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

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

#81

Post by 6DM »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #34
wfunction wrote: post #19

Question: how good are Roombas at actually cleaning? With an actual vacuum, I can turn it high or low, or press it harder or easier, or stick it at weird angles to make it clean. How good are Roombas in comparison?

It is actually very good, by virtue of running every day (unless you change its schedule to something else). So even though its suction doesn't compare well to a real big canister/bag vacuum, it makes up for that in sheer level of activity. It's not perfect. I have a single-floor apartment with no door thresholds, yet it keeps getting stuck. I keep cables and so on neatly organized and hidden, but sometimes I've left…

I wanted to confirm these findings and add something else. When my roommate bought it, I thought it was pretty useless. Even just seeing it in action makes you wonder how it get's anything done. It basically runs in random patterns and takes forever.

But after I moved to a different apartment, and he got his own place. I really saw how much work that thing was doing. I forgot how often the floors need to be swept to keep it clean. I plan to buy one myself once I move at the end of this month.

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

#82

Post by Lio »

izacus wrote: post #79
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?

I didn't, so hopefully newer Roomba's should be better in this regard.

It's a difficult thing to measure though and I didn't want to take the chance again (in the short term).

I found I got better cleaning (measured anecdotally by how much Ventolin I use) from a high-end handheld vacuum cleaner with HEPA and changing how I clean to include curtains, mattresses and pillows.

Definitely not as cool as having a robot though. I think that Karcher used to make a robot with a base station that it would empty itself into, which is a neat idea. That would cut down on the emptying.

[EDIT] I should add that the handheld vacuum cleaner has its own problems too since it's bagless. Great in principle until you empty it into a cloud of dust. I like seeing how much dirt is picked up but maybe disposable bags are the best solution after all.

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

#83

Post by Cerium »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #23
catbird wrote: post #6

Ah, they mean 20 percent of the vacuums sold this year. Since a vacuum is not something that gets replaced each year (or every 5 years even?), it will take quite a while for robots to reach 20 percent of all existing vacuums, if ever. Anecdotally the only person I know who owns a roomba used to work for iRobot.

If we assume a fixed lifetime of n years for vacuums, it will take at most n years to get to 20%. If we assumed a half-life of n years, then robot vacuums will only ever approach 20% asymptotically and won't ever reach it. (We could get over 20% if robot vacuums have a longer lifespan than regular vacuums. I'm tempted to write a simulation over different failure curves but I really have better things to do.)

I would guess robot vacuums have a shorter life! I'm still using the same vacuum I grew up with, it's more than 20 years old and going strong.

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

#84

Post by wott »

halimvohra wrote: post #9
catbird wrote: post #6

Ah, they mean 20 percent of the vacuums sold this year. Since a vacuum is not something that gets replaced each year (or every 5 years even?), it will take quite a while for robots to reach 20 percent of all existing vacuums, if ever. Anecdotally the only person I know who owns a roomba used to work for iRobot.

That's a good call for pointing out the logical flaw. But basically from the people I know who owned a cleaning robot, generally it last no more than 2 years because of the new technology and the battery life.

Also because of the amount of problems it has, and the er... "limited" quality of the result, people hope that it improves with the next versions.

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

#85

Post by wott »

Bombthecat wrote: post #41
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…

I'm in the same boat. Not an irobot but something similar. Luckily it was only 120€. This thing eats everything. Socks. Cloths, papers. Cables, anything on the floor stops, breaks, halts that thing. It really needs some kind of sensor to detect stuff like that before it gets any kind of useful.

> This thing eats everything.

I protest! It seems to carefully avoid anything that resembles a crumb, a hair or dust.

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

#87

Post by aplomb »

When he decides to lie about the share of robot vacuums within the market (which you can infer from iRobots "70%" marketshare) he should make sure their financial filings coincide - complete BS.

There is no reasonable interpretation of the public data (and estimates for privately held vacuum mfgs) where 20% becomes true. Perhaps the dataset is their employees and found only 20% own their product? ;)

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

#88

Post by chrisper »

wfunction wrote: post #19

Question: how good are Roombas at actually cleaning? With an actual vacuum, I can turn it high or low, or press it harder or easier, or stick it at weird angles to make it clean. How good are Roombas in comparison?

I had one and eventually sold it and went back to the regular vacuum.

You can't have anything on the floor, so I wasn't really able to let it run while I am not at home because I was afraid it would hit stuff. Sometimes it even pushes furniture around or bumps into other stuff and scratches it.

I can vacuum my whole apartment in a lot less time than when using the roomba.

The roomba kept blowing around the dog hair and ignore spots, but kept going over the same spots a thousand times.

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

#89

Post by Alphasite_ »

6DM wrote: post #81
lobster_johnson wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually very good, by virtue of running every day (unless you change its schedule to something else). So even though its suction doesn't compare well to a real big canister/bag vacuum, it makes up for that in sheer level of activity. It's not perfect. I have a single-floor apartment with no door thresholds, yet it keeps getting stuck. I keep cables and so on neatly organized and hidden, but sometimes I've left…

I wanted to confirm these findings and add something else. When my roommate bought it, I thought it was pretty useless. Even just seeing it in action makes you wonder how it get's anything done. It basically runs in random patterns and takes forever. But after I moved to a different apartment, and he got his own place. I really saw how much work that thing was doing. I forgot how often the floors need to be swept to…

The newer ones allegedly dont do the random pattern thing anymore.

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

#90

Post by donutz »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #30

The consumer in me wants to try Dyson's robot vac http://www.dyson.com/vacuum-cleaners/robot/360eye/360-eye-ni...

I've got an old Dyson Animal vacuum, and I'm always impressed with how full of dirt the canister gets. So I've got high hopes for a robotic Dyson.

That said, the reviews trickling into Amazon kind of deflate those hopes: suction is great, but otherwise it seems to have all the kinds of problems that all the robot vacuums have.

Definitely not something I'd be willing to plunk down a thousand dollars for. Here's to hoping the next version is a marked improvement.

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