Evolution Robotics Mint Automatic Hard Floor Cleaner

Product Description

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The Mint Automatic Floor Cleaner from Evolution Robotics is designed exclusively for sweeping and mopping hard surface floors for you. Using dry and pre-moistened cleaning cloths, Mint picks up the dust, dirt and pet hair that constantly accumulate on floors. Mint's compact design gets into tight spaces, under furniture and into other areas that are hard to reach with traditional mops and sweepers.
Guided by the NorthStar Navigation System cube, Mint tracks where it cleans so it doesn't miss a spot (see larger image).

The easy-to-use controls (see larger image).
Guided by the NorthStar Navigation System, Mint methodically cleans open areas by moving back and forth in straight lines, working around furniture and rugs, and cleaning along baseboards.
Mint is easy to use. Simply attach your cleaning cloth of choice, choose sweep or mop and let Mint clean for you. Since Mint is not a vacuum, there are no bins to empty or filters to replace. So you can enjoy hassle-free clean floors every day.
Intelligent Navigation
The NorthStar Navigation System works like an indoor GPS that helps Mint keep track of where it has been and where it needs to go. Specifically, the NorthStar Cube projects a signal that Mint uses to determine its location. Then as Mint starts cleaning, it builds a map of the area as it goes, marking walls, obstacles and drop offs as it encounters them. After Mint finishes cleaning open areas and around obstacles, it performs a final edge cleaning along walls and furniture and then returns to where it started so you know right where to find it.
The dry (above) and wet (below) microfiber cleaning cloths(see larger image).


Mint can map and clean up to 1,000 square feet either in a large open space or by discovering adjacent rooms. In mop mode, the cleaning area is restricted to 250 square feet to optimize cleaning while the cleaning cloth is wet.
Sweeps & Mops
Mint's dual modes let you easily maintain all your hard surface floors with one device. In Sweep mode, Mint uses a dry sweeping cloth to pick up dust bunnies, pet hair and grit from your floor. In Mop mode, Mint cleans with a pre-moistened cleaning cloth and a special back-and-forth mopping motion to pick up deeper dirt and grime. All it takes to switch modes is a fresh cleaning cloth and a press of a button.
Cleaning Cloths
Mint works with commonly available disposable cleaning cloths or with re-usable microfiber cloths. Mint's specially designed microfiber cloths can be re-washed and re-used hundreds of times. Different cloths have been developed to optimize both sweeping and mopping. Flat white microfiber cloths are ideal for attracting dust and dirt while dry sweeping. Textured grey cloths hold water and help loosen and grab deeper grime when mopping. Mint comes with a starter pack of 1 mopping and 2 sweeping cloths.
What's in the Box
Mint Automatic Floor Cleaner, NorthStar Navigation Cube with 2 C batteries, 2 dry sweeping microfiber cloths, 1 wet mopping microfiber cloth, power adapter, quick start guide, user manual. Backed by a 1 year warranty.
Care Instructions To keep your cloths in good shape for hundreds of hours of cleaning, please follow these laundering recommendations:

• Machine wash warm.
• Tumble dry low or air dry.
• Do not use fabric softener or bleach as these can degrade the cloth fibers over time.

Wet cleaning with microfibers is safe for sealed floor surfaces including tile, vinyl, laminate and sealed hardwood. Disposable pre-moistened cloths are usually safe for the same floor types, but always check the package to make sure they are safe for your floor type.



This review is from: Evolution Robotics Mint Automatic Hard Floor Cleaner, 4200 (Kitchen)
1 year update: Mint kind of works as a complement to roomba, but is not nearly capable enough to replace it. Given that all cleaning robots have reliability problems and failing batteries after a couple years, I recommend skipping mint and investing in a good quality roomba with an extended warranty. The main 2 issues are that Mint requires too much babysitting and fails to pick up enough stuff to be genuinely useful. Maybe if you have no kids and a house with all hardwood floors and transition strips in just the right places then mint will work for you.

In detail: I bought mint because I had 2 roombas that each died after a couple years of light use. All the moving parts coupled with the vacuum blowing stuff around resulted in every crevice of the roomba gumming up with hair and dust until it inevitably broke. The neato appears to have similar troubles. Newer roomba models are reportedly better, but it still makes sense to go with a long warranty I think. The mint doesn't have a vacuum and the cleaning pads are placed in front of the wheels, so it was my hope that the mint would keep going and going. Unfortunately, my mint actually broke after 5 months, before roomba (support was OK, and I got a replacement).

I love that the mint doesn't have a docking station or a scheduler or a remote control- the sort of add-on junk that breaks and complicates the design while not really helping. You need to prep a room and a robot before / after it cleans plus move it around the house to get different levels and over transitions, so I don't see the point in a scheduler or a dock. The mint comes back to where it started after cleaning so you don't have to hunt for it, a great feature that doesn't require placing a docking station.

The silence of the robot is also great, as you can be in the same room and it's a pleasant experience. It's also nice to have a robot that fully covers a space and then does edge cleaning- roomba can be painfully inefficient as it cleans the same spot for the 3rd time while leaving the mess in the corner.

In other words, I really wanted to like the Mint. I wanted it to be the ipad of cleaning robots- to take care of cleaning elegantly and not get gummed up with stuff. Having said that, there's just too many problems with this robot for me to recommend it:

- Larger stuff like cheerios, fluff balls, and pine needles won't get swept up, and small sandy grit won't either. All the stuff that doesn't stick to the pad gets pushed into corners, transition strips, or furniture legs. At the end of a cleaning cycle I find much of the mess isn't really gone, just redistributed.

- You'll need to baby sit this thing as it does each room of the house- it has to see the northstar cube, can't span even the smallest transition strips, and the pads get dirty quickly. Roomba you can just let go and it'll go everywhere.

- The wedge shape of the mint and the double stack design results in it wedging itself into a stuck position fairly often, for instance under my fridge and also under my stove. Unlike roomba, you can't just free it and start it going again- freeing it will cause it to reset it's cleaning cycle, which requires you to redo everything in order to get edge cleaning (the most important part, which only happens at the end of the cycle).

- The charging time is 8 hours and the cleaning time 2 to 3 hours, so don't expect to use this thing to mop more than a couple small rooms per day, or to sweep more than 3 small rooms.

- Unlike roomba, there's no good way to wall stuff off, so you can't clean part of a room or seal off a rug without a pronounced transition strip.

- You'll need to buy more microfiber cleaning pads- a couple cleaning cycles where you use both sides of the cloth and the 3 included ones will need to be run through the wash. Don't buy 3rd party cloths from Amazon as they don't work well.

- The mopping function only works in a small space and relies on a special low-friction mopping pad- it doesn't work with microfiber cloths included or that I bought from Amazon as it can't push them when they're wet. It also is too big to get around a toilet and dries out before covering a larger room.

After 1 month with mint I went out and bought a roomba 400 for $130 at Target since it's compatible with my broken roomba discovery stuff (the 500 series redesigned everything). I'm keeping the mint as a follow on cleaner that goes after roomba. It works pretty well for that as it is better for light cleanup when I'm in the room, while roomba is good for intense cleanup when I'm not around. Still, now I have to deal with 2 robots which is double the problems for maintenance and room proofing and batteries, and I'm not happy about that at all.

I think the ideal robot would be a neato with a 3 year warranty, an edge cleaning brush, and an option to use a wet microfiber cloth over the vacuum inlet and then turn off the vacuum (so it is quiet + mopping). Then you'd only have to deal with 1 robot that did everything.