Things I Wish I Knew Before Buying a Robot Vacuum Cleaner

I love my Roomba and I hate it. The adorable little honks and honks, the hypnotic yet inexplicable path it takes across my floor, the ability to train forest animals to ride it across the floor… there’s a lot to like. But after three years of using it, I have some problems. Here’s everything they don’t tell you about getting a robot vacuum cleaner (of any brand) that you should consider before making a purchase.

Maintenance cost

Robot vacuum cleaners are made up of many parts and these parts need to be replaced. I suspected so, but was not prepared for how often I would order components and how expensive they were. The main rollers, which I was going to replace once a year, or even once every six months, break easily even with a few long hairs splitting them in half every two months. Designed to keep you from having to empty your robot by hand, self-emptying tower bags almost never last more than a month or two, and sometimes you still have to empty them manually.

In addition to replacing parts, it turns out that the thing that cleans also needs to be cleaned. I spoke to iRobot on the phone three to four times during the first year for various issues and often the answer was to take it apart and clean it. It’s not difficult to do – you just need a screwdriver or a drill – but I didn’t plan on such a big maintenance.

There are aftermarket parts that cost less, and the rollers and brushes work pretty decently, but aftermarket bags often reported being full even though I just installed them. Braava (Roomba’s mopping partner) at least has reusable pads that you can buy, wash and reuse. But all these purchases added to the cost of maintenance and resulted in a lot of waste, which I bought a vacuum cleaner to avoid.

He gets stuck

You’ve probably seen the adorable IG robot vacuums saying they’re on a rock somewhere , paired with an image of him dangling from a three-inch ledge. It’s not entirely false: they have a lot more problems with thresholds (those stripes that divide the floor between rooms) than anyone reports. My vacuum often hits table or door legs endlessly before just spinning around, and while I specifically bought low-profile mats to make life easier, the edges of those mats now wear out, you guessed it, from vacuuming.

Getting stuck in a robot vacuum is actually one of the most frustrating aspects of a lifestyle. You imagine him vacuuming your house while you’re out or before you get up in the morning, courteously docking to recharge the next day; instead, he got stuck under the couch again. It must be babysat more than you expected. I moved everything I could off the floor and got everything high enough for him to easily move underneath, but I still can’t go on vacation and expect the vacuum to keep working while I’m away.

They need more practical help than I expected.

Years ago, I imagined a world where I have a robot vacuum cleaner and a mop, and at night they have epic battles on the living room floor while I sleep. This is what I thought of when I bought Roomba and its mopping partner Braava. The problem is that Roomba can move around most places except up stairs, and Braava can only stay in one room and clean it, but can’t cross a threshold, so they’re pretty limited in what they can do completely on their own.

Also, as excited as I am about touchless cleaning, Braava requires you to take a new pad, put it on and add cleaning solution for every cleaning, and then she takes that pad and wipes the entire floor with it. Other systems outside of iRobot, such as Narwhal, have both clean and dirty water tanks so they never wipe down tiles with one dirty rag.

Both Roomba and Braava let you set up zones, which you can then call from Google Assistant. But it’s not fast, and between opening an app or getting Google to recognize a command, it’s usually faster to just clean up all the mess you’ve made yourself. Even when I was called, Roomba often didn’t really get everything and that meant I had to stay away from him for an hour while I hit him on the nose a few times to get him to repeat the same area as I”. d just did. As for Braava, you can’t summon her anywhere if there’s a threshold, so she’s only really good for putting her in the middle of a space you want to clear; let it clear if it doesn’t get stuck, run out of fluid, or need a second pass (often this happens); then we pick it up and put it back on the pier.

Whatever the case, my Roomba is still in use. Every morning I hear it start at 7 am, reminding me that every day is a new chance to succeed in life. From time to time it gives me commands to clear it, find it, or just repeat some numerical error that I need to find. But by 9 a.m., he completed the run and picked up a decent amount of dirt and dust that the walls don’t have; and then I come back with my vacuum cleaner to clean up everything he missed.