these are best used as invisible walls to prevent it from knocking into plant pots or disturbing your pets. Each one projects around 2.5m outwards, which should be more than enough to fence off a door should you want to limit cleaning to a particular area of the house. Each emitter takes two D batteries, so you won't have to worry about running power cables around the room.

Suction, arguably the single most important function for a vacuum cleaner, was without a doubt impressive. The VR9000 collected more dust than a handheld stick cleaner, with fewer passes. It wasn't perfect, losing out to a full-size vacuum when it came to more stubborn spills and larger debris, but for fine dust it worked brilliantly. Unfortunately the design of our suction meter meant we weren't able to measure the VR9000's performance empirically, but it certainly performed better than other robot vacuums when it came to collecting dirt and dust. The brush bars will need to be cleaned regularly if you have pets in the house, however, as it can get quickly tangled with hairs and other long threads.

The VR9000 certainly isn't quiet enough to leave on while you're watching TV, even on the standard suction setting. Rated for 75dB on the Max setting, it's noticeable throughout the house, albeit at a lesser volume than a standard vacuum cleaner. It's quieter when returning to the docking station after finishing, and there is a low noise Silence mode should you want to avoid disturbing anyone, although the suction drops off to the point that we would suggest simply waiting until everyone is out of the house and send it round at the regular setting. 

The internal battery lasts for up to 100 minutes of regular cleaning, although it will drain much faster (around 60 minutes) if you use the Max Suction mode. That was still enough for it to complete a full pass of our two bedroom flat, with enough power for some manual spot cleaning and still get back to the charging station. It takes around two and a half hours to fully recharge, so will certainly be ready to go if you leave it docked overnight. It moves at about 0.3m per second, although based on how well it has learned your room layout it could take several passes before it decides the room is clean and moves on.

The charging station really needs to sit on a firm surface, as it often failed to make a connection when the VR9000 sank into the carpet. There are at least mounting brackets on the back to screw it into a wall, to prevent it moving when the vacuum docks.

While we were impressed by the Powerbot VR9000's suction abilities, which are up there with the best robot vacuums we've seen to date, it still struggled to make its way around a relatively small flat until it had spent a considerable amount of time learning its routes. Manual control and spot from a remote are welcome features, but only if you don't need to rely on them to get the cleaner to complete a full circuit of your house.

Robot vacuums themselves are still only really practical for single level flats, unless you're prepared to lug it up and down the stairs every other day to clean multiple floors while you're out at work. At £700, the VR9000 certainly isn't cheap; you could buy a full-size vacuum and still have enough left over for a cordless handheld model. Considering you'll still need to do a bit of work yourself, as the VR9000 can't get completely into edges or corners, we imagine most people will opt for a traditional cleaner rather than this, but if you have the house for it and are prepared to help it through its learning phase, it's a viable (if expensive) alternative to the weekly clean.