Reviews (6)

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5 Stars 

4 Stars 

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2 Stars 

1 Star 

Lazy Man's Vacuum

Love this new vacuum by Hoover! Charge it and let it go. Love that it has a remote and an app.

This thing is smart it runs into walls, adjusts and keeps going. Occasionally it will get hung up. For instance we have some raised rubber mats I forgot to move out of the kitchen. The vacuum attempted to climb the mat, which it couldn't do, for about a minute. Then it changed directions. It was really easy to charge, start, and then just prop my feet up and watch TV while this thing did the vacuuming. It does a pretty decent job.

Good but not great

This was an easy one to unpackage, and the user manual was easy to follow to install. The iPhone app was easy to download and to get started. It has features like selecting between 3 different types of cleaning and scheduling the time. Once started, it functions very quietly and can detect stairs easily. It moves smoothly and is small enough to fit under tables of various sizes and shapes.

What I found to be concerning was that it has a hard time to find its docking station and that is an issue. Also another thing that I noticed was that the machine disconnects from the app from time to time. It's frequent and I'm wondering if this was just a one-off case.

This is a good machine that will clean easily and is easily to remove the trash but for a couple of things, this would have been a five-star vacuum robot.

Not the set and forget vacuum I was hoping for.

Maybe I expected too much at this price point from a robot vacuum. I was thinking that I should be able to set this thing loose in a hallway and have it clean the hall and a couple of attached bedrooms. No way that is going to happen. Mainly because this robot can not do transitions. At all. Ever. So for me I have to set the vacuum loose in a room and close the door to keep it from getting stranded on a transition. And my transitions are standard wood transitions from hardwood to carpet that match the hardwood floors - not some unusual or makeshift transition that the manufacturers would not anticipate. Another drawback is that the docking station needs 3 feet of clearance on both sides so if you planned to hide the vacuum somewhere inconspicuous, think again. It needs to be well out in the open.

On the plus side, It does seem to clean a room well. And it is easy to clean. And If I move the docking station to the room I close the vacuum in, it docks and charges most of the time. But it is far from the set and forget vacuum I was hoping for.

Doesn't know when it's stuck when on a tile floor

I had high hopes for this "robot" vacuum. I have owned and used a couple of different models of the Roomba vacuum and one other brand. All of them performed pretty well. The first test with the Hoover BH70800 Quest 800 was disappointing. It was on a tile floor and the vacuum kept getting stuck. It doesn't have enough weight and drive power to recognize that it has run into a wall or cabinet. It would run into a wall and then just sit there with the wheels spinning. Where there were tables with small legs, it would get stuck under the table because it couldn't see the legs (too narrow). Where it ran, it picked up the dirt and dog hair, but it had to have constant supervision to keep it moving about the room. Since the majority of the house has tile and/or wood floors, it makes it less useful.

Has A Certain Charm But Not As Productive As I Had Hoped

We used to have another robot vacuum way back when they first came out. I expected that they would have improved over time but the same drawbacks still exist.

In theory this device would allow me to be doing something else productive while it cleans my carpet/floor. Unfortunately this guy (my children named him DJ and put a little speaker on him while he made his rounds) needs a fair amount of supervision. He frequently gets stuck on and wedged under my furniture and today he managed to repeatedly get stuck against the wall (three times). Not in the corner, mind you, but stuck flat against the wall, I had to give him a shove to bring him back to his senses. He did make his way back to his charging station all by himself and I was proud of him.

I was impressed by how much stuff he picked up off the floor, the collection container was full after his first cleaning job. Of course the collection container is very small. One thing I was very disappointed by was the fact that the directions tell you to empty the collection container and rinse it with water then let it dry for 24 hours before using it again. I don't know about you but that is fairly inconvenient for me.

Yesterday morning I woke up to the sound of "DJ" vacuuming. I wondered if he had turned himself on, but it was my son using it to vacuum his room! This was pretty awesome, never before has he made an effort to vacuum his room. I think this has to count for something...I think homes with children who this this vacuum is "cool" will have better results than those without them.

I downloaded the app to use with the vacuum and when I select the Quest 800 model I get a spinning circle and nothing more happens.

I think of this as a novelty item and less of a tool to help me manage household cleaning tasks.

Functional and control issues...

I've had my eyes on robot vacuums for a while, so when this became available for review, I couldn't wait for it to arrive. Unfortunately, the Quest 800 did not live up to its promise of unattended floor cleaning.

-I'm still NOT sure about whether this device is meant to work on carpet or not. The amazon and Hoover product descriptions online both say carpet and hard floors". The box it arrives in says "hard floors". My experience: It can't make the claimed "seamless transitions" from from hard to carpet surfaces. In my testing, this process resulted only in (1) separation of the rotating side brush from device and (2) it became immobile on rugs.

-Bluetooth? Forget about it. I downloaded the Bluetooth app, and it worked exactly one time. The included remote worked just fine, but the Bluetooth app consistently failed to detect the vacuum.

-Docking station placement requirement. The user guide calls for 4' of clearance on either side of the the docking station. This means you'll need 8' of wall space in immediate proximity to an AC outlet. If you have any concerns for the aesthetics of the room the dock sits in...you won't be leaving it out.

-Related: the vacuum's return to the docking station can only be described as "inelegant", and it is as likely to miss as it is to mate. Do NOT leave any of the docking station power cord exposed at the side, it's likely to have close encounter with the vacuum unit.

Finally: it is slower and less effective than a traditional vacuum directed by the efforts of a human brain and hands. If you have a fastidious floor cleaner human in your house (and my house does!), he or she is not going to like the speed or results that this vacuum delivers.

Take a look at the price, and consider investing instead in your dream upscale vacuum instead.

Disappointing overall.