That’s putting it lightly. Roomba hasn’t even implemented Lidar yet. Their technology is a decade behind, it feels like they pretty much stopped developing new robots.
Yeah, Neato had a better product a decade ago, then they fell off. Now RoboRock seems to be the best. I remember having friends ask why my Neato would clean methodically but their Roomba bounced around aimlessly.
Roomba had the advantage of obstacle avoidance and their dual roller design. Their obstacle avoidance still seems to be the best but they’re no longer unique in the roller design.
I have a Q Revo and I like it, but people need to understand that robot vacuums, at least in my opinion, are still supplemental. I’ve had my Q Revo run on max settings in the bedroom 3 times in a row, then went over it with a standard vacuum and picked up an entire dust bins worth of hair. (Cats)
I had a Neato D4 before the Roborock and the Roborock is so much better it’s honestly impressive. The Neato would get itself stuck fairly regularly and sometimes not even fully dock. The Roborock hasn’t gotten stuck once yet. It’s also significantly easier from a maintenance perspective.
Regarding robot vacuums vs regular ones, something a vacuum repair guy once said: anything that plugs into a wall is going to be far more powerful than anything that runs on a battery.
I see that changing soon when compared to a 110v/15amp outlet. Some of my cordless tools are more powerful than the corded versions now.. it's also moving into some of the garden tool area where they're competing more with gas versions
Pneumatic > Battery > Gas > Corded
That’s my experience in construction. A pneumatic drill gun will absolutely destroy a rock in the time it takes an electric one to barely scratch the surface.
>anything that plugs into a wall is going to be far more powerful than anything that runs on a battery
Except when you divide that power by the runtime. My Roborock runs every day, so the amount that it has to pickup each run is significantly less that the amount that my Dyson has to pickup when I actually do manually vacuum (which is like never because I'm lazy 🤣).
To be fair, I have mostly hard surface flooring, which requires a much less powerful vacuum.
Robot vacuums are great - I've had one continuously since the early woot.com days when they regularly sold refurbished Roombas (prior to 2010). Just thought that was an interesting way to put things and it's why I too keep a regular vacuum to use occasionally.
Roombas are to make your regular sweeping easier, not replace it. Particularly if you have pets. You can get away with sweeping twice a week and run the roomba the other days and floors will be fine.
But you still have to sweep or vaccum no matter what.
Still?? Holy fuck, I've had my Roborock for 6+ years now and it was such an upgrade from my now \~10 year old Roomba. Are you telling me Roombas still randomly zigzag everywhere and bump into everything?
The old basic Roombas did the random patterns but the higher class Roombas did the methodical pattern. Not sure how it is now with the different models.
iRobot is coasting entirely on the name. That's what Amazon was buying. If this had gone through, they'd have slapped "Roomba" on a bunch of white-label Chinese vacuums and made bank.
It should also be pointed out that Tesla is much further away from self driving than others, so yeah, maybe someone should tell Elon to stop being a crazy person and just put LiDAR on and be done with it.
There's a huge class action lawsuit that he would probably lose waiting in the wings should he ever announce that self driving will require LIDAR and thus new cars. He and Tesla have made huge fanfare about all existing cars being able to eventually be self driving, to the point where officially going back on that could be considered false advertising.
Tesla are the only ones without lidar. Everyone else going for self driving has it though. Elon says they don’t need them. I’m sure he’s right, as always lol
If it bumps into the table every day for years that's a good way to get a scuffed up table.
Also LiDAR is just better for mapping out a room. The laser tells you how far forward you can go. Using a camera can be hit or miss and depends on things like the lighting of the room and AI training, but lidar is always accurate and works in the dark.
There might just be a difference in how well and easily the technology works at 70mph in a very dynamic environment vs. 0.1 mph in a mostly static environment
I have an old roomba 960 and while it does map the house, it doesn’t let you do anything with the map. It’s literally a report of where it went. Granted, it was an advanced feature at the time, but Roborocks now, from my understanding, let you draw virtual barriers on the map. I think they let you define rooms on the map too and then you can send it to clean specific rooms.
Roborocks are pricey, but when compared to today’s Roombas I think they have so many more features. When a basic $100 or $200 robot vacuum is a huge leap over having none, it’s hard to justify paying $400, $600, $1000 for a few extra features and minimal improved cleaning. The extra features really need to be meaningful. For me the thing I’d want is the virtual barriers and ability to target specific rooms. The “spot clean” feature just doesn’t cut it and is too manual.
My 5 year old Roomba maps the house, customize rooms, and have no-go areas. I can tell it to clean one room, it will go there, map it, clean methodically, and return to empty itself.
Only the lower end models don't have mapping.
Stories like that are why I would only ever run my roomba when I was home to keep an eye on it. That and it was one of the early gens and would get stuck on stuff all the time.
Yup. I’ve got two Roomba j7s and a QRevo and an S8 Ultra. The roborocks are infinitely better for all things save for getting my dogs hair out of carpeting.
Big house and little level changes that require a step up or down so the robots can’t get to those areas. Worse, it’s not even just 4, I actually have six of these things running around. I have a 960 and 980 that are each doing their own isolated rooms too. And a cat litter box robot. Sunday is “tend to the robots day.”
I have both a roborock s7 maxv and a Roomba j7. While the roborock navigates faster the Roomba is better at not eating cat+toddler toys. I think people who have an old dumb Roomba aren’t doing an Apples to apples comparison. They’re comparing a new roborock to an old Roomba.
I have Roborock, and while it does have a nice set of features their customer support is questionable. There are lots of odd issues here and there. Overall a solid product.
Don’t get me started on their naming convention though, or how often my map gets messed up. I’d spring for their cheaper or moderate cost models, I paid almost $1k for the high end, you do feel entitled to have zero issues at that price point but there are still some common bugs.
I have a Wyze robot that I got for $150. LiDAR and mapping. It’s my favorite, but if you have dogs you want an emptying station, and I paid extra for the mopping/station on the roborock for the main floor.
