I am loving my new robotic vacuum cleaner! I did some research on Amazon and bought an inexpensive one with great ratings. I went into this very skeptically, but we have 3 dogs and one of them is a German Shepherd who produces lots of falling hair. I should have been vacuuming daily, but fell short. I maybe was vacuuming twice a week. I hoped the robotic vacuum would help me out. It has not disappointed. I can have that running while I clean the bathrooms, kitchens, dust, etc. It has cut my cleaning time in half. I run it every day. It goes under the beds and most other furniture. It’s just slightly too high to get under the couch but that’s fine. It looks like a big bug scurrying around with it’s feelers outstretched! We call it Tiki (it’s part of it’s brand name).
Anyone else have good or bad comments?
So what brand/model is it?
When the original Roomba first came out, I figured I’d have one at some point, but every time I saw them I just figured it was a novelty and probably not worth the money. About a year ago I got a Shark AI robot vacuum. I love it, I should have bought one ten years ago.
Honestly, I think the only real gripe I have is that I wish you could tell it what order to work in. But that’s mostly just so I can plan around it a little bit. For example, if I’m cooking dinner, I’d rather it start in my living room so it’s in some other area of the house when I’m eating and I don’t have to listen to it while I’m watching TV.
Actually, one other thing: I wish it would do the perimeter of a room (as well as the perimeter of any objects in the room) and then start going back and forth. It can sometimes take a bit of time for it to get right up to the wall, move over, turn around and head back. If it did the perimeter first, it could use that clean area to swing around a lot faster.
TLDR: I’m really happy with mine. Here’s the one I have.
Another thing. I’m also surprised that it can keep track of where it is when it gets hung up on something and the wheels spin under it. I assume that’s the AI part allowing it to look/feel around and figure out where it is, but I’m still surprised. It seems to have to get really lost before it needs to go find it’s home base again and even that’s usually because I flipped it over to pull a cord or something out of it.
We have an older Shark which we had just replaced its battery. I send it out maybe two to three times a week. It keeps the rabbit hair mostly under control.
I have an odd shaped, single floor house, live in a sandy area, and have a LOT of animals. We have 3 self-emptying iRobot Roombas (all reconditioned) and they are alternately the best thing EVar, and annoying as hell. The do a great job of keeping the yang to a dull roar, and as I prefer to be barefoot I really like a not-gritty floor. But, they do require a fair amount of maintenance as they get kind of gunked up easily, especially with cat yak here and there. Overall though I love them, even if they are a bit temperamental.
I love our two roombas. For the reasons others have stated. They gets= under a lot of things we probably wouldn’t get to. I’m amazed every time how much it picks up, even when I didn’t think the floors were very bad. I don’t like the noise, so we turn it on when we leave the house.
How do they self-empty?
They drive up to their docking station and the dock sucks out the debris into a bag.
Yes, it’s a specific model (mine is the i3?) that comes with a tower type docking station. Thing is LOUD when it empties, but the little-seeming bags hold a lot more than you’d think.
I’ve had four robovacs at this point.
A fairly early-model Roomba without cameras, etc. (500 series). Completely worthless. It would get stuck all the time, could not navigate through all the rooms in my place, etc. Even with the magnetic keep-out strips, which were themselves annoying. Just vastly more trouble than it was worth.
A Neato robot from several years ago (Botvac D5). Much, much better than the Roomba and actually a net benefit. Had LIDAR navigation and did a pretty good job in mapping out my rooms. Not perfect–it couldn’t see dark surfaces very well, like my black couch–but it wasn’t a big deal most of the time.
A Braava jet m6 mopping robot. From iRobot again, but with a camera and substantially better navigation than the Roomba. It had an easier time through since my wood floors cover much less area than carpets. Still, no significant complaints other than manually cleaning the pads.
A Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra. Pretty much top of the line when I bought it a couple of years ago. Vacuuming+mopping, cameras, LIDAR, self-emptying dustbin, self-cleaning mop, etc. Fantastic. Almost never gets stuck (if it does, it’s almost always a cat toy or something that it sucked up). Mop isn’t as good as the Braava, but good enough (it would work better if I used cleaning solution, but I pretty much only use water now). It was expensive but is much better than all previous models combined.
