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We 2 cats and a litter box where the furry toed bastards seem to track litter all over the house. It's a non-stop battle with me following them around with a broom, sweeping up litter bits and fluff bunnies, but was thinking a robot vacuum that can run 1-2 times a day, even when I am at work, might be trick. The one floor I need to do is about 750 sq/ft (give or take) but the tricky part is I have things on the floor, like a couple small mats, cat dishes, couple electric cords, which I could see being a pain in the rear end. But the floor is entirely vinyl plank except for a couple fairly large floor mats and one or two small mats in the kitchen (ie: food dishes, cloth under their water fountain). I a robot vacuum right for us? I have no desire to get anything that I can "hack" - I just want something reliable and wont destroy anything in our house or wrap itself up in a lamp cord or something. I'm not against spending money if it will work, but I do have something against spending $600 for a total piece of junk.
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Feb 19, 2020 07:03
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 13:05 |
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I have two Roombas. The 630 and the 980 Robot vacuums are great. I hate vacuuming and I'm very lazy, so having a magical device that I can turn on and go about my day while it scares the poo poo out of my cats is wonderful. They do require a bit of babysitting in my experience, I've never felt entirely comfortable scheduling them to run unattended. The 980 is obviously better, but both do a great job with basically everything you're concerned about. You can't schedule cleaning on the lower end models (like the 630 I have). Once a day is overkill. The dust bin is relatively small and running it twice a day would more than likely just end up with you having a full dust bin and a second cleaning paused. The crazy expensive $1200+ model has an external reservior attached to the charging station that it dumps dust into, but, well, it's $1200. 750 sq. ft. isn't particularly large by robot vacuum standards. The higher end models are smart enough to go charge and pick up where they left off if they run out of juice. I don't think that would be a problem with 750 sq. ft though. I have more than double that and mine will have to recharge once, sometimes twice if the place is filthy. Cat dishes are going to get bonked around and moved, no question. I have that problem. They generally won't eat power cords (like lamp cords and whatnot), although tying them back/taping them down is a good idea anyway. Loose USB cords and shoelaces are going to get eaten. Also be aware that they can't get over lips between rooms over 5/8ths of an inch in height. That's usually a problem with bathrooms.
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Feb 22, 2020 23:23
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I've got a 600 series roomba. Its pretty dope. I found that I have to pick up a bunch of poo poo off my floor for it to work best and not get stuck somewhere. A higher end one might be better at that though. Like I've got a table with four chairs, they get piled on the bed, an office chair, same thing. Floor mat by the patio door gets lifted up and put somewhere out of the way. Shoe mat, same thing...Bathroom mats get picked up. All that takes about five minutes to pick up and move, and same to put it back when I'm done. My roomba is the poo poo. I'd probably never clean my floors, but I can pick up all my stuff, hit the button, go out for a couple hours and my floors are clean of dust and poo poo when I come home. My pad is pretty small. Maybe 600 square feet but it works quite good. I've heard anecdotally that if your cat takes a poo poo on the floor, that roomba might spread that poo poo around. Google roomba vs cat poo poo or something it might come up. I find that in normal circumstances cats only take dumps on the floor when their litter box is full, so maybe if you clean the box and then run the roomba you could avoid that.
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Feb 23, 2020 17:37
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Roombas are the top of the end but they are pricey as gently caress. I've got a Eufy 11S and it does a fantastic job. You can schedule it using the remote control, it's not connected to the Internet so nobody is gonna hack your robot and make it vacuum your bitcoins, and it's dumb as bricks but, it's relatively quiet, it's low enough to go under all of my furniture at only 2.85" high, and it has a bigass basin for more than half a liter of bullshit. It does okay with my two shorthaired dogs that leave my hardwood floor a horrible off tan of dander and fur. It runs for about an hour and a half. It does okay with lips, but it will get caught on wires - you'll want to cover them with a plastic thing or tape them down if you want to be tacky. It does like to kill itself by sucking in tassles on carpets, don't use tassled carpets with it. It's not a smart robot vacuum, but it is a robot vacuum that works. Further points in its favor: it's Anker which is a pretty respectable brand in electronics and they honor their 1 year warranty absolutely. I have a 16 month old who learned to walk by mounting the robot and walking around behind it. When it died for an unknown reason (I think it got a hair in the power switch, the new design has a condom over the switch), I told Anker. They asked for a video, so I sent them a video of a robot just sitting there, and they said "don't even bother sending that in to be refurbed holy goddamn is that in bad condition, here is a new one." Edit: if getting your home automated and your bitcoins hacked is something you're actually into, the newer version, the 15C, is wifi enabled and you can voice your googles or alexa it or whatever. All the Eufy things are like, $180-$250 as opposed to like 600 for a low end Roomba. Paramemetic fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Feb 24, 2020 |
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Feb 24, 2020 00:10
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:Robot vacuums are great. I hate vacuuming and I'm very lazy, so having a magical device that I can turn on and go about my day while it scares the poo poo out of my cats is wonderful. Get the chimpanzee add-on for additional cat entertainment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hyzPvTiNDk
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Feb 24, 2020 00:32
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Eufy 11S is great. We still bust out the canister vacuum periodically, but the robot keeps the carpet in decent day-to-day shape.
