iRobot - 614

I bought a 605 from Amazon warehouse deals in 2018. Dave is still going strong. Bought a couple of maintenance kits but he’s very useful on the carpets. Still have normal vacuum (Henry) and a lightweight cordless vacuum for my wife and kitchen. Will keep Dave until he’s no longer viable.

Our Roomba 614 is going strong after 9 years. We've only had to replace the side brush motor and filters. We like that it's dumb, doesn't do any mapping, and is not wifi connected, but it still does a great job.

I’ve never understood this. I have an old Roomba 630 that “blindly bounces around” and it’s fine. Bought almost a decade ago and I still use it every day. Easy to get spare parts on eBay. I dread the day that it dies and I need to buy a cloud-connected model. How much better are these newer mapping / cloud-connected ones? Do they really add that much value?

I have a "dumb" Roomba that I bought way back in 2016 on a Prime Day sale. It doesn't have any of the smart features that a lot of the newer models have. In general it's not perfect but I would say it does a pretty good job and if you don't like vacuuming as a regular chore it'll allow you to vacuum more often than you personally would which overall is a net positive. Since moving to a bigger place a few years back, I ended up buying a Miele canister vac so that I can efficiently clean different parts of my home simultaneously. So the Roomba is vacuuming one section while I use the Miele to vacuum another section. The smaller your place the more effective a robot vacuum will be as your primary vacuum, but if you have a bigger place you'll still have to charge the vacuum after one section, then move it to another location to finish the whole house.

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.

Older roombas are simple, reliable, durable, effective, and cheap. But they don't have smart navigation or mapping where you can ask them to clean specific areas. If you want navigation they become less cheap and less durable. I have a 10yo 600 series roomba and a new Roborock Q5. Q5 is great but I'm skeptical that it's going to last as long.

Four cats, two with LOTS of hair. Our old Roomba 600-series works just fine, both on persian carpets and wooden flooring.

I have a Roomba 564 Pet I bought when my son was 6 months old. He's now 14 and the Roomba would be still doing the job if this little bastard had not screwed the elly plaque's screwheads. I bought a new battery I cannot replace because of that (I'll Dremel them out after the Spring clean out). So it was working since 2011, August. The other Roomba, a 600 something bought on discount in a clearance sale when my son was 6 or 7, is still going strong. I wonder how the Dreame L50 Pro Ultra is going to perform. It is my Mother's Day present, but we're not done with the Spring-clean so it just worked in the living-room.

I beta tested a shark and an update randomly disconnected it from the app and it would not connect again and their beta test support was useless in getting it reconnected. Tried blaming it on my mesh system. I went as far as to get a stand alone router/wifi from my internet provider and hook that up and try to connect it that way and still the same thing. The app would freeze once it found the robot, even after updates. I really liked how the vacuum worked up until then but I’d never buy one after that. My 600 series Roomba and i3 Roomba have never had Wi-Fi issues on any of our network iterations over the years. I ended up buying a Eufy over Black Friday.

I have a 600 series that works perfectly. After 6 years