iRobot says robot vacuums now represent 20% of worldwide vacuum market | Hacker News Reader

iRobot says robot vacuums now represent 20% of worldwide vacuum market

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79 pointsdudisbrie92 comments

Ah, they mean 20 percent of the vacuums sold this year. Since a vacuum is not something that gets replaced each year (or every 5 years even?), it will take quite a while for robots to reach 20 percent of all existing vacuums, if ever.

Anecdotally the only person I know who owns a roomba used to work for iRobot.

That's a good call for pointing out the logical flaw. But basically from the people I know who owned a cleaning robot, generally it last no more than 2 years because of the new technology and the battery life.

Also because of the amount of problems it has, and the er... "limited" quality of the result, people hope that it improves with the next versions.

Also seems to me like they are replaced more often than conventional vacuums (more bugs, technical progress, they run more and thus are more likely to fail, ...)

There should be a Moores Law for cleaning robot since they are upgrading too fast that many people don't want to buy it too early.

We don't need a Moore's Law. However, more robotic vacuums will generate revenue to further advance robotics research. Lawn mowers, leaf cleanup, etc.

We're waiting for the Apple II or iPhone 1 moment then things will get interesting.

I feel the opposite. I bought a Roomba 650 almost exactly four years ago (one of the best purchases I've ever made) for about 350 dollars after a bed bath and beyond coupon. With a little bit of maintenance it still runs every day exactly as well as it did the day I bought it.

The 650 is the robovacuum Sweethome recommends and has recommended for years (http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-robot-vacuum). The newest Roombas since then have been mildly incremental, and the competitors have struggled to offer something that works better. One of my close friends bought the exact same model last week for 370 dollars.

That's not to say there isn't room for a lot of improvement, but I think it's been a super slow moving space.

Another Roomba 650 owner here! Mine was $280 purchased from eBay, in March.

I also have a Roomba 555 bought for $200 in 2012. I spent about $100 to upgrade the older one to the newer sweeper/dustbin and to buy a new battery.

Love them both! Could not imagine life without them. To press a button, leave, and come back to a parked Roomba with a full dustbin is glorious!

The amazing thing is that they actually do a better job then using a broom and dustpan.

I own a 880 and 760 and I could not be happier with both of them. I had the 760 for over a year, but it couldn't properly do my entire upstairs (its rather large). So I moved it to my two room downstairs and bought the 880. With the 880 it comes with lighthouses that signal the roomba to know to do each room separately. I can not be happier. The 880 was a great upgrade too, the brushes are easier than ever to clear and maintain (basically you don't have to).

I just got my first 650 yesterday. I was recommended away from the more expensive models because for a home as small as mine, the features didn't make sense for the price.

It's running right now, and with two dogs and a cat my floor is rarely ever this clean.

If we assume a fixed lifetime of n years for vacuums, it will take at most n years to get to 20%.

If we assumed a half-life of n years, then robot vacuums will only ever approach 20% asymptotically and won't ever reach it.

(We could get over 20% if robot vacuums have a longer lifespan than regular vacuums. I'm tempted to write a simulation over different failure curves but I really have better things to do.)

> If we assumed a half-life of n years, then robot vacuums will only ever approach 20% asymptotically and won't ever reach it.

You shouldn't assume that they will be 20% of sales for every future year.

Not sure if you have ever met a Tellus vacuum cleaner, but as far as O can tell they live for ever and bugger up this equation.

I would guess robot vacuums have a shorter life! I'm still using the same vacuum I grew up with, it's more than 20 years old and going strong.

And I'd add to that: in the USA (with a bit of extrapolation).

Even with the caveat that they mean only vacuums sold this year the number seems off. There are about 20 million sold each year in the US alone[1]. Assuming 20 times that worldwide, that's 80 million robot vacuum cleaners. If true that's an incredible level of sales for a product that's less than two decades old.

[1] https://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/equipment/hou...

Question: how good are Roombas at actually cleaning? With an actual vacuum, I can turn it high or low, or press it harder or easier, or stick it at weird angles to make it clean. How good are Roombas in comparison?

A human can do a better job, but they are actually pretty good.

