Mom’s still in the picture and in good shape, and I have every reason to believe dad will be cooperative with signing DPOA (for both finances and medical) once diagnosis is in-hand, but since they happen to be updating their living will two months before his first appt with the oldpersonologist, please hit me with any suggestions/advice you got for ensuring we can care for him.
I spent a ton of time in this sub agonizing over which robot vacuum I’d go with. It’s been a year and some change since I made my decision, so I thought I’d give back a little by sharing what I learned.
TL;DR: refurbished units hold up just fine, an “older” model can potentially satisfy your needs as well as the latest model, and I am happy with the Qrevo after over a year of 2x daily use.
Now onto the details:
Use Case
I am a single person living in a ~1k sq ft single level apartment. The flooring is hardwood floor with assorted area rugs of varying pile. I have a short-haired dog a house rabbit. The dog drools a lot where food is concerned, so I wanted something that would mop up the drool spots around her food dish each day. The rabbit is litter trained, but not every poop makes it into the litter box, and there’s a lot of dust that accumulates daily from his hay and from the wood pellets that line his litter box. Both of them shed. So in additional to mopping, I wanted something with good suction for pet hair and litter/hay dust. I also wanted something that could be scheduled to run at certain times and would map out the floor plan so it would run efficiently…the last robot vacuum I had was before “smart” vacs and it would take all day to bonk around the apartment. I did not want a vacuum with an actual camera on it for privacy/security concerns.
Qrevo performance
Upon recommendation of a friend and this sub, I decided to get a Roborock, but I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of models available. I also did not want to drop more than $500. After reading a zillion reviews on here and watching vacuum wars videos etc. I came to the conclusion that literally every single robot vacuum will have pros and cons.
Not a single one works perfectly. All of them require some level of user maintenance. People who dropped a grand on their vacuums seemed to have no fewer complaints than people who dropped a couple hundred on theirs. So I decided that the original Qrevo had all the major features that I was looking for, had overall positive reviews, and got a refurbed one via the official Roborock store on eBay for $400, with a two year warranty.
It does what it says it does. It mops, it vacuums, it mapped my apartment and does a pretty good job avoiding most obstacles on its own. It handles my low and medium pile carpets just fine. It’s good at raising the mops so that the carpets don’t get wet. I like that it empties its own dust bin and cleans its own mops. When there are places that it frequently gets stuck, I can mark it as a no-go zone. It only ever “chokes” on things that any vacuum would choke on, like errant charging cables. It’s strong enough to suction things like bobby pins and coins. It always tells me when it’s choked on something or is stuck. The app tells me when it needs maintenance, like when I need to empty the dirty tank/refill the clean tank, clear out the docking tray, change the dust bag, clean the sensors, etc. it was easy and cheap to buy a bag of “refill” accessories to have handy for parts that need routine replacement (dust bags, mop heads, side brush). I still have plenty left after a year of 2x daily use (it vacuums the whole apartment each day and vacuum/mops the kitchen each night. Sometimes on weekends I will have it mop other rooms). I’m amazed at how much it picks up every day.
I had one issue at the beginning, which is that one room has a high threshold at the doorway, and I also have two baby gates in the hallway that don’t lay flat on the floor. The bot could not boost itself over any of these. I found a guy on Etsy with a 3d printer who makes ramps specifically for this purpose. I sent my specs and got back ramps that solved the issues. I did order one ramp in the color black and learned that the robot thought it was a cliff, so I bought tape that looks like wood grain in a shade similar to my actual wood floor and wrapped the ramp in it. That solved the problem, and the ramps and tape were much cheaper than buying the one really expensive model that can lift itself higher than the others.
Does it annoy the shit out of me on some days, like when it seems it’s finding everything it could possibly get stuck on? Yes, but also that is my fault for having shit on the floor that literally any vacuum will get stuck on. Are there maintenance tasks that sort of suck, like emptying a stinky dirty water tank? Yes, but also you can spray the tank with a little bleach each time you empty it or stick in a denture cleaning tablet and that helps a lot (and I have not found that either of these things are ruining the function of any parts of the tank). Does it feel wasteful to throw out a full dustbag and replace it with a new one? Yes, but also if you are committed to reducing waste it is in fact possible to empty the dust bag through the little hole and reuse it. And more importantly, there are no robot vacuums that will not require SOME maintenance tasks. It’s a machine with a lot of moving parts. It can’t run on its own indefinitely without user interventions. Yes, some tasks can be outsourced, like those models you can hook directly into the water pipes. But even those models will have other maintenance needs.
Anyway I’m pretty happy with what I’ve gotten out of this baby for the money. I’d be REALLY happy if I could get at least 5 years out of it, but it’s looking pretty good so far.
Hope this helps someone make their decision!