iRobot says robot vacuums now represent 20% of worldwide vacuum market • Hacker News Board

Re: iRobot says robot vacuums now represent 20% of worldwide vacuum market

#71

Post by mulletbum » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 1:46 PM UTC

animal531 wrote: post #64

Loic wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a maid. She is nice, we pay her fairly and she can also vacuum clean the stairs. She has the keys of the house, so, she can also clean take care of the plants when our vacations are not overlapping. She can also wash the floor. Oh, and a good thing, this is another person we trust to take care of the house in emergency when we are not here, she lives 500m from our house, we cultivate social relationships at t…

You remind me of The Fifth Element, when the main bad guy starts choking on a piece of fruit and doesn't have a back slapping robot among his legion of other robots. The other side of the coin is also in security, people by nature make your house less secured (albeit based on your relationship with them, the area, country and so forth).

And people I know making 40k can afford a Roomba. They will not be getting a maid. It's like saying "we don't need self driving cars, I have a personal chauffeur"

Re: iRobot says robot vacuums now represent 20% of worldwide vacuum market

#72

Post by mulletbum » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 1:48 PM UTC

cel1ne wrote: post #56

planetjones wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misread my first point. It's not about a clean flat. It's that normal obstacles like lamp bases, chair legs and wires for bedside lamps, etc. cause the irobot huge difficulty. It got stuck on my lamp base and scratched it badly. Nobody wants to have the light house things guarding every article as they're unsightly, costly and require battery changes. And whether the insect like rules are on purpose or no…

I don't have any lighthouses or virtual walls. I just put cables on the table or stuck them behind something so the robot won't find them. Haven't had any problems with leg chairs or lamp posts yet. Regarding the dust ball on the kitchen floor: that's what the Spot-cleaning-feature is for. Or just lift the robot and put it on the dust ball where you press "Start".

I own two of these vacuums. If you run a Roomba every day, you will not have a dustball. This is just someone being disingenuous.

Re: iRobot says robot vacuums now represent 20% of worldwide vacuum market

#73

Post by lucaspiller » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 1:49 PM UTC

phmagic wrote: post #26

Dominating the robot vacuum market has never been irobots problem. They still haven't figured out what's next. This is a similar story to Fitbit and GoPro, once you've own the market you're after, then what?

Why does there need to be a 'next'?

I've tried cheaper competitors and they aren't even close to how well Roomba's work. As long as they keep building the best quality robots, I'll keep buying them. If they divert resources to a new market and forget about their main product (kind of like Apple has with Mac), I have no issues in buying a competitors product if it's better.

Re: iRobot says robot vacuums now represent 20% of worldwide vacuum market

#74

Post by Lio » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 1:55 PM UTC

As a former Roomba owner with allergies I have mixed feelings about current robots.

The cleaning and coverage is pretty good. My Roomba didn't have massive cleaning power but because it revisits the same spot over and over it got the job done.

It required quite a lot of attention though, both emptying it and removing hair and carpet fluff from it.

However the real reason I got rid of it was that I suspected that the filtration wasn't very good and that it was just sucking up allergens and blowing them into the air as it went.

Re: iRobot says robot vacuums now represent 20% of worldwide vacuum market

#75

Post by UnoriginalGuy » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 2:02 PM UTC

tibu wrote: post #35

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are really bad at vacuuming regularly. A robo-vac buys you more time between required vacuums. If you're happy to vacuum weekly and are already, don't buy one (seriously), but if like me you don't recall the last time you manually vacuumed then buy a $300 Xiaomi Mi and let it do your chore for you. Plus I've found that they get into places which people ignore (e.g. under the bed, bottom of the closet) and…

Can you share why you choosed the Xiaomi instead of a Roomba? Can it provide the same level of cleaning?

It costs $300. The Roomba "multi-room" 960 is $700 (and Neato $500).

It isn't superior to the Roomba 900 series or Neato. It is just "Good Enough" and less than 1/2 the price. Ultimately it doesn't need to be better than the competition when it is cheaper than them, it just needs to basically perform its function.