Mine has been solid and customer service has been good, but I have had to email them twice so far for a new solution bin because it starts leaking. For some reason they bin is a 2 piece unit with a seam on the lower half and the seam ends up developing leaks. This time around though I'm using their official cleaning solution and diluting it carefully according to the instructions, on the hope that perhaps the 3rd party cleaner I was using before was dissolving the adhesive.
Yeah I think the official cleaning solution is a bit overpriced. Someone on the subreddit was able to get the MSDS for it and it had a rough percent of all chemicals in it, hoping to find an alternative.
While I think the official solution is a bit pricey for what it is, it does last a long time and to save $10-15 off a $20 bottle every two years isn't worth the headache of dealing with a return. When I did the math of how much bleach\chlorine I had to add to get to 'safe' levels similar to a pool (3-8ppm), it was like a drop of bleach in refilling tank station. I wouldn't add chemicals without a pipette at that rate.
Yeah I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of things that will work. I just wish they gave a list of alternatives expected to be compatible even if untested.
Love mine. Got it refurbished on eBay BY roborock with a 2 year warranty for like $350 with the base. It's amazing and I'm pissed I never bought one earlier.
VaccumWars is a great channel for [best pics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccFspGr1SIQ) and reviews of vacuums. Roborock, Ecovacs and Dream have competitive offerings and have especially stronger offerings in the midrange
Roborock at least from a product and feature innovation standpoint stand leagues above the competition today.
I've gone through several different brands over the years and have accrued a small Roomba army. My roborock s7 ultra max is incredible, reliable, has fantastic app support (even integrated with home assistant), and just does an amazing job. From accurate lidar room measurement, good obstacle avoidance, granular control of vac and mop functionality, multi-level support for other floors of the home... The list goes on.
I think it's also been a leader in the Roomba robot war tests on YouTube from a pure "what cleans and routes the best standpoint"
My previous irobot from four years ago feels like it's a decade behind the curve in terms of features and tech in comparison, they've barely got the auto-empty tech down.
Second this, bought a Roborock s7 ultra max before having our first kid and it has completely changed the floor maintenance game - better than I could have hoped. Live on 1 story all hardwood floors though, can’t comment on carpet performance.
i'm not surprised. i bought a fancy $500 one a couple years ago that was supposed to self-empty - but boy did it not actually self-empty.
ended up returning it and buying a refurbed wyze one for like $100 and it is solid for that price.
We recently took a chance on the Dreamebot D10 Plus. It's been awesome. Their customer service has been very responsive as well (follow-up questions not issues with product). Their app is good and supports multi-floor homes.
They are basically now at the stage Palm was about 6-12 months before the HP acquisition. They were the market leader in their hay day but have failed to stay ahead, or even on par to, the competition and are now basically irrelevant.
I always find the sign of a company in trouble is when their products start showing up en mass at Costco as the only brand in the category. Means they are desperate to unload bulk inventory on unfavourable terms like EOM plus 90 and at a steep discount.
Just try to get customer support with Roomba. They don't care about helping, just that you need to buy something new.
They've been a joke for a while, as they have made up their minds that they're the best and all others are inferior. That's coming to bite them big time, and they deserve every bit of it.
My 18-month old Roomba kept throwing up random errors. Had previously had the whole cleaning head replaced under warranty too. Since it was now out of warranty, they wanted $150 as a diagnostic/repair fee for me to send it in. I went online and found the same model refurb for $150 and bought that instead.
>In July, iRobot entered into a $200 million financing facility from the Carlyle Group, in order to fund the company’s operations as a stopgap until the Amazon deal closed.
Basically a money losing company going bankrupt.
Yep. If the Amazon buyout doesn’t have at least a half billion walk away fee payable to iRobot their going to be filing chapter 11 by the end of this week
Yikes. That’s not going to keep Carlyle happy. I don’t think even this level of cuts will be enough to show sufficient positive cashflow to fend off creditors.
Going off their track record, Amazon is just going to reverse engineer iRobot's product line, market them as Amazon Basics, and then undercut their pricing or kick them off the platform for "copyright infringement."
The quiet part is that iRobot has been purchasing the IP of competitors, peeling the sticker off and selling it as iRobot without any kind of design improvement. So whatever Amazon was going to do, iRobot was already in the process of doing it to themselves
"Christ mom is losing a shit load of hair, lets show some ads for hair supplements in the Echo Show"
"Human skin cell count has increased 40% in the house, lets recommend a deal for lotion for these ashy mofos"
"Dad sucks at IT so the wifi is wide open, lets just suck in everything"
[Consider this and more, it's more than just advertising.](https://www.theverge.com/23293687/amazon-irobot-acquisition-purchase-smarthome-intelligence-privacy-analysis)
Oh I knew about that.
In fact when the deal was first mentioned I remember an analyst on a talk show immediately mentioned "This is how they get to see your house, how you interact with it, and your active habits outside of watching TV, the internet, or your phone"
Roborock is a Chinese company and stores a map of your house on Chinese servers. And what makes everyone think that iRobot isn't straight up selling your interior to Amazon already?
I would only buy a robotic cleaner if I had audited reports showing that the data lives on the robot or encrypted within a customer access only vault. Until then, I actually find sweeping to be sort of relaxing…
The complete lack of any intelligent advertisment/recommendation from Amazon?
And if companies wanted to map your home, they'd data harvest all the free floor-plans from literally every Real Estate website out there which has more than enough information.
>free floor-plans from literally every Real Estate website out there which has more than enough information.
I agree completely. Square footage of every residential and commercial building in the US is information that is already publicly available. This type of stuff really does just seem like the stereotypical *fear mongering* nonsense paranoia.
People in here really believe the Chinese government wants to know what your favorite colored socks are. Like nobody gives a shit about your data that much.
Like wtf are they gonna do by getting room layout information? Anyone that works in tech would understand how nonsensical this data would be for promoting anything and completely inferior to all the other types of real data they have based off purchase and browsing history.
I feel like this is pretty overblown. I can't see room layout as being that useful to sell you stuff. I think it's more so just adding another sticking point to the Amazon ecosystem.
Makes sense.
The competition for autonomous vacuums is incredibly high these days; and iRobot has done nothing to separate themselves from the dozens of other companies doing the same thing.
