A long time ago I gifted my parents one of the early mid-tier Roombas that had beacons that you can place to avoid certain areas. I bought the Roomba plus several sets of beacons.
They were really excited to use it. We put beacons all around the house and then activated the Roomba on the hardwood floor near an obvious pile of dust in the middle of the living room. I figured that would be the Hello World test.
After about 10 minutes of watching it randomly bump into walls, get jammed under the couch, we started to get disappointed. But then it made a direct path towards the dust. We all got excited and then watched it simply go right over the dust without picking up anything. At that point I picked up the unit and kept restarting it over and over until it would pick up the dust.
We tried it on maybe two other occasions and it would just continuously get stuck within a few minutes (usually either between piano legs or under furniture that was raised about the same height as the vacuum). They re-gifted it back to me where it sat unused until I finally gave it away for free. That was well over a decade ago and I now realize that I had unrealistic expectations and possibly didn't give it a fair chance.
Have they improved much since then? My home has lots of hardwood floors throughout and I vacuum daily. Even though there's central vac access everywhere I prefer to use a Miele canister vacuum.
> I now realize that I had unrealistic expectations and possibly didn't give it a fair chance.
Sounds like it. We have one basic model. It also seems to stumble around rather randomly, but it doesn't, there is a movement patterns that makes it pass everywhere given enough time. It does not clean much with each pass, but it does not pass once. If you had let it run it would have cleaned the dust eventually.
> it would just continuously get stuck within a few minutes (usually either between piano legs or under furniture that was raised about the same height as the vacuum)
Mine gets stuck at the feed of an ikea chair. That's annoying and the only solution I have is to turn the chair around or to put it away. It's likely you have to prepare the space a bit before turning it on, but that's still a lot less work and time than doing everything manually.
> My home has lots of hardwood floors throughout and I vacuum daily.
Definitely buy one and stop wasting your time vacuuming :)
I don't have experience with the early Roomba models, but I am using a Roborock S50 (Xiaomi vacuum) for almost a year now and couldn't be happier. I don't have a carpet anywhere in my house and it works pretty well.
We bring out the regular Miele vacuum once every week or two to get to the spots that Roborock can not reach.
The only issue I have at the moment is that I am working from home and vacuuming takes a lot of time for these robots compared to using a regular vacuum.
They were really excited to use it. We put beacons all around the house and then activated the Roomba on the hardwood floor near an obvious pile of dust in the middle of the living room. I figured that would be the Hello World test.
After about 10 minutes of watching it randomly bump into walls, get jammed under the couch, we started to get disappointed. But then it made a direct path towards the dust. We all got excited and then watched it simply go right over the dust without picking up anything. At that point I picked up the unit and kept restarting it over and over until it would pick up the dust.
We tried it on maybe two other occasions and it would just continuously get stuck within a few minutes (usually either between piano legs or under furniture that was raised about the same height as the vacuum). They re-gifted it back to me where it sat unused until I finally gave it away for free. That was well over a decade ago and I now realize that I had unrealistic expectations and possibly didn't give it a fair chance.
Have they improved much since then? My home has lots of hardwood floors throughout and I vacuum daily. Even though there's central vac access everywhere I prefer to use a Miele canister vacuum.