Oh, @eld6161, I’ll be following this closely. My Roomba has started getting glitchy. It will run for a while and then just stop. I’ve watched multiple You Tubes, taken it apart, cleaned it, etc. I think I just need a new one. This one is 8-10 years old.

ETA: NYT Wirecutter’s most recent recommendations. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-robot-vacuum/ They are so much less expensive than when I bought mine. Mine was pretty much the basic - doesn’t empty itself or anything. IIRC it was $700 or so. The 2 that Wirecutter recommends are less than half that.

One word from the voice of experience, get one that will fit under the toe-kick of your kitchen cabinets. The Roomba that I have is very thick. It fits under the DW toe-kick but not the cabinet toe-kick. So I have to get out the hand-held vac and clean up that area.

We bought a Roomba during the pandemic. We were happy enough with it. Then, when our cleaner came back and we went back to work, we discovered that she had been using it and broke it. She soon became our former cleaner. I recently looked to replace it, but they've gotten so expensive. Would also be interested in hearing if anyone has one that they really like.

I've been wondering about this as well - every time the sun shines in the afternoon and clearly exposes all the cat hair. I imagine my cats would freak out every time it ran.

Last time we had a working Roomba, we had 2 senior cats. They were not fans. Given how our current two youngsters are with vacuum cleaners in general, I would imagine that they would not be happy either.

I have a Roomba that got glitchy after a while. Honestly I got frustrated with it being so incredibly loud and slow. It was especially loud on hard surfaces. For periods of time it would just stop working. Then suddenly it would work again. Now we moved and it's just been sitting in a closet for a year. I should probably re-home it. I have a big dog who sheds a lot so the concept seems sound. But it's so loud when it runs and likes to bash into furniture pretty hard and stuff things.

We have an Eufy. Got it during Covid I think. Did not want something self emptying - the self emptying Roomba my friend has does a really half a$$ed job of emptying. They can't clean their own bristles and can only dump the loose dirt. Hair (human and pet) gets wound around the bristles and the drum and then dirt collects in that. It requires human intervention which is fine but I do that already with my more basic model.

Anyway.... we have a fairly open floor plan and if I just want one room vacuumed I have to block it in - so consider a mapping feature depending on your house and needs. It does an ok job. Where it vacuums it picks stuff up pretty well. It also will miss something obvious like crumbs by an inch because it can't see them and who knows when it will track back to that spot to pick them up. Drives me nuts - I yell at it. Doink! Get back here you missed the crumbs! Yes, I named it Doink because of the way it runs into things. Never had an issue not being able to get under things - it's very slim. It's also pretty quiet. My dog is unfazed until it runs into her bed if she happens to be in it at the time. She just moves to the couch.

Anyway.....it has a scheduling feature so I could set it to run at the same time every day. Never bothered with it and just run it as needed. Prefer my rechargeable Eureka for everyday stuff or canister vac if I'm in deep clean mode.

@pricklypearcactus, DD’s Roomba is very loud …. like a regular vacuum running. On the other hand, mine is comparatively quiet. I’ve been wondering who has the broken Roomba? 😁

I would like a robot vacuum that runs in the dark. Roomba has to have light to ”see” where it is going.

Mine is named Rhonda after an old boss’ wife: it wanders through the house drunkenly and won’t go home unless you force it to.

Following.

I had a Eufy 11 for a few years, and loved it. Recently, I upgraded to a Eufy 10 Pro which vacuums AND mops! And I'm in love! I haven't vacuumed or mopped my floors in months. It is self-emptying -the only thing I do is empty the dirty water and fill the tank with clean water and add the soap. My dog Savannah, and my granddog Boone, who is often hear, make the usual mess dogs make in a house and this is a game changer.

It maps your house and you control it with a phone app. It's very easy to operate through the app. You can select a single room, or even a single area on the map. You can choose between varying levels of suction on the vacuum and varying levels of water on the mopping. You can also just vacuum or vacuum and mop. I set a schedule for mine to do my kitchen every morning at 6am, so it's squeaky clean when I get up, and then I have it do the rest of the house when It's convenient. But if I chose to, I could schedule the entire house. Really love it.

Oh bbstx, your post is hilarious!

Under unusual circumstances DH adopted an 8 month old black lab. The next week I bought a Roomba to help with all that dog hair. I had no idea English labs could shed that much.

Fast forward to today when it's just the two of us - no kids, no dogs and a twice a month cleaning service. Every now and then I find myself tempted until I remember the problems I had with my Roomba - the dust bin was small, the bristles needed frequent cleaning, it didn't fit under the toe kit and it was annoyingly loud. But the worst problem was that when it vacuumed area rugs it left a ring of dirt around the perimeter of the rugs because it couldn't handle the difference in height between the rug and the hardwood floor.

Perhaps that has been improved.

I did not like the Eufy. upgraded to a roborock Q7 M5+ Robot Vacuum and Mop, which i like quite a bit. Never tried the mop feature.