Hey everyone!
This topic is part of a series on Connected Home. Lots of people are starting to set up their smart home and run into many questions along the way. The idea here is to centralize the exchange of information about Robot Vacuums.
Let’s share experiences! What devices do you use? What are your experiences with them?
Also check out the other topics in the Connected Home series:
Has anyone here used or owned one of these vacuums? What are your impressions? Would you recommend them, or are they a waste of money?
I’ve seen plenty of reviews in other searches, of course, but here in the community the folks are more trustworthy! 
One day I will! 
I can’t have that kind of product.
Here at home, there are several floor levels between rooms, so it would have trouble.
Not to mention the floors themselves were laid as crooked as the person who did them.
Having to use something out of obligation, not by choice, is a pain.
Melissa wrote an article about robot vacuums:
I have a Ropo. It works well for small spaces; you have to close it in one room at a time and leave it there for about 15 or 20 minutes. It’s „dumb“ — the software has a set movement pattern, so it goes over the same spot multiple times and sometimes takes a while to get to a certain area. You need to clear away anything possible from the area so it doesn’t get tangled, especially rugs and cables. It also struggles with furniture that has a few inches of clearance from the floor, above the proximity sensor — I’ve had it get stuck before.
In general, in my experience, you can’t use it like in the ads on a schedule — it needs preparation and supervision, but it does a decent job for light cleaning.
Personally, I think it’s useless. I can do light cleaning faster and better myself.
Plus, my house has a lot of furniture, so the robot would easily get stuck.
If I have to go to the trouble of moving rugs and pushing furniture into corners, I’d rather just do the cleaning myself.
The day a robot comes out that can do heavy cleaning in the kitchen and bathroom and dust the furniture, then I’ll think about buying one.
I have a Ropo Glass 2 purchased for R$900 on a Black Friday with a 3-year extended warranty. It works relatively well, I remove furniture with thin legs, rugs, and let it run in the room for about 20 minutes, it does a satisfactory job of cleaning dust. At home, with cats and a wife with long hair, there’s a good amount of fur and it gets the job done. The software is pretty dumb with 2 presets and it rarely manages to find the charging base.
Is it worth it? For me, yes, it saves a lot of time from “sweeping the floor” and it would be even more worth it if there were no pets at home.
It’s precisely those needs that made me think about getting one of these. I recently moved in with my girlfriend (or is it wife now? 
) and she has long hair. The previous house had dark flooring, this one has light porcelain tile.
Man, now I realize how much hair gets lost in a single day. hahaha It takes a lot of sweeping to keep up with it, because on light flooring it’s very visible.
Obviously I’m not expecting it to do the housecleaning for me, but if it reduces that whole hair-on-the-floor thing and cuts down on our daily sweeping, that already helps!
hahaha my world!
Hey Alvaro, I’m on the same hunt… but I still haven’t decided which one to buy. From what I’ve researched, the iRobot brand is the “Apple” of robot vacuums. But I’m keeping an eye on another brand, ILIFE — I’ve seen people saying good things about it.
For a while, their AliExpress store had stock in Brazil, so it was cheap, arrived fast, and you didn’t pay any fees. Now the Brazilian stock is empty. I’m thinking about buying the ILIFE V7s model — I suggest you look into it.
Good luck with your purchase!
Good evening. I received my Ropo Slim today. I’m excited. I know the limitations of this type of device, but I bought it only for maintenance cleaning (which, by the way, is the purpose of these robots: maintaining floor cleanliness). Since the floor here is light-colored, it’s amazing how, after about two days, the little hairs (mainly from legs) stand out on the floor. It really draws attention. I’ll share my impressions later…
I have a Xiaomi Roborock. It’s great. It vacuums and mops. I imported it myself and, with taxes, it cost about R$2400 around two years ago.
I have an iRobot Roomba 960. I bought it at the end of 2018 during a trip. For $449 it was well worth it, especially with the exchange rate at the time.
It won’t solve all your cleaning problems (after all, the most annoying part is cleaning the bathroom/kitchen) and it’s always a good idea to “prepare” the house a bit when doing a deeper clean (lift chairs, clear wires from the path, etc.) so the task can be completed successfully.
But it helps a lot. And it’s always impressive to clean out the bin and see the absurd amount of dirt and dust that was on the floor.
The suction power is good; there’s an option in the app to make it go over the same spot twice, but you don’t even need to activate it. It has a camera and maps out the areas to optimize coverage as well.
Thanks, Regis! Looking forward to your feedback! The idea is to reduce the fur + hair and help with the sweeping.
I live in a large apartment (120m²), I don’t have much furniture or carpets, and I live on a busy avenue with heavy truck traffic, so dust builds up very quickly. Would one of those robot cleaners be up to the task?
I have a Liectroux C30B that I bought at the beginning of this year on Gearbest for R$1300, and this product was in stock in Brazil, so I received it very quickly, in less than 7 days. What this robot vacuums and picks up in terms of dust here at home 3 times a week is impressive, and it’s quite quiet even at maximum power. When it finishes vacuuming or damp mopping, it returns to the charging base on its own.
At first, it bumped into everything, but now it recognizes the rooms and objects in the house well, avoids most of them, and through the app you can track where it has already been or still needs to go, and it integrates with Alexa. Here at home, every penny invested in the C30B was worth it.
After I adopted two kittens, I had to vacuum the ENTIRE apartment every single day.
I bought a Roborock S2 and I don’t regret it. It’s one of those that has a brush underneath (it doesn’t just vacuum, it also sweeps and can “swallow” larger debris).
It’s pretty dumb, as people have mentioned, but in my apartment of just over 40 square meters, it cleans really well.
I run it every single day, and the mess of fur all over the apartment is gone!
Man, it’s really good. I cleaned yesterday. Since there were already some hairs on the floor, I decided to test it. I let the robot run through the bedrooms and living room. In the end, when I went to clean the compartment that collects the dirt, I was blown away! Either our daily routine really dirties the apartment, or I cleaned it as well as my nose.. hehe .. Anyway, I recommend it!
Dude, I went through exactly the same situation as you. I’m living with my wife (and a little cat came along), the amount of hair and fur that falls is crazy.
I started researching and bought a Roomba 671, on sale at FastShop for 1,600.
I live in an apartment of about 70m² (excluding wet areas), it takes 1:30 to clean the whole house. Like Higa said, you need some prep beforehand, mainly lifting chairs, but other than that, it’s a huge help, it cleans REALLY well.
The math I did was pretty simple: a housekeeper here charged 150 per visit to clean the whole house and iron clothes, coming once a week. We changed her to come every 15 days, just cleaning the wet areas and ironing clothes. So I’m saving 300 with her and spending 133 on the Roomba installment. 167 in savings.
Could the Roomba be better? It could. There are versions that map the whole house, have a larger dustbin, etc. But this one meets my needs, I can control it over the internet, activate it from anywhere, including integrated with Alexa (which allows, for example, creating a routine where when I leave the house, it starts working automatically on weekends, for instance).
Anyway, for me, the investment is totally worth it, it saved me 167 reais per month plus at least 2 hours of cleaning work that I would have had to do myself.
I forgot.. Just to add: these dumber robots don’t map the area. So it’s normal for them to go over an area they’ve already cleaned multiple times. Either way, the end result is pretty positive. You can notice this visually and when you go to clean the dirt collector (precisely because of the amount of dirt inside it). For someone getting into this for the first time, to get a feel for it, these cheaper ones do their job well. The value for money is very good. Down the line, when it’s time to switch devices, I think it’s worth upgrading to one of those smart ones that do the mapping.