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Comment by jspash | Hacker News Reader

I'm still in the cynic camp for a few reasons. 1. My flat is small. I can do a decent vac in about 15 minutes. 30 minutes if I do under the bed. 2. When I do the "big vac", I have to move 6 dining room chairs. Then shift the table a few inches. Zoom. Shift if back. Same goes for some other legged furniture. 3. I also do the windowsills. No bot can do this. 4. Don't you end up with little arched dust patterns in every corner of every room? How does a round vacuum do this? Seriously! This is the deal-breaker for me unless they have some little robot-wars-style dust-brush that shoots out to get into the 90 degree angles.

All that said, I really really want one!

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My housemate and I have the exact same vacuum as OP: a Eufy Robovac 30C.

1) It runs around our flat which I think we could vacuum well in about 15-20 minutes, perhaps similar to yours in size.

2) The vacuum happily bumbles around under our table and chairs and it seems to do a pretty good job. If we want it to clean where the chairlegs are, we just move the chairs against the wall the night before and move them back the following evening when we get back from work.

3) I feel like this is a cheap shot: it doesn't clean bathtubs or toilet bowls either (and like windowsills, it doesn't advertise to clean those, either).

4) No. It may be round, but it has two rotating brushes placed towards the front which get dust and crumbs out of corners, but the brush/vacuum portion itself does not reach right to the edges of the machine, so you're unlikely to get deep cleaning on the edges of carpets.

Overall I'm very impressed with it: it consistently comes back with a lot of dust and crumbs in its bin (we run it Mon, Wed, Fri), replacement parts (e.g. brushes) are cheap from the usual suspects in China, the edge cleaning is more intelligent than discussed by the linked article, and the floor under our sofa (a heavy 3-seater) has never been so consistently dust-free.

They have a brush.

I've found that while it doesn't do a lot of what a human would, it can do it daily. In my case the time savings made it pay for itself in half a year.

> I've found that while it doesn't do a lot of what a human would, it can do it daily. In my case the time savings made it pay for itself in half a year.

My home has pretty high thresholds/doorsteps (what are they even called?), and the robot always gets stuck. Thus, we clean together once a week: it does the vacuuming, and I clean the bathroom, kitchen etc and help it go where it wants.

This kinda works, but I wonder if there are models specifically with higher clearing for getting over bigger obstacles?

Just make a small ramp for it.

It's smarter to adapt to the future. If you have the choice, have no carpets, all furniture on legs at least 10cm high and no door thresholds. Or buy one robot for each connected area in the house.

Also at the same time as you're doing something else. I often run the roomba as I clean other stuff or do the dishes when I prepare for a visitor. If you run it daily or every other day, the first couple of days it's full of dust and hair, then less and less. I view this as evidence that it's needed.

I don't dare keep it on a schedule nowadays, because I have kids who leave stuff on the floor everywhere, including charging cables for phones that can get tangled up in the roomba. What I usually do is a quick check under the couch and tv bench, then start it manually when I leave for work.

I have a Roomba s9 and a Dyon v10 in a 48sqm apartment. The Roomba does not replace the Dyson, but in terms of floors the Dyson is mostly reserved for spot-cleaning. The S9 gets all the edges, and goes around each table and chair leg (though I prefer to put the chairs up on the table for easier reach).

The only thing I hate is that it gets stuff trapped in there so easily. It is meant to have some sort of anti-cord-catching technology, but unless I am very careful I will find it eating a charger or a cat toy or something. It also takes longer than my handheld vacuum, but I don't mind that - often I just quickly pick things up before I run out to the store and let it run as I leave, and then come home to a vacuumed apartment.

My cats also prefer the Roomba even though the noise is comparable. They hide from the Dyson, but couldn't give a crap about the robot running around.

It is especially noticeable if you have a cat or dog. Even through weekly cleaning with a powerful "normal" vacuum cleaner won't help with everyday hair and dust accumulation. And personally I'm often too lazy even for a once per week cleaning. This thing (I have Roomba 960) collects most of the dirt in the most visible places. It really makes a difference. And corners don't matter in a big picture where every furniture item collects a ton of dust in hard to reach places.

It doesn't 100% remove the need for a manual clean/vacuum completely, you still have to run over the places it doesn't get - occasionally - and yes obviously it doesn't do raised surfaces, windowsills, stairs or the upper corners of the ceiling... and obviously how much benefit you get depends on your home layout.

We've the exact same model as the article, bought on a sale last year for ~£180, and have been incredibly satisfied. The difference between a once a week/fortnight deeper clean and having it run over every day (before we get up!) has been incredibly obvious. It has also added an... incentive to avoid floor clutter.

I'm in the same boat as you are, with the same objections and all.

But overall I found we end up vacuuming the flat a lot more now that we have the roborok than before, so that's a big plus for me.

My wife spent half the money we spent on the roborok on a cordless samsung manual vacuum cleaner that broke in a year; I'm convinced I've seen the light now and that robot vacuuming is the future.

The value proposition is that they can do 90% of the job with 10% of the effort. It takes me 1-2 minutes to pick up stray socks and usb cords and start the vacuum right before I walk out the door for work. The things it doesn't do can be dealt with with a broom and duster, and that ends up being very infrequent.

So we have a roomba, and hands down that's one of my favourite devices that we own - we just pretty much never have to hoover downstairs, it starts automatically at 9am every morning, we come home to a clean house, it's amazing. When we need to clean the upstairs bedrooms I can just leave it there, press start, and it does its thing and we can go and have dinner in the meantime. Yes, you still have to hoover manually from time to time. No, it doesn't do corners very well. But the fact that it can automatically clean at least one level of your house every single day is just incredible.

1; Same here. I still prefer to do other things with my time. Of course this is a luxury, but an affordable one.

4; There is a side brush (maybe even two) on most models. For the exact reason you mention.

30 minutes is a long time. The robot vac cleaner does it’s rounds everyday. There is not way I would want to spend 30 minutes everyday on this.

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