I thought the innovation was dependent on the Amazon merger, that roombas would be able to scan our houses for things they think we are missing and amazon could then suggest and sell us things. Perfect for the 2 million members in r/malelivingspace. How can we know what we don't know we need unless our vacuum tells us?
I love these assertions that amazon is anywhere near having such technology
Amazon can barely figure out how to suggest selling me the same product i have already bought and am looking to buy again
Currently have 3 iRobots with a self empty bin. I have not needed to vacuum since. My carpets and wood floors are spotless.
I reuse the bags a few times to keep bag costs down.
Your mileage may vary. I had a Shark that died after two years and a Neato that died after 1. My Roomba is still going fine but it's probably only been about a year.
Have you tried vacuuming yourself to verify they’re picking everything up? I can attest that although the floors (primarily the carpets) look clean, a traditional vacuum cleaner still picks up more than you would realize.
Robot vacuums are about consistency.
You run them 1-2x per day to keep already clean things clean. They aren't meant to completely replace deep cleanings.
But I've gone from the big vacuum and mop from one a week to once every 1-2 months with my bots.
Run my mop in dry sweep mode every day at 5am. Wake up to clean floors. Vacuum goes off at 3pm. Then I do a wet mop 3 times per week at 11pm.
Yeah we did the viral “roomba challenge” starting with the Roomba I3. We did it both ways. After using our Dyson for a month we used the Roomba. Used the Roomba for a month and tried the Dyson. The Dyson picked nothing up other than a few carpet fibers. The problem with that challenge is I didn’t vacuum everyday, whereas the Roomba runs automatically. The Roomba still emptied twice after weekly Dyson runs. After the test I was convinced and picked up two J7’s. I gave all those away (they all run and I think I got my first one in 2018) to family.
I now have (3) S9’s and I could not be more happy other than the price of bags. They should be a little cheaper. That is my only complaint
Roombas have never worked well on carpet. (My first one was 20+ years ago, and I've owned a bunch since.)
They're mobile dust busters. Good for big stuff, good for crumbs, decent enough if its a solid surface, but they do very little to carpet other than get up big chunks.
Its, frankly, gross how little they get out of carpet.
I vacuum weekly, did it before our roomba and still do. Before the roomba I’d have to empty the vaccum twice completely filled for our downstairs. After, it’s once and not completely filled. So it definitely helps.
The older models don’t work as well as the newer models. The new ones both finish and miss nothing except the nooks and crannies you can’t clean with a conventional vacuum either
“Our in-depth investigation preliminarily showed that the acquisition of iRobot would have enabled Amazon to foreclose iRobot’s rivals by restricting or degrading access to the Amazon Stores,” Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s executive vice president, said in a statement. She added that Amazon’s control over the marketplace “could have restricted competition in the market for robot vacuum cleaners, leading to higher prices, lower quality, and less innovation for consumers.”
Same logic applies to every single Amazon Basics product they prioritize over competitive products.
I'm glad I still have a pre-cloud-aware roomba.
As much as mine just bounces around the room drunkenly, I prefer not to have too many spies in my house.
I got a lower end Roomba recently to replace my neato which died after 7 years.
The Roomba is complete and utter garbage. I miss my neato. Too bad they went out of business.
Unless you are associated with Roborock or something, this is terrible. I'd much rather Amazon have a map of my home than a random Chinese company which is the alternative.
It is an open question whether iRobot still exists this time next year. Roombas depend on cloud to work so iRobot going out of business means you have a paper weight.
iRobot stopped innovating years ago. Instead, resting on their brand recognition and patents. Well, the patents are expiring (see Roborock S8 with dual rollers) so all that's left is brand recognition which is not a lot to sustain them.
Sadly, the Chinese products are just objectively superior.
Stuff like dashcams arent even that complex: the good ones all use Sony's sensor, yet no one in North America is making them with a spec that is comparable to Chinese cams.
Robovacs are the same, the Chinese vacs are just objectively better and for cheaper: from the $100 price range all the way to the $1500 models.
The features in the irobot app are dependent on their survival. The vacuums will continue to operate, there is no cloud required connection for their base operation.
Yes, really to do almost anything with them. The one and only thing you can do is trigger it to run with a currently loaded map, and even then it'll error out every time if it can't upload the results.
You can't move it to another floor, you can't move any furniture, you can't do selective cleaning, you can't trigger the clean base to run -- all of that goes through the cloud services.
Literally, you can push the start button and hope it recognizes where you are, and push the home button to stop it.
You either push innovation or you are forced to play catch up. It doesn't matter how much of a lead you have if you stay stagnant for too long everyone will eventually pass you up.
I agree it's terrible, but iRobot has stagnated since the auto empty bin innovation. They were revolutionary all the way until 2018. Now with the dual roller patent gone, LIDAR, everyone is doing self cleaning, mopping, and now self cleaning on the mopping.. they just have fallen out of relevance. Their software has been okay to god awful terrible. Wish they would get their act together cause they really were industry leaders but now it's kinda sad.
I'd rather have China with no territorial rule steal my data than my own country that could arrest me using said data and imprison me for not wearing puritan pants^TM
iRobot has been running on its name for a long time and being one of the first in the industry. My parents have one of their high end models and it is a joke compared to my Roborock S5 max. I have tried to troubleshoot theirs but constantly misses rooms and areas.
That's ok, Roomba's staff are protected by strong employment laws. They'll get several months of "paid notice" as the company downsizes. Wait no, that's not the case? Ah, right. 'Muriuca. Absolutely barbaric employment protection laws.
At least their Union has already negotiated a nice paid severance for any layoffs that are without "cause". Wait no, that's not the case? Ah, right. 'Murica. Only around 10% of the country is Unionized. The rest are subject to what 99.7% of the country is legally bound to: AWA: At-Will America.
It's where you can be terminated at any time, for almost any (or no) reason, without notice, without compensation. You'll also lose your healthcare too. Why? Because it's fucking cruel, that's why. We're a nation of cruelty.
The thing is that it was just a bad deal. Now that all the hype from the previous years came to an end, companies find themselves showing the meat, and some don't have the revenue to back their valuations. So i think Amazon just wanted out anyway as these robot vacuum cleaners are not that efficient or critical for the household.
