Thoughts?

Does anyone have one. We need a new hoover and robotic ones are a lot cheaper than they use to be, probably about £100 more than a quality upright.

I’ve read a few online reviews and they are largely positive but has anyone got any real world experience of them

Ta
Rich

my sister in law in the US has one – seems to be shit

The one I’ve seen (eg roomba) are fairly pants. They struggle with carpet and have limited ai. I think if you live in a massive open plan apartment with hard floors it might be OK, but for your average house with mixed floor types and small rooms I wouldn’t bother until the technology has moved on. The ai needed to clean a whole room properly around lots of obstacles is bloody complex!

If I were you I’d look at a dyson cordless handheld like a dc59, we’ve got one and it’s pretty handy, no need for a full size machine now

The gf has a Samsung robot. It’s like a sweeper rather than a Hoover. It can be programmed to sweep up at set times. It doesn’t like black or high pile carpets. Works ok on wooden floors. Struggles with corners and occasionally forgets to clean part of the room. Can’t clean the car either!
If I had to get another one I’d buy a neato xv.
If I only needed a lightweight rechargeable upright I’d go for one of the air’ram’ones that sell for around 200.

My parents have a Roomba. We’ve borrowed it when they’ve been on extended holidays. It’s good for our large kitchen diner, vacuuming everyday whilst I’m at work. I think you’d always need a manual vacuum cleaner in addition though.

Inherited an old Roomba, fairly basic model so no timer or anything. It’s great! We have a 3 and a 1 1/2 year old so the living room/dining room is littered with slides, chairs, tables, nappy buckets, baskets, you name it basically. It navigates the lot with ease and never leaves any obvious patches uncleaned. The kids love bossing it around by giving it instructions and chasing it about and at times even help tidy up quicker so that George* can be set off.
I wouldn’t have spent enough to buy one but now we have one, it really is good 🙂

The only downsides are that you can’t have it as your only hoover and it needs lots more emptying and cleaning than a normal one. For me it is offset by the ease of keeping on top of clean floors and how much fun it is to tinker with. Totally modular and rebuildable with replacement parts. We just had to reset ours for the new battery the previous owners had bought and replaced about £4 of IR LEDs and receivers to return it to full working order.

* as it is the closest we will ever come to having a butler George seemed a suitable name…

I had a Neato from America. It was an amazing cleaner. Plenty powerful and never failed me……. until the screen broke last month. The big plus was that unlike Roomba it is laser guided, so it trundles into a room, does a 360 degree scan to map out the floor, then sets to work. It first does a perimeter clean and then it does stripes up and down. Then it moves on to the next room. It was wonderful returning to a properly hoovered house with bowling green stripes up and down the carpet. Amazing technology.

Sadly the screen broke. It still functioned properly – the screen isn’t that important. But since it was 18 months old I wondered if that was just the start of its demise. So as I bought it in Costco in USA I took it back to my Costco in UK for a full refund. I’m on my way back to USA next year so will probably pick up a new one then.

Link for the Neato

P.S. Can be had for £269 from Amazon

thanks fanatic

The Neato does look good.

thanks fanatic

The Neato does look good.

Just be sure you have a decent warranty. Whichever one you get don’t expect it to last longer than 2 years. These things are full of electronics that can go wrong. I was sad when mine went, but since I had 18 months out of it effectively for free then I can’t complain.

If you want to know more about Neato then let me know. I got a bit carried away with looking into these things. There’s a forum dedicated to these things: geek alert!

A flat with hard floors is ideal for a robot vacuum but anything else will be a struggle.

I also suggest caution if you have pets in the house, since a robot vacuum cannot recognise a fresh and steaming turd on the floor and will merrily spread an ultra thin layer of it over the entire flat. Don’t ask me how I know that.

Strong first post from dorisss.

How do they do on AstroTurf?

They’re not a complete replacement to self operated ones, they just keep on top of the worst of it until you can be bothered to do your next thorough clean. I knew this going in from completing a bit of internet research.

That said our Roomba 770 does a great job of the areas it has done, both hard and carpeted. We do have an open plan home, but I find it’s best if we confine it to a smaller area with the virtual walls because it’s designed to randomly cover the area more than once coming from different directions. This means it reportedly takes longer to clean than the other makes, but it does a more thorough job. Therefore it’s set to clean most days and I go around repositioning the virtual walls and/or opening/closing doors when an area is falling behind. I don’t care how long it takes either, we’re not there when it’s cleaning.

Even if it didn’t clean as well as it does, just the fact that it keeps on top of our cat constantly molting everywhere everyday from the moment you finish a clean yourself, that is worth the price alone to me. Note to self, don’t get a fluffy white kitten again.

Robot vacuum cleaner?

Yep, it was called the wife, sadly she broke and got recycled by someone else,now got a Hoover,still makes a lot of noise but you can unplug it and put it in the cupboard,the ex wife always found a way to get out of the cupboard.

If you do get one, make sure you also specify advanced AI module, normally a cat in a shark suit:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of2HU3LGdbo[/video]

Yep, if you don’t have a pet or a baby to sit on top of it or traumatise with it, you’re missing the point.

Spending nearly £300 on a vaccum cleaner? If I was that lazy, I’d rather have dirty carpets and buy something exciting!