Robotic Vacuums: How To Not Be Disappointed

Any time anyone is at my house, they are sure to be intrigued by my robot vacuum that runs three times a day. It truly is a necessity if there are pets in the house because frequent vacuuming keeps pet hair under control. But who has time to vacuum a few times a day?

Full disclosure: I do not sell or receive any compensation from any brand, so my advice is not tainted.

Buying a Robot Vacuum is Easy: What Can Go Wrong?

Well, unfortunately, the risk is fairly high that the robot vacuum you buy will break within a year — or sooner. And of course, when it breaks it will be right before a holiday when you have house guests.

The good news is if you do a little research before you buy, and you understand the strengths and weaknesses of these gadgets, you can make a good purchase that you won’t regret.

Is a Robot Vacuum a Good Fit for My Home?

Before you even start picking brands and models, you have to really think about how well a robot vacuum will work in your home.

Works Best on Solid Floors not Carpet

I am not saying robot vacuums won’t work on carpet, what I am saying is that they work about a hundred times better on solid floors — whether that be wood, tile, linoleum, etc. When dirt falls onto the carpet, then it gets stepped on the dirt gets embedded. So it is just a lot harder job than a hard floor.

The vacuum will suck up carpet fibres as much as it sucks up dirt, so your vacuum will need to be emptied a lot quicker…. and clearly, your carpets are wearing out slightly in the process.

Carpet also presents more roll resistance, so the vacuum will need to work harder to propel itself, which means your vacuum duration will be shorter because the battery loses charge quicker.

You Will Need to Make Your Home Robot Vacuum Friendly

You will need to do a little work to make your home one that your robot vacuum can navigate and not get hung up. Wires, lamp cords, etc. need to be looked at. A robot vacuum will find any wires and make it a point to roll over them, stop, turn, spin its wheels, suck one of the wires into its main brush motor, and just keep spinning and chewing up that nest of wires.

You will need to do cable management of your wiring. The good news is, it will end up looking a lot better and it was a good idea anyways.

Pet food and water bowls will get run into, spilt, etc.

There will be furniture pieces that your robot vacuum can get under, but won’t be able to get back out.

You get the idea I am sure. The goal is for this robot vacuum to work without needing your constant supervision. Plan on spending some time supervising and seeing where your vacuum gets hung up, and solve the issue.

Obviously, you want to look at breakables. A robot vacuum is like a child — anything that can get broken will get broken.

It doesn’t take a ton of time, but it does take time. And it might require some investment. For example, you may have floor thresholds that are too high and too narrow for a robot vacuum to navigate.

Stairs

Virtually any robot vacuum you buy will have sensors to detect steps and avoid the robot falling down the steps. The problem is, the cliff sensors can get dirty and not work. If your stairs are carpeted, it isn’t such a risk. But if you do have hardwood floors and wood stairs, if your vacuum does tumble down the steps you can plan on it breaking.

If you have wooden stairs and floors, and you do plan on trusting the cliff sensing of your robot, it is important to keep all the sensors clean.

It is worth mentioning, it isn’t likely that your robot vacuum will be able to work on your steps, so you will need to plan on having to do that yourself.

Plan on Becoming a Robot Cleaning Professional

At a minimum, you will need to empty the dustbin daily. You will also need to remove the main brush every so often and completely de-hair it and clean it. Obviously, you will need to wipe down the exterior and clean its sensors.

The simple fact is this — if you take good care of your robot that will reduce the chance that it breaks. If you don’t clean your robot frequently and let its dust bin be full for a week, it will ingest hairs and dirt into its internals.

When that happens, it is going to need a surgical cleaning. This leads to my final point to consider before buying a robot vacuum…..

Are You Prepared to Become a Robot Surgeon?

No matter how well you take care of your robot, I can almost guarantee your robot will end up breaking long before you think it should last, and it will need to be disassembled and cleaned thoroughly.

In fact, I am writing this article as I just finished fixing my broken robot vacuum. It wasn’t physically broken and needed no parts. But I did need to tear it down completely and clean it.