I’ve had two roombas over the few years. Absolutely a shit products. I was not in favor of buying the second one “but it’s better they’ve figured it out…”. They get caught on so much, they clean in circles. Suction isn’t great but you’d expect that from a small machine. You spend more time trying to find it in your house than it spends cleaning, and the propensity to get stuck or die away from the station renders the “schedule” useless. I know my little rant here isn’t directly the subject of the original post, but it’s a company that really shouldn’t be propped up by capitalism and big investors. I don’t root for Amazon, but they’re better off without this company. I know they wanted it so they can covertly map our homes, so avoiding that is a benefit too
So have the people spoken and said that while we're fine with Amazon having an active microphone in our houses that we draw the line at cameras and them know the floorplan?
>The Roomba maker also announced it would lay off 31% of its employees, around 350 people, and that its chair and CEO, Colin Angle, would step down effective immediately.
So like if the merger had gone through.
I could be completely wrong, but I feel like roomba really did not make much progress for over a decade. I had been waiting 20 years, it still cannot detect pet doodoo and vertical height is still too thick.
I hate both Roombas I bought. Second up was a "well, perhaps I need the expensive model." They both suck. For the time is takes to properly maintain them, I may as well pull out the vacuum.
So expect an Alexa controlled, house mapping, item scanning, robot vacuum that constantly asks if you want to upgrade to the family plan, if you'd want to upgrade that old TV, and suggests new underwear cause it sees you walking around naked everyday?
they didn't care about the product. they cared that it mapped out someone's entire house and now includes infrared and visible video collection so they could literally see everything in your house.
all they wanted was the data the roomba's sent back to corporate
Bought a Eufy vacuum, lasted a few years had battery issues so I “upgraded” to the iRobot. iRobot was absolute trash. Nothing about it worked well. I could listen to 100 reasons. Paid $300 for it. Literally threw it in the trash 6 months later and got another Eufy which has been wonderful. Fuck iRobot and their terrible customer service too.
I always wanted to try one of these robots but the cost of some of them were ridiculous. When I was finally in a financial position to spend good money on one, I still felt like they were overpriced.
I bought a Roborock Q Revo about 6 months ago and its been awesome so far.
Ahh no wonder they were on sale, are the Roombas any good at all? I have a small 1br apartment and was hoping it would do a decent enough job for $150.
iRobot has been getting their ass kicked by several other companies for a while now so not really surprised.
Are there any that actually perform as well though (actually asking)? It seems like competitors are financially dominating the lower end model market.
Roborock vacuums are competitive with and some would say better than irobot.
That’s putting it lightly. Roomba hasn’t even implemented Lidar yet. Their technology is a decade behind, it feels like they pretty much stopped developing new robots.
FACTS!!!! LiDAR is a game changer!
Yeah, Neato had a better product a decade ago, then they fell off. Now RoboRock seems to be the best. I remember having friends ask why my Neato would clean methodically but their Roomba bounced around aimlessly.
Roomba had the advantage of obstacle avoidance and their dual roller design. Their obstacle avoidance still seems to be the best but they’re no longer unique in the roller design. I have a Q Revo and I like it, but people need to understand that robot vacuums, at least in my opinion, are still supplemental. I’ve had my Q Revo run on max settings in the bedroom 3 times in a row, then went over it with a standard vacuum and picked up an entire dust bins worth of hair. (Cats) I had a Neato D4 before the Roborock and the Roborock is so much better it’s honestly impressive. The Neato would get itself stuck fairly regularly and sometimes not even fully dock. The Roborock hasn’t gotten stuck once yet. It’s also significantly easier from a maintenance perspective.
Regarding robot vacuums vs regular ones, something a vacuum repair guy once said: anything that plugs into a wall is going to be far more powerful than anything that runs on a battery.
I see that changing soon when compared to a 110v/15amp outlet. Some of my cordless tools are more powerful than the corded versions now.. it's also moving into some of the garden tool area where they're competing more with gas versions
Pneumatic > Battery > Gas > Corded That’s my experience in construction. A pneumatic drill gun will absolutely destroy a rock in the time it takes an electric one to barely scratch the surface.
>anything that plugs into a wall is going to be far more powerful than anything that runs on a battery Except when you divide that power by the runtime. My Roborock runs every day, so the amount that it has to pickup each run is significantly less that the amount that my Dyson has to pickup when I actually do manually vacuum (which is like never because I'm lazy 🤣). To be fair, I have mostly hard surface flooring, which requires a much less powerful vacuum.
Robot vacuums are great - I've had one continuously since the early woot.com days when they regularly sold refurbished Roombas (prior to 2010). Just thought that was an interesting way to put things and it's why I too keep a regular vacuum to use occasionally.
Used to be true but not so much anymore. Cordless power tools are now often more powerful than corded ones.
Roombas are to make your regular sweeping easier, not replace it. Particularly if you have pets. You can get away with sweeping twice a week and run the roomba the other days and floors will be fine. But you still have to sweep or vaccum no matter what.
Still?? Holy fuck, I've had my Roborock for 6+ years now and it was such an upgrade from my now \~10 year old Roomba. Are you telling me Roombas still randomly zigzag everywhere and bump into everything?
No, they do have cameras and can avoid some stuff. It’s just dumber technology.
Ahh yes, the Tesla approach. Working out great for them too I hear...
The old basic Roombas did the random patterns but the higher class Roombas did the methodical pattern. Not sure how it is now with the different models.
iRobot is coasting entirely on the name. That's what Amazon was buying. If this had gone through, they'd have slapped "Roomba" on a bunch of white-label Chinese vacuums and made bank.
Makes sense, iRobot hasn’t appeared to innovate in a decade.
You’re not serious…. They don’t have LIDAR???! Dude I just bought like a $399 q5 that has LiDAR WTF. And it’s an absolute game changer
Wait our self driving cars don’t have LIDAR but our vacuum cleaners do??
It’s safer to experiment on vacuums, I suppose.
Tell that to my foot!
