Does anyone have any feedback on which robot vacuum is the best?
We have hard floors and would love it to be swept and cleaned regularly.
Mod — Moved to General Discussions.
Robot Vacuums - which one is the best?
megsfield on 28/01/2012 - 17:03
Last edited 28/01/2012 - 22:36 by 1 other user
Last edited 28/01/2012 - 22:36 by 1 other user
Comments
Or go for evolution mint they are pretty good priced
I bought the OzBargain Roomba deal from BigW pre-Christmas and have been very happy with it. I have it primarily working upstairs on carpet in a small townhouse, but it does find its way into the tiled en-suite/bathroom/toilet too if I leave the doors open. I can't believe how much crap it finds. I vacuumed regularly and it looked clean beforehand, and I also use a Bissell extraction/shampooer every month or so. I admit having a cat in the house probably makes it worse with fur and dust that you can't see. I empty out a good handful of dust and lint after every excursion it makes (dust is mainly dead feline skin and human skin e.g. dandruff and other exfoliated skin). The only downside of these devices is that you have to strip them down after they have gone on a good run and pull all the fluff off the bearings and sensors. It's not hard to do but might be frustrating to do so often for some people. The first time I used it I swear the carpet looked as good as if it had just been steam cleaned.
Absolutely stay away from the cheap and nasty crap that uses a piece of paper stuck to the underside of a "drunken droid" that "mops" the floor. They don't work. I think CoTD was selling one this week for $20, mine was ~$350. http://www.catchoftheday.com.au/Automatic_Cordless_Electric_… You get what you pay for.
these things actually work? i just can't imagine getting enough suction from a battery operated machine
IME not really, they're glorified carpet sweepers wherein the 'suction' (if you could call it that) really only 'assists' the sweeping process. As you say, most of the power seems to be devoted to drive, sweep & navigation functions so that doesn't leave much from a small battery for vacuum power!
I haven't tried a Roomba but a family member got a Samsung equivalent on sale about a year ago from Bing Lee (IIRC) reduced to ~$499 from ~$1k. It had a bucketload of cool features but ultimately it never lived up to its promises, she spent more time rescuing it from obstacles than it would have taken just to vacuum! She returned it & just bought an old school Sabco carpet sweeper from Kmart for ~$20 on special. I was so impressed that I bought one myself…whizz that sucker over the floor a couple of times a week & you'd be surprised what you pick up between vacuum cleanings! :)
We recently bought a Neato XV-11 from Amazon, was about $430 incl. shipping. The Neato uses laser sensors to map out the perimeter of the room, then methodically goes backwards and forwards, rather then the more random movements of a roomba etc. We've been really happy with ours, but there a few things to keep in mind
- The robot can;t open a door and go behind it etc. It also can't go on top of skirting boards…
- Our robot leaves a small (2-3cm) gap along the skirting boards - he goes close, but not quite to the very edge of the room.
- We wanted to have ours go while we weren;t home - it usually goes OK, but sometimes gets lost (ours will clean for around 90 mins until the battery gets low, then return to it's charging base before resuming where it left off. Ours gets lost just often enough for us not to just set and forget.
- Ours cleans much better without obstacles - e.g. it's fine with rugs etc, but can get caught on the base of our bar stools. Ours gets around obstacles like table legs etc, but we move all the chairs out and let it vacuum and it seems to have far less problems.
- Make sure that whatever you get has some kind of barrier so that you can block off areas. We have found that we get ours to do the house (around 220m2) in 3 sections, and closing doors and using the supplied magnetic strips allow us to section things off appropriately.
Bottom line - we're happy with our purchase, we call him 'Ned' the neato :) He saves us time because while he's vacuuming we're doing other cleaning jobs…but if you get one you will also need another "traditional" vacuum - we used to spend around 2 hours vacuuming our house, thats now around half an hour after Ned has done his bits. We also did most of our research on Youtube, where you can actually see them operating etc..
Hope this helps…
Love my roomba. I can highly recommend it!
we have a Neato, also bought from Amazon.
We use it on tiles and it works great.
It vacs our kitchen, dining, bathroom, and rumpus areas and picks up dirt quite well. It can also negotiate the large rugs without a problem.
I set ours on a schedule and it just does it thing.
Cleaning it is also a breeze. We don't have pets, so we don't have to contend with hairy problems.Bad points:
it can't do corners very well.
is noisy.
very poor manufacturing eg broken bits, sensor errors, just google them.I believe its way better than a roomba, in terms of technology, cleaning efficiency, and overall problems.
I hear the LG robokings are a good unit.
No doubt roomba