Roomba Review

 

Are you thinking of getting a roomba but don't know if it is worth the price? Or are you unsure if it is right for your household/lifestyle? That was me for a looooooong time. But when I saw a special deal on a roomba for 5 monthly payments of $85 (it was the 960 model with some accessories), I decided it was time to pull the trigger and see what I thought.

Now that I have been using and enjoying it for almost 2 months, I thought it would be worthwhile to distill my thoughts into one blog post. 

Programmed to run or manually managed:

As soon as I mentioned buying one on my social media, I received two separate warnings from friends that when they had programmed it to run while they were out of the house, the roomba drove through some nasty stuff and smeared it all over the house (dog poop). With those warnings in mind, I only ever manually run it while I am home. This is great for avoiding catastrophic messes, but it's also great because it is pretty common for the roomba to run into an issue like getting stuck on the corner of a rug or accidentally eating a small, loud thing. For ME, this works beautifully and is no issue. I am home most of the time anyway because I only work part time, remotely. I would also say that if I had no pets or children, those concerns wouldn't exist so programming it to run while you're at work would be fine.

Noise:

This thing is not quiet. It's not excessively loud but it's as loud/distracting as my dishwasher is. For me, again, this is not an issue. I run it when a little background noise isn't a problem. Similar to the dishwasher, I don't have it running if I'm watching a quiet show or if I'm trying to get work done. I also feel like having only had it for less than 2 months, there have been several times it was noisier than usual and I had to examine it and troubleshoot what was causing the noise. Hair wrapped around a wheel or a stuck spinner... I'm already a little bit concerned that I'll be running into some "over my head" maintenance issues sooner than later. We will see... Some of these issues could very well be rooted in having two pets and three children, hence a lot of BS littered about. 

Cleaning before you vacuum:

I do pick up the floor before I run it but sometimes I miss something. So far, it hasn't been much of an issue. It can vacuum up little pieces of plastic and so far it doesn't destroy a random floor sock. This could change, but up to this point I haven't encountered anything concerning. That said, if keeping your floor generally picked up is problematic for you, I would wait on a roomba. I would almost never have been able to use it when my kids were younger. Now that my littlest is two and we have moved all the kids toys/play area to the basement, I can pretty easily keep the main floor picked up.

Cleaning area:

To be fair, the roomba site recommended a more expensive model for me based on my house's square footage. However, I couldn't swallow that price tag (it was around $1000). The model I got does a great job of the front few rooms of my house. By the time it does that area, the battery is low/dead and the trap is full. Again, this is another area where my particular lifestyle means this "problem" is not at all concerning. I simply charge the roomba back up and once it is charged I will manually guide it to the areas it didn't get to before. I realize this isn't completely "hands off" but honestly, this is as much work as moving the roomba a couple times and pushing a button. Since I'm home almost all the time anyway, this is not an issue. If you want something you NEVER have to think about, then I would recommend whatever model the roomba site says you need. The flip side is that you could probably do an even less expensive model than the one I got and just charge/move it around more often. 

Quality of clean:

I have been really impressed with how well this "vacuum" works. When I look at the areas it has cleaned, it looks just as clean as when I would use my traditional vacuum. I have mostly hardwood floors with a couple low-pile area rugs, so I can't speak to situations that are different from that. I'm sure it goes without saying that the roomba does not replace floor-cleaning with some sort of liquid/wipe/mop action. Although I was the recipient of a targeted roomba ad the other day that informed me they make a mop-robot soooo.... maybe someday I'll be fortunate enough to give that bad boy a review. 

Bottom line:

For ME, this purchase was totally worth it. My floors get vacuumed far more often without me having to spend my time on it. I have some concerns about the longevity of it, but friends who have them have had theirs for years so I'm optimistic. Maybe there's an area roomba maintenance technician. I love not seeing little fur fluff on the floor or random debris from crafts, shoes, etc. And I love that I get that from pushing a couple buttons once a day. Unless this robot breaks in the next year, I'll be very satisfied with the purchase.