Considering a Roomba for the house. Anyone have pros / cons experiences with one? Worth the money? Mainly dark hardwoods and we have a new yellow lab (= hair problem). Do they really work? Even with a lot of furniture or area carpets? Let me know what you think. Thx.

Step 1: Buy a Samsung PowerBot
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit

I like my roomba. Only negative (aside from getting stuck under my entertainment system) is that it can leave little marks or dents when it runs into my dining room chairs. Otherwise, it is a necessary evil to combat the absurd level of shedding of my dog.

Roombas work great if you don't have rugs with dark patterns, they will read the dark spots ledges.

We have a Neato, tile and 5 small dogs. It's a godsend!

If you have one and your dog craps/pees on the floor, it will spread it. EVERYWHERE

Otherwise it's nice.

hph6203 said:

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Roombas work great if you don't have rugs with dark patterns, they will read the dark spots ledges.

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Really? Mine never is an issue. Or maybe my dog's hair lightens it up.

Does the roomba still use chaos theory to vacuum a room? They still bump into things? We got rid of the roomba 8 years ago and switched to Neato for that very reason, but I haven't researched them lately.

Here's a nice round up/review of 8 models.

http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-robot-vacuum/

They picked the Eufy RoboVac 11 as their main winner with the iRobot Roomba 960 as their upgrade (ie more expensive) pick.

I ordered the Eufy last week. It will be here tonight. I'll report back after a couple of days.

Same application: hardwoods and yellow lab.

My parents had a an old, maybe gen. 2'ish, Roomba that was never used. We took it and it worked for a few months. But eventually the dog hair wrapped the brush spindle and the motor failed. Replaced the motor once; then the front sensors failed and it would only run in circle hitting ghost walls.

We bought the knock-off iLife Gold. It's an actual vacuum cleaner with two side brushes feeding the vacuum inlet. No issues with dog hair so far. Been running it 4 times/week for almost 2 years.

But the hair/dust bin is super small and it has to be emptied mid-cycle.

We have the neato. Had the xv21 older version for about three or four years. Like it enough to buy a new one, the d80 a while after it died.

Did a little comparative research and the neato seemed a better deal options vs price to the roomba. Have found the return to base and recharge then return to cleaning to be an important feature. Seemed that only the really high end roombas do that. Becomes more important as the batteries wear down.

Amazing how much stuff it picks up.

I've had one for a little over a year, we call it Rosie. Same application, dark flooring and a yellow lab. Works great for us, runs weekdays at 8am while we are at work. Dog goes outside when we aren't home. Rosie was my idea and, since my wife isn't very technically savvy, I am responsible for keeping her working.

We had a problem with an area rug that has a black border, Rosie thinks that is a ledge and wouldn't go there. I found out, by looking online, that the ledge sensors have a problem with black carpet. We have no stairs or ledges so I taped some aluminum foil over the sensors...problem solved.

Most of the complaints I see about these things make me laugh. People complain about having to empty the dust bin everyday among other things. I run mine at least 5 0r 6 days a week so a fair amount of maintenance should be expected. It's a good I idea to spend 30 minutes every couple of weeks to clean and inspect as much as you can. The rollers, filters, and that spinning brush need to be replaced periodically.

Also, every morning before I leave for work, I have to go around the house and make sure there aren't any land mines lying around for Rosie to run into. Electrical cords, phone charging cords, shoe strings, and such are examples of things Rosie can get stuck on. I also pull the chairs away from the tables so she can clean more thoroughly around that stuff.

We just bought a new couch with love seat and my only prerequisite for the wife was to pick one that Rosie could fit under. It worked fine with our old furniture but it sure is nice when Rosie can get underneath to clean there as well..

We purchased ours for the very reason you stated, to keep the dog hair under control and I think it does a wonderful job of doing just that.

I recently bought my wife the 960 model and we are looking to sell her 630 - still works great. Let me know if you might be interested. We actually got the 630 as a gift from her mom - she had bought it for herself, but never used it. I wanted to give it a try just to keep the pet hair down between deep cleans and it does a good job of that. We wanted to up grade to the 960 so that we can turn the unit on remotely and we are now more confident and willing to invest in the product since we know it is going to work for us.

I will say this, if you are going to buy a new one, the time is NOW. They have the 960 on sale at Bed Bath and Beyond for 599 and you can go to their website and sign your email address up for deal alerts and they will immediately give you a 20% off code. I got her 860 for 599 minus 20% - great deal for one of these things when the regular price is 699.

Good luck whatever you decide & Gig'em!

My parents have a Neato. Runs great! Easy to maintain. You'll have to buy a new battery every couple of years but those aren't that expensive. Their #1 reason was for pet hair which is why most consumers buy them. You'll still have to actually vacuum as it doesn't get every space but it's a good in between house cleanings. You can also set schedules so it'll work for you while you're at work because it can get loud and in the way. Also make sure you have nothing laying out on the floor like phone chargers or curtains too low. The worse is when it runs over fresh dog poop, haha.