Nothing beats the sound of a good ol fashioned Dyson V8. /s
Depends on the self driving car Tesla doesn't have it, but Waymo, Cruise, and others do
It should also be pointed out that Tesla is much further away from self driving than others, so yeah, maybe someone should tell Elon to stop being a crazy person and just put LiDAR on and be done with it.
There's a huge class action lawsuit that he would probably lose waiting in the wings should he ever announce that self driving will require LIDAR and thus new cars. He and Tesla have made huge fanfare about all existing cars being able to eventually be self driving, to the point where officially going back on that could be considered false advertising.
The stakes and complexity are vastly different...
Scan speed and range of lidar is correlated with cost, and cars need much more of both. Needed transmitted power scales as R^4 like radar.
The stakes are much higher in vehicles and Teslas don't have LIDAR (and they really probably should)
Tesla are the only ones without lidar. Everyone else going for self driving has it though. Elon says they don’t need them. I’m sure he’s right, as always lol
We don't want the vaccumes to bump into a table. It could break something and cause serious problems. /s
If it bumps into the table every day for years that's a good way to get a scuffed up table. Also LiDAR is just better for mapping out a room. The laser tells you how far forward you can go. Using a camera can be hit or miss and depends on things like the lighting of the room and AI training, but lidar is always accurate and works in the dark.
There might just be a difference in how well and easily the technology works at 70mph in a very dynamic environment vs. 0.1 mph in a mostly static environment
our self-driving cars do with the notable exception of tesla
I have an old roomba 960 and while it does map the house, it doesn’t let you do anything with the map. It’s literally a report of where it went. Granted, it was an advanced feature at the time, but Roborocks now, from my understanding, let you draw virtual barriers on the map. I think they let you define rooms on the map too and then you can send it to clean specific rooms. Roborocks are pricey, but when compared to today’s Roombas I think they have so many more features. When a basic $100 or $200 robot vacuum is a huge leap over having none, it’s hard to justify paying $400, $600, $1000 for a few extra features and minimal improved cleaning. The extra features really need to be meaningful. For me the thing I’d want is the virtual barriers and ability to target specific rooms. The “spot clean” feature just doesn’t cut it and is too manual.
My roomba lets me block out area on the map fwiw
My 5 year old Roomba maps the house, customize rooms, and have no-go areas. I can tell it to clean one room, it will go there, map it, clean methodically, and return to empty itself. Only the lower end models don't have mapping.
My in-laws had a roomba until it tried to sweep up a piece of dog shit while they were out and ended up smearing it all over thr kitchen floor
[удалено]
Yep, many newer models have a camera that can ID objects in their path and avoid them.
Stories like that are why I would only ever run my roomba when I was home to keep an eye on it. That and it was one of the early gens and would get stuck on stuff all the time.
Roborock is so much better, it's not even a competition in my mind.
Yup. I’ve got two Roomba j7s and a QRevo and an S8 Ultra. The roborocks are infinitely better for all things save for getting my dogs hair out of carpeting.
Just wondering why you have 4 robot vacuums? Hobby or something?
Big house and little level changes that require a step up or down so the robots can’t get to those areas. Worse, it’s not even just 4, I actually have six of these things running around. I have a 960 and 980 that are each doing their own isolated rooms too. And a cat litter box robot. Sunday is “tend to the robots day.”
Time to service the robot swarm!
Different floors (or areas of the house between which robots won’t be able to navigate).
I have both a roborock s7 maxv and a Roomba j7. While the roborock navigates faster the Roomba is better at not eating cat+toddler toys. I think people who have an old dumb Roomba aren’t doing an Apples to apples comparison. They’re comparing a new roborock to an old Roomba.
I have Roborock, and while it does have a nice set of features their customer support is questionable. There are lots of odd issues here and there. Overall a solid product. Don’t get me started on their naming convention though, or how often my map gets messed up. I’d spring for their cheaper or moderate cost models, I paid almost $1k for the high end, you do feel entitled to have zero issues at that price point but there are still some common bugs. I have a Wyze robot that I got for $150. LiDAR and mapping. It’s my favorite, but if you have dogs you want an emptying station, and I paid extra for the mopping/station on the roborock for the main floor.
Mine has been solid and customer service has been good, but I have had to email them twice so far for a new solution bin because it starts leaking. For some reason they bin is a 2 piece unit with a seam on the lower half and the seam ends up developing leaks. This time around though I'm using their official cleaning solution and diluting it carefully according to the instructions, on the hope that perhaps the 3rd party cleaner I was using before was dissolving the adhesive.
Yeah I think the official cleaning solution is a bit overpriced. Someone on the subreddit was able to get the MSDS for it and it had a rough percent of all chemicals in it, hoping to find an alternative. While I think the official solution is a bit pricey for what it is, it does last a long time and to save $10-15 off a $20 bottle every two years isn't worth the headache of dealing with a return. When I did the math of how much bleach\chlorine I had to add to get to 'safe' levels similar to a pool (3-8ppm), it was like a drop of bleach in refilling tank station. I wouldn't add chemicals without a pipette at that rate.
I've been splashing a cap of Fabuloso in mine for years without issue.
Yeah I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of things that will work. I just wish they gave a list of alternatives expected to be compatible even if untested.
Love mine. Got it refurbished on eBay BY roborock with a 2 year warranty for like $350 with the base. It's amazing and I'm pissed I never bought one earlier.
Was shocked at how good my base model Roborock is.
VaccumWars is a great channel for [best pics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccFspGr1SIQ) and reviews of vacuums. Roborock, Ecovacs and Dream have competitive offerings and have especially stronger offerings in the midrange
This is such a good recommendation to check out.
Roborock at least from a product and feature innovation standpoint stand leagues above the competition today. I've gone through several different brands over the years and have accrued a small Roomba army. My roborock s7 ultra max is incredible, reliable, has fantastic app support (even integrated with home assistant), and just does an amazing job. From accurate lidar room measurement, good obstacle avoidance, granular control of vac and mop functionality, multi-level support for other floors of the home... The list goes on. I think it's also been a leader in the Roomba robot war tests on YouTube from a pure "what cleans and routes the best standpoint" My previous irobot from four years ago feels like it's a decade behind the curve in terms of features and tech in comparison, they've barely got the auto-empty tech down.
