Well after watching a youtube video of a puppy being scared by a Roomba I’ve decided that I might possibly buy one (the Roomba, not the puppy), anyone here have one or a different model and what do they think of it?
I have the Irobot Roomba. Would I purchase it again? Probably not. It works, yes but many times I find it easier to get the broom when the Roomba has been running 30 minutes and still hasn’t traveled to the specks of dirt that made me turn it on in the first place. They are a little loud and are a pain to empty (requires a special tool). Also messy to empty. Additionally, it will pick up electric cords or pieces of rug so you have to examine the area carefully before you turn it on. I would never have it running when I wasn’t at home. All in all, I have no mechanical complaints about it and we’ve had it for over a year. It is more the concept that I don’t find worth the money.
I have a Roomba 560. It works very well but it is best used for daily touchup cleaning for this like crumbs or small pieces of litter on the carpet. You still need to run a full-sized vacuum from time to time to get the deeper dirt from carpet. It works great on hardwood floors. The only problem I have with mine is that it locks itself in the bathroom if I forget to close the door before it starts. Mine runs on a timer when I am at work so I don’t even have to listen to it.
I might get a Neato if my Roomba dies. I have read they have stronger suction and follow a specific cleaning pattern rather than the random movement strategy that the Roomba uses.
Surprised there’s nothing since 2006, but I’ll take your word for it.
I have a Roomba 560 series, the Pet version. Daisy (for tis her name) has been with us for about 5 years I think and we love her. She just pootles around, doing her thing and we empty her and charge her up. She’s especially useful since we moved into a single level, hard floored flat.
Couple of caveats: IMO, particularly if you have pets, the generation of Roomba I have is not good enough to be your only vacuum cleaner. She’s great for the daily sweep that I’m far too lazy to do, but I still like to get the Dyson out at the weekend. We’re also starting to get issues - the docking station has stopped charging her for instance, which just means I have to plug her in to the direct charger.
I’ve looked at replacing her, but they’re limited and ferociously expensive here. When I have a bunch more money though, I’ll definitely do it.
Our latest one (named Steve) also has a joystick. If you want it got get something in particular, you can control it like a video game. Steve is the latest pet version. He’s a little bit easier to empty and clean than the last one we had.
We have wooden floors and use it mostly for pet hair, which otherwise builds up insidiously and is too floaty to sweep nicely. For other things, the broom is often quicker.
They’re good for touch up until they break. And they will break. Hopefully within the warranty, and iRobot is good about replacement within warranty. But, they’ll stop charging on the charging station, and then stop holding a charge for more than a few minutes, and then stop charging at all. After about a year of use. I have one, but I think it’s my last (of four) for this reason.
I ended up with a Roomba 620 and really like it so far. I wonder if Foxy40 has an older model because mine doesn’t have a problem with cords and it doesn’t need a separate tool to empty it; I just pull out the bin and dump it. It’s no messier than dumping the bin from my regular, bagless vacuum. I am impressed with how well it trudges through the thick carpeting in the bedrooms and how it feels around table legs. One thing to think about is whether dining room chair legs are wide enough for it to fit through.
I just replaced my old one with a 630. I’ve got a Golden, and she sheds like crazy. The newer model is much better than the one I had before - bigger bin, better suction so less stuff gets on the rollers. I’ve never had a problem with it missing stuff, not when it is working. It can get trapped, and we take up electrical cords before starting it so it doesn’t get tangled and pull over a lamp or something.
They do break. Our problem has always been the vacuum pump. The good news is that most of the components are shared across product types, so we could use our old virtual walls with our new Roomba, and the charging station is the same. They are also quite modular. When I got a new vacuum pump under warranty it took about five minutes to replace it with just a Philips screwdriver.
It is also easy to take apart so the dog hair that sneaks inside can be removed.
Before I bought it, I looked at the Neato and wasn’t impressed.
My former employer bought one of those. It scared his cat. And I, as housekeeper, was thoroughly uninmpressed with the job it did. It was not an especially powerful vacuum, and it knew nothing of the quirks and issues of his particular floor. (You know, like those places where you need to use the nozzle, or where you have to pick up a phone cord or something.) I thought it was a ridiculously overpriced, not very efficient thing.
Would have been different if the cat liked to ride it.
I bought one for my wife, waste of money , Looks good on tv, but if you want to wait 30 hours for it to do your house where u could do it yourself in 20 min , go for it.
I bought a Dirt Dog. It sweeps instead of vacuums. It was a fun gimmick to impress guests, but I sold it on Ebay after three months to someone who lived in a large bungalow with few thresholds and had three shedding dogs. He loves it.
This.
Don’t run it while you are home–it drives me nuts to see the thing moving around at random and completely miss the specks of dirt that I want it to pick up, untill maybe 45 minutes later it happens to find them, but only has the strength to suck up half of them. Then it continues wandering around the room like it’s drunk, laughing at me all the time, while I go get the broom.
If you let it run when you leave the house, you come home and still have to sweep and vacuum almost the entire house.But you feel like you’re working just as hard , with less results, because you’ll collect less dust.
We love our Roomba. Very simple to use, easy to empty. Sure, it gets trapped in the bathroom once in a while, but overall it’s amazingly adept at handling obstacles.
I think expectations are part of the reason some people might not like it. I don’t see it as a replacement for regular vacuuming, but as a very useful and effective adjunct. We don’t get the regular vacuum out every day at our house, but we do run the Roomba most days and with two dogs it makes a big difference. It gets so much even a short while after regular vacuuming – mostly dog hair – that we shudder to think how we were blissfully living in filth before.
The Roomba is very effective at keeping the house cleaner than if we didn’t have it. That’s because I’m not dragging the regular vacuum out every single day and doing a thorough job with it, but I don’t mind pushing the little button on the robot and letting it do its thing for a while.
Back in the day my housemate brought one home from a yard sale. It was a first generation I’m pretty sure. It didn’t really work that well, but we had hardwood floors and we were two early-20s bachelors so needless to say we didn’t really give a shit what the house looked like.