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Feb 25, 2020 21:02
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How are they with avoiding things on the floor like cords and the such? I had a Roomba years ago and it just had a big bumper on the front which it would smack into things with surprising force, not enough to damage furniture or anything but certainly enough do dump a bowl of catfood/water and move something like a small garbage can. Do the "see" nowadays or still feeling like a blind person with a cane?
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Feb 27, 2020 05:14
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Cords you might need to put a rubber ramp over or tape down. They use two little brushes on the front to push poo poo under the main brush, and those will snag on cords, or sometimes they will wrap themselves up in them. It's not like, awful, I have cords on my floor, but sometimes you have to rescue them if they trap themselves is all. They do a good job of not bumping into things normally and they won't drive off cliffs or ledges or whatever, but cords that they can pass over will sometimes snag up those brushes.
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Feb 27, 2020 06:01
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I gotta make sure my charger cable isn't on the floor or it'll either get caught up in it, or unplug it and drag it around the house. I haven't had issues with it overturning the cat bowl, but we use a fairly heavy ceramic bowl, so ymmv if it's a light, plastic one.
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Feb 27, 2020 10:34
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Are there any brands besides Eufy that are good with pet hair and are cheaper than roombas?
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Apr 30, 2020 17:38
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I can add another glowing positive review for the Eufy 11S Max, especially for the $180 I paid on Black Friday. It runs unattended 1/day at 1am and we never hear it. The cat doesn't even care anymore, she will sit in its path and not even move until it 'bounces' off of her. It does a great job picking up cat hair from our long-haired tabby. We have 3 levels so I bought 2 additional charging bays and put 1 bay on each level. We only have to move the vacuum and we move it every other couple of days or so to another level and we clean out the vacuum at the same time. We had to move/tape almost all cords down, and oh boy do NOT use rugs with tassels. It handles ~1/2" transitions fine, it stops and redirects at the top of stairs, etc. It's great. The next time I see them <$200 I'll buy 2 more. The only thing I would look at is getting one that also cleans hardwood in addition to vacuuming. After Christmas we remodeled our main floor and replaced carpet with ~1000sf of hardwood. It might be nice to get a model that vacuums and cleans hardwood.
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May 7, 2020 14:49
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Can't vouch for the Ecovacs Deebot, mainly because I have one. It's not able to traverse your average Walmart rug without having a problem with the edge. After it's been roaming around for an hour, the bin is still nearly empty. I never bothered with registering the product, or using their app, but that company started spamming my email address (don't know how they got it) nine months later with direct marketing emails. Verdict? Non-functional on all types of flooring.
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May 15, 2020 22:18
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I've got a NEATO Robotics vacuum and I got it for exactly your use case. It's got a LIDAR on top of it that can sense a 3/4" diameter object. It's also got very soft contact bumpers on the front. I use it around my pets' food and water dishes, and there's no spilled drops. It has some IR light sensors on the front so it doesn't fall off of stairs; these can get confused if you have large black/white pattern on your carpet/rugs/etc. A roughly 2" highly-contrasting strip will make the unit think it's falling down the stairs, and it won't drive that way. This makes it easy to fence with gaffer's tape or Velcro(R)(TM) strips, or the included heavy-rubber fencing strip. Sucks pretty good, has a decent capacity. Learns rooms well. Has a good scheduler and spot clean system. HEPA filters for no cat litter dust, and it's not crazy expensive. I've had mine for four or five years now and just replaced the battery. It's not one of the "wifi connected" ones or anything. It is hackable and I pulled 600x600 .gifs of my rooms that it laser-scanned, which was a cool novelty; I have to imagine having an app for all of that is more useful.
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May 17, 2020 00:21
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I just bought a Eufy 30c and so far, so good. Echoing the need to clear the floor before running it, but that takes five minutes then I can ignore it and chill. It will eat cables, and I had to rescue it after it was over-ambitious trying to climb my desk's leg plate thing, but I like it a lot. It doesn't quite pick up the bigger chunks of cat litter but does well with the general bits and grime. It advertises itself as being only as loud as a microwave, but I'd say it's quieter. It has an auto setting, an edge setting, and you can control it with a remote. It goes back to the charging base when it's done or runs out of power, and needed help getting on because we ignored the instruction that says to leave a meter of space around the charging point. Cat hates it but just fucks off up/downstairs, rather than hiding for an hour in one of her secret spots, which is a big improvement on the normal vac. I'm given to believe you'll need to run a proper hoover round every so often, but the robot does well enough that I see that being a rare occurrence.
