iRobot - i5 Series

I’ve had robot shark and roomba. I believe running them daily has prevented us from being buried in dog hair and 100% recommend a robot vacuum. My dogs are very housebroken and I’ve never had the poo every where situation.  Overall, I think the shark works a little better, but I think the roomba’s features and app are better. I just upgraded to the dual vacuum/mop roomba and it’s not perfect but I’m happy. I still have to real vacuum once a week as it doesn’t get all the hair all the time, but the literal basketball was of hair I pull out of the canister every few weeks tells me it’s working pretty damn good. 

We started with one iRobot, it worked great! Later decided on a brava (iRobot mop) and it worked amazingly! I was in my doctorate program and didn’t have time to clean the floors. We have two small dogs and five children. The floors are one thing I don’t have to worry about anymore. We recently moved and purchased two combo vacuum and mop, one is iRobot and the other is ecovacs. I like the ecovac more, it seems smarter, however they both do a great job. We have three stories so there are robot vacuum on each floor, they run every day, this keeps the stairs pretty clean and I vacuum the stairs once a week. Our original robot is eight years old and runs fine with daily use.

I got that exact one a while back. Fyi it is not the self emptying base version, no matter what the description says 😭

That's correct for the self-emptying version. However, they simply did not ship the self emptying version. :( (If you get the self empty version, I'll be livid)

I have the Wyze robot vac and a roomba self emptying vac. I vastly prefer the performance of the wyze vac.

Your experience must be with the cheaper Roombas. I bought a $500 Roomba and base and my experience was the same as yours. Hot trash. Sent it back and even that was a bad experience, they never refunded me and I had to do a credit card charge back. But then I bought a $250 roborock + base. Wayyyyyy better. Never have to tinker with it. Completes our kitchen, dining room, main bedroom, and living room in 35-40 minutes. Does multiple floors/mapping. Vac and mop. A lot quieter than the Roomba. Very clean floors, like I'm blown away at how well it vacs, the Roomba left little crumb piles  everywhere. I have not manually vacuumed anything since I've bought it other than to spot clean when my dogs destroy a toy or something. Overall there is a reason irobot is going out of business. Roombas are overpriced and perform poorly. But not all robot vacuums are created equal and other brands are both cheaper and higher in quality.

We love ours. We have one for upstairs and downstairs. Don’t try to get a cheap one, we did that and went through a couple of them pretty quickly. Now we have two good ones (iRobot) with the bin that they self empty into when they get full. We have three kids, two dogs, and a cat that sheds more than both dogs combined, and having robot vacuums has been a game changer. Before we got the one with the bins, it would get full and need emptying before it finished a whole cycle. Now it goes and empties itself and then goes back to cleaning. It’s some trial and error at first. Just run it the first few times when you’re watching it to see where it has any problems. Then you can try to adjust any problem areas. Our upstairs vacuum doesn’t go into the bedrooms because the kids have lots of tiny Barbie shoes and stuff. We have them clean up good and just regular vacuum real quick every other week or so (and we keep bedroom doors closed so the pets don’t go in there to keep hair shedding out). But the robot keeps the main areas of the house from getting hairballs and dirty. We recently got a robot mop as well, and that has been awesome! I feel like it’s just like having any other vacuum. You have to get everything picked up off the floor before you start. You wouldn’t start regular vacuuming with things still on the floor. If there are areas that it gets stuck often, either block it off or try to adjust any problem areas. We usually pull all of the dining room chairs away from the table so that it can get a good clean under the table and around it. We run the vacuums & mop anytime we leave the house, and it’s so nice coming home to freshly vacuumed and mopped floors!

I have a Roomba that I picked up from Costco. It can be controlled via app and it has a self emptying base.

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?

I hope they find a decent US or EU buyer. I’ll buy most Chinese products all day long, but I don’t trust having my entire house’s LIDAR scans or photos/videos in the possession of a company that can be easily forced to hand all data over to their government, no matter their policy. That makes most of the great robot vacs a non-starter for my wants & needs, so I got a roomba i5. It’s been great despite this sub’s negative feedback toward the brand!

If you get a roomba I highly recommend one that self-empties into a tower. We run ours 4 days a week in our bedroom, the living room, front hall. Kitchen, dining room. It keeps the ACD tumbleweeds at bay between weekly Dyson vacuumings.