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Comment by Merad | Hacker News Reader

> I can vacuum my floor by myself

If you're in the HN demographic that likes to live in small urban apartments then you may not see value in automated vacuuming, but believe me they are filling a need for many people. My 68 year old mom decided to get one last year, prompted by discussions with several of her friends. She loves it so much that she's become something of a Roomba evangelical - last I checked she's talked 4-5 other people into getting one, and they all love them.

I don't even have a large house (~1200 sq ft), but I do have a cat. The whole ordeal of vacuuming probably took me at least 45 min to an hour every week, and often it didn't get done weekly. Getting a Roomba was amazing for me. It runs on a schedule twice a week, and I only spend a couple minutes dumping its dustbin.

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The main dust-trap in our house is the carpeted stairs. Since I have to drag a vacuum out to do those I might as well do the rest of the house whilst I'm at it.

I suppose I could have a Roomba that I moved up and down the storeys on alternating days, plus a manual vacuum cleaner solely for the stairs, but that seems to be defeating the point of robotics.

> Since I have to drag a vacuum out to do those I might as well do the rest

My parents have gotten themselves a back-pack style vacuum cleaner. It's not the prettiest thing, but it makes it very easy to vacuum stairs, and very very easy to play Ghostbuster.

Could just use one of those hand vacuum cleaners that people use to clean cars. They're good enough to clean my stairs twice a week, at least.

I move my vacuum robot up and down stairs as needed. I'm not _quite_ lazy enough to buy a second one for upstairs (but I _have_ considered it, I use an inexpensive Chinese knockoff, not a brand-name-priced Roomba...)

Are the Chinese knock-offs any good? I just looked up the price of a Roomba. $600 AUD to start for the shittiest model :(

I grabbed an iLife brand one from (I think) gearBest on special for ~$176AUD delivered (from memory as an impulse buy while shopping for quadcopter parts...)

This one: https://www.gearbest.com/smart-home/pp_187246.html

Turns out it's a few weeks short of 2 years old now, and it's still going strong. (It's kinda slow to charge, but at least thats kind to the batteries.)

It works fine for me - and I've had friends who've got real Roombas who say theirs doesn't work as well. I _think_ you sometimes get lucky with the wheels/traction and your particular carpet - mine does it's least-good job in the most rarely used room (spare bedroom) where the carpet is fluffier. It occasionally gets "trapped" in there. But I probably wouldn't have ever pulled the trigger at a $600 pricepoint.

Had my Roomba 780 for five years and the lifting handle broke a few weeks prior to the 5y warranty expiry.

I got it dirt cheap using a price match, included 5y warranty. Will see if they replace or fix it... But overall very happy with my purchase.

Replaced the battery once with a higher capacity one; does a great job, can go for hours, always love the result. Bit noisy, so best to run when out.

You have to look after it by cleaning the rollers and dust bin etc, but yeah, it's a very solid build.

Mate has the new one and it creates a spookily accurate floorplan. Pretty cool to see the advancements made.

I'm equally pleased with the iLife A4 I got over a year ago, also from Gearbest.

I admire its design - it's a fairly simple machine that gets most everything right, including climbing carpet, being fairly quiet, not bumping hard into furniture, not falling off steps, and even returning to its charging base (on command or when battery is low after a couple hours work).

It does not have fancy magnetic barriers to close off areas, but a simple door draft stopper pillow on the floor holds it off well enough.

I'm surprised at the good reviews of the Roomba here. I got one a few years, and found it basically worthless. Everyday I'd come home and find the inventive way my Roomba had discovered to fail. Somedays it would get stuck on a chair leg, other times it would get trapped behind doors, or I'd just discover it dead somewhere without a clear explanation.

I had been hoping the Roomba would make my apartment and sweep it intelligently, but as near as I could tell, the Roomba just moved at random. I also found the power of the Roomba was weak. Inspecting my floor afterwards, I'd frequently find the same kind of lint, or detritus that made me want a Roomba in the first place.

Maybe I was just unlucky, or had a bad living space for a Roomba, but in my experience they aren't worth it at all.

I have a first generation Xiaomi vacuum and it's amazing, at 30% of high end Roomba with comparable features

Xiaomi, the phone manufacturer?

Have a look on AliExpress or gearbest etc they make a huge range of things. I've always been happy with their stuff too, though they are getting more expensive.

I have a "Eufy robovac" I bought off Amazon and it works pretty great if you can accept a bunch of limitations.

It has no app and setting up any sort of non-trivial schedule using the simple remote that comes with it is very hard.

It never manages to find its way back to the charging station, so you have to find it and carry it back yourself each time.

It has no 'memory' so it has to learn the space it's in each time you start it and it doesn't know what it has and hasn't cleaned.

Beyond that it just works. I don't bother with scheduling. I just turn it on when I'm on my way out the door every other day or so and just let it get to work.

2nd this Eufy robovac. I looked at the others, and since Eufy is Anker, went with them because of better service and battery life.

I don't think any of the others, including the 4x priced Roomba are any better at navigating my house. The sensors don't seem to work well on black floors, and there are places you will have to block so you don't have it getting stuck often. Once you've figured those two things out in your house, it's push button vacuuming with the $200 Eufy.

There are a few people at my workplace that swear by this guy [1]. Last time I checked you had to jump through some hoops to get the app to render in English, but there are YouTube tutorials to walk you through it.