After trying the new Neato D80 for a week or so, I decided to return it. So I guess I withdraw my recommendation for Neato as well. I was disappointed that the actual technology of mapping the room and avoiding obstacles did not seem to have improved at all over the one I bought 4 or 5 years ago. The dust bin was a little bigger and the motor was a lot quieter, but in 6 or 8 tries it only managed to return to base about half the time and never managed to actually clean the whole first floor. Kept getting stuck on things or in places that it really should not have gotten stuck in. So it almost seems worse than the old one.

Gonna take BQ95's advice and try the Roomba 960 from BB&B with their coupon.

That's weird, mine almost never gets stuck.

AggieBQ95

How did you get BB&B to take the 20% coupon? When I tried online it told me the manufacturer did not allow the coupon to be used? Does it maybe work at the store?

hph6203 said:

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That's weird, mine almost never gets stuck.

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My old XV21 Neato did really well and hardly got stuck either.

We have had a Roomba 880 for 2 years and love it.

I really am curious how the effective the 9xx Roombas are at mapping the house. All the previous models are so random and not very efficient.

It's one of the best purchases we've ever done for our house. We have a 960. It maps the downstairs exactly like the floorplan with the furniture in the way. It runs in a grid pattern and will go back and do the edges of the room and anything on the ground. I run it daily after we leave the house in the morning since we have dogs and empty it every evening. We have mostly tile downstairs with carpet in the master and a few rugs. It has no problems traversing from different surfaces.

Regarding the floor plan stuff, the app will show you the shape of the area that it cleans every day.

So, I got the Eufy in on Tuesday. I ran it that night and yesterday. It got stuck on a flat dog toy a couple of times (~3 x 8 inches long and it sucked it halfway up). It was dog toy that had been disemboweled, so I just threw the toy away. It's all good now. It doesn't aggressively bump into stuff like my neighbor's Roomba and it's pretty quiet. You can easily converse at normal volume while it's cleaning. The Eufy will typically sense that it's about to hit something so it will stop and change directions. However, it will lightly nudge things when it's cleaning the perimeter. It does better at traversing rugs than my regular vacuum and it handles the conical bases of my barstools really well.

It has a couple of different modes:

• Single room random zig zag (the directions advise that you close doors and trap it a single room)
• Spot cleaning - it will circle around an area in concentric circles
• Perimeter mode
• Auto Mode - just cleans everywhere it can until it needs to return to base for a recharge
• Manual - you can control it with the arrows on the remote
• Not really mode, but you can schedule cleanings using the remote. I scheduled a cleaning for 3:30 this afternoon. We'll see how that works out.

Edit to say that it handles thresholds and transitioning surfaces very well. Also, it has a Max cleaning mode for carpet where it sucks harder than normal.

It picks up quite a bit. The bin has been relatively full each time. It also returns to the base without issue. We keep the base under a hall tree so that it's out of sight.

I have a miniature schnauzer, so he doesn't shed, but he has a doggy door and brings dirt and grass in like a damn front end loader. I have been vacuuming every day for the last year and a half. I expect to like my dog more after purchasing the Eufy.

So far, I'm very happy with it. Prayers that the dog never poops in the house prior to a scheduled cleaning.

ALWAYS CHECK FOR POOP!! EVERY MORNING!!

I picked up the roomba 960 today. Can emphatically say that it is far and away better than the neato. Cannot comment on the chaos theory roombas, but this one is awesome. It does everything the engineer in me was thinking the neato should have done. I can also see how the round design is superior.

This version of the roomba does the straight line thing and will return and recharge then continue cleaning where it left off.

The mapping and avoidance / obstacle recognition is very good. It definitely seems to be sensing much more about its surroundings and the decisions it makes are much more effective.

Ran it several times. It go stuck once in a sock it found (damned kids) and once under a recliner that was extended (excusable as I don't think it could tell the space angled down.) For the most part it will gently tap something once then turn to maintain its pattern or gently go around d the corner without hitting it again. (the neato would repeatedly run into things to work around them.)

Haven't really played with the app, was not my primary focus. But I was able to get it set up easily..

Price point is 50% more. Appears the manufacturer controls pricing, so store does t really matter. Would whole heartedly say it is worth the extra 200 bucks over the neato as somekne that has had both.

Thanks for the review/feedback.

This video does a pretty good job of showing how the 9xx remembers where it has been. With the exception of the edges of the room, which is probably used to fully map the house, it rarely repeats going over the same space repeatedly.

Why is no one looking at the Samsung PowerBot's? By far the best compared to what has been referenced above....

I've used mine 7x+ times a week for 18-months

We have a refurbed neato botvac 85 and like it so far. It's pretty efficient and even successfully navigates our pantry and laundry room.

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Regarding the floor plan stuff, the app will show you the shape of the area that it cleans every day.

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I can't find that in the app for my 960. I'm probably looking at it wrong. I can watch the bot and see that's its obviously mapping. It would be awesome to tell it to clean a certain room or skip a room, etc.

roveram said:

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Regarding the floor plan stuff, the app will show you the shape of the area that it cleans every day.

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I can't find that in the app for my 960. I'm probably looking at it wrong. I can watch the bot and see that's its obviously mapping. It would be awesome to tell it to clean a certain room or skip a room, etc.

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Hmm, I haven't seen either of those functions on my app for my 960.