I had one about five years ago, and so long as I pressed the "clean" button every day when I left my flat it was good enough that I only manually cleaned every two weeks or so.

My place was ideal though, all on one floor, with no steps, and polished wooden floorboards + thin carpets only.

I expect modern ones are better in terms of suction, battery life, and I know that you can schedule them so that removes the element of having to remember to press the button

The newest model, which I don't suggest, will schedule, but if you have a large space it will actually vacuum, charge, and vacuum some more till its algorithm thinks the entire room should be done.

It is actually very good, by virtue of running every day (unless you change its schedule to something else). So even though its suction doesn't compare well to a real big canister/bag vacuum, it makes up for that in sheer level of activity.

It's not perfect. I have a single-floor apartment with no door thresholds, yet it keeps getting stuck. I keep cables and so on neatly organized and hidden, but sometimes I've left a temporary charger cord or something on the floor; this kills the Roomba. You also have to careful with plants -- it ate a whole branch of a plant once that was hanging low near the floor. It has issues with rugs, especially with black areas, but also just getting onto the rug. It also loves to close the door on a room so that it can't get out; I had to buy a couple of door wedges to prevent that, but I don't always remember to use them. Pretty much 50% of the time I come home to find the Roomba dead in a corner.

Its dust compartment is quite small and must be emptied at least every 2-3 days. You also have to take out the little spindle things and remove hair which collects around the axles. Fortunately, the Roomba is really modular in design; you can take it apart completely, and there are replacement parts for absolutely everything. It is a rare product where the designers seem to have rejected the trend of planned obsolescence; I haven't really owned it long enough to be qualified to judge, or taken it apart, but everything I have seen indicates that it was carefully engineered to be repairable and last a long time. (It's probably hackable, too.)

Despite its weaknessss, I am quite happy with it. It keeps my apartment clean and removes the mental burden of thinking about dust. A couple of times a month I take my Dyson to clear up some corners that the Roomba can't get to where dust bunnies pile up. I have a friend who combines it with the cleaning model, but I can't deal with two gadgets that leave their depleted, cable-choked corpses around.

I wanted to confirm these findings and add something else. When my roommate bought it, I thought it was pretty useless. Even just seeing it in action makes you wonder how it get's anything done. It basically runs in random patterns and takes forever.

But after I moved to a different apartment, and he got his own place. I really saw how much work that thing was doing. I forgot how often the floors need to be swept to keep it clean. I plan to buy one myself once I move at the end of this month.

The newer ones allegedly dont do the random pattern thing anymore.

The 900 series (at least the 980) has a new navigation system.

It depends. For me, the automatically-scheduled Roomba does a much better job than me failing to vacuum at all for months. However, my Dyson certainly pulls more dirt out of the carpet when I bother to use it.

They're pretty decent, but you can't leave anything on the floor. Cables will get eaten, and anything expensive will get scratched as it constantly runs itself into it.

On low? People do this? I've asked at shops about the low setting and they say it's for doing the curtains, which isn't anything I've ever done (or the walls and ceilings for that matter). I've only ever wanted high and maybe high x3.

You don't really always need it all the way up to the highest possible when you're dealing with e.g. hard floors IMO. Though your mileage may vary obviously (and that wasn't really a crucial part of my comment).

I had one and eventually sold it and went back to the regular vacuum.

You can't have anything on the floor, so I wasn't really able to let it run while I am not at home because I was afraid it would hit stuff. Sometimes it even pushes furniture around or bumps into other stuff and scratches it.

I can vacuum my whole apartment in a lot less time than when using the roomba.

The roomba kept blowing around the dog hair and ignore spots, but kept going over the same spots a thousand times.

Buying a neato was one of the best things we did last year. Yes, it gets stuck under furniture ever now and then. Yes, it will freak out if you leave stuff lying on the ground. Yes, it won't get into every corner. Yes, it really only has 20W of power, and can thus only clean superficially. But it vacuums twice a week, without supervision. And it even vacuums under the bed.

I'd say this has had a similar impact on our life as a dishwasher.

