Does anyone have any experience with this robotic vacuuming gadget? It looks so cool, but I have doubts as to how effective the thing is. Anyone know?
TIA
Since you’re looking for opinions, let’s waltz your “roomba” question over to IMHO.
samclem GQ moderator
These people seem to like it a lot.
Sara loves her roomba…
I have a roomba. I love my roomba. It has it’s own little personality. As far as being effective, it is for me. But it was never, ever intended to take the place of a regular vacuum. I put it in a room to sweep up dust and dog hair, which it does, but it won’t deep clean like my vacuum cleaner. If you want it for that job, you’ll be disappointed. If you want it to do daily sweeping, or spot cleaning, you’ll like it.
True story.
Roombas make all of these cute little sounds, which kinda makes you think of them as little critters. At least I do. So once right after I got mine, I put it to work in the laundry room. I closed the doors so it would stay in that room and as I walked away, I realized that I had left the lights on so that it wouldn’t get lonely. In my defense, as soon as I realized that, I went back and shut the lights off. But I did feel a little funny about leaving it in the dark… 
I would probably love mine if I had wall to wall carpeting instead of bare floors with area rugs. It gets caught on the rug fringe and I have to rescue it.
Have you tried tucking the fringe under before setting the Roomba loose?
I think I read that in the manual.
I love my Roomba. The other day I forgot to turn on the magic wall & found out that it really does successfully avoid falling down the stairs. I was so proud!
I bought a Roomba. It sounded great in theory. In practice, it was the most disappointing piece of crappola I ever owned. It would get stuck on and under everything. It was more work to prepare the room for the Roomba than it would be to just vacuum it.
There were battery charging problems and the company sent out a fix. Well, it “fixed” the battery right into oblivion. I ended up throwing the whole thing and everything associated with it into the trash. Total waste of money.
If you live in one room with no rugs, no furniture and only dust on the floor you might find it entertaining. Otherwise, forget it. It would be easier and a lot less aggravating to fall in love with your (non-electric) toothbrush.
Mine works good on hardwood floors picking up dirt and dog hairs.
But it broke awhile back and it was a pain. I had to tear the thing apart and try all kinds of stuff before tech support would give me a return number. And every time I called tech support I had to convince them that I had already torn it apart. I had to pay for the shipping to return it to them, and it was only after I harshed them soundly that they agreed to ship it back 2nd day delivery rather than three week delivery.
Beware.
I don’t know, I don’t find my own vacuuming to be that big a chore for me personally.
Now, find me a device that will go through rooms, pick our belongings off the floor and put them away so that I can come vacuum afterwards, and now you have a great product!
Amen brother. I don’t mind vacuuming, it is the picking up that I hate.
I got one last Christmas, and I’m still using it, so that’s something.
You do have to “Roomba-proof” the room, which can be easy or hard, depending. Any wires that are running on the floor need to be shielded or raised up, otherwise they’ll be sucked up. And if you have anything that could act like a ramp, the Roomba will probably run up and get stuck. And it tends to bang into furniture harder than you would prefer.
Given that, I only use it in my bedroom. It gets under the bed way better than I could, and there aren’t any wires or things to worry about. And it does a fantastic job of vacuuming around piles of dirty clothes and shoes and such. OTOH, I don’t use it in my living room. It goes under the couches, of course, and I really need to run my stereo wires under there. Maybe if I get motivated someday to get cable runs I will rethink this, but not worth the effort at the moment.
Hmmmmmmm, very interesting. I think that is thing works on some low pile not-so-dirty floors, but the wear and tear that my livingroom gets is just too much for the state of the art right now. When these things put out more power I will get one.
Thank you, my people.
Yeah, that was exactly my experience. My sofas are exactly the wrong height so it got stuck beneath them. And it couldn’t handle my fluffy wool rug. The wires under my desk are a nightmare.
I still have it tho’. I keep imagining that one day I’ll get really organized and Roomba proof everything…