Reinforces my gut instinct that I don't want any of these "smart" devices in my home. Aside from being spys, it takes 10 minutes to vacuum the floor with a standard vaccum cleaner. I spent more time than that guiding the Roomba that we had, getting it unstuck from corners or wires, emptying its pitifully small dust cup, making sure all potential obstacles are picked up, etc. Chucked it in the trash after a month or so.
I love our robot vac. Not because it's faster or better than me, but because it's labour-free, and I can run it every day after the kids go to bed and have nice clean floors.
However I also agree about not putting smart spy devices in my home - mine is a very basic cheap model with no cameras or wireless connectivity. Absolutely INSANE to have any type of connected camera inside your home. Even baby monitor cameras, such a huge vulnerability for so little utility.
It seems silly, because as the parent said, it doesn't take long to vacuum normally, but it's one chore struck off the list and becomes something you rarely have to think about anymore.
Coming home to a freshly vacuumed house is a great feeling. With a robot vac, you get to have that feeling every single day.
Robot vacuums aren't as effective at vacuuming as a human would be, but it also doesn't matter. Whatever it missed today, it'll get tomorrow.
Yes, you need to adjust somewhat your living style. If you leave a lot of clothing on the floor, or have cables just laying about, the robot vac will find them and get stuck. You should clean those up anyway - but within the robot vac-owning community it's often a joke that you have to "roomba-proof" your house.
For me at least, my robot vac stops well short of that.
But the feeling of smugness I get while I sit on the couch doomscrolling or watching Netflix, while being able to tell myself "Look at me, I'm an adult! I'm doing the chores!!!" as my extremely dumb non wifi robot randomly bumps around my lounge room is priceless. Totally worth the couple of hundred bucks I paid for it, and the minor rearranging I had to do to make my apartment suitable for it to roam around.
Having some discipline is a tremendous advantage in both personal and professional life, much better life success multiplier than ie just raw intelligence. I guess we all have seen it many times around us. In the sea of kids having 9 seconds attention span due to parents giving up on screen time, the ones with just a bit of discipline or focus will get much further in life, in whatever direction they will decide to pursue. And this is one way to get and maintain it, another may be cleaning dishes preemptively (well maybe not if you have family with 2+ small kids). There are many more.
Not taking away from the benefits of automation and getting a bit of extra free time (nobody is thinking how cool it is to handwash all our clothes all the time, do we), but if you would say that instead you could do 10-15 mins meditation, learn something new or have a longer run outside, now that would be an improvement. Those passive activities you mention are one of the worst one how to spend extra gained time (albeit very popular due to easy access and addictivity).
Just my take on some chores, I honestly believe making the life too easy has some negative consequences later and that's how I raise my kids, contrary to many other parents.
Oh yeah, definitely a life improvement, but it's not an "OMG! You won't believe this life hack! It's totally changed my life!!! Don't forget to like and subscribe, smash that bell to be sure to see my next amazing video!"(tm) kind of life changing event.
But also, this for me is way more than just "one more thing off the todo list", it's the smugness of "That todo list item is being handled WHILE I'M SITTING ON THE COUCH STUFFING AROUND! HOW GOOD AM I???" :-)
(I acknowledge this is a fairly childish reaction, I'm sure I'll grow up and get over it one one day, I'm only 57 after all...)
Sadly, because of two medium hair cats (and carpets), all the robots I’ve had required brush maintenance after every single run, ruining that “coming to a freshly vacuumed house” feeling. Maybe someone knows a robot vacuum that somehow solved it and doesn’t need daily maintenance for pet hair?
My Roborock is probably the best <$500 purchase I've ever made. I'm actually tempted to get a fancier one with auto emptying just to avoid having to dump the bin once or twice a week
If (like me) you're okay with connectivity but not cameras, there are quite a few choices out there. The Roborock Q Revo is basically brand new, has just about everything you'd ever want in terms of features / performance but uses lidar for navigation.
If a network connection is a non-starter, your choices are way more limited. It looks like the eufy 11s doesn't have any sort of app / wi-fi support.
I got the Roborock Q Revo a little under a year ago, as an upgrade to a Neato Botvac 80 that had just broken down. Robot vacuums have come so far in ~8 years they're very nearly an entirely different product.
I think OP's issue with Roomba is simply that it was a Roomba (depending on when they tried it); I did a lot of searching before deciding on the Q Revo, and it seems like iRobot had been relying on the Roomba brand name for some time and until very recently was still playing catch-up. Not sure they have caught up when it comes to navigation and the control app.
Also a happy Q Revo Pro customer. No mic/camera, but with the lidar the auto location and pathing is shockingly efficient. And vacuuming might be easy, but mopping is a pain that I never have to deal with anymore. The difference between a pure vacuum and a vacuum plus mop on hardwood floors is night and day, especially with two pets.
After initial setup the Q Revo does not need internet connectivity. So you can set it up using an ephemeral hotspot and afterwards control it exclusively with the buttons on the top of the unit. Any errors are spoken by the device.
> Aside from being spys, it takes 10 minutes to vacuum the floor with a standard vaccum cleaner.
Robot vacuums often pick up things I miss, because they tend to be thorougher.
> getting it unstuck from corners or wires
Yes, this is annoying. Not everyone has stuff that these vacuums will get stuck in.
> making sure all potential obstacles are picked up,
If you have small clutter on the floor, you probably need to pick it up anyway if you vacuum yourself.
Robot vacuums are for people who have a track record of not vacuuming :-) If you have the discipline to vacuum on your own, then there's no need for a robot one.
I get a lot of value out of my Roomba. It takes me quite a bit longer than 10 minutes to vacuum manually. Whenever I want the Roomba to do its thing, I spend 5 minutes picking things up off the floor (mostly cat toys that I'd have to pick up anyway if I were vacuuming manually) that would trip it up, and then I start it up and ignore it. Sure, it takes longer to vacuum than I would, but aside from the initial 5 minutes of effort, I don't have to do anything. I do also have the model that goes back to the base station to empty its own bin; not having that would be annoying.
Even my sister ended up buying one after I talked about it with her. She was looking for a way to make her daily nighttime kid cleanup ritual less work. Same deal with her: it takes longer for it to do its job than if she were doing it herself, but while it's vacuuming she can clean something else, and be ready for bed earlier than she'd otherwise be.
My space is a bit larger, I hate vacuuming and have never had a manual vacuum I don’t find too loud too inefficient and too large.
I run the robot when I’m outside and have it do two passes which results in very good results. I get tremendous enjoyment from knowing a machine is doing the work I absolutely hate, with quality results. Would absolutely buy again.
Agree on smart devices, but I also have 3 kids and just want to have clean floors every day.
Also, Roomba is absolute trash compared to any other brand. Replaced my Roomba with a different brand a few months ago and it's a totally different experience.