If you are a technical person in nature, and a fixer that is not afraid of new territory, you will end up fixing your robot vacuum. Otherwise, if you are not this type, then I would seriously say that you should go into your purchase with it in mind that you will get one to two years of use from this product, after which it will be a doorstop.

Human Hair Is What Makes Robot Vacuums “Needy”

The thing that makes your robot vacuum ultimately beep error codes and ultimately stop working is almost always human hair. It gets wrapped around the brush, and its axle, and gets sucked into the brush motor assembly.

This is why I said above to plan on doing frequent cleanings of the brush. Because if you don’t let that hair go for too long, it won’t get sucked into the motor assembly.

The good news is most robot vacuums are designed to detect when the main brush isn’t spinning as fast as it should, and then start beeping and refuse to work. It’s a pain, but at least it doesn’t let you keep using it and making a small problem a bigger one.

90% of the time, when a robot vacuum beeps error codes and refuses to work, it is because hair is wrapped around the brush axle at both ends.

Shop for Durability as a Priority

I am sure, if one were shopping right now, they could easily find a dozen potential products, and we tend to stack rank the candidates in terms of cool features, such as whether it integrates with Alexa, etc.

The number one reason people end up regretting their robot vacuum purchase is exactly what my own experience was in the early 2000s when these first came onto the market — worked great for a month or two, then it just beeps.

Much of what I said above, if you follow the advice, can prevent issues. But the fact is, some brands/models are just better than others in terms of durability/reliability.

Stay Away from Amazon Prime Day

Several years back, when I decided to give robot vacuums another try, it was because I saw one on Amazon’s prime day sale. It lasted about 6 months, and when I tried to get parts I couldn’t. The maker of that product had already discontinued their manufacturing of that model and its parts, etc.

It was through this experience, and a bad purchase decision, that I ultimately ended up with a very durable and reliable robot vacuum. When that piece of junk broke, I ended up buying another model from the same maker because consumer reviews touted it as being an absolute workhorse.

And a few years later, it is still working. Though I have had to replace its battery once, I did just do a complete teardown and cleaning.

What was wrong with the piece of junk I bought on Prime Day? Its main brush motor assembly had cracked, and though I could find motor assemblies for many other brands/models, the motor assembly was impossible to source.

My opinion is that Amazon’s Prime Day is a sale specifically designed to move products for which they bought large bulks, but the sales performance is not good. There aren’t many tech items that are on Amazon’s Prime Day that are worth buying.

The Bottom Line: Research Makes/Models

Features are nice, but your best bet is to buy a robot vacuum that is tried and true by many before you. That is how I ended up with the best Robot Vacuum I ever bought — the Deebot N79.

If I were buying a robot vacuum today, I would most likely buy the Deebot brand again. Since durability is my main consideration for a product of this type, I probably would not buy the latest model. I would be more interested in models that have been around and have been sold to the masses with good feedback.

Security Concerns… for My Vacuum Cleaner?

As always, one should consider security concerns when purchasing any piece of technology. Really? A vacuum cleaner? What can happen, a cybercriminal will make my vacuum cleaner clean my house?

Well, a robot vacuum is an IoT device (Inter of Things). Virtually any robot vacuum anyone buys today is going to connect to your wifi network, because that is the only way your robot vacuum can integrate with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistance, etc.

This means that the possibility exists for a robot vacuum’s firmware to be not well secured, which ends up providing an attack vector for cybercriminals. If they can gain control of the robot vacuum, that puts them onto your home network — behind your firewall.

Even worse, is that some robot vacuums have features to learn the layout of your home. While this has the potential to make the robot better able to work your home, it brings the potential for bad actors to breach your device and harvest this floor plan data. Now your address is sold to street criminals so they can rob your house with the benefit of having a literal floor plan.

For these reasons, I recommend ta the robot vacuum be treated as any other IoT device, which means it goes on a virtual network that is dedicated to IoT devices and doesn’t have access to other non-IoT devices like your computer.

I am not saying don’t buy a robot vacuum because of the security implications, just that you are aware. Perhaps you won’t pay an extra $200 to get a robot that has that floor plan learning feature?