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Comment by dyingkneepad | Hacker News Reader

I used to be a huge fan of robot vacuums back when I had hardwood floors. When I switched to a house with carpets, I noticed my socks were never really clean and my kids started having allergies. So I bought the super-ultimate-mega model of a standard old fashioned vacuum (which cost less than half of a Roomba) and that significantly improved both my sock situation and my kids' allergies. For carpets, I don't think these tiny vacuums can compete with the powerful standard ones, the floors just don't get as clean as they can get.

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A robot vacuum doesn't replace an upright vacuum, it supplements it.

Our robot vac gets ran daily, and each day the bin is almost completely filled with dog hair. Then periodically we use the upright, and it still always manages to pull up lots of debris from the carpets.

> For carpets, I don't think these tiny vacuums can compete with the powerful standard ones

They never did. Even the best vacuum plugged into your standard 120v receptacle will have trouble removing all the crap that's accumulated in the average carpet. A small, battery powered vacuum can't either.

They do help in reducing the amount of stuff that accumulates in between hand vacuums. Back when I had carpets, because of my wife's allergies, I'd vacuum with the "old fashioned" vacuum every weekend. A Neato would run every day (and would have to be emptied every couple of days, it picked so much stuff). Then I'd actually _wash_ the carpets every month. Every single time, even with all that, the water would come out black. This helped, but ultimately we had to move. You can never really clean carpets.

If anyone in your family has allergies, get rid of carpets if you can. Just because they may not be displaying symptoms that are really obvious right now, doesn't mean they aren't having a constant allergic response.

Yes, washing the carpet is absolutely necessary. But: how the heck did you find time to wash your carpets every month?? I'm guessing your apartment was pretty small... I takes me a whole day or more to wash all my carpets.

I try to do the bottom floor every 3 months and the upper floor every 6 months. If I do it more frequently I start getting clean water out of the machine, especially in the upper floor.

That said, we don't use shoes inside our home. I think that makes a great difference.

I've never had a super strong vacuum, but, as others have said, the main attraction of the robot is that is can do its business much more often than I would vacuum myself.

So, to me, the house is actually cleaner, because there is no way I would vacuum every day.

And even if the suction isn't up to a regular one's standard, I'm still quite amazed by how much dust it gathers every time. And I don't have pets, and live in a relatively small apartment.

My brother has a new house that's almost entirely one level and tile floors with just a few throw rugs. He really likes whatever robot vacuum he has. I've looked at them but I have a bunch of level transitions, always have various stuff in piles, etc. Last time I looked, I decided to get a cordless Dyson instead. I just pull it out, do a quick vacuum of high traffic areas, and put it away. Takes me 5 minutes--and totally solved the problem of my kitchen especially getting dirty between the times my housekeeper comes.

I agree with you. I have a robot vac and a plug in stick vac. The robo vac is scheduled to clean 3x a week when no one is home. Most of the time it finished this just fine and things appear ok.

But in Fridays when I get home I give everything a once over with the plug in vac and the amount of dust and dirt it captures at first surprised me. The robo vac's suction just can't compete

But I still don't mind it as it makes keeping the floors in general cleaner easier - but if I had to do it again today I wouldn't buy the robo vac.

Well that's because almost all of them aren't actually vacuum cleaners; they're just sweepers. Brooms work fine on hard floors, not so well on carpet.

Dyson make a (super expensive) vacuum one that actually vacuums, with a brush bar and everything. There are probably others now.

What? They are all vacuums. With a brush. From the original Roomba, to the Neato, to Roborock, etc. We can argue about their suction power and how good the brush is, but they all have them.

They have a brush that sweeps not a brush bar that beats the carpet. It's completely different.

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