I purchased an iClebo Smart in September 2010 after doing a lot of research in to robot vacuums. As they are a reasonably new item to the market, I decided to purchase from an Australian dealer is case things didnt go to plan with a fauly or not up to standard item. Unfortunately this is something I would come to regret.
The iClebo itself is a fairly well made unit (apart from one item I will mention later ). The " smart " model incorporates an inbuilt webcam type camera that takes a picture of your roof and walls so it knows where it has been and where it has to go. The "home" model doesnt use a camera but a series of pre determined patterns which may vacuum the same area anywhere from 2 - 10 times. The " smart " model uses this pattern in " carpet " mode.
I received the unit in a reasonable amount of time when ordering, but had to wait for it to arrive in Australia from Korea so I can only assume Alpha Robot doesnt keep stock but rather " drop ships " - placing an order after you pay them.
Generally, a full charge will get you around 2 hours of vacuuming. I have a large house, so only use the iClebo in my small front lounge room, hallway and family room. See the photos below of the flooring tested on - hard wood flooring and short pile carpet.
Initially the iClebo Smart worked well, certainly from a robotic perspective it was able to get around the cleaning area with any real problem, obviously you will need to remove any objects from the floor before hand that might get caught up in its spinning brush.
In December I contacted Alpha Robot to let them know the following :
Originally Posted by Email to Alpha Robot
After a couple of weeks use, the iClebo Smart wasnt doing its job. On the hard wood floor, instead of removing items it would run over the top of them and shoot them out the back. The rubber bin blade looked to be the culprit and Alpha Robot sent another :
After replacing the rubber blade, the result was instant. The machine was back to working as normal. But not for long, after only a few vacuums we were back to square one. Alpha Robot admitted " there is an issue with this " but claimed no one had it happen after a few vacuums. They stated they would send another blade but if it happened again this quickly I would have to give them my phone number or have them inspect my house.Originally Posted by email from Alpha Robot
I then sent the photos of my floor to Mark as requested, where he was quick to spot an aluminium seperating strip of " unusual nature " which he was quick to blame. He then sent me another blade that was a different color to the previous one. Again, same problem, rubber wears out, vacuum doesnt vacuum. This time, I ensured the robot did not cross the seperating strip at all. Exactly the same result.
So after 3 rubber blades wearing out in a short period of time, I asked Mark for a refund.
In a nutshell, as soon as the rubber has the slightest wear on it it will not vacuum items off the floor. Mark admitted this problem on a number of ocassions :Originally Posted by email to Alpha Robot
However asking for a refund on a product that doesnt work doesnt go down well with Mark. Even though he admits numerous times that there is an issue with these blades wearing out, he offers me only 80% of the purchase price because " you have had it for 5 months ". Seemingly it doesnt matter to Mark that most of that 5 months has involved a non working product.it seems there may be some blades that lose a 2 – 3 mm strip off the edge
Unfortunately from this point, I havent used my iClebo Smart, its sitting in the corner with 3 worn out bin blades. Interesting Mark now claims on another
public forum " he offered to supply new bin blades for the life of the product " yet there was no mention of this when I asked for a refund because I did not intend to be responsible for paying for new parts when the warranty ended.
Unfortunately I cant recommend the iClebo nor can I recommend Mark from Alpha Robot. His claims I used it too much by vacuuming once a day border on hilarity. I had very high hopes for iclebo, and whilst it does work well with a new rubber strip on it, you can guarantee it will only be working for a few vacuums. The " 2-3 " ml strip that Mark mentioned wearing off is enough to render the iClebo unusable on a hard flat floor. Clearly until iClebo fix this issue, you are wasting your money.
I did originally intend on writing a substantial review but have had to put it off for months while dealing with Alpha Robot so have made it alot shorter.
For anyone wanting to try another brand of robot vacuum, Roomba seems to have a good name and can be bought from major stores like Harvey Norman. I wouldnt expect you would have the same warranty issues that I did if you bought from a large professional retailer.
Edit : Forgot to also mention that attempts to contact Yugin Robot directly failed. They have a number of dead contact email addresses and when I did find one that didnt bounce I got no reply.
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