Robot vacuum cleaners?

[stevensfo]

Does anyone use them?

I noticed on Amazon recently that the prices seem to vary enormously (£90 - £500) but I don't know much about them. We have an apartment on one level with tiled floors everywhere, so perfect for a robot, but I'm not clear on how these things work. From some reviews, it appears that a 'mopping' function is not as good as it sounds since it tends to leave streaks and gets dirty too quickly.

The cheapest has only 800pa suction while the more expensive are 2100pa. Not sure if that's important if the thing is so close to the floor.

Any recommendations? Could we leave one to do the kitchen area, then go down a short corridor to do other rooms, or do you have to take it to the rooms yourself?

Steve

[JamesMuenchen]

My wife has wanted one for ages and I eventually gave up the fight. Amazon had a sale a couple of weeks ago and I got this one cheap, based on a few personal recommendations:
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B082HLMMDP

Probably you could find a similar model in the UK.

I have to say it's absolutely fantastic, I'm a total convert.

We have a mix of carpet, laminate and tiles. It vacuums well on all of them. Have only tried the mopping function once, but it was fine.

So far I haven't used any of the programming functions, or the magnetic tape to mark off areas. I just drop it in the area I want, close doors if necessary (eg for noise or to keep it from mopping carpetted area) and leave it to it.

And it's not even very noisy - its running around now while I'm on the phone working from home and it's really not a problem.

Could we leave one to do the kitchen area, then go down a short corridor to do other rooms, or do you have to take it to the rooms yourself?

That should work ok. It will find its way around and the only issue is the battery life really.

[Peanutte]

We have had a couple - both were Roomba. They didn't have mopping functions - just straightforward vacuum cleaners.

The story is that the manufacturers used to make robots for disarming bombs, and use similar technology.

If you have a reasonably clear floor they are brilliant (no carpets with loose threads for example). They will happily go round table legs and under kitchen units, beds and other low furniture. And when the battery is running low, they return to their docking station.

You will spend time just watching them - they are really clever - they get to the wall or table leg and back away and trundle off in another direction. There are reviews on YouTube you can watch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csGdz5_gZiY - picked at random - there are lots). When they get to a step down - they sense this and divert away.

The only drawback is that the dust collecting bin is quite small. And if there is any chance your cat or dog might have had 'an accident' somewhere, that would not be good.

Whether they are as effective as a full size vacuum cleaner, I don't know. And they are pretty expensive. But if you have clean and clear floors to start with, you can set them off before you go out and they will definately clean the floor for you.

In your situation, they sound ideal.

[mc2fool]

...the prices seem to vary enormously (£90 - £500)...

And the rest! https://www.which.co.uk/news/2020/02/the-irobot-roomba-s9-costs-a-cool-1500-is-it-worth-it/

[martinc]

I have one of these:https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07XXXKBL9/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_zp1yFbZFVHBP2. It doesn't pick up every bit of dust in one go but leave it alone and it will go over and over and make a pretty good job of it. It's great watching it go under things that haven't been hoovered for years. You need to move trailing cables out of the way, tuck them behind curtains etc.

It's a bit like having a dishwasher - some people love them, some think it's a lot of extra work loading/unloading.

[vrdiver]

We have a Roomba 870 and a Scooba 450. The Roomba collects dust pretty efficiently, but struggles with, say, sewing threads dropped onto carpet. Over time, it can also leave a track mark in the carpet next to the skirting board where it travels in the same place (going along a straight edge). It's very good for wooden floors.

If I launch the Roomba after vacuuming with a Dyson, it still finds a fair amount of stuff, which may or may not be more about my style of vacuuming than about the efficiency of the Dyson!

The Scooba will keep a clean floor clean (acts as a mop) but is not any good at cleaning a dirty floor. Sometimes it will leave patches of dirty water on the floor (it's supposed to have a "drying" cycle, whereby it wets the floor, scrubs it, but then mops up in a later pass).

I'd buy a replacement Roomba, but wouldn't bother with the Scooba.

VRD

[Julian]

I've been a robot vacuum user since 2009 and I'm a complete convert but it is a complex marketplace.

