Robot Vacuum

We had one of the early versions of the robot vacuums. About 6 years ago, we had a robot vacuum that would go through the house and vacuum things up and try to keep things mostly clean. This was certainly a lot of fun to watch, and our oldest son really loved to watch the vacuum wander the house. At the time however, the technology was still really new and it did not do that great of a job.

These days, there are dozens of companies that build robot vacuum cleaners, and each of them has several different versions of their vacuum cleaners. It’s a bit crazy to figure out what’s good, what’s not good, and whether or not they actually work. We recently jumped back into the robot vacuum game, and we’ve done a bit of the research to figure out what’s really good and what you need to know about these vacuums.

First off, most of the robot vacuums are meant for carpeted areas. While some of the top end vacuums boast a mop as part of the vacuum, these simply don’t work that well. If you’ve got most hardwood in your home, you can still use a robot vacuum, but you should still plan on mopping floors as you’ve been doing up until now. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get a robot vacuum.

We’d definitely recommend that you look at a robot vacuum which maps out your rooms and learns where things are at in the home. While all of the vacuum cleaners will start out being dumb in the sense that they’re just trying to figure out your home, the vacuums which will map out your home will quickly become far more efficient than the ones that don’t - they will know exactly where they’re going.

Another feature which we highly recommend you have on your robot vacuum is collision detection. If you have kids (or pets), then you’re likely going to have toys or other random items lying on the floor when the vacuum is going. If you don’t have item detection on the vacuum, it’s simply going to run into this item. Depending on how good it is, it may be able to get around the item or it may get stuck.

Finally, you’ll also want to have a vacuum that has enough space inside of it that you’re not going to have to constantly empty it. Some of the top end robot vacuums have emptying stations which are super convenient, but you’ll be paying for that convenience. If you have to empty the vacuum mid-clean every time it runs, then it’s not really that beneficial. Make sure you have a vacuum cleaner with enough room in the canister.

If you’ve never had a robot vacuum before, then we’d actually recommend you start with one of the basic models rather than going into the more expensive feature-filled models. While it does seem like a cool idea to have a mop and a vacuum, you may find that you simply don’t like the robot vacuum cleaner at all, and you don’t want to be into this purchase more than you need. Start with a basic vacuum cleaner and upgrade in a few years.

That being said, we definitely think a robot vacuum is totally worth it for those with kids. You let that vacuum run once a day to clean up the general mess that constantly shows up with kids. While it’s not perfect, it’s way better than not cleaning at all. It’s easily worth a couple hundred dollars to get back a few minutes of each day without having to worry about how clean your home is - you simply let the robot do it’s thing.

Grab a robot vacuum cleaner for your home - you’ll likely find that it’s easy worth the price that you end up paying, and your child will likely be enamored with it to start. You probably will be as well. Buy a robot vacuum now.