In the wootiverse, today only and for the next 4 days (or until sold out).
I love my Roomba, but then I live alone (no other people or pets), have short hair, and live in a small condo. So I’m probably the ideal user. As long as I don’t leave things that get stuck in it on the floor, it’s the easiest cleaning I’ve ever done.
I couldn’t find it!
The new 790 is out and is previewed.
There seem to be some Neato detractors in the comments for that as well. Houngan, can you sum up why the Neato is better?
Our Neato has a rug fetish. It spends half its battery life mounting the rug in the living room.
We bought a Neato (last year) as at the time it reviewed better the Roombas consistently. Having said that, its not mapped our open plan downstairs fully and its path around the place seems quite haphazard. Mapping is one of the things its meant to be so much better at than the Roomba as well.
I never understood this Roomba thing. If you need to vacuum then vacuum. But I guess if you need a toy that makes you feel good, get one. Whatever.
Personally, I’d love something like a Roomba, because I have 3 animals and cleaning up all the hair is almost a full time job. I often have to vacuum multiple times a day.
But, that same pet hair would lead me to never get a roomba, because of the hassles involved when dealing with long hair, sounds like they just don’t handle it well.
It enables my core laziness.
I had a dream last night that I bought a Roomba.
Well, I can say why I like it, but having never owned a Roomba I can’t really say why it’s better.
The mapping works for me, though Synth apparently has a different experience. It goes around the edges of the room and eventually carves out a quadrilateral, then stripes through the quadrilateral quickly and then moves on to the next room.
It parks itself.
It has a schedule so it starts automatically.
It detects drops and doesn’t fall.
It can climb 1" bumps by hitting them at a 45 degree angle, which is really cool to watch.
It has friendly R2D2 beeps to tell you things.
Of course I’m using it on hardwood and non-shag rugs without a pet in the house, so maybe it has some drawbacks, but it goes through 1400 sq. ft. of rooms in a little over an hour, usually successfully. Sometimes I have to give it a nudge when I come home if it got confused by a shoe or something but usually it works. You just have to keep cords and loose things off the floor.
Do you really need one of these for a hardwood floor?
Sure, it gets dirty just like anything else, plus the little plastic paddle seems to buff the finish as it goes.
My girlfriend insisted on getting one of these, even though I’m the one who does the vacuuming. To be honest, it’s more work than doing it manually. We don’t have pets or carpet, but the cleaning is just as much work as the bagless vacuums (personally I’ve always thought bag vacuums were the cleanest easiest way to go… bagless just means I have to dismantle the damn thing to get at the dust caked on all the parts the bag would have kept it off).
Anyway, the roomba doesn’t have great battery life, does not map the room efficiently, takes forever and needs to be shepherded around to hit the spots you need it to.
Now that we’re in the UK we’re using a broom and dustbin because our flat is small and manageable. The roomba comes out only to clean the rug once in a bit, corralled by it’s laser towers, and now it’s started to ignore those, too.
My fiancee loves her Roomba, but she uses it rarely (she also sweeps and uses a regular vacuum, as do I). She doesn’t use the border towers and instead relies on tipping chairs over, making lines of shoes, and other such antics to keep it from going where it shouldn’t. Personally, I find it incredibly inefficient since it roams the same areas many times and misses others, as if its internal mapping can’t figure out the place. However, it does seem to pick up a lot of dirt, particularly because there’s a cat involved I expect.
Frankly, I think of it as a novelty more than a useful tool.
This is another silly useless item, like Segways.
The Roomba is 10! It’s limited in usefulness, but it’s still my own personal cleaning robot, and who doesn’t want that?
houngan is right: neato über alles. i love watching it. it’s heavy duty, reminds me of a tank. well engineered. the pathing works and when it spins around the rear doesn’t get jammed on anything. i got some toy infrared goggles and it shoots out infrared beams to look around.
Yes, they work okay, but are too light to get the heavier stuff (blood, brain matter, etc.) out of deeper carpets.
Long live Neato! We got the one of the Pet models, I forget the exact designation.
We named ours Alfred. He does a pretty decent job, if there aren’t too many coords or loose clothing on the floor, he manages to do pretty well. He can even get under our couches, which is nice. Doesn’t fall down stairs and seems to map out rooms fairly well. He does however, tend to not clean corners as well. And occasionally my wife’s long fallen hairs will trip him up, but easy enough to fix.
Overall, it’s a time saver. I can just set him up to vacuum upstairs while we’re all downstairs, or vice versa and he goes to town. When he’s done I can do some quick touch ups on corners and call it good.
Hate to revive this old thread, but better than starting a new one I guess.
Fairly recently I found out I have a dust allergy. Plus, I have 2 cats, and between hair and litter, it seems like I need to vacuum a few times a week, which I am not good about doing. My allergy doctor even suggested one.
So I just ordered a Roomba 960 from Amazon and I am really nervous about it. Deebot’s robots seem to be all the rage lately, but when you get into carpets, not so much. Which makes me even more nervous. I don’t know what it’s called, but I have very dense carpet. You can see footprints in it, and anything that doesn’t move leaves an imprint for weeks, if not permanently. I have no doubt there is all sorts of dust trapped in it.
Reviews are all over the place on them, from terrible to great. The Wirecutter seems to like them though. Plus it sounds like they have gotten better over the years. Part of me thinks I should just invest in a really good vacuum and force myself to vacuuming twice a week. On the other hand if this thing works enough to reduce the need for multiple real vacuums, it might be worth it.
Any thoughts on recent models?