[1] https://www.productreview.com.au/p/xiaomi-mi-robot-vacuum.ht...

Don't know about the knock-offs. But Ecovacs makes a line of roomba competitors that match up as well or better and cost 75% as much.

I have a couple of Aldi "robotic" vacuum cleaners. They are excellent.

The Dyson animal is a nice half way house, runs for 20 mins on a charge and because its always to hand the mental block of hauling the full size vacuum out from under stairs is gone, makes starting the job easier.

Those spot cleaning handheld carpet shampooers are also great for small places for similar reasons. Slurp up anything right when it gets spilled and rent an upright once a year. Also good for upholstery.

I'm still on the fence about whether I like our Roomba. A few things:

- we can't run it on a schedule, b/c it requires prep (moving cat food/toys, floor mats, etc)

- it's much slower than hand vacuuming, especially with our lightweight Dirt Devil (which is great for hardwood / tile but not for carpet)

- it's not all that thorough. it naturally leaves some stuff behind because it pushes some dirt / dust around while scooting around the floor

- whenever it's running we have to either hide in a different room or always be getting out of its way

- it can't get nooks and crannies smaller than itself

I will say that it's particularly useful on carpet, where I'd normally have to retrieve our very heavy standard vacuum out of the closet.

However - my wife loves it and I tolerate it. The mental hurdle of picking up a few things off the floor and pressing the "start" button is easier than actually doing it by hand. It's really best thought of as supplementary to a regular vacuum rather than a replacement.

> we can't run it on a schedule, b/c it requires prep (moving cat food/toys, floor mats, etc)

If you have one of the models (I think it's the higher end ones) that supports the "lighthouse" that can do a circle, consider getting one. I have one of those by the cat's bowl, and I schedule the Roomba to start right before I leave for work so I'm reminded to go around picking up toys, etc. The cat usually sleeps most of the morning, so she normally leaves them alone long enough for the Roomba to finish.

> it's not all that thorough. it naturally leaves some stuff behind because it pushes some dirt / dust around while scooting around the floor

FWIW in my house (about 80% carpet) it does great. I was a little nervous last fall when I pulled out the upright vacuum for the first time after 3-4 months of letting the Roomba handle things, but what I got was much less than a normal week pre-Roomba.

I'll look into the lighthouse! And yes - I've been really happy with how it does on carpet. Most of our apartment is faux-hardwood, where it doesn't do quite as well.

The prep work on a roomba is longer than for a normal vacuum. I have to empty the tiny dust bin and clean the brushes of pet hair. It ends up being not much of a time saver. Give me a roomba that empties itself into a larger bin when charging and doesn't require cleaning it's brushes.

I get a real kick out of getting home after the vacuuming robot has been doing my housework while I'm out :-)

I'd love a similarly simple way to press a button and have my laundry done - I've seen combined washer/dryers, but I'd love something that sorted and folded everything for me...

(Interestingly, I live alone, and do not have any motivation to buy a dishwasher.)

I live alone and have a “half width” dishwasher. It’s amazing at saving me time but also clutter. No dirty dishes on the bench top. The thing is on every night. Research has also shown it uses far less water and energy than hand washing.

By far the best investment I ever made for house cleaning though is a cordless Dyson vacuum. It’s mounted on the wall and I end up vacuuming (5 mins max) every day so it hardly feels like a chore.

Less water and energy, but using a brutal kind of soap that is surely more harmful to the environment than hand wash soap.

Old-fashioned dishwasher detergents caused significant phosphate pollution, but since the regulations were changed, they're considerably less nasty.

Three small squirts of handwashing liquid, fill it 2/3rds the way with baking soda, then fill the rest with cooking salt: works wonders in a dishwasher, is cheap as hell, and pretty good environment-wise.

Or you could use Ecover dishwasher products, which are a bit better.

I live alone, and you'll pry my dishwasher from my cold dead hands. If I didn't have one, I'd probably cook a lot less; it really simplifies cleaning up.

I also have a washer-dryer, though mostly for space reasons.

That's interesting. I feel dishwasher is one of the easiest life improvement purchases. Will depend quite a bit on how much you cook I suppose.

I would've gotten a robot vacuum ages ago too but my place has quite high doorsills, I don't think there's a device that could climb those.

You can hire people to do that for you, you know - very flexible, can do all the things, do them while you're out of the house.

For me there, the issue is trust (and that's not intended as a slight against the people who do that kind of work -- I have family members who used to do precisely that). I just would not feel comfortable having people doing work in my home whilst I wasn't there.

Also the price point is not quite the same as appliance.

I’m in 800 sq ft apartment + cat and I would love a robot that vacuumes, but I have a mix of hard floors and high-ish pile rug which last time I checked roombas etc weren’t versatile enough to handle both.

My cat also HATES the sound of the vacuum me and makes me feel guilty every time I use it :(

> but I do have a cat.

This. I have animals and letting the Roomba run daily while I'm making breakfast helps keep the fur at bay until I vacuum each weekend. The Roomba does a good job getting under furniture, and having it run daily makes my weekend vacuum go much quicker.

95% of my house is on a single level so that does help.

I've lived in a tiny urban apartment for so long that just imagining 1200 square feet makes me agoraphobic.

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