Is anyone here an aficionado of robot vacuum cleaners?

[Dave Gray]

Before I go deep into it on here, I have been interested in a robot vacuum cleaner for a long time, but there's a high barrier to entry and I really don't know what my needs are or what I should look out for.  Is anyone here passionate and can give me some pointers?

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

They all automatically suck.  

[Spider-Dan]

I bought a Roomba from Costco about 5 years ago.  The model I got (i8) will create a map of your home the first time it runs, then you label each room and can tell it where you want it to vacuum.

It has worked... fine?  There's been a couple of times where I've had to troubleshoot it simply spinning in circles, either by rebooting, or by making a new vacuum schedule.  I did specifically get it from Costco because I wanted their lifetime warranty, and I wasn't sure how durable it would be.

[Dave Gray]

So, like....should I buy one?  Is it worth the cost?  Does it make a noticeable difference? Does it eliminate the need to vacuum for real or just serve as a stop-gap?

How does it deal with thresholds, closed doors, etc?

[Spider-Dan]

How often do you vacuum now?  Are you satisfied with the results from manual vacuuming?

On a single-pass, my Roomba isn't quite as thorough as a manual vacuum, but it's trivial to instruct it to do a second pass on high-traffic areas.  Most of my house is hard flooring where the Roomba does better.  I do make sure to turn lights on (it must be able to see to navigate) and clear the floor of obstacles before I send it on a run, and I don't even bother having it clean my office because of all the floor obstructions, but it does the rest of the house satisfactorily.  However:

1) I don't know if I would bother buying one for a multi-level home, as you would have to both carry it between floors, and have a solution (such as the manufacturer's laser barrier accessories) to keep it from tumbling down stairs.
2) I don't have kids in my house, and the performance would obviously be affected by the increased traffic.
3) I purchased the unit with the base that automatically empties the robot after each run, and I've only had to empty the base once in 5 years.  Having to manually empty the robot itself would certainly be much more annoying.

For the record, I paid $685 out the door in February 2021.  I was in the middle of (what turned out to be) an extremely expensive flooring upgrade at the time of purchase, so I wanted to "protect my investment" as it were.

[Dave Gray]

I don't really vacuum at all, as an ongoing thing.  That's part of what my wife handles, mostly.  I will spot clean if there's a dirty area I'm specifically cleaning or if I've spilled something.

But we have had a cleaning lady come through every couple of weeks and that stopped relatively recently.  I have 4 short-hair cats, plus we have a lot of in and out dirt, as well as I have kids.

So, just --- dirt, cat litter, hair...that kind of stuff.

I don't really expect this to take over entirely for traditionally vacuuming if we are cleaning, but to just maintain the day to day.

My house is one story, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect that stuff will be picked up or uncluttered.  There are just too many people and too many variables for that.

[Spider-Dan]

I wouldn't expect it to, say, do a decent job vacuuming kids' rooms if there's stuff all on the floor.  They need a certain minimum amount of open space to be effective.

[CF DolFan]

We have 3 Golden Retrievers and a cat so we have to constantly vacuum. My wife has had Roomba (sometimes 2 at a time) and other brands but we have been using a Roborock daily for the last couple of years. It has easily outperformed all of the others we have had. We still have to vacuum once or twice a week but for the most part, the Roborock keeps the whole house in pretty good shape.

[Dave Gray]

I wouldn't expect it to, say, do a decent job vacuuming kids' rooms if there's stuff all on the floor.  They need a certain minimum amount of open space to be effective.

I specifically don't want it going into the kids' rooms.  Just common areas, hallways....big spaces to big up cat-hair tumbleweeds, dust/dirt in walkways, cat litter that got flung from the box.

[Fau Teixeira]

i really want the robotic lawn mower

[Dave Gray]

Update:

I bought a robot vacuum cleaner from the thrift store for $20.  It's about 10 years old and retailed for around $400.

It actually works really well.  I'm sure there have been big advancements since then, but for what I need, it's been really nice.  The battery runs out faster than it did a decade ago, I'm sure and it rarely finds its way home to the base, but by and large, it does its thing and reduces general dirt and pet hair in walkways.  It is not a replacement for sweeping and I find that I'm actually sweeping more to free grit from the corners.  But the house is cleaner and it's fun.

I am pleased and I'm experimenting with unleashing it in different areas.  Tomorrow, I'm going to try to have it roam in the garage.

[SCFinfan]

Oh, you're in my wheelhouse now.

If you're willing to spend the cash, I'd say Narwal Flow or Flow 2 (which recently came out). Obscenely expensive, but excellent at what it does, and durable. Uses camera-based nav system over LiDAR, so there may be privacy issues, but I haven't noticed anything through the app (no weird references to anything I recently said in banner ads, no weird references to types of furniture, etc).

It also mops, and mops superiorly. The bathroom floors at my firm get disgusting from the staff and client foot traffic. But they are pristinely cleaned every weekend without me doing anything except spending the money, setting up the device, and scheduling it.

One downside, if you're not using this in a workplace setting, like I am, you can't have an employee dump the dirty water and re-add the clean. That can be a little gross, but it's no worse than actually spending the time to clean the floors.

[Dave Gray]

So, second update -- I love this thing.

It's imperfect.  It gets stuck sometimes, doesn't have a ton of battery.  I run him daily for 30 minutes and then I will sometimes just spot drop him at other times in the day.  Sometimes he finds his way back home, other times not.

But for $20, it's like the best money I've ever spent and it's fun.  Also, the amount of hair that it picks up is kind of astounding.  I don't really know where it's coming from.  I assume that it's getting underneath stuff and grabbing all the hair from there, but I just can't say enough good things about it.