this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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This image is 10 years old - I bought the 980 (top shelf, third from the left, highest model pictured) as my first bot. Black friday 2016.
For anyone wondering, iR bots have great smarts but suck ass for hardware. I went through a total of 6 iR bots across 3 models, spending up to 1.6k USD for a model (and extended warranties by the store, which I used every time each failed, again, out of warranty). Oh and iR customer support is staffed only by certified assholes - I'm a disabled tech enthusiast and literally every single person I spoke to, both phone and email, was a condescending motherfucker. Every, last, one.
I've tried almost all the brands sold in the US, and I prefer Neato, which was bought by a German company and killed, so uh... that's great. Shark is absolutely literal garbage, the one I bought failed after 28 days, Ecovacs are designed to fail after about 9 months of moderate use every other day (a wheel will start to fail to rotate, causing it to go I'm circles; two models, 3 units, across 2.5y did this). I'm testing a Roborock that has been okay so far, but it's only been in use for two months...
Usually, extended warranties are bullshit. Here, I implore you to get one if you're getting a bot. I'm now on bot make/model 8 (not counting replacements of the same model!), in 9 years. Seriously.
Anyway, 'lol funny picture'.
My Roborock has been serving me well for over a year, even the home assistant integration has been painless. I’ve never had a different brand so reading your post makes me feel very fortunate. I actually recently ordered some new rollers and mop pad and was pleased how serviceable it is.
I'm on my third Roborock only because of upgrading to newer models. The other two were sold in full working order, never had any issues.
Yeah mine too like what 6-7 years now. Recently bought another just to have downstairs
Easy to replace parts. Went though a few brushes and filters
My ex has an... S5? for a few years now, so I took his experience as a hopefully positive experience. I ordered my Saros 10R like two and a half months ago, a sale just happened to coincide with the Ecovacs replacement failing. I also got credit for replacement parts, which is nice.
I had issues with initial setup, where my phone needed me to switch off cellular data to pair the bot to the network. Frustrating, found a page on reddit that nudged me in the right direction. Once that was sorted, it's been quite pleasant. Not the lowest maintenence, and it's suction could be... significantly stronger (even on 'max+' it can fail to pickup large hair from the carpet). But overall, I'm really happy with it so far. The app is on much higher quality than Ecovacs too, even though they are... suspiciously similar (down to the UI and location of buttons), the Roborock is waaaaay less buggy and feeding bad info to me.
I bought the extended warranty through RR directly (also the bot directly) instead of a store or third-party. Hopefully if it does have issues in the next... 4 years, I think? that customer service will be pleasant. iR set the bar underground, Ecovacs and Neato were good (above my low expectations), so fingers crossed. Be even better if it manages to work through the warranty without issues, it'd be the first to achieve it for me.
Nah. Got a Roomba for cheap 10 years ago, still does it's job. But man is that thing dumb. I'm no expert but i'm sure even i could do the algorithms better.
Their classic bump and go ones are super dumb. The ones with the cameras pointed at the ceiling did alright. I don't think iR has ever transitioned to lidar, still using slam for nav.
I just bought one of the new 705s that has LIDAR and it's been pretty fantastic. Most of their new lineup has LIDAR now and it's been pretty good compared to my old j7's vSLAM. I'm really not a fan of them being app based and hope that they'll eventually work with Valetudo, but with 2 huskies and cats I just really don't want to have to manually vacuum every single day.
Oh cool, they finally started using lidar! The slam tech was impressive for the data and locational awareness it could do but as soon as I got my first neato I was like 'holy crap this is night and day' for nav.
I thought that Amazon bought iR a few years ago and was expecting them to let the brand die, nothing much happened for the first couple years. I'll still be very skeptical but competition is good.
Fortunately/unfortunately, they didn't get bought by Amazon. I only say unfortunately because they made a lot of business decisions expecting it to go through, and when it didn't, has caused them a ton of trouble. They seem to be hanging in there pretty well and this current gen of bots seems to be pretty solid. I've had iR stuff for over 20 years now and have generally only had good experiences, so they're still my go-to.
TIL, I thought it had gone through
Neato was bought by Vorwerk and as far as I can tell, the Kobold VR7 is a successor to Neato‘s robots. So it doesn’t seem to be all that dead. The VR7 has great hardware but it’s software is a bit lackluster.
I don't know what worse, this or a technical support going through the script, page by page, despite me already trying most of their solutions before ringing. Nowadays I only ring them when I want to initiate return/repair procedure.
I’ve got a Roomba and Braava jet and I think the opposite: the software (navigation) is shit but the hardware (cleaning-wise, not including the lack of lidar here) is great.