Does anyone have recommendations for a robot vacuum that can handle dog hair and won't sell my floorplan to advertisers?
If you are in Europe and on a tight budget, Lidl's Silvercrest models are surprisingly good.
Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
111–120 of 839 posts
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#112People are mentioning alternatives, but do any of them have the repairability of a Roomba? The maker was famous for keeping parts readily available for even the oldest models, and making it so replacing parts was easy (although I've heard that in mid-2024 they started on some model making wheels, chassis, and motors an integrated unit that the user cannot easily service). If you were happy with your Roomba you could…
Aside from having parts available, I was unexpectedly impressed that my RoboRock self-emptying dock (c. 2023) was clearly designed for painless serviceability. The ducts are easily accessed via removable panels, and you need only a Phillips screwdriver.
That said, the performance of the robot certainly degraded over time, and I haven't identified the cause to my satisfaction. Obstacle avoidance needs work (especially for charging cables left dangling off the couch), and the map is frustrating to edit and seems to degenerate over a 6 month period.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#113Didn't Amazon acquire iRobot?
No, the deal was killed: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/01/...
"[..] the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) opened an investigation into the merger. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and several Democrats in the House of Representatives sent a letter to then-FTC Chair Lina Khan, saying "the FTC should use its authority to oppose the Amazon–iRobot transaction."" [0]
Thanks, I guess? Better to let China buy the husk than evil Amazon, right.
[0] https://reason.com/2025/10/31/irobot-faces-bankruptcy-after-...
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#114I had a Roomba about 10 years ago. It was OK but required a lot of “handholding” to not run over cords, kids toys, etc. It just was not really worth it to use it in an environment where you can’t keep everything nailed down and off the floor at all times. Relocated it to a basement level where we had much more empty but sill finished space. The cat angrily pooped just outside her litter box and the Roomba ran right o…
That's my experience as well. We got rid of our Roomba because you need to remove pretty much everything from the floor, only for it to spend 20 - 30 minutes vacuuming at incredible volume. Getting the 20 year old Miele vacuum from downstairs, vacuuming and putting it back takes 10 minutes, you just move stuff out the way as you go, and it clears better too.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#115I was rather happy with my old, dumb Roomba. It just bounced around until things were clean. No cloud required. No mapping. No AI marketing foo. Seems like all the newer alternatives want internet access and send maps of your premises to some cloud somewhere. Seems completely unnecessary to me.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#116This is the cost of complacency. They were ahead for so long then the likes of Roborock just left them in the dirt. I remember the first time I tried one of the Roborock devices, and until then I have been a long time Roomba user (like, 20 years). I just couldn’t believe how much better it was. And iRobot just stubbornly refused to iterate on their fundamental products.
Anybody who played Doom, or Quake, or Counterstrike knows: if you are not moving, you are dead. And if you try to show a counterexample, and say: "Look, I'm not moving, and I'm alive all right", it's an illusion, because the rockets, grenades, nails, and plasma charges that will slay you are already in flight, you are just failing to see them.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#117They outsourced production to China thinking that they can just do the marketing in US. Now they learnt that Chinese can do marketing too.
>Now they learnt that Chinese can do marketing too. Roborock didn't win because of doing marketing, they won by being technically superior and word of mouth, in spite of lack of marketing, at least in the west. Same how Japanese cars beat US made cars in the 1980s even though US cars had the most amount of advertising in the media. Even Steve Jobs said in the 90s that US brands have the best marketing and win all mea…
Because that's always the case at the beginning, the country doesn't matter. It takes time to learn and improve. People look at the first or second generation models, get complacent and then they are surprised that by the third or fourth generation those remote countries start to innovate and sell better and cheaper products.
It's the same with kids. They start replicating what grown up do, then they start inventing their own stuff. Not everybody of course, but here we are at a scale of million people so innovation happens inevitably.
By the way, that complacency maybe is driven by a few parties, as they dismiss the inevitable future to cash in the initial benefits of offshoring production before moving to something else.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#118Another success for EU antitrust law. By blocking an acquisition, they have allowed a bankruptcy purchase by a Chinese firm so that the market is between a few Chinese firms.
The US FTC was also against the merger.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
i got roomba less than year ago, because it was hard to find well reviewed non-mop vacuum with docking station that sucks all the dirt out.
> non-mop vacuum Such a good point. Vacuum wars website has no way to filter out vacuums without mop (my house is mostly carpet, I do want a good product but they are all with mops nowadays). It's such a common issue with sites like this. It's either all products or products WITH this feature. No way to find products WITHOUT this feature. Anyway quite happy with my Mova which is a rebranded Dreame.
I have a Roborock S5, and when I don't use the mop, I just remove the mop AND the water tank. And without the water tank it never gets stuck in doors.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#120If you've used any non-iRobot vacuum alternatives in the last 5 years and ever owned a Roomba in the past there should be nothing surprising about this headline. It's shocking to me how good Roborock mop-vacuums are for example, Eufy vacuums are nice as well. They still run into unavoidable issues, but they're: much quieter even at their highest setting; show you how they map out the space; allow you to easily custom…
I second your option about Roborock. Also Dreame. Although I use both of them after rooting with Valetudo and connecting to my home assistant.
Just out of curiosity as I don't own a vacuum robot: do yo loose any key functionality by rooting your device with Valetudo, compared to what the manufacturer offers?