iRobot - 530

I have purchased my first robot vacuum was roomba 530 back in 2008. I never looked back. They don't last forever though, I'm on my fourth unit, moved from roomba to roborock. It's great, my current one is 4 years old now, still running strong. Does it do a perfect job? No. It doesn't clean corners all that well, it can get stuck in stupid places, sometimes it looses mop attachment in random places. It can close itself in a room on occasion (by pushing the door). But you know what? The worst vacuum robot that vacuums even part of your house every day will make your house cleaner that the best vacuum human that does it once a month (or even once a week).

Grew up with a Roomba 401 and 530. I just recently purchased a Dreame L20 Ultra and have been extremely happy with it. Just make sure to go and set each individual carpeted room as "vacuum only" on the map. Learned that the hard way lol. If you have hardwood floors be sure to set the floor direction for mopping too in the app. Once I got past the initial frustration of sorting through the plethora of cleaning options available in the tedious app menus, it's been a great buddy so far. I don't think our hardwoods have ever shined this much before!

If it's just one room, get one of the old random bounce around Roombas with the bristle roller. 500 or 600 series. They're great at picking up litter and combing embedded pet hair out of carpet. I have a 692 I keep just for that. They're also super cheap because everyone wants the self-emptying models now. I see the older ones pretty often at thrift stores and Facebook Marketplace for under $30.

We have three dogs and one being a Golden Retriever. Our 15 year old 500 series Roomba has zero issues cleaning that.

Neato XV series for being awesome and being the first robot vacuum to feature a lidar sensor roomba 500 series, for a while they were the most popular robot vacuums ever made and still the most reliable, other than battery replacements they can last more than 15 years without issues Roomba 980, the thing is still a beast at cleaning and the navigation is good enough. No keep out zones or anything but it does its job well

The older Roombas could be set to clean once per day at a specified time, so you could have 7 scheduled cleanings. There are buttons to set the clock and then a cleaning time for each day of the week. I still have 2 of them, one is a 650 and the other is a 500 something. I don't think they make them anymore, but I am sure you could find one. These 2 both still work. I don't have an app for them, but I have a 3 foot dowel rod I use to push the start button, If you have connection problems or simply don't want to connect to the internet, the solution is to not connect. Just push the start button. The advantage of the Roomba brand is that you can get replacement parts easily and they run forever. There's lots of info on how to repair them. Don't know if the other brands have that knowledge base yet.

I have one basic Roomba that moves around randomly and another that supposedly maps the space. The cheaper, random movement robot is vastly superior in all ways.

No robot vacuum is going to do well with stones and if there’s snow, it’s going to get wet when it melts. You’d probably want to get something industrial quality, like Makita or Pudu, but those are HUGE and probably will be too big for 600 sqft. If you meant pebbles when you said stones, you might have a better chance with one of the older iRobot Roombas (500-600/Professional series) with the high capacity sweeper bin. They are cheaper on eBay now and don’t have as many problems as the Dirt Dogs. I don’t think any household robot is going to clean up stones at all. And even if they somehow do, it’s going to get clogged in the auto emptying dock.

I bought one a while ago for the novelty since it was a black Friday sale (and I suck at keeping a schedule to vacum. Didn’t have mapping but I thought it would be smart enough to still navigate just fine. Instead it just rams into things then randomly changes direction. Meanwhile, a coworker bought some  bootleg that cost a fraction of the price and it runs flawlessly. All the extra shit that roomba charges for in it’s higher tier models are included for free.  Never buying another roomba product. They’ve clearly just been coasting off of brand recognition.

I bought a Roomba that can mop and vacuum (pricey models are great). I bought a bunch of replacement rags/mops on Temu for a few euros, and exchange them every now and then. All you have to do besides that is fill its water tank with clean water and floor soap. I also went on my Roomba's App, drew out a map of my house, and set a cleaning schedule for every single day on setting 'deep clean'. And he keeps the floors like 98% spotless, while we have 2 long-haired dogs and 1 short hair cat. We still vacuum and mop ourselves like once a week or so. But if need be we could easily skip that. The difference has been amazing. Googly eyes are optional. ;) Why do it yourself if a robot can do it for you?