For your use Steve (all tile floors) I'd recommend having a good look at the Roborock s5 max. I have one of those in my holiday home which is all laminate flooring on the ground level. It has the advantage that it will vacuum and mop at the same time which helps the mopping pad to not pick up too much fluff and other loose debris because the vacuum nozzle is forward of the mopping pad so sucks that stuff up first. It has very smart and accurate navigation using a system called "Lidar"(*) which means it can create a map of your whole house which you can then go into the app to split it into rooms that you can then label e.g. "spare bedroom", "kitchen", "living room" etc. Once you've done that you can tell the robot to clean everything or to only clean specified rooms. It also has other features such as keep-out zones that you can set up so that it doesn't go and try to mop a rug for instance

The other possibility given that you have all tiled floors would be the iRobot Braava m6. I have no experience of that although like you I've heard some reports of it leaving streaks on the floor. It is also more expensive and doesn't have the ability to vacuum first. In raw mopping performance however it is likely to be better, providing you aren't one of the people who gets streaks, because it has a backwards and forwards mopping pattern as opposed to the single pass action of pretty much all combination vacuum+mop robots. It has the same capabilities as the Roborock in terms of building a map of your home on which you can label your rooms and individually select them for cleaning if required but it does not use Lidar but rather "vslam" which is a video camera that points upwards towards the ceiling and it uses this to try and locate itself within each room. I have another iRobot model, the i7+, at my main home since it is almost all carpet that uses the same iRobot vslam implementation and I find the vslam navigation to be vastly inferior to Lidar. It works perfectly in the front area of my apartment but there are a couple of bedrooms where the i7 gets totally lost as soon as it enters them. I'll actually be replacing my i7+ as soon as the model that I want to replace it with (an Ecovacs Deebot T8+) is available in the UK simply because of my frustrations with the vslam navigation.

I also have an iRobot Bravajet 240 which I use at my main home just for the kitchen and bathrooms which are the only rooms that have tiled floors. This unit mops really well, reviews say it is as good as the Braava m6 and I can believe that, but it is a much simpler robot that has no mapping capabilities so you have to carry it to each room and start it manually. That works well for me but might not work for you.

One thing to be aware of is that when mopping you will need to change the mopping pad and refill the water tank on any mopping robot before you send it out to clean so it's not quite as hands-off as the really fancy vacuuming robots now where the docking station automatically empties the dustbin in the robot after each cleaning run so you can literally leave those to do a daily clean for weeks without needing to touch them at all.

- Julian

(*) Not unique to Roborock, it's a generic term that stands for "Light detection and Ranging" and a spinning laser on top of the robot can take a 360 degree view of how far it is from all the walls at any given time.

[GrahamPlatt]

I bought a cheapie some five years ago (£250 or so). It picked up fine and left a nice pattern on the carpets, but its navigation was useless and it kept getting itself stuck under the settee. More trouble than it was worth and the last time I gave it a go I found the battery was dead (as in unrechargeable). Can’t even recall the make (not a know brand, of that I’m sure). Complete waste of money.

[UncleEbenezer]

I have a roomba: looks exactly like https://shop.irobot.co.uk/de/promos/iro ... 06040.html - which I guess is today's version of it. Definitely worth it compared to other vacuum cleaners I've encountered - from ancient hoover to overhyped, overpriced dyson - though I don't have any rival robot comparisons.

I bought it about six months after my house move in 2013. First time I used it on the bedroom, the (thick) carpet changed colour. The hint of something dark reddish-brown (probably from a previous occupant's strongly-coloured garment or bedding) had eluded both my old Electrolux upright and whatever came before it and, like a background noise that you only notice when it stops, hadn't really been noticeable.

It does occasionally get into trouble: gets wedged somewhere, or knocks its own base station so it can't dock. If that happens, you just have to return it to base. And once you know where it risks get wedged you can arrange things to prevent it going there.

[mc2fool]

I have a roomba: looks exactly like https://shop.irobot.co.uk/de/promos/iro ... 06040.html - which I guess is today's version of it. Definitely worth it compared to other vacuum cleaners I've encountered - from ancient hoover to overhyped, overpriced dyson - though I don't have any rival robot comparisons.

I bought it about six months after my house move in 2013.