I have a roomba and never use it :( The tiny compartment that holds the dirt is too small. And I'm constantly having to dig out my wife and daughter's hair. Granted, it's 5+ years old - maybe they've improved. But in my experience it just doesn't have the strength and capacity to be something other than a conversation starter. Oh, and it keeps getting stuck in the living room...

Roombas aren't for deep cleaning; they're basically for the light cleaning (crumbs in the kitchen, tufts of pet hair). Newer models are easier to maintain (no brush to cut hair off), but you're still expected to do a proper deep clean (with a more powerful vacuum) regularly.

Also, newer ones are automated, so you come home every day, empty the canister, and that's your floors cleaned.

won't use one until someone includes a deep-learning image recognition module to stop it spreading a track of cat shit all over the room

I read a truly disturbing story last month involving a roomba, a puppy, diarrhea and a light beige carpet. Imagine 8 hours of unattended shit smearing.

Yep, we still ran our robot vacuum at a previous house even though it was hard wood floor (helps with pet dander and such) and there were definitely a few incidences of it running over cat throw up while we weren't home. The brushes actually clean it up rather well, but it still gets all over the vacuum, and leaves wet throw-up streaks all over the floor, it's horrible... but not as bad as diarrhea, and carpet.... good god.

Does your cat poop randomly everywhere? Or in one area? We had a Neato and it came with magnetic boundary tape, which worked rather well. I believe other brands have a similar concept with IR beams and such, which aren't as nice as the magnetic boundaries.

I think he wanted it to clean up around the cat litter box, which I would say is not a smart endeavor when you are confirming there isn't soft shit laying around said box.

Just as you said too, roombas come with an Infrared wall, basically to make a barrier between something. They also have a "hub" you can by, which if you sat between feeding bowls puts a ring around them the roomba wont cross.

As a former Roomba owner with allergies I have mixed feelings about current robots.

The cleaning and coverage is pretty good. My Roomba didn't have massive cleaning power but because it revisits the same spot over and over it got the job done.

It required quite a lot of attention though, both emptying it and removing hair and carpet fluff from it.

However the real reason I got rid of it was that I suspected that the filtration wasn't very good and that it was just sucking up allergens and blowing them into the air as it went.

Did you have one of the newer models with HEPA filters?

I didn't, so hopefully newer Roomba's should be better in this regard.

It's a difficult thing to measure though and I didn't want to take the chance again (in the short term).

I found I got better cleaning (measured anecdotally by how much Ventolin I use) from a high-end handheld vacuum cleaner with HEPA and changing how I clean to include curtains, mattresses and pillows.

Definitely not as cool as having a robot though. I think that Karcher used to make a robot with a base station that it would empty itself into, which is a neat idea. That would cut down on the emptying.

[EDIT] I should add that the handheld vacuum cleaner has its own problems too since it's bagless. Great in principle until you empty it into a cloud of dust. I like seeing how much dirt is picked up but maybe disposable bags are the best solution after all.

It may not seem like it there has been much change, but the 800 series and later Roombas are vastly better than the older models.

I had one of the early 400 series and it was problematic: it required a lot of picking up and it would get entangled on cords, carpet fringes, anything loose. It also would get stuck and the brushes would get jammed up with hair. So while it vacuumed ok, it required so much picking up and fiddling with that we gradually stopped using it.

The new 805 we got at Costco (a bargain too) looks similar overall but everything is different in detail. The new rollers don't get tangled, it doesn't get caught on cords or fringes, it slows down and approaches walls cautiously instead of just crashing into them, and the algorithms for getting unstuck are effective. Now we have it set to run unattended twice a week and the house is cleaner than it has been for years.

I recommend the 800 series (or up I guess) over the 650 that Sweethome liked because it has the new rollers and bin so it picks up better and needs much less hair removal and other fiddling around.

I owned an Roomba and it works fine until recently its battery is going down quickly. I'm watching Neato recently and yes it sure has an upperhand with its patent, but the marketing is way behind iRobot.

Replacement batteries are $20-ish on eBay. 5 minutes to swap.