Re: iRobot says robot vacuums now represent 20% of worldwide vacuum market

#76

Post by freehunter » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 2:16 PM UTC

rm999 wrote: post #16

adinambiar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a Moores Law for cleaning robot since they are upgrading too fast that many people don't want to buy it too early.

I feel the opposite. I bought a Roomba 650 almost exactly four years ago (one of the best purchases I've ever made) for about 350 dollars after a bed bath and beyond coupon. With a little bit of maintenance it still runs every day exactly as well as it did the day I bought it. The 650 is the robovacuum Sweethome recommends and has recommended for years ( http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-robot-vacuum ). The newest…

I just got my first 650 yesterday. I was recommended away from the more expensive models because for a home as small as mine, the features didn't make sense for the price.

It's running right now, and with two dogs and a cat my floor is rarely ever this clean.

Re: iRobot says robot vacuums now represent 20% of worldwide vacuum market

#77

Post by freehunter » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 2:21 PM UTC

mulletbum wrote: post #70

phmagic wrote: post #26

Dominating the robot vacuum market has never been irobots problem. They still haven't figured out what's next. This is a similar story to Fitbit and GoPro, once you've own the market you're after, then what?

Floor mopping with the Braava, which they are already breaking into. Gutter cleaning with Looj, pool cleaning with Mirra. Then on to lawn mowing. They have figured this out already, just none of them have as much name recognition as the roomba.

I would love a roomba lawn mower, but with as often as my roomba runs over my feet while it's going through its cycle, it would need some serious sensors. And when I'm mowing, I inevitably have to pick up some sticks that fell from my tree, or sometimes trash that people threw onto my lawn as they drove by. It's a harder space than the living room, you can't control the outdoors quite as much.

Re: iRobot says robot vacuums now represent 20% of worldwide vacuum market

#78

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 2:23 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #77

mulletbum wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Floor mopping with the Braava, which they are already breaking into. Gutter cleaning with Looj, pool cleaning with Mirra. Then on to lawn mowing. They have figured this out already, just none of them have as much name recognition as the roomba.

I would love a roomba lawn mower, but with as often as my roomba runs over my feet while it's going through its cycle, it would need some serious sensors. And when I'm mowing, I inevitably have to pick up some sticks that fell from my tree, or sometimes trash that people threw onto my lawn as they drove by. It's a harder space than the living room, you can't control the outdoors quite as much.

I think a slow-motion lawn mower could work. More like a turtle that crawls around cropping the grass. Always there; maybe solar powered; keeps creeping around and gently munching the tops off the taller stems.

Re: iRobot says robot vacuums now represent 20% of worldwide vacuum market

#79

Post by izacus » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 2:25 PM UTC

Lio wrote: post #74

As a former Roomba owner with allergies I have mixed feelings about current robots. The cleaning and coverage is pretty good. My Roomba didn't have massive cleaning power but because it revisits the same spot over and over it got the job done. It required quite a lot of attention though, both emptying it and removing hair and carpet fluff from it. However the real reason I got rid of it was that I suspected that the…

Did you have one of the newer models with HEPA filters?

Re: iRobot says robot vacuums now represent 20% of worldwide vacuum market

#80

Post by freehunter » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 2:27 PM UTC

deelowe wrote: post #39

planetjones wrote: post #38

Buying an irobot was one of the worst consumer decisions I ever made. It can only work with extreme supervision otherwise it mounts and scratches lamp bases, gets tangled in cords or assaults plants. What's the point of having it if you have to make the whole apartment inert before letting it loose. Worse still it never seemed to learn and would often finish its job leaving huge parts of the floor untouched. And even…

Pretty much sums up my experience as well. The first step in using a roomba is cleaning the entire damn house.

Sounds like poor expectation-setting by whoever sold you on a Roomba. I have two dogs and a cat and keeping up with their fur is a full time job. Much easier to run the Roomba once a day. Yeah I have to keep the floor free of large debris, but I should do that anyway so I don't mind.