Looking at getting one of these for the misses. There’s several out there, so coming here to see if anyone has one and what they recommend. I have hardwood and carpet, and also pets, if that helps anyone on helping with which one to pick. 

I've no experience with good robotic vacuums.   We were given a very inexpensive one as a gift, and it was useless; the algorithm driving it couldn't effectively tell, or take action, when it got stuck.   So it was stuck constantly. against almost anything it touched.  You really had to walk around behind it to steer it with your foot.  That, and the dirt container only held about as much hair as the dog could shed in a minute.

So avoid the cheap ones.   Hopefully someone here can weigh in on what the good ones can do.

1 hour ago, EWC88 said:

Looking at getting one of these for the misses. There’s several out there, so coming here to see if anyone has one and what they recommend. I have hardwood and carpet, and also pets, if that helps anyone on helping with which one to pick. 

 

I'm on my second Neato. We had the Roomba first, that tended to pick up the cat's hair only to clump it and deposit the clumps elsewhere in the house. That was several years ago, so they may have improved on that. The Neato does a much better job, no complaints as far as it picking up what it should. I found the Neato's App setup to be less frustrating as well.

The first Neato ran well for 2+ years, then the sight system failed. Best Buy just happened to have a newer one on sale for a good price so I bought it.

We've had this one for close to two years now. It typically runs daily M-F, but it had an extended break during the full lock-down since we were both home and it was distracting. Now that we're both back to work and it runs M-F again, it seems to get stuck more often. I need to give it a good cleaning of all of the sensors and see if that helps.

When it was new it could do the entire house in one run, now it has to dock to recharge and then continue. The cheaper units will not recharge mid-clean, so be aware of that. They also vary as far as how you can tell it not to go into areas you don't want it to. Originally they used magnetic tape, now you can do it in the App.

I was amazed at the amount of dirt it picks up. Early on the dust bin would be jam packed just about each day, then it got less. That indicated to me just how much embedded debris it was pulling out if the carpets.

Early on it was a bit of a hassle making sure stuff was picked up off of the floor that it would suck up and get jammed or destroy. The upside is it does force us to keep the house a little tidier. It did set off the house alarm once... My wife left a TV tray precariously leaning against the wall. The Neato managed to knock it over, which was enough of a bang to trip the glass break sensor for our alarm.

We have a Roomba. Not sure what model. It works fairly well except:

-The bin is very small so with pets/kids it will fill up very quickly. 
-It constantly gets stuck. On the brick hearth, under chairs. 
-It seems to seek out situations to get stuck. I’ll put it at the far end of the room and it will flip a 180 and beeline for the brick. 
-It doesn’t seek out the base when the battery is low, or if it does it is horrible at it.
-My house isn’t conducive to one either since we have steps/whatever that it can’t navigate to do the whole house/floor in one go. 

-The toddlers like to ride it. Or throw things at it. Or put play dough in front of it.  

Had one when they first came out and eventually trashed it. Between the 3 daughters with long hair and the long cat hair and long dog hair I’d spend forever cutting all that hair out of the gears and shafts etc. just to make it work.

13 minutes ago, beachwhistle said:

Had one when they first came out and eventually trashed it. Between the 3 daughters with long hair and the long cat hair and long dog hair I’d spend forever cutting all that hair out of the gears and shafts etc. just to make it work.

I will say that cleaning the one we have is very easy. All the rollers, brushes, wheels either pop out or are easy to work around.  A lot easier than the Dyson we also have. 

This is the automatic vacuum that I like:

Glock 19.

We have a Roomba i7.   It doesn't like the wood debris from the fireplace much but in general works pretty good.

It filled up a lot so we ended up getting the docking station.   Works great.    It runs home, empties and continues on.  It is able to cross over our room transitions which are just over the rated max of 5/8.  It makes it.  Shrug.

 

 

From @Golf battery

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJQwj7cj/

THIS.    Is the best!!!!   Oops.   This will be fixed shortly by my  IT department.   

I did see best buy having j belive the roomba or the shark for 499 that has the station and it self empties. I’m sure we will still use our normal shark vacuum as well, but the robot would just help her a little, through out week. 

Self emptying is very nice. A def plus. 

15 hours ago, Golf battery said:

THIS.    Is the best!!!!   Oops.   This will be fixed shortly by my  IT department.   

Hmmm...  Not available.  Russian hacking.

On 11/24/2020 at 9:51 AM, CMJeepster said:

Russian hacking.

Or Chinese/government hacking. First there was Ring cameras watching/recording, then Alexa and Google Home recording every conversation, now your Roomba is spying on you. Make sure you always have your pants on, and don't say a word. 

....."The research team, led by Assistant Professor Jun Han from NUS Computer Science, said LidarPhone, the sensor that allows the robot vacuum to navigate around the house safely, can be repurposed into a laser-based microphone to eavesdrop on private conversations. 

Sami continued: "Our method shows it is now possible to gather sensitive data just by using something as innocuous as a household robot vacuum cleaner. Our work demonstrates the urgent need to find practical solutions to prevent such malicious attacks."

If you're worried about the government conducting surveillance - well, our advice is to avoid wiring up your house with smart devices - one can only imagine some scary scenarios if hackers or even the government using robot vacuum cleaners to spy on people. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/your-robot-vaccum-can-spy-private-conversations

11 hours ago, Sniper said:

Make sure you always have your pants on, and don't say a word. 

If the charlies want to have a look at my tallywacker, well, they can have at it. 

Just get the sandwich maker to vacuum. 

10 minutes ago, silverado427 said:

Just get the sandwich maker to vacuum. 

Not the crock pot?

Had a roomba for a while, wasn't as awesome as I thought. We swapped back over to a manual vacuum after. Dyson Ball Animal. And yes, I know it was pricey. But the wife and I actually fight about who gets to use it. Love that thing.