I will admit, I was really skeptical of the roomba vacuums but–we are SO glad we have one now!
We did not jump on the bandwagon in the beginning. Ethan wanted one but I didn’t really think it was going to be worth it. After hearing so many of our family and friends rave about theirs we caved. We returned some wedding gifts to Macy’s that we got duplicates of and had credit. We knew if we were ever going to try out the roomba now was the time so we ordered ours in January.
I cannot imagine not having it now! For us, it is worth every penny!
PROS
Our house has that noticeable “just cleaned” feel daily now. You really can’t beat that. When you walk in after the roomba has run the hardwood doesn’t show dust and the carpets have vacuum lines in them. LOVE.
Even though it does not mop, it really does cut down CONSIDERABLY on the work you have to put into cleaning your floors.
Ours cleans our hardwood and our carpet and even runs over the rugs we have in our bathroom and kitchen.
You can schedule automatic cleanings from the app. We have ours set right now to clean every day at 2pm. You can also open the app and turn the vacuum on or off manually if you need. This is handy if you need to be able make changes while you are at work or out of town.
The roomba docks itself. It runs for 90 minutes at a time and then heads back to its dock to charge. It can cover a lot of ground in an hour and a half.
If the vacuum accidentally sucks up a charger you can just untangle it manually. We haven’t experienced any significant damage from this and it tends to happen at our house fairly regularly. Ha!
It picks up so much! Pet hair, stray pieces of dog food, dust bunnies, cat litter, debris on baseboards, etc etc.
The height of the machine is minimal so it can clean under the beds, etc with no issues.
Cleaning out the roomba is easy. The part that collects just pulls out so you can dump it into the trash.
I am sure we will have to replace the brush in ours eventually since so much long hair gets tangled in it. They sell those replacements though so that is the good news!
CONS
It is loud when it runs over our hardwood floors. We have carpet in our bedroom and the sound does decrease significantly when it runs in there but otherwise, it is pretty noisy. Now, if I didn’t work from home a lot then this would not be an issue because we would set it up to run during the day when we were away.
There are a few places it gets stuck in our house. One being a corner in our kitchen and the other being under our bar cart. However, we were able to set up a sensor that the roomba came with in the back corner of the kitchen. It stops the vacuum from coming over in that exact area and has thus fixed that issue. The downside is that it only comes with one sensor. We really need one or two more for our house. However, you do have the option to purchase additional barriers here.
We have two shag rugs in our house with a long pile. The roomba will not hop up over these and clean them (they really are thick) but it will clean over our thinner area rugs with no issue.
MODEL OPTIONS
There are several different brands and model options to choose from once you decide you want to buy one of these vacuums. Obviously, I can’t speak to any other than this one that we have but here are a few points to think about.
Our model does not have a map of our house that we can see on our phone. This one does offer that feature. I think this would be nice to have because you can see exactly what grounds the roomba covered during the cleaning session and you can also select for the roomba to go clean a specific room if you want. The map will contain information about how your house is laid out and the info is stored on the cloud. People have expressed safety concerns over this even though the company says they take measures to keep this information private and will not sell any collection of it to 3rd parties. Just something for you to consider when comparing models.
There is even a model now that will automatically dispose of dirt that it collects in the base so instead of emptying the roomba after every cycle you just empty the base after 30 runs. Personally, I don’t think this is necessary. (Plus, it currently has an over $1000 price tag. Ouch.) We don’t mind dumping our out daily. Honestly, it is kind of nice to see how much it has cleaned up from your house! Makes you realize how much it is actually doing daily!
TIP
Once a week or so move some of your furniture and items out in the middle of the room so the roomba can really get in behind items and work in places that are usually blocked. I do this with our chairs to our dining table, our trash can, bar stools etc etc. I love to really make it work for it some days haha!
Overall, the positives definitely out weigh the negatives for us. I would recommend anyone getting one but it is especially handy if you have pets like we do!
Keep an eye out for sales at Macy’s and Target if you are in the market for one. They are the places I seem to see the most discounts.
ps, We refer to ours as roombie. In our house, everything gets a nickname! xx
