Neato Botvac D7 Connected

One of the first things you notice about the Neato Botvac D7 Connected is its high noise level. But once you get used to it, you'll experience a robot vacuum cleaner that gives good cleaning results at a fast speed.

The Neato Botvac D7 Connected is the successor of Neato Botvac D6. They are very similar, however, the D7 version utilizes a “Zoned Cleaning” feature in the app, and the main brush is a bit different.

We have tested the Neato Botvac D7 Connected in accordance with our robot vacuum cleaner testing methodology.

Who is the Neato Botvac D7 Connected suitable for?

• The Neato Botvac D7 Connected is powerful and clean efficiently. This makes it suitable for large households.

Who is the Neato Botvac D7 Connected not suitable for?

• The Neato Botvac D7 Connected is a very noisy robot vacuum cleaner and is not built with object recognition. These two criteria mean that we would not recommend this robot vacuum cleaner for households with pets, or if you expect to be home when it cleans. If this is one of your requirements, we recommend you take a look at the Roborock S7 MaxV instead.
• The Neato Botvac D7 Connected isn’t built with a mop-function, so it is not a suitable choice if you want to mop as well as vacuum. If you are looking for a good robot vacuum cleaner with mop-function, take a look at the Roborock S8, or the Roborock S7 instead.

Navigation

The Neato Botvac D7 Connected is equipped with LiDAR navigation, which is one of the best navigation systems for robot vacuum cleaners. It has a laser navigation tower on the top, which navigates and maps the room quickly. In 1 - 2 cleaning sessions, the robot has mapped your house.

The robot is not equipped with a camera, so it doesn’t have object recognition. This means that it has difficulty navigating around cables and smaller objects.

Object avoidance test

In our object avoidance test the vacuum did a very poor job. We placed 5 items on the floor to see if it could detect and maneuver around them. It only managed to register one object, the rest of the objects it just ran over.

We tested its ability to avoid the following objects:

• A fake poop
• A can
• A piece of cloth
• A rolled up cable
• Dog bowl with water (filled with water)

The vacuum managed to spill all of the water from the dog bowl into the floor.

Based on this result, this is not a robot vacuum we recommend if you have cables lying on the floor, or if you have pets.

App

The Neato Botvac D7 Connected creates an interactive 2D map, which enables you to customize the cleaning; for example, you can select which room to clean, create “No-Go Zones” etc.

The app works satisfactorily, however other robot vacuum cleaner apps we have tested are more intuitive and give more control (for example Roborock’s app is very intuitive).

The map is very accurate and takes 1-2 cleaning sessions to be fully created.

Design

The Neato Botvac D7 Connected is built with a D-shape, whereas, by comparison, most other robot vacuum cleaners are built with a round shape.

The advantages of a D-shaped design is that the main brush is typically wider (which means the robot can cover a larger area), it typically has a larger dustbin, and is better at cleaning into the edges of a room.

However, the disadvantages are that it is easier for the vacuum to get stuck in tight areas and the robot is typically heavier. In our tests, the Neato D7 managed to get out of all tight spaces, but it struggled and its motion became quite violent in some situations, which means it could damage furniture or paintwork.

The Neato Botvac D7 Connected has a large dustbin capacity of 0.7 liters and a 27.9 cm wide main brush. By comparison, the Roborock S6 MaxV has a 17.0 cm wide main brush and a dustbin capacity of 0.46 liters. This means you don’t need to empty the Neato Botvac D7 Connected that often.

Battery

The vacuum could easily clean my 1st and 2nd floor on one charge. Moreover, the battery is powerful enough to clean large households. The battery is a 4200 mAh lithium battery, with an estimated maximum runtime of 120 minutes.

It is built with a “Recharge and Resume” function, which means if it doesn’t manage to clean the entire floor in one cleaning session, it will return to the charge station and finish cleaning when it has recharged.

Cleaning

The Neato Botvac D7 Connected cleans thoroughly, especially in the corners and it cleans quickly (due to its 27.9 cm main brush). However we missed the mop feature, which a lot of competing robot vacuums are built with.

We tested the cleaning ability of the robot vacuum cleaner in three different cleaning tests:

• Parquet floor with 50 gram sand spread out
• Parquet floor with 50 gram rice spread out
• Carpet with 50 gram sand spread out

Test results went as follows:

• Parquet floor, 50 g rice: 49 g collected (98%)
• Parquet floor, 50 g sand: 49 g collected (98%)
• Carpet, 50 g sand: 40 g collected (80%)

Parquet floor cleaning test

The Neato Botvac D7 Connected performed almost perfectly in our parquet floor cleaning test. It did not push the dirt away, as seen with some other robot vacuum cleaners, and it entered the corners well. Our experience is, in general the high-end robot vacuum cleaners do a very good job at parquet floor cleaning, and the Neato Botvac D7 Connected is no exception.

Carpet cleaning test

In the carpet cleaning test the robot vacuum cleaner managed to clean up 40 grams of sand (80%), which is a good result.

Mopping

This robot vacuum cleaner is built without a mop.

Dirt disposal unit

This robot vacuum cleaner comes without a dirt disposal unit. and it is not possible to buy one.

If you want a robot vacuum cleaner with an emptying station, we recommend that you take a closer look at the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra, the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra or the Ecovacs Deebot X1 OMNI.

Size

The Neato Botvac D7 Connected measures:

• Height: 9.96 cm
• Width: 31.9 cm
• Depth: 33.55 cm

It is taller than robot vacuum cleaners with other types of navigation, as it has a laser navigation tower on the top. However, it is sufficiently low-profiled enough to be able to clean under most furniture in the home.

Noise emission

We tested the noise emission of the Neato Botvac D7 Connected in the robot vacuum cleaner’s “Max mode”. We measured the vacuum’s maximum noise emission to be 76.7 dB, which is very loud for a robot vacuum cleaner.

By comparison, a regular vacuum cleaner has a noise emission of about 72 dB.

Conclusion

The Neato Botvac D7 Connected does a very good job when it comes to cleaning performance. The vacuum is very noisy and can display violent motions which ruins the overall experience of the robot vacuum cleaner. Furthermore, the robot comes without a mop-function, which is also a big minus.