Today the Does It Work? crew turns its attention to products for the home.
Consumer reporter Betty Lin-Fisher, food writer Lisa Abraham and I put five products to the test for this installment, sometimes working together and sometimes testing on our own.
Here’s what we thought. And be sure to check out readers’ opinions on one of the products — the Mint floor-cleaning robot — in the accompanying story.
Roto Punch
This gadget is an amped-up hole punch, designed to create small holes in leather and fabric and attach snaps and shoelace eyelets. We think this overachieving tool is trying to do too much.
Right out of the gate, we were satisfied with its ability to punch holes in a couple of leather belts, although working with the thicker of the two belts did require some force. Still, the holes were neat and professional-looking, and the process was simple.
We lost a little confidence when we used it to add eyelets to a pair of leather boots. Sometimes it worked fine; sometimes it didn’t quite bend the flanges and connect the pieces the way it was supposed to. We could always fix our mistakes, though, and we could see the tool’s benefit for salvaging shoes that might otherwise go into the trash.
But once we got to the snap function, we got exasperated.
The process was complex and awkward. Just getting all the pieces lined up was hard enough, but trying to keep them in place during the process was flat-out frustrating.
“You almost need multiple people to do this,” Betty observed.
We also thought the product’s packaging was misleading. It shows a picture of someone repairing a snap on a pair of jeans, but the tool is made only for lightweight snaps that would never work on denim.
Lisa joked that if she got a Roto Punch as a gift, she’d regift it — to me.
Thanks a lot.
I’ve used a snap tool from the sewing-notions section of a fabric store, and it was much easier than this contraption.
Bottom line: At $9.88 it’s worth buying just for the hole-making function and maybe the eyelets, but pass it up if you want it for attaching snaps.
Verdicts:
Betty: It Depends
Lisa: It Depends
Mary Beth: It Depends
Mighty Light
This battery-operated LED light has a motion sensor that turns the light on when it detects movement. The light stays on as long as there’s motion within its range, then turns itself off after about half a minute once it stops detecting movement.
It’s little and lightweight, so you could easily attach it to a wall with adhesive strips or screws and plastic wall anchors, all of which are included.
We liked this light when it worked, and it did work most of the time. But when I tested it in my coat closet, it ignored me a couple of times, even when I waved my hands right in front of it. I had to pick it up to get it to turn on.
We also couldn’t figure out why the packaging describes it as “light sensor activated.” As far as we could tell, the device doesn’t respond to the presence or absence of light at all, just motion.
You wouldn’t want to use it as a night light in a child’s room or any other place where you want the light to stay on all night. It’s better for a bathroom, closet or laundry room, where you want a light to come on temporarily and don’t have an outlet.
It’s worth noting that the LED casts a rather ghastly bluish glow, and the light is only about as bright as a typical night light. The unit isn’t exactly attractive, either.
But for the $9.88 price, it’s not a bad little light.
Betty: It Depends
Lisa: Snap It Up
Mary Beth: It Depends
Sift & Toss
Even if you love cats, you probably don’t love cleaning the litter box.
Betty and I both have kitties in our households, so we were hopeful about the Sift & Toss cat box liners she picked up on sale.
You line the box with several nested, disposable mesh liners before adding the litter. Then, instead of scooping out the waste, you’re supposed to be able to just lift out one of the liners, let the clean litter sift back out and throw away the liner and its yucky contents.
Easy, right?
Not really.
Betty discovered that her cats’ paws would catch on the extra liners when they covered their waste, bringing the liners to the surface and letting some of the waste slip between the liners. And when the cats’ aim was off, they would wet layers of the liners with urine.
The result was one icky mess.
Betty was so frustrated that after just a couple of days, she threw out all the liners.
Even it they’d worked, we wouldn’t have liked throwing away a liner every time we cleaned the litter box. Even at the $5 sale price we paid, that’s almost 36 cents a liner. And if we’d paid the store’s full price of $14.95, the liners would have cost more than a buck apiece.
As Betty put it, “I scoop for free.”
Verdicts:
Betty: Skip It
Lisa: Skip It
Mary Beth: Skip It
LavaSeat
There’s hope for the chronically cold, and it’s called the LavaSeat.
This portable stadium seat, which sells for around $30, has a microwavable insert that’s supposed to stay warm for up to six hours. While we didn’t have the option of waiting for winter so we could test it under the harshest conditions, we can tell you it retained its heat through football games in some pretty lousy fall weather.
Straight out of the microwave, it’s almost too hot for comfort. But assuming you’re warming it to take somewhere, there’s plenty of time for it to cool to the point of being pleasantly toasty.
Betty got several chances to try it out during her son’s football games. Her only problem was wrestling it away from the other family members who’d claim it whenever she’d leave her seat.
We like its design, too. It folds in half and has a convenient handle.
Verdict:
Betty: Snap It Up
Lisa: Snap It Up
Mary Beth: Snap It Up
Mint
When I was a kid watching The Jetsons, I dreamed of having a robot to take care of the household chores.
The Mint isn’t exactly Rosie, but it does promise to clean your hard-surface floors for you.
This little gadget holds either a dry cloth for sweeping or a moistened cloth for damp-mopping. Aided by a navigational cube that sits on a surface such as a counter or table, it roams your floor, cleaning in specific patterns and constantly refiguring its route as it bumps into things. (Its rubberized bumper strip keeps it from dinging your furniture or walls.)
We first tried the sweeping function, which Lisa likened to an automatic Swiffer. We weren’t impressed. The Mint picked up some loose dirt, but because it’s not a vacuum, it didn’t get it all.
I sprinkled about a half-teaspoon of sugar on my floor as a test. The Mint picked up some, but it pushed the rest around and left streaks of sugar behind.
We fared better when we used it for damp mopping. Despite our concerns that it wouldn’t apply enough elbow grease, the Mint did a surprisingly good job on my wood kitchen floor. Its back-and-forth scrubbing motion seemed to get up the dirt and sticky spots.
Still, it had quite a few shortcomings. It couldn’t work its way into tight spaces, such as the area under a table when the chairs were in place. It took nearly two hours to clean my kitchen floor and adjacent hallway, draining the battery and requiring a long recharging before I could use it in my laundry room.
The Mint also needed baby-sitting. I had to rescue it when it got stuck on one of my floor registers, stop it a couple of times to remoisten the cloth, redirect it to a narrow part of my laundry room that it didn’t find on its own and restart the directional cube after it stopped working inexplicably.
And even though we tried to keep an eye on it, we weren’t convinced the Mint reached every area of the floors we tested it on. It’s supposed to finish the job by making one last pass around the edges of a floor, but I never saw it do that.
The $199.99 cost was a drawback for us, too. It’s cheaper than a maid, but a lot more expensive than a broom or a mop.
I liked this product as a damp cleaner more than Betty and Lisa did, but I think the technology needs to be improved.
Still, I have to admit the Mint was kind of fun to watch, continually stopping to back up or pivot as it felt its way around a room.
It’s like an expensive pet, Lisa noted. “It’s more like Astro than Rosie.”
Verdict:
Betty: Skip It
Lisa: Skip it
Mary Beth: It Depends
Have you seen an advertised product and wondered if it really lives up to its claims? You can suggest items to be reviewed by Lisa Abraham, Mary Beth Breckenridge and Betty Lin-Fisher by sending email to labraham@thebeaconjournal.com or calling 330-996-3737, mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3756 or blinfisher@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3724.