LG Hom-Bot Turbo+
Decent suc on for cleaning. Cleverly avoids obstacles and ledges. Most a#rac ve bot. Can’t schedule individual days. Likes to mount things.
The LG Hom-Bot Turbo+ is the best looking bot in this shootout, and it even comes in three different colors. It also ships with a couple of unique features, which allow you to use the bot’s camera for remote control and as a security webcam.
The Smart ThinQ app, however, needs a little work. Right out of the box, I had trouble setting up the bot — I discovered that it couldn’t connect to networks that had names or passwords with special characters.
After a few days however, it was clear how smart the bot actually is. After getting stuck in a few corners at the beginning, it seemed to have learned to avoid them. It cleverly avoided dropping down the short ledge into my toilet, something the iRobot Roomba 980 liked to do. The Hom-Bot Turbo+ also managed to avoid crawling into the bot-trap that is my sofa.
This might make the Hom-Bot Turbo+ a pretty good choice, except that the app can’t let you schedule speci c days for cleaning; you can only select between ‘daily’ or ‘once.’ In contrast, I could set the Roomba 980 to only clean on weekdays, and skip the weekends.
While the Hom-Bot Turbo+ navigates more methodically than the Roomba 980, I found that it didn’t have as much suction power. It left more debris behind, and even spread a bit of debris throughout the house (things get stuck in its brushes and then dislodge). The bin is difficult to empty, because dirt can drop out from its two sides as you open the top.
While it avoids dropping down ledges, it does like to mount things; it tried to escape from my kitchen, mount my bookshelf, and runs over my shoes. It can clean carpets, but not those with tassels — it got tangled almost immediately with the one in my living room.
The Hom-Bot Turbo+ comes with a HomeGuard feature, which lets you position the bot and set its camera to watch for motion. If it detects movement, the bot’ll snap a series of photos and sends them to your smartphone. I’m not sure it’s a better option than a dedicated webcam, but the feature is there. The only caveat is that the bot can’t be too far from its charging station in HomeGuard mode.