Buzz
I have a love-hate relationship with my Roomba. The charming beeps and boops, the mesmerizing yet baffling route it takes across my floor, and the amusing thought of training woodland creatures to ride it across the room... there’s a lot to appreciate. But after three years of use, I have a few complaints. Here’s everything you need to know about owning a robot vacuum cleaner (regardless of the brand) that you won’t hear unless you’re already in it.
The maintenance costs
Robot vacuum cleaners come with numerous parts, and all of them need replacing. I had an inkling of this, but I wasn’t ready for how frequently I’d be placing orders for parts and how pricey they would be. The main rollers, which I assumed would last a year or maybe six months, get wrecked every two months by a few long hairs. The bags for the self-emptying station, designed to save you from manually emptying your robot, rarely last longer than a month or two, and sometimes, you end up having to empty them manually anyway.
In addition to replacing parts, I discovered that the robot itself needs regular cleaning. During the first year, I found myself on the phone with iRobot three or four times dealing with different issues, and more often than not, the solution was to take it apart and clean it. It’s not difficult—you just need a screwdriver or drill—but I didn’t anticipate that level of maintenance.
There are cheaper aftermarket parts available, and while the rollers and brushes work reasonably well, the aftermarket tower bags are frequently reported as full, even right after installation. At least the Braava (Roomba’s mopping counterpart) offers reusable pads that you can wash and reuse. However, all these purchases not only increased the cost of upkeep but also contributed to a surprising amount of waste, which somewhat defeats the purpose of buying the vacuum in the first place.
It gets stuck.
You’ve probably seen those adorable Instagram posts where robot vacuum cleaners are ‘reported to be on a cliff,’ often with a picture of it hanging off a ledge. That’s not far from the truth: These vacuums struggle with thresholds (those strips between rooms) far more than anyone tells you. My vacuum frequently bumps into table legs or doors endlessly before eventually turning around, and despite buying low-profile rugs to make its job easier, the edges of those rugs are now fraying because of, you guessed it, the vacuum cleaner.
One of the most annoying parts of owning a robot vacuum is when it gets stuck. You picture it calmly cleaning your home while you’re out or while you sleep, then docking itself to charge for the next day. Instead, it’s once again stuck under the couch. It requires more supervision than you expect. I’ve moved everything I can off the floor and raised furniture high enough for it to easily glide under, but it’s still not like I can leave for a vacation and expect the vacuum to keep going while I’m away.
They need more hands-on intervention than I initially anticipated.
Years ago, I imagined a world where my robot vacuum and mop would engage in epic nightly battles across the living room floor while I slept. That’s exactly what I envisioned when I bought the Roomba and its partner, the Braava, which mops. The issue, however, is that the Roomba can go almost anywhere except upstairs, while the Braava can only clean one room at a time and can’t cross thresholds. As a result, their autonomy is more limited than I had hoped.
As much as I was excited about touchless cleaning, the Braava still requires me to attach a fresh pad, apply cleaning solution, and then it just wipes the floor with that pad. In contrast, other brands like the Narwhal offer separate reservoirs for clean and dirty water, so they don’t just spread a dirty rag across the floor.
Both the Roomba and Braava let you create specific zones, which you can activate via Google Assistant. But it’s not exactly fast—between opening the app or waiting for Google to recognize the command, it’s often quicker to simply clean up the mess yourself. Even when the Roomba responds, it often misses spots, meaning I have to stay out of its way for an hour, repeatedly nudging it to clean areas it just passed. As for the Braava, you can’t summon it to clean anywhere with a threshold, so it’s best placed in the center of a space, where it’ll clean until it gets stuck, runs out of fluid, or needs a second pass (which happens often). Then, you just pick it up and return it to its dock.
For what it’s worth, my Roomba is still going strong. Every morning at 7 a.m., I hear it start up, reminding me that each new day offers another chance to succeed. Occasionally, it’ll give me commands to empty it, locate it, or tell me about a numerical error I need to research. But by 9 a.m., it has finished its cleaning, picking up most of the dirt and dust from the areas not near the walls, and then I come in with my stick vacuum to get the spots it missed.
