****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I've resisted getting a robo-vac since they first came out. They've always been too expensive in my mind for what they offered, and I was never able to see the value in having one when vacuuming the house once a week always seemed to be plenty.Well, that was before this past few years, when we got two cats and a dog. The amount of fur being shed was making area rugs bought in the last few months dingy and faded even with regular weekly vacuuming. And weekly is the best we manage. So I decided I was going to take the plunge and finally buy this model of robo-vac since the price was often very reasonable with the frequently-offered coupons.I've had it for two weeks now, and I'm a skeptic no more! The day it arrived, I fully charged the battery and ran it in just our living room, where we have a medium-pile 8 x 10 area rug. The bin was packed at the end of the run, and it took four more days of cleaning just that room on a full charge before the bin finally got to just 1/2 or 2/3 full. I would recharge the battery and run it separately in the rest of our ground floor, where it's all hardwood and much smaller / thinner area rugs, and that was better after just 2 runs.I now have the vacuum scheduled to run at 1 AM every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I just pick up the stuff on the floor and move things like dining chairs or trash cans to maximize the floor coverage. This is just the right schedule, as it's keeping up with our pets shedding and the bin is moderately to mostly full. And on the weekends, I run it in our finished basement and the second-floor rooms where the pets spend much less time.Still have to use our canister vacuum for the smaller spaces where this robo-vac can't get, along with vacuuming the pet hair off the upholstery. But our once-a-week vacuuming time is now faster and more focused, instead of being the half-day chore it always was in the past.What I love most about this robo-vac is that it fits under all of our couches, dressers, and other furniture with a raised bottom, so those spaces that never got cleaned without pulling out the furniture (which was never for the big/heavy pieces) now actually get cleaned with the rest of the room. I was amazed when Puck (that's what we've named it :D) rolled right under my wife's dresser, clearing the space by what looked like a couple of millimeters. It wandered around under there for maybe 30 seconds and finally found its way back out with equal ease.It does get stuck sometimes on some of the furniture that has scalloped trim in the corners; mainly our living room couch. And I was really surprised when it got stuck under the side of our recliner in that room, so now I have to make sure that's positioned in a way where that won't happen during the nightly scheduled runs. And we have two doorways with thresholds that are just a smidge too high for it to climb up / down without getting a little stuck, but that's it as far as problems.If you're like me and need to run it frequently, you *must* make sure to empty the bin and clean the roller brush after every single run, and the side spinner brushes as stuff builds up where they snap onto the vacuum. The brush roller definitely tends to get a lot of hair wrapped around it, and that makes it run louder if not cleaned regularly. The included cleaning tool is great for this, as it includes a small razor-bladed section for quickly slicing through the hair buildup.Hopefully, Puck will last a good long time as long as I keep cleaning it regularly. I definitely prefer this kind of low-profile model to the more-typical thick-built ones that can't get under as much furniture. But if it ends up have reliability issues because of our more-frequent use, then I'll have to look into something like a Roomba model that's more user-serviceable.Nov 5, 2022 UPDATE: Puck is still running like a champ. I still get close to 90 minutes of run time on a charge, even when I have to stop and start him every 15-20 minutes to empty the bin when we clean a room that got skipped for a couple of weeks. Have only needed to do standard replacement of the filter, side brushes, roller brush, and brush guard as those parts wear out (generally every 2-3 months for the filter, 4-6 months for the other parts).The bin has definitely proved to be this vacuum’s biggest shortcoming, as it can fill to bursting after20 minutes with all the pet fur it picks up. This is true even in rooms we clean regularly, just because so much fur is shed by our three pets. When Puck does eventually wear out, we will be replacing it with a robovac that has a bin sensor and automatic emptying base. It’s still less work than regular vacuuming, but more “hand holding” that I want from a device that is otherwise so incredibly useful and that has made this chore much more thorough and bearable.
