For anyone who wasn't sure that a robot vacuum was worth it
I'm here to tell you that my robot vacuum is changing my life! I've had it for about a month now and I have only vacuumed one other time. We got the Eufy 11s, which is a great bang for your buck vacuum. It's not the most expensive and it's not the most flashy, but it gets the job done. It can go up every carpet that we have, and bath/kitchen mats too. It fits under our couch and tables perfectly. It runs for ~120 minutes and then it returns home. I have it on a schedule to run every morning at 9am. And while it's definitely not the same sucking power as my very nice upright vacuum (that now sits in the closet unused), and I would still do a sweep of our living room carpet if we were having a party, it is worth every penny I spent on it because I literally never think about vacuuming EVER anymore. Imagine the time you have if you aren't constantly looking down at your floors thinking about how much dog hair they have on them. Now you can probably go on wirecutter to find out all this information, but here it is from a real live person with a shedding dog :)
Pros (Eufy on its own, and compared to my sister's Roomba 690 which is the comparable roomba model)
- Can handle all of our carpets and kitchen, back door mats, etc (my sister's roomba flashes red that it is falling off a cliff every time it approaches her door mats, also it can't go on their living room carpet but her carpet is much more plush than mine so I don't have evidence that eufy would be able to either, but i think it would)
- Slim enough to fit under our furniture (Roomba 690 is taller, wouldn't be able to fit under as much furniture)
- Easy to empty
- Quiet (Roomba is much louder, they only run it at night)
- Sucking power is perfect for hardwood, diminishes slightly as the carpet becomes more plush but still probably comparable to a medium quality upright vacuum
- Pretty good at not sucking up cords, etc and just pushing them around. A few iPhone cords have gotten caught up but then Eufy just carries them around, doesn't shred them or anything
- Very resilient. Has never gotten stuck to the point that it needed to be rescued. Just continues to try and try until it gets out of a tight situation.
Cons
- No app or smart home integration. The 11s model only comes with a remote with basic controls and can set a once a day schedule. There are upgraded models that have an app but it didn't seem worth the price increase for that. We are happy with the once a day schedule. (Roomba has an app)
- No barrier strips. The 11s model does not come with an barrier strips, or the feature to integrate with them. There is one place that the Eufy has trouble in our house that I wish we could block off, but since there is no option to do that, I have to put a shoe in front of it. (Roomba comes with a nice invisible barrier, the upgraded Eufy comes with actual strips you have to lay down)
- So slim it can get stuck! It is great that it fits under all our furniture, but because it is so slim it is able to wedge itself under our reclining chair and takes a long time getting itself unstuck. This is a very specific instance where with this chair the eufy is able to get over the back metal barrier but then the chair immediately becomes much narrower and it has trouble getting out. Personally I'd rather get rid of the chair than the eufy!
- Bubba hates it :)
Caveats:
- We have a small one story house, which makes robot vacuums make more sense overall because it can clean the whole thing in its 120 minute cycle.
- We don't have any kids, so we don't have a ton of kid stuff laying around. My sister doesn't run her roomba as often and has to "set up" for it (she picks up the house and then turns it on at night). Now that is not to say we don't have a ton of non kid stuff laying around that our Eufy handles just fine. When I told my sister that I wanted a robot vacuum she told me she thought we had too much furniture for it to do a good job, and that definitely wasn't true! Since eufy can go under almost all our furniture and around what it can't, it still works great.
- I work from home so I would stare at the dog hair in my house all day. Maybe you are better at ignoring it than me!
Sorry for this super long post, but I just had to put it out there! I remember my parents had a Roomba back in ~96. They have come a long way and I think the technology is finally at a point where the price tag (ours was $224) is worth it and it's not just a gimmick.
