670

Friend of mine has kids and came over several times and asked me what I was doing to my floors that made them feel so clean. I had no idea but around 6 months later I gave them my old Roomba 670 (the stupid one that bounces randomly off everything) while I upgraded to a Roborock Q5 Max+. Only after running my Roomba for a week in her apartment did she realize that the feeling she had in my house was from having actually clean floors. Since then she's tossed the Roomba and picked up the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra and *loves* it. Now her floors feel cleaner than mine and I've debated upgrading to a robot that does mopping but probably will give it another year to let the technology mature and come down in cost.

I mostly agree. I had to stop using scheduled runs after my X1 omni spread dog poo throughout the house (including rugs). My dog is toilet trained but just decided to carry in an old poo from outside one day. I couldn't have predicted it. At the same time the uses and priority of features vary so much between users. Some people are minimalist and tidy, so won't have to babysit robots either way. Another example is my garage robot vacuum, that just needs to handle large debris like leaves and twigs. My ancient roomba 670 has a bin opening the length of the roller, which is uncommon now but perfectly suited to the debris in my garage. I get that this is an obscure use though.

I have the older 677. Still works great. If I had to buy another I’d get the self-emptying.. buts she’s only on hard floors, no carpet.

I should add that I do have one older Roomba in our cat litter room. It does do a really good job, but it’s in a square room with LVP and it really can’t go wrong. I don’t know if I would trust it on long dog hair and human hair in thick carpet.

More complex vacuum and mopping robots with lots of sensors and fail points are probably going to last less long than a simple vacuum. I believe a lot of brands are heavily pushing mop + vacuum because they need replacing more and are more profitable. If longevity is important, I would think about vacuum only if you don't really need the mop. Brands change over time. I have an Irobot 676 which is working just fine 6 years, but they tend to get bad rep lately.

Just picked up a Roborock QRevo from Costco yesterday, and was able to return an older Shark that stopped working as an even swap ($399). The tech has come a long way in a few years. I’ve relegated my old Roomba 671 to the basement.