Matter of interest, how many times have you had to replace the battery?

[UncleEbenezer]

I have a roomba: looks exactly like https://shop.irobot.co.uk/de/promos/iro ... 06040.html - which I guess is today's version of it. Definitely worth it compared to other vacuum cleaners I've encountered - from ancient hoover to overhyped, overpriced dyson - though I don't have any rival robot comparisons.

I bought it about six months after my house move in 2013.

Matter of interest, how many times have you had to replace the battery?

I haven't. It's still on the battery it came with. The trick is, do as it says in TFM, and leave always on the charger when not in use.

[mc2fool]

I have a roomba: looks exactly like https://shop.irobot.co.uk/de/promos/iro ... 06040.html - which I guess is today's version of it. Definitely worth it compared to other vacuum cleaners I've encountered - from ancient hoover to overhyped, overpriced dyson - though I don't have any rival robot comparisons.

I bought it about six months after my house move in 2013.

Matter of interest, how many times have you had to replace the battery?

I haven't. It's still on the battery it came with. The trick is, do as it says in TFM, and leave always on the charger when not in use.

That's impressive. How often do you run it and how long does it run each time?

[stevensfo]

Thanks for all the great advice. The tiles in the apartment are very light cream in colour and show up any little specks immediately and I got so fed up with cleaning them all the time. I will have a look at all the models and see which I can get easily, probably going for a cheapish vacuum/mopping robot to see how it copes.
Yes, some models are very expensive, but I see how in some places, they may save a lot of money over time, allowing cleaners to concentrate on other things. Unfortunately, although perfect for our apartment, our main house has stairs everywhere. I'd love to know just when a robot that can climb stairs will come along. I imagine that not many hot cakes will sell faster!


Steve

[Loup321]

We have an iRobot Roomba, and have had a robot vacuum cleaner of some sort for probably about 15 years. At one point we had a cheap one from Maplin, but it didn't have brushes. The suction was fantastic, but I have long auburn hair and it left a brownish tint on the light grey carpet where I brush my hair each morning that the vacuum didn't notice. Eventually, I noticed and just brushed it all up with my hands. My first Roomba didn't dock by itself, and had to be plugged in. The batteries only lasted about 2 years. Replacing with a cheaper generic battery lasted only just over a year, but it was cheaper per year. Now that I have one that docks itself, I think I've had it for about 3-4 years still on the first battery, so maybe the other poster is right about always leaving it on charge! One I had launched itself down the stairs, because there was a patch of bright sunlight and the cliff sensor didn't stop it. Apparently they get confused by bright light and highly patterned carpets. My current living room has a striped carpet, and when the light in the room is right the Roomba thinks it's about to go over a cliff and stops itself. It also seems to get stuck at the top of the stairs, because it doesn't like turning right, which has never been a problem for previous cleaners.

They all have their personalities, and you will end up treating it like one of the family and chatting to it as it passes.

Can't comment on ones with mops - we have carpet throughout apart from the kitchen and bathroom, and I use a broom and mop on those manually. Yes, it's annoying that I have to vacuum the stairs myself, but that's life!

[Lanark]

I don't have one, but I have friends who have been through several, given the price and how often they wear out,I think it might be cheaper to pay a cleaner to come round.

[UncleEbenezer]

Apparently they get confused by bright light and highly patterned carpets.

Not those with no visual sensor. Like mine.

Mine did once have a minor accident with the stairs: ended up in an undignified position where it stopped itself and issued its distress call. That was when I'd moved a rug to near the top of the stairs, so it was already at an angle half on the rug when it encountered the precipice.

They all have their personalities, and you will end up treating it like one of the family and chatting to it as it passes.

Nope. I set mine going and leave it to run. So for example if it's doing my bedroom I'll be in the living room or the study, or maybe even the kitchen.

Can't comment on ones with mops - we have carpet throughout apart from the kitchen and bathroom, and I use a broom and mop on those manually. Yes, it's annoying that I have to vacuum the stairs myself, but that's life!

Indeed. A while back I did a bit of research on the subject, and found the ones with mops seem to collect a consensus "not really good enough" review - as reflected in this thread from someone who has one. I shall look forward to that changing!