In this post you’ll learn all about Roomba vacuums – the good, the bad, and the ugly! HA!
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We’ve had our Roomba vacuum running around our floors, sucking up tons of debris and dog hair for months now, so I’ve got a good idea about what it does well and what it doesn’t do well.
In this post, I cover the pros and cons of having a Roomba vacuum so you can better make the tough decision of if it will be a worthy investment for you.
Some of the main reasons we wanted a Roomba vacuum was because we wanted:
To make our life easier
Like any busy family, we were looking for some cleaning help or really anything to help make our life easier. Can I get an amen?!
One of my least favorite cleaning activities is vacuuming. Ugh. It’s the worst. Standing there listening to loud noises come out of a machine, while pushing it back and forth….bleh. Well, you know how it is.
Cleaning is a part of life, but anything to make that part of life a little easier is a plus in my book.
More time to do other things
Cleaning can take up so much time, especially when you have a large house.
I wouldn’t say our home is overly large, but by the time I vacuum our basement, main floor and upstairs, half of the day is gone.
When you multiply a half day by once a week, you’re looking at A LOT of time vacuuming.
We knew a Roomba vacuum would give us some time back to focus on other activities, like having more quality family time.
A solution to keep up with pet hair
We have two dogs, and both of them shed. One of our dogs sheds way worse than the other, but together they leave lots of stray dog hairs all over our home.
I wanted to be able to get better control of the copious amounts of dog hair floating around my home, and I thought a Roomba vacuum would be the perfect solution and save me a little bit of sanity.
The story of how we got our Roomba
Jason and I had considered buying a Roomba several times, but we always backed off because of the price. It is a big investment and we weren’t sure if it would be worth it.
I had heard both good and bad stories about the Roomba vacuum. Some said it worked well while others said it didn’t. I really didn’t know what to think so, again, we backed off from making the purchase.
It wasn’t until December 2019 that we got our Roomba vacuum.
It was Christmas Day to be exact! You guessed it….we received it as a gift for Christmas. Jason’s parents gifted us one, and can I tell you?…. I was ecstatic!
I’d wanted one for awhile, so this was a dream come true. I couldn’t wait to try it out!. As soon as I got home, I turned it on…and I never looked back!
Our Specific Roomba Vacuum
As you might know, there are lots of different Roomba vacuums including other robotic vacuums that are not made by iRobot.
We own this Roomba vacuum that is made by iRobot.
Our Roomba vacuum connects with the iRobot HOME app so you can schedule cleaning sessions. My husband has this feature set up on his phone and uses it all the time.
When I want it to clean, I prefer to walk over to the Roomba and press the “clean” button on the vacuum to start it. I do this because I always have to make sure the house is picked up before I start the vacuum.
It can’t run over your clothes and toys, so it’s hard for me, as a busy mom, to have it run on a schedule everyday.
I run it when I know the house is picked up. In fact, I pick up the house more so now because I want it to clean our floors. So, in a way, it pushes me keep our home cleaner.
It has a small dirt bin in it that you can easily pull out every time it gets full. You can easily empty it in the trash and then put it right back in the vacuum.
It’s way easier to empty the small bin than a large bin of debris in a regular vacuum. Normally, those large debris bins from regular sized vacuums make a huge mess, so I always have to take the large one outside to empty it for fear of debris getting everywhere in my house.
The little tray in the Roomba vacuum holds less which means less debris gets around our home when I got to dump it. I’ll get into this more later, but the bin is a pro and a con in my view.
Let’s talk about some pros and cons now of the Roomba vacuum.
PROS & CONS of our Roomba vacuum
As I mentioned earlier, there are tons of different Roomba vacuums. The following pros and cons are for the Roomba vacuum that we own. I can’t speak for the other Roomba vacuums, but I can tell you all about the one we own!
PRO: PICKS UP DOG HAIR WELL AND OTHER DEBRIS WE DON’T EVEN SEE
This vacuum does a GREAT job picking up dog hair. Our two dogs shed a lot, and this was a major reason I wanted the Roomba vacuum in the first place.
I let it take its course for an hour and I find tons of dog hair and random other small debris in the dirty bin.
Lots of times I don’t even realize my floors are that dirty until I do a round of vacuuming with the Roomba (*cough* I guess I don’t do it… I just push a button to start it). 😉
Once it’s done its session, I check the bin and always finds a full bin of dog hair and debris that I didn’t know were on my floors. Sometimes I don’t think it will have much dirt in it because I think my floors are clean…then I realize I was so wrong!
Just look at all that dirt and dog hair!
It picks up all that stuff you don’t see, so I always feel really good after seeing the dirt, knowing that the Roomba is keeping my floors clean.
CON: IT’S NOISY
The Roomba vacuum is not silent, but at the same time neither is any other vacuum I’ve ever owned.
Below is a video of our Roomba vacuum running so you can hear exactly how loud it is.
I think sometimes it can become annoying because I like to work when the Roomba is running, and it is pretty loud. If I’m doing work that requires concentration or work that requires silence, I have to hold off running the machine.
I guess this normally isn’t a problem when a person is vacuuming with a regular vacuum because they’re manually doing the work so there’s no reason they’d need silence for another task.
That being said, you just need to be strategic about when you run it if you work from home, like me.
I’ve learned to run it in our basement when I’m working on our first floor so I can’t hear it. It’s all about strategy y’all!
PRO & CON: SMALL DEBRIS BIN
I discussed this a little earlier, but let’s delve into this a bit more. I’m counting this as a pro and a con.
