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Buying an irobot was one of the worst consumer decisions I ever made. It can only work with extreme supervision otherwise it mounts and scratches lamp bases, ge

Buying an irobot was one of the worst consumer decisions I ever made. It can only work with extreme supervision otherwise it mounts and scratches lamp bases, gets tangled in cords or assaults plants. What's the point of having it if you have to make the whole apartment inert before letting it loose. Worse still it never seemed to learn and would often finish its job leaving huge parts of the floor untouched. And even worse, just past the warranty period the side brush which rotates to flick dirt into the path of the irobot broke. I guess I am part of the 20% even though the irobot sits in my cellar doing nothing. We bought a dyson fluffy (battery powered) recently and that's a much better choice.

deelowe 10y ago
Pretty much sums up my experience as well. The first step in using a roomba is cleaning the entire damn house.
- freehunter 10y ago
  Sounds like poor expectation-setting by whoever sold you on a Roomba. I have two dogs and a cat and keeping up with their fur is a full time job. Much easier to run the Roomba once a day. Yeah I have to keep the floor free of large debris, but I should do that anyway so I don't mind.
  - deelowe 10y ago
    Cleaning up includes things like unplugging lamps and moving the cords. It includes taking all chairs off the floor and putting them on the table. It requires adding special devices to the floor to add barriers b/c the roomba has absolutely no learning capabilities. It includes removing rugs b/c the roomba gets stuck on them. I could go on. It's just a poor product. These things might be known issues, but when all of this is factored in, it really isn't a good solution for anything but gymnasiums and dance floors. If you have any stuff whatsoever, it takes more time and effort than a traditional vacuum.
Bombthecat 10y ago
I'm in the same boat. Not an irobot but something similar. Luckily it was only 120€. This thing eats everything. Socks. Cloths, papers. Cables, anything on the floor stops, breaks, halts that thing. It really needs some kind of sensor to detect stuff like that before it gets any kind of useful.
- wott 10y ago
  > This thing eats everything. I protest! It seems to carefully avoid anything that resembles a crumb, a hair or dust.
danmaz74 10y ago
Anybody has experience with robot vacuums with ultrasonic sensors? They should be much better at avoiding obstacles. I also guess/hope that recent "mapping" models would be much better at coverage.
cel1ne 10y ago
> What's the point of having it if you have to make the whole apartment inert before letting it loose. I actually find that beneficial. Takes me a couple of minutes and ensure that I clean up more often. > Worse still it never seemed to learn and would often finish its job leaving huge parts of the floor untouched. That is on purpose. Different than other robots, Roombas don't learn a floor-plan, but follow some simple, "insect-like" rules. (Travel along if you find a wall, turn around if you hit something, etc.) It uses the length of stretches that it can drive in a straight line, to get an estimate of the room size, which it will use to adjust the runtime of it's cleaning program. This behaviour ensures that Roomba adapts well to different rooms. It doesn't clean the entire floor in one go, but over some runs it will eventually reach everything.
- planetjones 10y ago
  I think you misread my first point. It's not about a clean flat. It's that normal obstacles like lamp bases, chair legs and wires for bedside lamps, etc. cause the irobot huge difficulty. It got stuck on my lamp base and scratched it badly. Nobody wants to have the light house things guarding every article as they're unsightly, costly and require battery changes. And whether the insect like rules are on purpose or not, the fact remains that after 7 days there's still a huge dust ball on my kitchen floor that the irobot continually fails to find.
  - cel1ne 10y ago
    I don't have any lighthouses or virtual walls. I just put cables on the table or stuck them behind something so the robot won't find them. Haven't had any problems with leg chairs or lamp posts yet. Regarding the dust ball on the kitchen floor: that's what the Spot-cleaning-feature is for. Or just lift the robot and put it on the dust ball where you press "Start".
    - mulletbum 10y ago
      I own two of these vacuums. If you run a Roomba every day, you will not have a dustball. This is just someone being disingenuous.
Loic 10y ago
We have a maid. She is nice, we pay her fairly and she can also vacuum clean the stairs. She has the keys of the house, so, she can also clean take care of the plants when our vacations are not overlapping. She can also wash the floor. Oh, and a good thing, this is another person we trust to take care of the house in emergency when we are not here, she lives 500m from our house, we cultivate social relationships at the "village" level. This makes a nice smile and short conversation when we meet here and there. So, for us, no robots, but for a reason not exactly the same as your reasons. We prefer to trust people. Imagine a world where everything is automated, you just use stuff which are autonomously delivered to your door and you work from home, you order your pizza with an app, etc.. You are alone.
- animal531 10y ago
  You remind me of The Fifth Element, when the main bad guy starts choking on a piece of fruit and doesn't have a back slapping robot among his legion of other robots. The other side of the coin is also in security, people by nature make your house less secured (albeit based on your relationship with them, the area, country and so forth).
  - mulletbum 10y ago
    And people I know making 40k can afford a Roomba. They will not be getting a maid. It's like saying "we don't need self driving cars, I have a personal chauffeur"

deelowe 10y ago

Pretty much sums up my experience as well. The first step in using a roomba is cleaning the entire damn house.

