Seeing a few of these pop up on sale for Black Friday and was curious if anyone had a strong opinion one way or another about them. Some are pretty cheap while others go up to almost 2K. My kids enjoy leaving their shoes or a random sock on the floor from time to time and I am wondering if this vacuum will just stop when it runs into something like that, forcing us to pick up the house on a regular basis (which would be a good thing).

Guessing the cheaper ones don't have as much suction power or limited on what to do?

I’d like to get two of them and let them loose in the same room at the same time.

We really like our Shark, paid around $400. It does a great job, we have it set for Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.

We have two , the wife likes them , I would rather just use a regular vacuum.
Mo

The power is still there…it’s lack of effort. $20 doesn’t really capture the heart like it used to.

Sounds like the one we have-

As you can imagine maybe I cant run a normal vacuum, but I have snake handling tool that I use to push the start button on the shark and vacuum when needed before the wife gets home-

I don’t think it completely replaces a vacuum, but it’s another helpful tool-

We have a Roomba i3+ that is going on 3 years old. It’s good because it will vacuum everyday and it really keeps the floors cleaner because we have dogs and don’t sweep/mop daily. The not so good with dogs is they really need to be house broken or you might be smearing “stuff” everywhere.

I have a cheaper EcoVac and it does a surprisingly decent job. You can feel a noticeable difference if you walk on the tile floor barefoot after it has done its thing. My dog brings in lots of fine dirt, and the vacuum picks it up. It also does well with dog hair, but it never gets 100% of it.

I have had a couple of issues:

1. If you don't use it regularly, the battery can go dead and it won't charge again. I tried a knock-off battery but it lasted about a month, so I had to get one from the company.

2. The charging station on mine has infrared LEDs the bot homes in on. They're on 24/7, and they're cheaply made. So after a while, they were too dim and/or burned out and I had to get a new charging station.

They're good if you're going to use it frequently. Like I said, I got a cheap one but I can't imagine one that costs double could do twice as good.

Think of it as a "sweeper" rather than a vacuum. It does pretty good picking up pet hair and surface dirt, but you still need to vacuum to get really clean. Also, it is great at getting the wife's hair all stuck up in the roller, leaving your vacuum roller free of hair.

We have one, used it quite a bit for the first few months we had it, and it does work like it’s supposed to. I got tired of it occasionally getting stuck under the kitchen table or caught up in a few power cords behind the tv. You can drive it around by remote and that’s what I ended up doing most of the time. Like mo said above, regular vacuum is better far as I’m concerned.

one good thing is they sell quick at garage sales... we had two Golden Retrievers - shed like fools ! when we had one, clogged the room'ba in short order became worthless... sold...

Had a Shark a few months. Couldn't handle the cat hair, gave it to Goodwill.

We have 1 of the Shark models that empties itself. The 1st one lasted about 6 months before it stopped working. I did some trouble shooting with Shark support and they decided to send me a replacement. I was ecstatic to here that and asked, well...what do I do with the old unit? They said trash it, the new one is on the way. I said to myself, Self...take the old one back to Sams club for a refund. Sams asked what's wrong with it and I said it quit working and they proceeded to refund my purchase in full no further questions asked.. Now, 2 years later the replacement is still working great and I haven't spent a dime on it. lol

As others have said, they work great on dog hair, debris on the floor etc. The thing we like best is, ours easily go under the furniture, bed and stuff and gets all the dust/hair we normally wouldn't get with a regular vacuum.

Your mileage may vary...

I let 2 robot mowers loose in the yard, it was freakin hilarious

Years ago, shortly after they first came out, I had a robot vacuum that my over 100lb German Shephard hated, many times I could not find it in the house but found it in the backyard where he took it thru the doggie door and disposed of it out back....

Same . We have the Shark mentioned above.