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Roombas came out in the early 2000s and still can't vacume a floor half as good in 2 hours as a human can in 10 minutes. If the floor has carpet it doesn't even

Roombas came out in the early 2000s and still can't vacume a floor half as good in 2 hours as a human can in 10 minutes. If the floor has carpet it doesn't even begin to do 10% of the job.

pravda 8y ago
I love my Roombas. A better job then manual sweeping and they get under the bed. Can't say how they work on carpet, but for wood flooring, they are most excellent!
- Moru 8y ago
  Has there been any studies on how good the robot hovers realy are for capturing smaller particles? Does it have enough power to use a HEPA filter? Or does it just blow the dust out the backside like old hovers?
  - Tade0 8y ago
    Anecdata: I'm allergic to pollen and cats(a little bit). This spring I got myself a Roomba 895 which is equipped with a HEPA filter and hadn't experienced any symptoms since. I have no real data on its effectiveness aside from "works for me", though.
- woolvalley 8y ago
  I had a roomba, but the combination of constant brush maintenance, hair cutting and emptying made it a pain in the ass. Not to mention how it totally ate wires on the floor. The time it saved was taken up by different things. And it did a relatively bad job compared to a human A dyson handheld does a better job cleaning under your bed, and you can clean the couches fairly easily with it. Your $1000 is better spent on a miele canister and a dyson v7.
  - aedron 8y ago
    They make sense within a pretty narrow use case: You have a largish room with hard floor, which is usually kept uncluttered. You don't have pets. We use it for a large kitchen and it's okay. Run it before leaving the house and the floor is clean when you get back. Who cares how long it takes or that it is noisy or whatever. It does like 75% as good as a human would and that's good enough most of the time. But it's true that a part of the time you save is spent on maintenance instead.
    - schiffern 8y ago
      >part of the time you save is spent on maintenance instead. There's a quote I always remember while taking 30 seconds to clean the dishwasher: "The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders." -- Isaac Asimov, 1964
dtech 8y ago
In the two hours that the automaton is doing an okay job, the human can be doing something more interesting/productive.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
regularfry 8y ago
Ah yes, but an okayish job done in 2 hours is better than a 10 minute job that doesn't happen.
vvillena 8y ago
But a Roomba works when you're not home. I have a Roborock S50 and I tell it to clean when I go to work. When I come back, the floor is clean.
smileysteve 8y ago
I've had a Roomba and Neato. They've always picked up more dust after using a different vacuum cleaner. There's some bit of necessity with a dog that sheds though. And there is something relaxing coming home to freshly vacuumed carpet. Even calculated at only 10 minutes of time savings, that's 1040 minutes a year at 2x a week; giving me back an entire waking day of time a year (17/hours).
merpnderp 8y ago
I don't know how you're measuring "half as good". But I have a high end Dyson. When I first got my Roomba, I cleaned my office floor with the Dyson as good as I could going over it several times. Then I set the Roomba loose on it to see if it pulled up any dirt. When it was finished the bin was completely full. I assume not all of it came from the edges of the carpet where the trim meets and that since it was moving much slower it actually pulled up dirt the Dyson had missed. And don't misunderstand this at all, I absolutely love my Dyson.
vorpalhex 8y ago
I use a knockoff Roomba from Eufy. The benefit of it is that it can run while I make dinner. I don't care if it's imperfect or takes forever - it's an improvement and I don't have to monitor it. Ours handles cat toys and random junk fairly well, usually doesn't eat cables and does surprisingly well on our hardwood floors. It also gets the lip under the cabinets that usually requires me to get the hand vac, which is nice.
mschuster91 8y ago
> Roombas came out in the early 2000s and still can't vacume a floor half as good in 2 hours as a human can in 10 minutes. They're great at keeping pet fur and "everyday dust" at bay, though. It's easier to clean your house when the baseline is already taken care of. Downside: Haven't met a robot able to detect cat poo/barf yet. Gotta be careful...
- Tade0 8y ago
  My take is this is the biggest selling point here - it's not going to replace your vacuum cleaner entirely, but it surely makes it easier to keep a certain level of cleanness. > Downside: Haven't met a robot able to detect cat poo/barf yet. That's why I leave some dirt inside when emptying the container. By pure coincidence last time there was enough of this residue to mix with the cat barf and form a neat, dry, cigar-shaped... thing. I had to clean the brush area and the brushes themselves though.

