As far as vacuums go, I like mine. It does a great job. But it is a cannister vac and I spend far more time with it each week than I would prefer.
I eyed the Roomba and Roomba-wannabes over the holiday season, but found myself a bit sticker-shocked and decided to keep spending quality time with my sweet little Miele, for now.
This week my router manufacturer sent me Big News that they’ve launched a robotic vacuum, and the launch price doesn’t scare me. Circumstances find me trying to save money rather than spend, but I’m tempted…
If you’re using a robotic vacuum, what do you like about yours, what do you wish was better, and what are the must-have features?
If you’ve not yet bought one, what’s holding you back?
I had a Roomba years ago. The battery only lasted a year and, at the time, a replacement battery cost more money than I wanted to spend if it were to only last another year. Maybe they’ve improved since then. It seemed to do okay as a vacuum, but didn’t have great capacity. It was nice for getting under the furniture and nice for terrorizing the cat. Now we pay a nice lady to come and clean every couple weeks. As a bonus, she’s a great baker and we end up with an endless supply of pies and other treats.
We’ve had a Roomba i7 for a couple of years. We like it a lot. When first installed, it ran all over the house making an amazingly accurate map which we then were able to divide up and give names to each room. It also works great with Alexa, so we can say, “Alexa, tell Roomba to vacuum the kitchen,” and off it goes. It will also vacuum the entire house if we want; if it’s battery runs down, it will go park to charge up and then go right back to where it left off. When it’s done it sends a cheery text message and parks itself on the charger.
I do have some recommendations:
Get the self-cleaning base. It costs extra, but the vacuum picks up an amazing amount of dust and hair, and it would be nice to not have to empty the bin so often. Roomba names the vacuums with the self-emptying bins with a “+”. Thus, we wish we had purchased the Roomba i7+.
Apparently there are two types of vacuuming action; one just does a kind of random roll-around, and the other does the map and then vacuums in rows and it knows where all the furniture and walls are. The one that vacuums in orderly rows from the map is definitely best.
We’ve had no problems of any kind in the time we’ve had it, the batteries are still strong and none of the other parts have worn out yet. (There is a little square filter that they want us to replace from time to time, but we learned to just vacuum the dust out of it with a little hand-held vacuum, so we haven’t had to purchase anything since we got it.)
I had a Roomba too. My home has mostly hardwood floors and it did a decent job. My dog shed quit a bit and the wheels had to be cleaned of dog hair all the time. Frankly, I prefer my 40+ year old Hoover PortaPower. Hoover still makes this super powerful little jewel.
Wait, @jBen, I’ve never replaced vacuum brushes in my life. Is this something unique to robotic vacuums, or have I been neglecting regular maintenance on my traditional vacuums?
And @BillG, interesting point about the dog hair. That would definitely be a problem here.
Looks like Roomba even states a couple of time a year, our older el cheapo brand called for every 3 months. It seems that with the lower suction, a lot depends on the side sweeping brushes to bring in the dirt for the roller brush and vacuum to pick up, and they wear out faster.
I think the brush they are talking about replacing is the little three-prong spinner brush that sticks out one side to pick up dust along the edge of the wall. It’s quite inexpensive and they do provide a couple of extras in the box, but in our case we’re still on the original brush that came with the Roomba. There are also two larger rubber roller brushes that are replaceable, but those don’t seem to wear much.
I cannot believe I first posted this topic over two years ago! Well, I’ve finally made a purchase. I found what looks like a decent little robotic vacuum, the OKP K4, on my local craigslist in “like new” condition. It sold new for about $200, the seller had bought it on sale for $159, and I took it off his hands for $35. I was afraid to spend nearly $200 on one only to learn I don’t really like it. For $35, I figured even if I stick it in the garage and let it keep the garage floor clean, I’ll be happy. (I sweep the garage three times a day just to try to keep us from tracking stuff into the house.)
The brushes don’t even look used.
I asked him why his wife stopped using it, and he said they got a housekeeper. Sounds familiar! I asked him if it worked, and he said, “It worked when we boxed it up and put it in the closet.”
Uh-oh. That should have been a big warning sign for me. I mean, I worked for a cellular service provider for 6 years, I should have known what happens to lithium-ion batteries when you don’t charge them regularly.
Sure enough, I got it home, unboxed it, plopped it on the dock, and it blinked its little red light and beeped six times, then beeped six times again, then beeped six times again. The user’s manual says this means the battery won’t charge.
A replacement battery runs about $25 on Amazon, so I bought one and I’m still feeling okay about my total cost. I’ll get the battery tomorrow, then I get to perform minor surgery on my new little friend (wish me luck!) and see how she does. I’ve named her Rosie (I know, not very original)
We have moved on from upright and canister vacuums to cordless ones (currently, a model from Dyson). I typically buy either the ones that are on sale or refurbished, which are generally hundreds less than buying them new. With kids (and sometimes adults), our floor needs regular attention, and given how lightweight and portable the stick vacuum is, you can pull it out, use it, and be done in a minute or so. It’s also very easy to empty. We’ve shifted our use to shorter cleaning sessions rather than doing the whole house at a time, so it doesn’t usually feel like a lot of effort to vacuum.
Between 3 levels with stairs, flooring transitions, and little toys (like legos) that we don’t want to suck up, I don’t see our house working well with a robotic vacuum. We’ve been mostly happy with the stick vacuum from convenience and effectiveness perspectives. But they require more maintenance (just replaced the vacuum head, also filter #2) and upkeep (batteries, though we haven’t had this yet) than their traditional counterparts.
So what happened to your “sweet little Miele”? Those are great vacuums!
Our house has a semi-finished basement with very few interior walls and obstructions, no doors, a flat concrete floor. A projector and a 4 x 8 sheet of birch plywood, both hung from the ceiling, serves as our one TV, which we use 2-3 times a week (mostly DVDs from the library). Our two cats have litter boxes and automatic feeders down there as well. That said, everything stays put and we keep things tidy.
Seems like a gently used robo-vac might be just the thing for picking up cat hair and the bits of cat litter that they can kick up. I am imagining a base station that activates a vacuum that activates on some sort of frequent schedule to prevent build up, but not take the place of deep cleaning. I am also wondering about occasional floor mopping down there. Thoughts?
Oh, I’m still using it! I’ve shifted my perspective about the robot vac. I don’t want it to replace my weekly deep-cleaning and totally free me from the chore of vacuuming, but I want it to run around a few evenings a week and tidy up in-between. Sometimes when someone comes over on a Saturday, I feel like they are seeing the house at its worst, and I need to explain, “Oh, hi, my house isn’t always this dirty, I just haven’t run the vacuum yet…”
Sounds like a good plan for your basement. I think a robot vac would be a great tool for an area with litter boxes. Do you have furniture down there it might wedge itself under?
As for mopping, the vacuum I picked up has a mopping feature, but it’s simply that you dampen and attach a mop-head, so it’s just damp-mopping, not really cleaning. The Roomba model I’d been eying lately (iRobot Roomba Combo i5 Robot Vacuum & Mop) has a tank, but just wicks water to a mop head that damp-mops the floor as it vacuums. Neither works like my (non-robot) Hoover Floormate, which puts down floor cleaner, scrubs, and vacuums up the dirty water.
Per @cbwahlstrom , home cleaning tech is ever changing! I will check out the Hoover, could be the best compromise. We really don’t have much furniture in the basement, just a fake leather loveseat recliner easily elevated for watching BBC crime series. How romantic!
The user’s manual says this means the battery won’t charge. 