Replacement batteries are relatively inexpensive and reliable. I've had good luck with replacing the battery on a Roomba and a Mint (now part of iRobot) via 3rd party manufacturers.

Have one, relegated to cleaning the garage. Just too much issues in a household with toddler stuff lying around (toys).

I'd pay serious money for a real cleaning robot though. Not a little disc but something that can navigate stairs, clean higher surfaces. Currently paying humans to do it. They have access to my house, etc.

Once that cleaner robot really exists, imagine the extensions to it. Give it some other sensors and you have a fire alarm and firefighter. Even overall security. Close the doors behind you. Turn off something you forgot.

Rather than put chips in every item and automate everything I'd rather have one big thing to automate my (legacy) house. Easier to upgrade, fix plus I'd have a fully functioning house if the logic fails.

Looking at Japan, they seem to lead in this area. Can't wait.

I bought one a few years back. It just gets pinned under the two pieces of furniture that have a clearance that closely match its height. I've googled and googled but there seems to be no way to solve it other than super glueing some sort of makeshift horn on it and praying it doesn't crack off. It sits in the corner now because I'm not sure what to do about it. It was a whimsical good time for a while but ultimately a waste of $300.

I bought it at Costco so I'm considering just bringing it back, but I feel kind of guilty after waiting so long.

I made the mistake of buying one for my parents soon after I got mine for Christmas. Theirs eats the low hanging drapes, so it sits in the corner as well. I always wince at it when I go over there for dinner.

Don't do it.

I have a couch that has clearance that is almost the height of my Roomba. It got stuck in there only once though. My idea is to increase the clearance with some pads under the couch. Then Roomba will be able to clean under the couch also. Lately I had to buy new furniture with no clearance at all or high enough so Roomba can go under.

Dominating the robot vacuum market has never been irobots problem. They still haven't figured out what's next.

This is a similar story to Fitbit and GoPro, once you've own the market you're after, then what?

Floor mopping with the Braava, which they are already breaking into. Gutter cleaning with Looj, pool cleaning with Mirra.

Then on to lawn mowing. They have figured this out already, just none of them have as much name recognition as the roomba.

I would love a roomba lawn mower, but with as often as my roomba runs over my feet while it's going through its cycle, it would need some serious sensors. And when I'm mowing, I inevitably have to pick up some sticks that fell from my tree, or sometimes trash that people threw onto my lawn as they drove by. It's a harder space than the living room, you can't control the outdoors quite as much.

I think a slow-motion lawn mower could work. More like a turtle that crawls around cropping the grass. Always there; maybe solar powered; keeps creeping around and gently munching the tops off the taller stems.

They already have lawnmowers like this. They already work great too.

Why does there need to be a 'next'?

I've tried cheaper competitors and they aren't even close to how well Roomba's work. As long as they keep building the best quality robots, I'll keep buying them. If they divert resources to a new market and forget about their main product (kind of like Apple has with Mac), I have no issues in buying a competitors product if it's better.

20% seems a bit high, now perhaps if it was "20% of the world's vacuums and Cat Antagonists" I might find that believable.

The consumer in me wants to try Dyson's robot vac http://www.dyson.com/vacuum-cleaners/robot/360eye/360-eye-ni...

I've got an old Dyson Animal vacuum, and I'm always impressed with how full of dirt the canister gets. So I've got high hopes for a robotic Dyson.

That said, the reviews trickling into Amazon kind of deflate those hopes: suction is great, but otherwise it seems to have all the kinds of problems that all the robot vacuums have.

Definitely not something I'd be willing to plunk down a thousand dollars for. Here's to hoping the next version is a marked improvement.

iRobot can't really see the market need while competitor like neato and LG are offering better product with lower price. In China market, Xiao Mi and other local copycats are also selling well.

Where's the innovation at iRobot? Where are the self driving garbage cans and self driving beach coolers? Where's the quad copter that brings you a beer? This is a neat submarine article for them, but it seems to highlight a kind of complacency that other firms can innovate around.

More like 5%.

Let's say there's one vacuum for every 20 people (household of 4 or so, 1/2 households who can afford it own one, 1/2 households can afford it), that's 350 millions vacuums.