Roombas came out in the early 2000s and still can't vacume a floor half as good in 2 hours as a human can in 10 minutes. If the floor has carpet it doesn't even begin to do 10% of the job.

pravda 8y ago

I love my Roombas. A better job then manual sweeping and they get under the bed. Can't say how they work on carpet, but for wood flooring, they are most excellent!

Moru 8y ago
Has there been any studies on how good the robot hovers realy are for capturing smaller particles? Does it have enough power to use a HEPA filter? Or does it just blow the dust out the backside like old hovers?
- Tade0 8y ago
  Anecdata: I'm allergic to pollen and cats(a little bit). This spring I got myself a Roomba 895 which is equipped with a HEPA filter and hadn't experienced any symptoms since. I have no real data on its effectiveness aside from "works for me", though.
woolvalley 8y ago
I had a roomba, but the combination of constant brush maintenance, hair cutting and emptying made it a pain in the ass. Not to mention how it totally ate wires on the floor. The time it saved was taken up by different things. And it did a relatively bad job compared to a human A dyson handheld does a better job cleaning under your bed, and you can clean the couches fairly easily with it. Your $1000 is better spent on a miele canister and a dyson v7.
- aedron 8y ago
  They make sense within a pretty narrow use case: You have a largish room with hard floor, which is usually kept uncluttered. You don't have pets. We use it for a large kitchen and it's okay. Run it before leaving the house and the floor is clean when you get back. Who cares how long it takes or that it is noisy or whatever. It does like 75% as good as a human would and that's good enough most of the time. But it's true that a part of the time you save is spent on maintenance instead.
  - schiffern 8y ago
    >part of the time you save is spent on maintenance instead. There's a quote I always remember while taking 30 seconds to clean the dishwasher: "The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders." -- Isaac Asimov, 1964

dtech 8y ago

In the two hours that the automaton is doing an okay job, the human can be doing something more interesting/productive.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

regularfry 8y ago

Ah yes, but an okayish job done in 2 hours is better than a 10 minute job that doesn't happen.

vvillena 8y ago

But a Roomba works when you're not home. I have a Roborock S50 and I tell it to clean when I go to work. When I come back, the floor is clean.

smileysteve 8y ago

I've had a Roomba and Neato. They've always picked up more dust after using a different vacuum cleaner. There's some bit of necessity with a dog that sheds though. And there is something relaxing coming home to freshly vacuumed carpet. Even calculated at only 10 minutes of time savings, that's 1040 minutes a year at 2x a week; giving me back an entire waking day of time a year (17/hours).

merpnderp 8y ago

I don't know how you're measuring "half as good". But I have a high end Dyson. When I first got my Roomba, I cleaned my office floor with the Dyson as good as I could going over it several times. Then I set the Roomba loose on it to see if it pulled up any dirt. When it was finished the bin was completely full. I assume not all of it came from the edges of the carpet where the trim meets and that since it was moving much slower it actually pulled up dirt the Dyson had missed. And don't misunderstand this at all, I absolutely love my Dyson.

vorpalhex 8y ago

I use a knockoff Roomba from Eufy. The benefit of it is that it can run while I make dinner. I don't care if it's imperfect or takes forever - it's an improvement and I don't have to monitor it. Ours handles cat toys and random junk fairly well, usually doesn't eat cables and does surprisingly well on our hardwood floors. It also gets the lip under the cabinets that usually requires me to get the hand vac, which is nice.

mschuster91 8y ago

> Roombas came out in the early 2000s and still can't vacume a floor half as good in 2 hours as a human can in 10 minutes. They're great at keeping pet fur and "everyday dust" at bay, though. It's easier to clean your house when the baseline is already taken care of. Downside: Haven't met a robot able to detect cat poo/barf yet. Gotta be careful...

Tade0 8y ago
My take is this is the biggest selling point here - it's not going to replace your vacuum cleaner entirely, but it surely makes it easier to keep a certain level of cleanness. > Downside: Haven't met a robot able to detect cat poo/barf yet. That's why I leave some dirt inside when emptying the container. By pure coincidence last time there was enough of this residue to mix with the cat barf and form a neat, dry, cigar-shaped... thing. I had to clean the brush area and the brushes themselves though.