Samsung SR8845 Navibot review

Despite our best efforts, the floor of Expert Reviews labs is often less than sparkling. With so much kit being unpacked and tested, the carpet tiles are often littered with small screws, cable ties and packing croutons. We were overjoyed then when Samsung offered us an SR8845 Navibot robot vacuum cleaner for review.

This squat, round domestic assistance comes with its own charging bay. It can hoover for up to 90 minutes before finding its way back home for a two hour charging cycle. You can set what times of day you want it to do its rounds, a good thing as it takes it time getting about and is fairly noisy while at work.

It cleans using one central roller-brush and two additional rotary brushes. These stick out from the front edge of either side and let the circular Navibot get into corners. That said, cleaning down the edges of your room isn’t its strong point and you’ll want to whip round them yourself occasionally. Other than that it did a good job of picking up bits and dust.

In our labs it certainly suffered, our fairly new carpet tiles still create quite a bit of fluff, and this quickly filled the small half-litre dust box. Other than that, the fluff caused it no problems and so we believe its claim of been able to handle pet hair. Cable ties were another matter, but we doubt you have too many on your carpet.

Its path-finding looks a little chaotic at times, but when it needs to find its way home to charge it becomes clear it knows where it is. Even then the floor will need to be clear to get good results, and a profusion or chair and table legs will thwart it. It has sensors that stop it falling off edges, and comes with a Virtual Guard unit – which sends out a beam the hoover won’t cross, so you can block off areas you don’t want to be touched.

As well as cleaning our labs, the SR8845 Navibot’s antics amused us. It brought out a touching streak in some of our hard-bitten writers – engendering a sense of maternal anthropomorphism – “No, don’t go there! … Go back to bed, you silly thing”.

Its small capacity and inability to get in corners and awkward spots, make it better suited to those who always want their house looking perfect, rather than those who can’t be bothered to hoover themselves. It would be particularly ideal for keeping large laminate floors free of dust. It’s not cheap admittedly, but we suppose that all depends on how much you value your time and the cleanliness of your home.