Any full timers use a roomba style vac?
I normally sweep but dont like the dust. Started looking at the cheap stand up cordless vacs. I like the idea of a filter. Im on vinyl flooring and live on dirt. Think a roomba type of vac would w...
Forum Discussion
We have a cordless Dyson in the fiver that works well for us. It was actually a "standard feature" with our RV. I probably wouldn't have bought that model, but it's been reliable for almost five years.
We've talked about a robot vac for the RV, but the robot wouldn't be able to get the stairs up to our bedroom or the bedroom itself. It just doesn't pencil out for the RV.
We have two shedding dogs though, so we vacuum the RV nearly every day on our trips.
For home, we actually have four robot vacs (five if you count the one that I decommissioned). It's a long story, but I received three of the five for free to evaluate.
Here's my unbiased opinion of the units we've used:
Dyson 360 Eye Robot Vacuum: This vac is priced at $1,699 on Amazon right now. Unbelievable. This was our first robot vac and we had a serious love/hate relationship with it. This one was a disappointment from the git-go and it took us about a year to finally get it dialed in enough to be of any use. I think we got two more years out of it and then retired it. This vac probably gave us 60% frustration and only 40% satisfaction over its lifecycle. It just never lived up to its hype. I would have been pretty steamed if we paid for it, but instead we're just disappointed.
Roomba: This one never gave us the technology pain that the Dyson did. Maybe it's because they didn't attempt to do as much with the Roomba technology, so there wasn't as much to disappoint us. I never really liked this one from the beginning. While the other two brands make valiant attempts to draw a map of the room and then sweep back and forth through the rooms in an orderly pattern, the Roomba is just a random drunk who staggers through the rooms weakly attempting to pick stuff up. It can't negotiate even the simplest transitions from hard floors to carpet, so we based it in the "lowest" room in the house (about an inch below the carpeted rooms) where it wouldn't get into much trouble. Since it's random, it doesn't draw itself any sort of map of hazards, so it boldly charges at the gaps beneath the sofas and gets stuck all the time. Even when it doesn't get stuck, the best it will do is draw big funky asterisks (*) in your carpet because it just goes back and forth across the room with no order. Of the three brands, the Roomba picks up the least dirt and dog hair.
Neato: I had never heard of this brand and still haven't really heard of it except through our own experience. I never would have tried this one if it hadn't been given to us to evaluate. I let it sit in a box for months without deploying it because the network connectivity was finicky and I couldn't get it to connect. I finally tried it again after I upgraded my home wifi to a mesh and had better connectivity in every room. Once I got this one going, it dazzled me so much that I bought another one for downstairs. We felt silly for having an upstairs Neato robot and a downstairs one, but we still loved it and I bought one for mom for Christmas last year. And then about a week before Christmas, mom mentioned that she and her husband don't like robot vacs in principle, so we sat on that present and I eventually gave it to my wife last winter so we could divide the duties between the two robots and really keep those rooms dog hair-free. I used the mapping features to define which rooms each is responsible for, and they really do a fantastic job.
My wife also secretly still likes the Roomba, so even through I cancelled its schedule and stopped it from running automatically, she still runs it once a week or so, especially if we have people coming over soon. Last week we had a literal conga line of the three downstairs robots all lined up and chasing each other and then each of them erroring-out or running out of charge, so they just died in a line like that. Funny stuff.
We have doggy doors and our dogs are able to come and go at will, except that they have to come in through the garage and laundry room to hopefully get some of the dog crud off of their feet before they get in. Still though, this tracks an insane amount of silt dirt into the house, plus their dog hair. So with these three robots running every day (plus the occasional help from #4), our floors look good visibly, but we still have to empty out the robots' bins at least once a day.
Would I ever buy five robot vacs? Not a chance. But I've bought two of the Neato units myself because I loved the first one so much. If you live in a multi-story home, one robot doesn't really do any good.
If you don't completely love fussing with technology though, then don't ever get any brand of robot vac.
We've talked about a robot vac for the RV, but the robot wouldn't be able to get the stairs up to our bedroom or the bedroom itself. It just doesn't pencil out for the RV.
We have two shedding dogs though, so we vacuum the RV nearly every day on our trips.
For home, we actually have four robot vacs (five if you count the one that I decommissioned). It's a long story, but I received three of the five for free to evaluate.
Here's my unbiased opinion of the units we've used:
Dyson 360 Eye Robot Vacuum: This vac is priced at $1,699 on Amazon right now. Unbelievable. This was our first robot vac and we had a serious love/hate relationship with it. This one was a disappointment from the git-go and it took us about a year to finally get it dialed in enough to be of any use. I think we got two more years out of it and then retired it. This vac probably gave us 60% frustration and only 40% satisfaction over its lifecycle. It just never lived up to its hype. I would have been pretty steamed if we paid for it, but instead we're just disappointed.
Roomba: This one never gave us the technology pain that the Dyson did. Maybe it's because they didn't attempt to do as much with the Roomba technology, so there wasn't as much to disappoint us. I never really liked this one from the beginning. While the other two brands make valiant attempts to draw a map of the room and then sweep back and forth through the rooms in an orderly pattern, the Roomba is just a random drunk who staggers through the rooms weakly attempting to pick stuff up. It can't negotiate even the simplest transitions from hard floors to carpet, so we based it in the "lowest" room in the house (about an inch below the carpeted rooms) where it wouldn't get into much trouble. Since it's random, it doesn't draw itself any sort of map of hazards, so it boldly charges at the gaps beneath the sofas and gets stuck all the time. Even when it doesn't get stuck, the best it will do is draw big funky asterisks (*) in your carpet because it just goes back and forth across the room with no order. Of the three brands, the Roomba picks up the least dirt and dog hair.
Neato: I had never heard of this brand and still haven't really heard of it except through our own experience. I never would have tried this one if it hadn't been given to us to evaluate. I let it sit in a box for months without deploying it because the network connectivity was finicky and I couldn't get it to connect. I finally tried it again after I upgraded my home wifi to a mesh and had better connectivity in every room. Once I got this one going, it dazzled me so much that I bought another one for downstairs. We felt silly for having an upstairs Neato robot and a downstairs one, but we still loved it and I bought one for mom for Christmas last year. And then about a week before Christmas, mom mentioned that she and her husband don't like robot vacs in principle, so we sat on that present and I eventually gave it to my wife last winter so we could divide the duties between the two robots and really keep those rooms dog hair-free. I used the mapping features to define which rooms each is responsible for, and they really do a fantastic job.
My wife also secretly still likes the Roomba, so even through I cancelled its schedule and stopped it from running automatically, she still runs it once a week or so, especially if we have people coming over soon. Last week we had a literal conga line of the three downstairs robots all lined up and chasing each other and then each of them erroring-out or running out of charge, so they just died in a line like that. Funny stuff.
We have doggy doors and our dogs are able to come and go at will, except that they have to come in through the garage and laundry room to hopefully get some of the dog crud off of their feet before they get in. Still though, this tracks an insane amount of silt dirt into the house, plus their dog hair. So with these three robots running every day (plus the occasional help from #4), our floors look good visibly, but we still have to empty out the robots' bins at least once a day.
Would I ever buy five robot vacs? Not a chance. But I've bought two of the Neato units myself because I loved the first one so much. If you live in a multi-story home, one robot doesn't really do any good.
If you don't completely love fussing with technology though, then don't ever get any brand of robot vac.
