Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw-qqqqq | Hacker News Reader

> To be honest the Roomba sucked

I have an old Roomba (980 perhaps?) and laud it as one of my best appliances. It’s a work horse!

We’re had it for five-six years and it still works great. Nowadays it sometimes needs to charge twice to finish, but I only notice if I’m home - and I could just replace the battery. Parts are so easy to replace, that my wife has replaced most, and she isn’t a tinkerer.

Maybe I just don’t know what I’m missing - I’ve never had others - but I love my Roomba.

View on HN

The main thing is with the chinese ones you get lidar and a cached map from that lidar run (so you can send it to clean specific areas) and they cost maybe a third or less what roomba charges, at least when I was in the market.

Are there privacy issues with the data being exfiltrated?

I don't care if the CCP has my floorplan

"I don't care if they spy on my, I have nothing to hide."

What would they possibly do with my floorplan? It isn't like I am zuck where there might be risk of commandos breaking into my compound... Chances are that floorplan is in some city hall database that they already breached anyhow.

I have one I bought in 2008. My parents still use it. Replace batteries and filters. Works fine.

Gets stuck on cords and in corners. So does the one I bought in September 2025.

Same. I bought a roomba in covid and it's still kicking. No repairs at all just new brushes and filters when they get dirty.

Felt bad they went under as I would likely have purchased more of them forever. But maybe that's why they died? Kinda like appliances that last forever the company doesn't have financial incentives to make them last longer or are outcompeted by less reliable ones selling more often.

I also have a 980 that's going strong. A number of parts replaced over time, so refreshingly repairable. My mother in law has had a whole lineup of Chinese robot vacuums in the time we've owned Roomba and they haven't seemed miraculously more effective. Ours does get stuck occasionally, but it runs every day so...it's not a huge deal if it doesn't finish on any given day.

I think a lot of people who have pets or kids who are outside a lot and some rooms with hard floors would be pleasantly surprised at how good even a really mediocre mopping does when it's done often enough.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com