They've sold 14 millions robot vacuums to date, let's say 25% are broken/not in use, that's 10 millions.

10/350 is 3%. According to some web page I just googled, IRobot has 60-65% market share, so accounting for competitors that's 5% of vacuums.

And 90% of partially broken vacuums sitting in the corner of your living room charging indefinitely in the hopes that some day it will find a purpose.

When he decides to lie about the share of robot vacuums within the market (which you can infer from iRobots "70%" marketshare) he should make sure their financial filings coincide - complete BS.

There is no reasonable interpretation of the public data (and estimates for privately held vacuum mfgs) where 20% becomes true. Perhaps the dataset is their employees and found only 20% own their product? ;)

I do not own one, and I don't see the point of owning one until they can clean as well as a real vacuum.

Can someone explain to me the draw?

The point is that you can setup the machine and leave home for your work. And after you come home it has already finished cleaning. However, as the restriction of the size and design, they will never clean as a vacuum like Dyson.

Most people are really bad at vacuuming regularly. A robo-vac buys you more time between required vacuums.

If you're happy to vacuum weekly and are already, don't buy one (seriously), but if like me you don't recall the last time you manually vacuumed then buy a $300 Xiaomi Mi and let it do your chore for you.

Plus I've found that they get into places which people ignore (e.g. under the bed, bottom of the closet) and dust still acculates in those places.

Can you share why you choosed the Xiaomi instead of a Roomba? Can it provide the same level of cleaning?

It costs $300. The Roomba "multi-room" 960 is $700 (and Neato $500).

It isn't superior to the Roomba 900 series or Neato. It is just "Good Enough" and less than 1/2 the price. Ultimately it doesn't need to be better than the competition when it is cheaper than them, it just needs to basically perform its function.

It doesn't seem to be available in the US?

I have a cheap robot vaccum from Aldi. It cleans 90% as well as a hand held vaccuum cleaner and requires less than 10% of the time (total of time to switch on, occasional monitoring and emptying).

For me, this means that my environment can be cleaned daily while I exercise or brush my teeth. Manual, time consuming, but admittedly more effective cleaning can now be done far less frequently.

I have hardwood floors, so for me at least it cleans as well as a "real" vacuum; doesn't take much suction to lift dirt off hardwood.

It is easy to vacuum, so you vacuum more frequently.

I have a very old-gen roomba, but I just press the button for it to run as I walk out the door for work every day and my apartment floor is constantly spotless.

It may not have amazing suction or intelligence (though I hear newer ones are smarter...), but it will randomly cross over the same spot a few dozen times during its run, and that seems to make up for it.

If you have pets, and you or someone you live with has allergies, having a robot vacuum with a hepa filter is rather useful.

It's a tool like a dishwasher - dishwasher doesn't clean the dishes as well as you do manually either and still needs preparation. But it does save you a lot of time.

Same with a Roomba - I basically just quickly check a room to see if there's anything lying on the ground, throw it in there and come back in a hour. Clean and in meantime I can actually do my work or something more fun.

Ive been thinking about getting the Xiaomi robot hoover.. its got SLAM and is pretty cheap. Anyone tried?

I wish they'd invent something to pick toys off the floor.

Buying an irobot was one of the worst consumer decisions I ever made. It can only work with extreme supervision otherwise it mounts and scratches lamp bases, gets tangled in cords or assaults plants. What's the point of having it if you have to make the whole apartment inert before letting it loose. Worse still it never seemed to learn and would often finish its job leaving huge parts of the floor untouched.

And even worse, just past the warranty period the side brush which rotates to flick dirt into the path of the irobot broke.

I guess I am part of the 20% even though the irobot sits in my cellar doing nothing.

We bought a dyson fluffy (battery powered) recently and that's a much better choice.

Pretty much sums up my experience as well. The first step in using a roomba is cleaning the entire damn house.

Sounds like poor expectation-setting by whoever sold you on a Roomba. I have two dogs and a cat and keeping up with their fur is a full time job. Much easier to run the Roomba once a day. Yeah I have to keep the floor free of large debris, but I should do that anyway so I don't mind.

