I have 2. They work excellent on hard floors. For carpet they are a good addition to an upright vacuum, they don’t deep clean much at all though. I run one every day on my downstairs floor and have been happy with its performance
Things like this just want to make me want to throw away everything made in the last 20 years! Definitely technology for technology’s sake. I’m pretty sure one can vacuum the entire house in less time and do a much better job than these ever could. Once they get blocked or suck up a cable it's done until one realises.
We`ve had ours for a while now and love it, we have both a cat and dog that shed alot. Before we would have to vac at least 2 or 3 times a week which was a pain, where as now its maybe once a week. We have alot of carpet and while it doesnt clean as well as our upright, it defiantly helps the amount of time we have to vacuum the house which is nice.
The old Roombas used Ni-Mi/Ni-Cd and the newer one used Lithium. The chargers aren’t compatible so it makes sense finding the right charger fixed your issue.
I bought my 980 at the end of last year, and I love it. One thing to note is that the automatic suction adjustments based on floor type are dictated by a classification model that reads the rolling characteristics of the brushes across the floor, and aftermarket brushes will make it behave strangely. I learned that the hard way by buying aftermarket brushes with a deeper tread pattern. For the first few weeks of use, the vacuum locked itself in carpet mode and in addition to being earsplittingly loud, it degraded the battery to the point where it couldn't finish my house on one battery charge. Unfortunately, that appears to be permanent and I would only be able to fix it with a new battery.
I bought an old one a while back, i think it was from around 2012. I have a modern one from 2022 as well. Both work in the app but even then, they allow local control with home assistant which means even if IRobot shut the app down, I can still schedule them to do things. Also, Irobot used to, I am not sure now, stock parts for the older models as they believed in longevity
Roomba's, and other robotic vacuums, are great for a daily clean, but they are by no means a replacement for a normal corded vacuum cleaner. I have a 680 and it only uses the "random" cleaning pattern; only the upper-end models like your 980 uses the mapping system to know where the robot has been and where it still need to clean. Also, you can buy what's called a "Virtual Wall" for these, which uses an IR beam to keep the Roomba out of rooms where you don't want it go. I despise all this "smart home" nonsense, so I prefer the non-WiFi models as I see no need to waste bandwidth on a vacuum lol
My roomba i3 has outperformed every single stick vacuum I've ever used or owned, including a dyson v11, lg cord zero a905, and a Samsung jet 75. Those brush rollers are amazing at picking stuff up that a stick vacuum with their lack luster attachments can't do. It's no replacement for a deep clean, and doesn't touch what my both of my mieles can do (their canister vacuums suck themselves down to low pile carpet to the point you can't move it), but they're a great once over pick up machine
Now they have robotic lawnmowers now which is the same basic concept as this however with the robotic lawnmower that I have seen a video on needs your phone so you can map out your yard with the app on top of installing some kind of poles that it needs. I would say rumbas are good for very small places like dorm rooms because it wouldn't take that long to clean after it knows the room. Yeah I am not too keen on robotic vacuums either but it is a cool device though.