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May 18, 2020 20:59
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slidebite posted:How are they with avoiding things on the floor like cords and the such? I had a Roomba years ago and it just had a big bumper on the front which it would smack into things with surprising force, not enough to damage furniture or anything but certainly enough do dump a bowl of catfood/water and move something like a small garbage can. Thick cords are fine, but mine will devour and destroy any earbuds that come close. They don't do a fabulous job, they're loud, and will leave dust bunnies in hard to reach crannies, but it's a fabulous addition for basic maintenance. I flip mine on while I'm doing dishes, laundry, or basic straightening up and the house looks way better.
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Jun 3, 2020 21:51
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Thanks for the replies folks, even if I haven't been in this thread much lately.babyeatingpsychopath posted:I've got a NEATO Robotics vacuum and I got it for exactly your use case. It's got a LIDAR on top of it that can sense a 3/4" diameter object. It's also got very soft contact bumpers on the front. I use it around my pets' food and water dishes, and there's no spilled drops. It has some IR light sensors on the front so it doesn't fall off of stairs; these can get confused if you have large black/white pattern on your carpet/rugs/etc. A roughly 2" highly-contrasting strip will make the unit think it's falling down the stairs, and it won't drive that way. This makes it easy to fence with gaffer's tape or Velcro(R)(TM) strips, or the included heavy-rubber fencing strip.
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Jun 5, 2020 05:13
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I have a eufy 11S. In my previous place it was great, but now that I live in a more "open floorplan" house I've been sticking to using it in the bedrooms where I can close the door. In my living/dining/kitchen it seems to end up doing the same spots over and over.
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Jun 5, 2020 20:33
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slidebite posted:Thanks for the replies folks, even if I haven't been in this thread much lately. I don't typically leave cords down, but it doesn't eat the extension cord or any of the lamp cords that are down. It did suck up a cloth-wrapped USB charging cable but the beater motor stalled out and it cried its little song saying "I'm choking on something help me" and I rescued it. It's very charming. Speaking of very charming, I printed a little Pirate Ship Helm including Pirate, ship's wheel, and a railing. I then hot-glued it on top of my vacuum. The vacuum did its little run, and went under something just higher than its deck, stripping the helm off. It then choked on the ship's wheel and cried. It was cute and cool for like ten minutes.
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Jun 6, 2020 02:11
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I put eyes on my roomba so it looked like a happy face. One of them is now missing. I had a picture of it, and I remember seeing it recently, but I must've deleted it because I can't find it now.
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Jun 6, 2020 15:10
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Not sure if you considered it, but a cordless stick vacuum is way better and easier than using a broom and dust pan. We thought about a robot vacuum for awhile but after getting the cordless it's so easy to take out and run it around real quick we didn't bother with a robot. The cordless works perfect for cat hair too. We have a small house tho, I'd probably opt for a robot if we had more area to cover.
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Jun 6, 2020 18:13
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Well, we have a central vac with kick plates so it's actually really easy to use in that regard as we just use one of those big microfiber swiveling heads and push everything to the nearest one. It's more for getting under the furniture with some regularity and maybe doing it when we're not home. Who am I kidding - I'm just lazy 
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Jun 6, 2020 19:06
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Wouldn't the robot vacuum spread cat vomit and hairballs all over the place if they ever make a mess? That's the one thing that's kept me from getting one. It's not a regular occurrence, but I can't imagine the mess. Have vacuums changed enough to where they can clean up wet messes as well?
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Jun 19, 2020 13:43
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That could definitely happen. I think I posted something further up thread about it happening with cat poo poo or something. I don't know how often it happens, but yeah, I guess if it happened once, it could happen again.
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Jun 20, 2020 18:32
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Smeared turds and/or vomit would certainly temper the appeal
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Jul 13, 2020 19:21
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I got a Neato Botvac refurb a few years ago. I run it upstairs in the hallway where my cat's litterbox is every couple days. It works really well, no complaints. The early Neatos don't memorize room layouts but they do use radar to scan their environment so they don't just bump around like Roombas - they cover the whole room in an orderly fashion. Only drawback is battery life isn't great and as I've had it for a few years now it's getting worse. When I have it do a larger area it dies before it finishes, but it recharges itself and gets back on the horse eventually. It has smeared cat puke all over the house before and that sucked. Just run it when you're home and keep an eye on the area when it's going.
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Jul 15, 2020 19:19
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I've got a Roomba 6something for ages now, my parents gave it to me when I moved out since it sucked in a 3-floor house. I have to replace batteries every few years but otherwise no maintenance so I'm stuck with it even though I'd want one of those fancy new mapping robots.
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Jul 15, 2020 20:56
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I just bought a Goovi off of Amazon and I love it so far. I don't think it has the best mapping system but it cleans up pet hair and litter better than my stick vacuum. Plus, the manufacturer sent me an email for a 30$ Amazon gift card.
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Jul 24, 2020 03:45
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 13:05 |
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I splurged on a Roborock S6 and it’s been great. It’s only gotten stuck twice in 3 months. It’s pretty quiet and the lidar is awesome. It cleans very efficiently and I love being able to send it to specific rooms. You can get it for about $450 if you set a price alert on it on slickdeals. It seems to be on sale every 3-4 months or so.
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Jul 26, 2020 14:11
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