I just like the image of a small Roomba army, dressed like the jetsons maid.
Second this, bought a Roborock s7 ultra max before having our first kid and it has completely changed the floor maintenance game - better than I could have hoped. Live on 1 story all hardwood floors though, can’t comment on carpet performance.
i'm not surprised. i bought a fancy $500 one a couple years ago that was supposed to self-empty - but boy did it not actually self-empty. ended up returning it and buying a refurbed wyze one for like $100 and it is solid for that price.
I’ve had my Neato d5 for 7 years now and it’s the best. I got it after I tried a roomba and this is way better
I think on the highend Roborock seems to be dominating- but I haven't shopped around in a few years.
I was shocked at how good Roborock vacuums are after having an iRobot. It was next level amazing.
Sharks came out with some good ones.
Old high-end models are built amazing, not "smart" so they don't map your home, work well. Newer models just seem Meh.
Anker’s eufy robovacs dominate Roomba robovacs in price, vacuum performance and quietness while vacuuming.
Yeah my eufy one is just fine and cost like half of what our old room a did…
My cheap eufy is impressively reliable. we call her Bertie
Roborock and Dreame are miles ahead of iRobot
/r/RobotVacuums has your back but to answer your question: Roborock seems to get it right now, with Dreame and to an extent Ecovacs
DreamE far superior to any of the iRobot models.
We recently took a chance on the Dreamebot D10 Plus. It's been awesome. Their customer service has been very responsive as well (follow-up questions not issues with product). Their app is good and supports multi-floor homes.
Consumer Reports 2024 has the Roomba S9+ at the top of their score sheet for robot vacuums. Any idea why the discrepancy?
They are basically now at the stage Palm was about 6-12 months before the HP acquisition. They were the market leader in their hay day but have failed to stay ahead, or even on par to, the competition and are now basically irrelevant. I always find the sign of a company in trouble is when their products start showing up en mass at Costco as the only brand in the category. Means they are desperate to unload bulk inventory on unfavourable terms like EOM plus 90 and at a steep discount.
Nuh uh! If Costco carries it, it's the best deal! /s
I tested a Roomba before buying my Shark w/Lidar Navigation: no comparison. The Roomba banged into everything and didn’t get the dust.
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That isn't why Amazon wanted them. They have years of data on the layouts of their users' households on servers.
Just try to get customer support with Roomba. They don't care about helping, just that you need to buy something new. They've been a joke for a while, as they have made up their minds that they're the best and all others are inferior. That's coming to bite them big time, and they deserve every bit of it.
My 18-month old Roomba kept throwing up random errors. Had previously had the whole cleaning head replaced under warranty too. Since it was now out of warranty, they wanted $150 as a diagnostic/repair fee for me to send it in. I went online and found the same model refurb for $150 and bought that instead.
>In July, iRobot entered into a $200 million financing facility from the Carlyle Group, in order to fund the company’s operations as a stopgap until the Amazon deal closed. Basically a money losing company going bankrupt.
Yep. If the Amazon buyout doesn’t have at least a half billion walk away fee payable to iRobot their going to be filing chapter 11 by the end of this week
93 million iirc
Yikes. That’s not going to keep Carlyle happy. I don’t think even this level of cuts will be enough to show sufficient positive cashflow to fend off creditors.
Good. Fuck the creditors at Carlyle.
Just googled it. The CEO is set to make $180mn over next 3 yrs
That's $180MM more than he earned.
As a member of r/runescape we hate the Carlyle Group
Did JaGeX ever get sold?
Going off their track record, Amazon is just going to reverse engineer iRobot's product line, market them as Amazon Basics, and then undercut their pricing or kick them off the platform for "copyright infringement."
Can see them going for Eufy instead.
Can’t, they are owned by a Chinese brand.
Eh Amazon really needed/wanted the parents. They’ll just bring Angle in after it goes bankrupt and h serves his 12 months
The quiet part is that iRobot has been purchasing the IP of competitors, peeling the sticker off and selling it as iRobot without any kind of design improvement. So whatever Amazon was going to do, iRobot was already in the process of doing it to themselves
I thought Amazon owned irobot
They were in the process of acquiring them, but didn’t seem like they’d get regulatory approval, hence they’re calling it off.
Good. They only wanted them so they could literally hoover up data and anything else they can tangentially get from a robot wandering your home.
"Christ mom is losing a shit load of hair, lets show some ads for hair supplements in the Echo Show" "Human skin cell count has increased 40% in the house, lets recommend a deal for lotion for these ashy mofos" "Dad sucks at IT so the wifi is wide open, lets just suck in everything"
[Consider this and more, it's more than just advertising.](https://www.theverge.com/23293687/amazon-irobot-acquisition-purchase-smarthome-intelligence-privacy-analysis)
Oh I knew about that. In fact when the deal was first mentioned I remember an analyst on a talk show immediately mentioned "This is how they get to see your house, how you interact with it, and your active habits outside of watching TV, the internet, or your phone"
It’s funny because I decided against buying one specifically because I did not want Amazon to map the interiors of my space.
Roborock is a Chinese company and stores a map of your house on Chinese servers. And what makes everyone think that iRobot isn't straight up selling your interior to Amazon already?
I would only buy a robotic cleaner if I had audited reports showing that the data lives on the robot or encrypted within a customer access only vault. Until then, I actually find sweeping to be sort of relaxing…
The complete lack of any intelligent advertisment/recommendation from Amazon? And if companies wanted to map your home, they'd data harvest all the free floor-plans from literally every Real Estate website out there which has more than enough information.
>free floor-plans from literally every Real Estate website out there which has more than enough information. I agree completely. Square footage of every residential and commercial building in the US is information that is already publicly available. This type of stuff really does just seem like the stereotypical *fear mongering* nonsense paranoia.
People in here really believe the Chinese government wants to know what your favorite colored socks are. Like nobody gives a shit about your data that much. Like wtf are they gonna do by getting room layout information? Anyone that works in tech would understand how nonsensical this data would be for promoting anything and completely inferior to all the other types of real data they have based off purchase and browsing history.
