Samsung has been making robot vacuum cleaners for a while now, and while they haven’t quite gotten to the level of popularity as iRobot’s Roomba line has, it seems that enough people buy them for Samsung to keep making them.
With that in mind we have the latest model of Powerbot vacuum cleaners, the Powerbot VR7000, which Samsung announced this week ahead of CES 2017. The new vacuum is less than 4 inches tall — Samsung claims it’s 28 percent thinner than the previous version — and offers up to 20 watts of suction power (an actual vacuum cleaner benchmark, apparently) on the most powerful model.
But perhaps the biggest addition to the Powerbot VR7000 is Amazon Echo support. This will allow you to operate your vacuum cleaner with voice controls, giving Samsung’s vacuum a feature that the Roomba line doesn’t have. There’s also some new software features that allows the Powerbot VR7000 to more intelligently map out rooms and optimize its cleaning depending on floor type. But really, if you’re getting a Powerbot VR7000, it’s probably so you can verbally command your robotic vacuum minion to clean your floors.
Samsung isn’t giving any pricing or release information on the Powerbot VR7000, but it does intend to showcase it at CES, so it’s possible we’ll get more information next week.