I had an OG Roomba. Sure, it was really expensive, but it did what was advertised and did it well.
Don’t remember any magnetic anything, just infrared beams that you could set up. You are correct that there were no cameras, but that was a deliberate design choice. It therefore took a relatively long time to clean a room, but the idea was that you could leave the robot to it.
You’re right; the Roomba had the lighthouses. Themselves annoying since they ate D (or C?) cells. Must have been the Neato that had the magnetic strips. The LIDAR wasn’t quite accurate enough for some keep-out zones (like the little bump between the floors and the stone ledge in front of my fireplace).
The Roomba could allegedly move between rooms but in practice not so much, at least if the layout was in any way complicated. My condo has a somewhat unusual layout and the random-bounce method was virtually worthless. The Neato only had a little trouble and the Roborock no trouble at all.
I absolutely love my Roomba! I have an i3 named Roscoe. He’s a few years old, so he doesn’t have a lot of fancy features, but he does an excellent job with keeping up with dog hair, and I really don’t have to break out the actual vacuum cleaner very often.
This is my second Roomba, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be getting another iRobot product when I’m ready to upgrade.
I’ve got one of those myself, or one very like it.
It’s great- it maps your house on the initial discovery run, then refines the map as it goes so that ideally it always knows where it is. It’s able to be scheduled to run whenever you like- ours comes on at midnight and vacuums most of the house.
You can also define each room or part of rooms separately, allowing you to say… specifically set the bot to go vacuum a set of rooms. Or you can have it spot clean a 6’x’6 square. And you can define no-go zones that it won’t enter, so if your kids have Legos out everywhere, you can just define their room as a no-go zone, and it’ll avoid it.
The only real complaint I have is that it is kind of pissy about things like legos or other little things like that, as well as things like candy wrappers. Stuff that kids leave around sometimes. That’ll clog it up and it’ll typically just stop and cry for help.
And it’s a lot of fun to watch on our Wyze cameras when we’re out of town. The infrared LIDAR shows up on the cameras’ night vision and the thing looks like a tiny UFO roaming the house, flashing and illuminating everything it comes near.
We have multiple cats and dogs and used Neato and Braava. It breaks my heart when they run into things.
At one point, they all packed their bags and left in the middle of the night. David Paulides over at Canam Missing is still looking for them. I guess we have too many pets.
We recently purchased a Roborock from Amazon. It’s a vacuum and mop combo. My husband spends a lot of time watching it on the app. Overall, it’s a great investment.
Does it have to map an area to avoid it? I have it doing all but one room, as that room is too cluttered with random stuff and lots of small things on the floor. When I first had it map the house, I closed that door on the assumption that, without it knowing that room exists, it would just skip it. However, if I leave that door open while it’s running, it still tries to get in.
I suppose what I should do is leave the door open, but put up some type of barricade just inside the door and let it remap the house. Then it’ll find that room (or what it can see of it), and I can block it from there. Maybe.
If you’d prefer, it can be hacked so bumping into things will cause it to swear as if it’s in pain.
Of course you have to name your vacuum. Mine is Vinnie. He has googly eyes attached.
I’ve learned that Vinnie is much more than a gimmick. He does good work. we have no pets and, I’ve always assumed, a relatively dust-free home. Vinnie works pretty much every day and he always ends with much more stuff in his belly than you might guess. He’s even found a few missing earrings.
I replaced his battery once. Easy and pretty inexpensive. I also do maintenance every 6 months - new filter and brushes.
Absolutely worth the investment.
mmm
As I understand it, they’ll explore new areas, even if you’re not doing an explicit discovery run.
What you could do I think (not entirely sure) is maybe just clean out a small area and make a boundary with books or something to make it seem like a very small room to the bot, let it map that, and then set that up as its own no-go zone. It probably won’t even go in there after that, based on my experience.
So…like this?
In any case, it’s not really that big of a deal. I just close the door as I’m walking around to make sure everything is off the floor before I start it.