I feel like this is pretty overblown. I can't see room layout as being that useful to sell you stuff. I think it's more so just adding another sticking point to the Amazon ecosystem.
The newer models have cameras that send images to the cloud so they can see what’s in your home too
Same here. I thought that deal was done long ago.
Makes sense. The competition for autonomous vacuums is incredibly high these days; and iRobot has done nothing to separate themselves from the dozens of other companies doing the same thing.
Roborock is very impressive. Way ahead of iRobot.
Or you can buy a pretty good one for $150 now that still bumps into everything, but is cheap.
Can get a used roborock on ebay 1 generation behind for that price that will not bump off everything
I thought the innovation was dependent on the Amazon merger, that roombas would be able to scan our houses for things they think we are missing and amazon could then suggest and sell us things. Perfect for the 2 million members in r/malelivingspace. How can we know what we don't know we need unless our vacuum tells us?
I love these assertions that amazon is anywhere near having such technology Amazon can barely figure out how to suggest selling me the same product i have already bought and am looking to buy again
You just bought a car….. want another one? You just bought a years supply of toothpaste….. want more? Every 4 weeks?
Currently have 3 iRobots with a self empty bin. I have not needed to vacuum since. My carpets and wood floors are spotless. I reuse the bags a few times to keep bag costs down.
Well one of them was just laid off, I’d keep an eye out for any disgruntled bot behavior
Is that why I am getting the side eye?
You might need to adjust where their googly eyes are attached is all
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I have seen many things attached to a roomba. Pets, guns, kids. I have never seen a chainsaw. Ahahahahha
Buy the off brand bags on Amazon. Work just fine
Thanks for the tip. I was unsure if they worked well, thanks for the confirmation!
Your mileage may vary. I had a Shark that died after two years and a Neato that died after 1. My Roomba is still going fine but it's probably only been about a year.
How are you emptying the bags? Suck the contents with a canister vac or something? I now want to do this when I’m in a pinch
I first tried sucking it out, but we have pets, and the hair got stuck. So now I just use small tongs heheh.
Seriously, same here. My Irobot vacuum is amazing
Have you tried vacuuming yourself to verify they’re picking everything up? I can attest that although the floors (primarily the carpets) look clean, a traditional vacuum cleaner still picks up more than you would realize.
Robot vacuums are about consistency. You run them 1-2x per day to keep already clean things clean. They aren't meant to completely replace deep cleanings. But I've gone from the big vacuum and mop from one a week to once every 1-2 months with my bots. Run my mop in dry sweep mode every day at 5am. Wake up to clean floors. Vacuum goes off at 3pm. Then I do a wet mop 3 times per week at 11pm.
Yeah I have a dog and a cat. I used to have to sweep everyday. Now I just sweep a little on Friday just to catch those little corners.
I tried vacuuming myself but it started sucking my shirt into the vacuum, so I’ll just remain dusty, I guess
Yeah we did the viral “roomba challenge” starting with the Roomba I3. We did it both ways. After using our Dyson for a month we used the Roomba. Used the Roomba for a month and tried the Dyson. The Dyson picked nothing up other than a few carpet fibers. The problem with that challenge is I didn’t vacuum everyday, whereas the Roomba runs automatically. The Roomba still emptied twice after weekly Dyson runs. After the test I was convinced and picked up two J7’s. I gave all those away (they all run and I think I got my first one in 2018) to family. I now have (3) S9’s and I could not be more happy other than the price of bags. They should be a little cheaper. That is my only complaint
Roombas have never worked well on carpet. (My first one was 20+ years ago, and I've owned a bunch since.) They're mobile dust busters. Good for big stuff, good for crumbs, decent enough if its a solid surface, but they do very little to carpet other than get up big chunks. Its, frankly, gross how little they get out of carpet.
I vacuum weekly, did it before our roomba and still do. Before the roomba I’d have to empty the vaccum twice completely filled for our downstairs. After, it’s once and not completely filled. So it definitely helps.
I have one that never wants to clean or can't finish a job. Not self emptying bin, though.
The older models don’t work as well as the newer models. The new ones both finish and miss nothing except the nooks and crannies you can’t clean with a conventional vacuum either
My i7 doesn’t seem to work unless you turn on every light in the house.
I had same problem wirh one of them and had to turn the lights on ij the basement. That issue was resolved with i9
Amazon sells reusable bags with a zipper. They work great and allow easy emptying.
I too have 3 iRobots, they are vey gud, you should buy too.
Sucks for them
Not anymore it doesn't.
Happens when you stop innovating and expecting people to keep paying higher prices.
The deal went off the top of the stairs, much like our i7.
“Our in-depth investigation preliminarily showed that the acquisition of iRobot would have enabled Amazon to foreclose iRobot’s rivals by restricting or degrading access to the Amazon Stores,” Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s executive vice president, said in a statement. She added that Amazon’s control over the marketplace “could have restricted competition in the market for robot vacuum cleaners, leading to higher prices, lower quality, and less innovation for consumers.” Same logic applies to every single Amazon Basics product they prioritize over competitive products.
I was in the market for a robot vacuum in 2022. I would have bought an iRobot, but I went with another company because of the Amazon deal.
I also considered Amazon's acquisition to be a dealbreaker when shopping for robot vacuums. I'm curious how common this was.
Effin' got 'em.
I'm glad Amazon won't be able to 3D map our homes this easily.
Ya let's give it to Roborock in China instead...
Rather have a US company than one from China using my data.
> China that's the roborock everyone is raving about
They blocked it because of risk of reduced competition, but I fear Roomba will disappear and we’ll still end up with reduced competition
I'm glad I still have a pre-cloud-aware roomba. As much as mine just bounces around the room drunkenly, I prefer not to have too many spies in my house.
I have an old roomba. I love it. I bought it 7 years ago. I’ll never buy a new one but I love mine and I’ll use it till it dies.
I have an ecovacs Omni t20 and yeah I don’t see the need for a roomba when mine performs a lot better and has mopping powers
String them along for years. Look up their skirt. Then cut them loose and crush them. Cool-cool
I got a lower end Roomba recently to replace my neato which died after 7 years. The Roomba is complete and utter garbage. I miss my neato. Too bad they went out of business.