Dumping out the dirty bin filled with dog hair and debris is so darn easy to do. It’s so much easier than dumping out a large bin in a regular vacuum and so much less mess. That being said I do have to empty it out after pretty much every session.
I just simply remove the small bin and dump it in our trash.
Here’s what the bin looks like when it’s all dumped out and ready to go again:
Fortunately, it only takes a second, and it’s really easy to do. It also goes to show just how much debris and dog hair is picked up in my home if I have to empty it after each run. I guess I could say it’s doing a good job of keeping my home clean!
Some models of the Roomba vacuum have an automatic dirt disposal option, and I think that means it gets sucked up in a larger bin automatically. Of course, you’ll eventually have to empty the larger bin once that gets full but it would save you from emptying it so frequently.
CON: HAS TROUBLE FINDING DOCK
Our Roomba vacuum has a hard time finding the dock unless I put it right next to the docking station and press “dock.”
You can see that it has a button that says “dock” so you can easily push that anytime you want to send it home and stop cleaning. It also has to charge on the dock when you’re not using it.
Sometimes I’ll press “dock” and it will just go all around like it’s lost. Whenever that happens I have to pick it up and walk it back over and put it on the dock.
It’s not a huge deal because it’s a light machine but at the same point, I wish it went to the dock every single time when I press the button.
PRO: A HUGE TIME & ENERGY SAVER
This is pretty much the MAIN reason I love this vacuum so much. It saves me so much time and energy, and for that I am SO thankful!
What used to take me hours to do every month now takes me zero time.
Every time the Roomba vacuum is running, I’ll be working on another task and thinking about how great it is that I can do something else while this robot cleans my floors.
It’s one of those feelings that doesn’t go away – at least it hasn’t gone away yet after having the Roomba for several months.
I’m sure one day I’ll forget what it was like to NOT have my Roomba but that day hasn’t come yet.
I don’t ever want to go back to NOT having a Roomba vacuum.
CON: THE VACUUM TAKES AWHILE TO GET THE WHOLE SPACE
The Roomba vacuum is robotic so it goes around the floor in what looks like a random manor to me. I have no idea how the robotic function of it works, but it just goes all around and it takes time for it to get a whole space.
We have a somewhat open-concept home, so on our main floor it tackles several rooms in one session. This means that it takes quite a while for it to complete the whole area.
Normally it goes for over an hour in one space.
If you’re under a time constraint and having guests over, for instance, you might want to whip out a regular vacuum.
PRO: HAS A “SPOT” FUNCTION
If you want to just get up a few crumbs, you can just place the Roomba directly over the crumbs, and press the “spot” function
Here’s a video of me pressing “spot” and it vacuuming in that main spot.
PRO: GREAT ON ALL FLOORING TYPES
I have all types of flooring in my home – wood, carpet, rugs, and tile. I let it run over every type of flooring I own.
It’s wonderful on hardwood floors. It has never scratched one of my hard wood floors, which is something I was concerned about early on.
I also let it run on our rugs and carpet and tile floors. It does great over every type of flooring.
I was worried that the suction wouldn’t be strong enough to get up dirt off rugs and carpet but it actually does quite well!
It goes around our furniture well and is short enough to go under most of our furniture, like our beds. SCORE! I hate trying to vacuum manually under our beds.
The Roomba does a great job getting in those hard to reach places.
Here’s an example of the Roomba getting under my buffet cabinet.
CON: IT DOESN’T GET DIRT ON THE EDGE OF RUGS
As great as the Roomba vacuum does on carpet and hard wood floors, it does not do well getting the line of dirt on the wood floor next to the rugs.
I have a lot of rugs throughout my home, so this is the one negative thing about my Roomba that probably bothers me the most.
I have these nice clean floors after it runs except there’s debris lining the wood next to my rug edges. The Roomba doesn’t seem to be able to get those edges.
The work around for this is after it runs for me to flip my rug edges over and let the Roomba run again over that area. Or I will just sweep that part or use a regular vacuum.
I don’t need to do it too often though because it’s really just small little leftover debris. I can definitely tell though that it doesn’t get those edges well.
It also doesn’t get it corners great…because it’s a circle.
There are definitely touch ups that need to happen to get a deep clean, however it’s amazing as a daily floor vacuum.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Does the Roomba vacuum get every little thing? No. Especially if it’s in a corner of a room or alongside a rug.
Does it get the majority of debris and dog hair up? Yes, definitely.
It’s absolutely wonderful as a daily cleaner. It is not a deep cleaner though.
In my opinion, you still need a regular vacuum in addition to having a Roomba vacuum. I save the more strenuous “regular vacuuming” for a deep clean day, but only when my home needs it, which isn’t too often.
It’s rare that I need to do a deep clean with a regular vacuum since the Roomba does the majority of the work. Still, there are times, like when I want to get the corners of my rooms or behind certain furniture that the Roomba can’t get behind.
I also still vacuum off my fabric couches so I need a regular vacuum for that.
Overall though, my Roomba vacuum does the majority of vacuuming in our home. I run it ALL THE TIME. It runs usually twice a day, as I alternate it between spaces of my home.
I love my Roomba vacuum and I never want to go back to NOT having one. It saves me SO MUCH time and energy.
It is perfect? Of course not.
Is it something I think is worth the investment? Absolutely.
I obviously realize that I didn’t make the original investment since we received it as a gift, however, now that I have one and know exactly how it works, I can say that I think it is worth the investment.
I’m actually considering purchasing a second one for our upstairs, just for the convenience!
We love our Roomba vacuum, and there’s no way I’d choose to go back to life without my Roomba!