freehunter 10y ago
Sounds like poor expectation-setting by whoever sold you on a Roomba. I have two dogs and a cat and keeping up with their fur is a full time job. Much easier to run the Roomba once a day. Yeah I have to keep the floor free of large debris, but I should do that anyway so I don't mind.
- deelowe 10y ago
  Cleaning up includes things like unplugging lamps and moving the cords. It includes taking all chairs off the floor and putting them on the table. It requires adding special devices to the floor to add barriers b/c the roomba has absolutely no learning capabilities. It includes removing rugs b/c the roomba gets stuck on them. I could go on. It's just a poor product. These things might be known issues, but when all of this is factored in, it really isn't a good solution for anything but gymnasiums and dance floors. If you have any stuff whatsoever, it takes more time and effort than a traditional vacuum.

Bombthecat 10y ago

I'm in the same boat. Not an irobot but something similar. Luckily it was only 120€. This thing eats everything. Socks. Cloths, papers. Cables, anything on the floor stops, breaks, halts that thing. It really needs some kind of sensor to detect stuff like that before it gets any kind of useful.

wott 10y ago
> This thing eats everything. I protest! It seems to carefully avoid anything that resembles a crumb, a hair or dust.

danmaz74 10y ago

Anybody has experience with robot vacuums with ultrasonic sensors? They should be much better at avoiding obstacles. I also guess/hope that recent "mapping" models would be much better at coverage.

cel1ne 10y ago

> What's the point of having it if you have to make the whole apartment inert before letting it loose. I actually find that beneficial. Takes me a couple of minutes and ensure that I clean up more often. > Worse still it never seemed to learn and would often finish its job leaving huge parts of the floor untouched. That is on purpose. Different than other robots, Roombas don't learn a floor-plan, but follow some simple, "insect-like" rules. (Travel along if you find a wall, turn around if you hit something, etc.) It uses the length of stretches that it can drive in a straight line, to get an estimate of the room size, which it will use to adjust the runtime of it's cleaning program. This behaviour ensures that Roomba adapts well to different rooms. It doesn't clean the entire floor in one go, but over some runs it will eventually reach everything.

planetjones 10y ago
I think you misread my first point. It's not about a clean flat. It's that normal obstacles like lamp bases, chair legs and wires for bedside lamps, etc. cause the irobot huge difficulty. It got stuck on my lamp base and scratched it badly. Nobody wants to have the light house things guarding every article as they're unsightly, costly and require battery changes. And whether the insect like rules are on purpose or not, the fact remains that after 7 days there's still a huge dust ball on my kitchen floor that the irobot continually fails to find.
- cel1ne 10y ago
  I don't have any lighthouses or virtual walls. I just put cables on the table or stuck them behind something so the robot won't find them. Haven't had any problems with leg chairs or lamp posts yet. Regarding the dust ball on the kitchen floor: that's what the Spot-cleaning-feature is for. Or just lift the robot and put it on the dust ball where you press "Start".
  - mulletbum 10y ago
    I own two of these vacuums. If you run a Roomba every day, you will not have a dustball. This is just someone being disingenuous.

Loic 10y ago

We have a maid. She is nice, we pay her fairly and she can also vacuum clean the stairs. She has the keys of the house, so, she can also clean take care of the plants when our vacations are not overlapping. She can also wash the floor. Oh, and a good thing, this is another person we trust to take care of the house in emergency when we are not here, she lives 500m from our house, we cultivate social relationships at the "village" level. This makes a nice smile and short conversation when we meet here and there. So, for us, no robots, but for a reason not exactly the same as your reasons. We prefer to trust people. Imagine a world where everything is automated, you just use stuff which are autonomously delivered to your door and you work from home, you order your pizza with an app, etc.. You are alone.

animal531 10y ago
You remind me of The Fifth Element, when the main bad guy starts choking on a piece of fruit and doesn't have a back slapping robot among his legion of other robots. The other side of the coin is also in security, people by nature make your house less secured (albeit based on your relationship with them, the area, country and so forth).
- mulletbum 10y ago
  And people I know making 40k can afford a Roomba. They will not be getting a maid. It's like saying "we don't need self driving cars, I have a personal chauffeur"