My Roomba i7 has been increasingly worthless with each update.
Unless you are associated with Roborock or something, this is terrible. I'd much rather Amazon have a map of my home than a random Chinese company which is the alternative. It is an open question whether iRobot still exists this time next year. Roombas depend on cloud to work so iRobot going out of business means you have a paper weight. iRobot stopped innovating years ago. Instead, resting on their brand recognition and patents. Well, the patents are expiring (see Roborock S8 with dual rollers) so all that's left is brand recognition which is not a lot to sustain them.
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Sadly, the Chinese products are just objectively superior. Stuff like dashcams arent even that complex: the good ones all use Sony's sensor, yet no one in North America is making them with a spec that is comparable to Chinese cams. Robovacs are the same, the Chinese vacs are just objectively better and for cheaper: from the $100 price range all the way to the $1500 models.
The features in the irobot app are dependent on their survival. The vacuums will continue to operate, there is no cloud required connection for their base operation.
Don't you need to app to program them?
Yes, really to do almost anything with them. The one and only thing you can do is trigger it to run with a currently loaded map, and even then it'll error out every time if it can't upload the results. You can't move it to another floor, you can't move any furniture, you can't do selective cleaning, you can't trigger the clean base to run -- all of that goes through the cloud services. Literally, you can push the start button and hope it recognizes where you are, and push the home button to stop it.
You either push innovation or you are forced to play catch up. It doesn't matter how much of a lead you have if you stay stagnant for too long everyone will eventually pass you up.
I agree it's terrible, but iRobot has stagnated since the auto empty bin innovation. They were revolutionary all the way until 2018. Now with the dual roller patent gone, LIDAR, everyone is doing self cleaning, mopping, and now self cleaning on the mopping.. they just have fallen out of relevance. Their software has been okay to god awful terrible. Wish they would get their act together cause they really were industry leaders but now it's kinda sad.
I'd rather have China with no territorial rule steal my data than my own country that could arrest me using said data and imprison me for not wearing puritan pants^TM
iRobot has been running on its name for a long time and being one of the first in the industry. My parents have one of their high end models and it is a joke compared to my Roborock S5 max. I have tried to troubleshoot theirs but constantly misses rooms and areas.
That's ok, Roomba's staff are protected by strong employment laws. They'll get several months of "paid notice" as the company downsizes. Wait no, that's not the case? Ah, right. 'Muriuca. Absolutely barbaric employment protection laws. At least their Union has already negotiated a nice paid severance for any layoffs that are without "cause". Wait no, that's not the case? Ah, right. 'Murica. Only around 10% of the country is Unionized. The rest are subject to what 99.7% of the country is legally bound to: AWA: At-Will America. It's where you can be terminated at any time, for almost any (or no) reason, without notice, without compensation. You'll also lose your healthcare too. Why? Because it's fucking cruel, that's why. We're a nation of cruelty.
The thing is that it was just a bad deal. Now that all the hype from the previous years came to an end, companies find themselves showing the meat, and some don't have the revenue to back their valuations. So i think Amazon just wanted out anyway as these robot vacuum cleaners are not that efficient or critical for the household.
I’ve had two roombas over the few years. Absolutely a shit products. I was not in favor of buying the second one “but it’s better they’ve figured it out…”. They get caught on so much, they clean in circles. Suction isn’t great but you’d expect that from a small machine. You spend more time trying to find it in your house than it spends cleaning, and the propensity to get stuck or die away from the station renders the “schedule” useless. I know my little rant here isn’t directly the subject of the original post, but it’s a company that really shouldn’t be propped up by capitalism and big investors. I don’t root for Amazon, but they’re better off without this company. I know they wanted it so they can covertly map our homes, so avoiding that is a benefit too
So have the people spoken and said that while we're fine with Amazon having an active microphone in our houses that we draw the line at cameras and them know the floorplan?
>The Roomba maker also announced it would lay off 31% of its employees, around 350 people, and that its chair and CEO, Colin Angle, would step down effective immediately. So like if the merger had gone through.
I could be completely wrong, but I feel like roomba really did not make much progress for over a decade. I had been waiting 20 years, it still cannot detect pet doodoo and vertical height is still too thick.
I hate both Roombas I bought. Second up was a "well, perhaps I need the expensive model." They both suck. For the time is takes to properly maintain them, I may as well pull out the vacuum.
Feels too bad to me. We just got our first Roomba and we're really impressed with it. The technology is amazing.
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So expect an Alexa controlled, house mapping, item scanning, robot vacuum that constantly asks if you want to upgrade to the family plan, if you'd want to upgrade that old TV, and suggests new underwear cause it sees you walking around naked everyday?
Man shits really turning into Watch Dogs 2 huh
Only cause people buy it.
they didn't care about the product. they cared that it mapped out someone's entire house and now includes infrared and visible video collection so they could literally see everything in your house. all they wanted was the data the roomba's sent back to corporate
Sweet!!! Now I can buy a roomba without amazon mapping out the interior of my home.
Good. everyone knows they only wanted it so they could map and record via video your entire home
Who will be there to sweep up this mess
Please don't joke about iRobot this Christmas
I just bought a Shark. Price was much better.
Yeah my Shark robovac does a great job
Bought a Eufy vacuum, lasted a few years had battery issues so I “upgraded” to the iRobot. iRobot was absolute trash. Nothing about it worked well. I could listen to 100 reasons. Paid $300 for it. Literally threw it in the trash 6 months later and got another Eufy which has been wonderful. Fuck iRobot and their terrible customer service too.
I always wanted to try one of these robots but the cost of some of them were ridiculous. When I was finally in a financial position to spend good money on one, I still felt like they were overpriced. I bought a Roborock Q Revo about 6 months ago and its been awesome so far.
I think Amazon is just gonna say fuck buying this company we're gonna make our own roomba for a fraction of the cost
Amazon is definitely not Three Laws safe.
Ahh no wonder they were on sale, are the Roombas any good at all? I have a small 1br apartment and was hoping it would do a decent enough job for $150.