Review of Koolvac KV1

Mart · Joined: 06 Dec 2004 Posts: 34 Location: Canada

My Roomba red passed away a couple weeks ago. At first I thought it was just a dead battery so I bought a new one but the battery was not the problem. I live in Canada and here the Roomba are more expensive then in USA so I didn't really have the money to buy a new unit as custom and shipping fees are very expensive. I also spent $70 on a new battery so I didn't want to put more money in a Roomba. So I searched for alternative and I came across the Koolatron Koolvac for $99 cnd at costco.ca. Hey! this is affordable and I decided to give it a try as I know Costco will take it back if I'm not satisfied. I received the Koolvac yesterday. The Koolvac is a copy of the first generation of Roomba and even my APS battery can fit in the Koolvac.

First impression

My first impression when I took it of the box is that the Koolvac seems to be built with cheaper materials than my old Roomba and seems fragile. The side brush and brush guard are cheaper than Roomba. The filter and dust bin are much smaller on the Koolvac but the rest of the unit look very similar to Roomba. The box contains the robot, a wall charger, 3 air filters and a manual.

One thing I don't like is that you need to unscrew the brushes to clean them and I think it will be a pain in the neck. Also getting parts seems to be a challenge.

Performance

At first I plugged it in the wall for 16 hours to be sure the battery would be fully charged. What I don't like is that there is no light telling you the status of the charge so I don't know if it's charging or even if it is fully charged.

I then put the robot in the middle of my kitchen and press on the LARGE button to start it. As the old Roomba you can choose between S, M or L room. The robot then start to turn just like the Roomba and went everywhere. What I noticed is that it often goes along the wall and under the kitchen cabinets and doesn't go that often across the room which I find annoying because this is where I have the most pet hair to clean. It also tends to go at the same place many many times before going else where and it can turn around a chair 10 times before changing direction. It also got stuck under my fridge door but I think my roomba would have done the same thing because it's a new fridge. I tried my Roomba's virtual wall but it didn't work, too bad as it is a good tool.

So I can say the behaviour of the Koolvac is way under performance of a Roomba but it is much quitter. The noise level is acceptable with the Koolvac as I can stay in the room and do something else. With my Roomba I couldn't stand the noise level.

One positive point of the Koolvac is his cleaning ability. Even if it takes time to cover the surface it sucked lot of things and did his job pretty well just as my Roomba was. I only have hardwood floors and tile so I can't tell how it works on carpet.

Conclusion

The Koolvac is certainly not perfect and behaves differently then my Roomba but it basically does what it needs to do: CLEAN my floor so I don't have do it :-) Yes it can be frustrating to see it turn around a chair a few times or go over the same spot a many times but at the end the job is done. I just have to go else where and I won't notice his behaviour. There are some irritating things I don't like from the Koolvac such as no light indicator for the charge and the screwed brushes but I will give it a try for a couple weeks and see how it goes. Don't forget that it is a $99 cnd robot so overall I can say that I'm satisfied so far. I would recommend it for everyone that would like to have a robot vacuum cleaner at a good price.

Look: 3/5
Performance: 4/5
Price: 5/5
Overall: 4/5

Mart · Joined: 06 Dec 2004 Posts: 34 Location: Canada

Some more info on my new Koolvac: pictures and video added.

1- Koolvac and Roomba side by side #1

2- Koolvac and Roomba side by side #2

3- Underneath the Koolvac

4- Koolvac, Dust bin and air filter

5- A close view of the "small" dust bin

6- Hey, my APS battery fits in the Koolvac!

7- Video of the Koolvac in action

geekgranny · Joined: 25 Jul 2006 Posts: 1775 Location: Dallas Texas USA

Thanks for the review and pictures Mart.

For sure I'm glad you are not without a floor 'Bot. As you noted, the Koolvac appears to be a clone of the first generation Roombas. I still have two of mine that do an occasional run to keep them "happy". The other one, on loan (yes I gave her a Discovery and a DirtDog and she still uses "silver" too) is in full service with my daughter. They still do a great job of cleaning the floors. The only issue I experience is the more difficult cleaning of them and the reduced bin size and smaller filter surface. Otherwise, with in an environment that is far cleaner than mine could ever be I would think anyone would be very happy with the Koolvac's performance. I was thrilled with my First Generation Roomba Silvers for a very long time. :D

roombareview · Joined: 25 Dec 2003 Posts: 721

Great review Mart, thanks!

A couple of notes. Yes, this is a clone of the original Roomba, and as such it performs almost identically to the original Roomba. The original Roomba was absolutely capable of performing an adequate cleaning - after all, we built this site because we loved the original Roomba so much! :)

For a detailed comparison of how the original model Roomba compares to the new generation, take a look at the original roundup review I did over 2 years ago:

http://www.roombareview.com/reviews/roundup.shtml

As you can see, the original Roomba Pro Elite performed best on bare floors, and not nearly as well on carpet. Additionally, unless you can buy it at a substantial savings over even an entry level Roomba 400, it really wouldn't be worth it. Even the lowly Roomba 400 is superior to it in every way.

And finally, keep in mind that the Koolvac is a blatant ripoff of iRobot's intellectual property. This is not an authorized clone, and in fact iRobot took Koolatron to court in 2005 and successfully had it banned for sale in the United States.

Regards,
Craig

Tizzy · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 29 Location: netherlands

I came across this post searching for Koolatron as we're Pro Elite users still going strong after 4 years of weekly use who recently finally (besides the battery which I upgraded with more powerfull cells about a year ago) needed some parts which are hard to come by these days.

The Koolatron MB we received turned out not to be compatible at all. Gracefully tho we received a minor discount on the purchase. Thanks Chris!

Be aware tho, all series produced after the ProElite have parts which are almost but not quite compatible to the ProElite (and earlier), eg wheeltracks and wheelbases basically dont fit under the cover and neem some serious twiddling and tweaking to produce even lopsided results. I'm sure this extends to other parts as well.

Might be time to start thinking about getting a newer model you say, but to be honest it looks like we'll be ProEliting for a couple years more for sure..

Stryfe76 · Joined: 22 Sep 2008 Posts: 4

More Koolvac fun! I bought one off of ebay and just got it home today.

Has anyone noticed that the battery on the koolvac doesn't have the contact for the temp sensor? I found this out when trying to charge the battery in my Red 410. It wouldn't acknowledge that a battery was plugged in. I thought it was a dead batt as it showed about 7V with the DMM. I charged it in my old silver 1st gen for a few hours then tried again and no go. Thats when noticed that there was a contact missing on the side of the batt and also in the koolvac. I opened it up and wired in a 10k resistor with a contact made out of extra brass shim like the Create battery case Li-Ion mod and it's charging on the red now.

It also has dual charging ports one fits the original Roomba wall-wart and the other takes my fast charger. The green LED lights with the FC but, not with the wall-wart. Not sure what the original charger looks like I didn't get one with the koolvac.