Cleaning up includes things like unplugging lamps and moving the cords. It includes taking all chairs off the floor and putting them on the table. It requires adding special devices to the floor to add barriers b/c the roomba has absolutely no learning capabilities. It includes removing rugs b/c the roomba gets stuck on them. I could go on. It's just a poor product. These things might be known issues, but when all of this is factored in, it really isn't a good solution for anything but gymnasiums and dance floors. If you have any stuff whatsoever, it takes more time and effort than a traditional vacuum.

I'm in the same boat.

Not an irobot but something similar. Luckily it was only 120€.

This thing eats everything. Socks. Cloths, papers. Cables, anything on the floor stops, breaks, halts that thing. It really needs some kind of sensor to detect stuff like that before it gets any kind of useful.

> This thing eats everything.

I protest! It seems to carefully avoid anything that resembles a crumb, a hair or dust.

Anybody has experience with robot vacuums with ultrasonic sensors? They should be much better at avoiding obstacles. I also guess/hope that recent "mapping" models would be much better at coverage.

> What's the point of having it if you have to make the whole apartment inert before letting it loose.

I actually find that beneficial. Takes me a couple of minutes and ensure that I clean up more often.

> Worse still it never seemed to learn and would often finish its job leaving huge parts of the floor untouched.

That is on purpose. Different than other robots, Roombas don't learn a floor-plan, but follow some simple, "insect-like" rules. (Travel along if you find a wall, turn around if you hit something, etc.)

It uses the length of stretches that it can drive in a straight line, to get an estimate of the room size, which it will use to adjust the runtime of it's cleaning program.

This behaviour ensures that Roomba adapts well to different rooms. It doesn't clean the entire floor in one go, but over some runs it will eventually reach everything.

I think you misread my first point. It's not about a clean flat. It's that normal obstacles like lamp bases, chair legs and wires for bedside lamps, etc. cause the irobot huge difficulty. It got stuck on my lamp base and scratched it badly. Nobody wants to have the light house things guarding every article as they're unsightly, costly and require battery changes.

And whether the insect like rules are on purpose or not, the fact remains that after 7 days there's still a huge dust ball on my kitchen floor that the irobot continually fails to find.

I don't have any lighthouses or virtual walls.

I just put cables on the table or stuck them behind something so the robot won't find them. Haven't had any problems with leg chairs or lamp posts yet.

Regarding the dust ball on the kitchen floor: that's what the Spot-cleaning-feature is for. Or just lift the robot and put it on the dust ball where you press "Start".

I own two of these vacuums. If you run a Roomba every day, you will not have a dustball. This is just someone being disingenuous.

I don't like to see comments labelling someone as disingenuous here. What I said was factual hence the downvote.

We have a maid. She is nice, we pay her fairly and she can also vacuum clean the stairs. She has the keys of the house, so, she can also clean take care of the plants when our vacations are not overlapping. She can also wash the floor.

Oh, and a good thing, this is another person we trust to take care of the house in emergency when we are not here, she lives 500m from our house, we cultivate social relationships at the "village" level. This makes a nice smile and short conversation when we meet here and there.

So, for us, no robots, but for a reason not exactly the same as your reasons. We prefer to trust people.

Imagine a world where everything is automated, you just use stuff which are autonomously delivered to your door and you work from home, you order your pizza with an app, etc.. You are alone.

You remind me of The Fifth Element, when the main bad guy starts choking on a piece of fruit and doesn't have a back slapping robot among his legion of other robots.

The other side of the coin is also in security, people by nature make your house less secured (albeit based on your relationship with them, the area, country and so forth).

And people I know making 40k can afford a Roomba. They will not be getting a maid. It's like saying "we don't need self driving cars, I have a personal chauffeur"

About 5 of them are Dyson, seriously where is it already?

Until they solve the paint the living room with pet shit issue I can't buy it.

Bullshit.

Headline should read, "Chap selling super expensive robot vacuum cleaners that take ten times as long as humans, and need just as much supervision, claims they're not irrelevant, really good Christmas present. Honest."

I'd believe that 20% of the world's new robots are vacuum cleaners though.

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