When It Works
Anyone have a Roomba, or any of the knockoff equivalents?
My son and his wife bought something called a Eufy, which is some brand of vacuum cleaner bot. It's been in the house now for three weeks or so, and contrary to what I thought before we had this one, I'm discovering I don't really like it that much.
Image courtesy of Glen Anthony Albrethsen.
Our Eufy RoboVac, bouncing off the wall.
Now, it could be just the model. When I go shopping for any kind of technology—television, computers, game consoles, home assistants, etc.—I generally do a lot of homework first. Price is a factor—I'm not going to just throw money at the most expensive one—but it's not the only one. I rarely buy the most expensive gadget, but neither do I generally buy the cheapest. That's because I research possible features, pick the ones I like, then look for the ones that have those features, and then compare what they do. Then, I go by price and yes, I wade through some comments.
I wasn't there when the kids decided to purchase this one. I suspect they may have done some comparing, but that price was the principle consideration. As long as the reviews weren't horrible.
I wasn't consulted in the matter. It was meant to be a gift for my wife, but I think the kids like it enough that it may just end up leaving with them whenever that happens. And if that's the case, I'm fine with that.
When I went looking at the Roomba's a while back, I was looking for ones that had things like proximity sensors and programmability. A camera would be cool, but not necessary. Good battery life, low motor noise, things of that nature.
This one, does not have any of those things, except maybe a decent battery life. Now, it's not quite as loud as a regular vacuum, but you definitely know it's running. It sounds a lot like our dishwasher. It can't be programmed, but it can be driven with the provided remote. You can set a time for it to clean, too, but that's about it. When I say program, I mean have it learn the layout of each room in the house and determine how to best go about cleaning it, as efficiently and effectively as possible.
It doesn't have proximity sensors because it keeps hitting things. Walls, furniture, doors, drawers, people. It doesn't discriminate.
Of all the features it's lacking is the one that annoys me the most. It can get caught in some areas of the house where it has to bump its way out for at least a minute, if not more, because it can't see where it's going and then figure out how to get out of a corner. I watched it get wedged underneath a corner of one of the couches, where it kept turning until it finally managed to free itself.
It doesn't take a room horizontally or vertically, but diagonally. Even that is probably an oversimplification, because as it's pinballing around, it seems to knock itself off course so rather than going in any semblance of a straight line, it tends to run off to the left in a fairly flat curve until it runs into something else.
I've not messed with the thing at all other than to send it back home a couple of times. One of my later nights last week I came in (after 11 pm) and found it running around in the dark. Not that it needed any light. But I did. I couldn't figure out what the noise was until I turned on the dining room light and found the vacuum bot doing its thing in the corner of the living room.
When asked, my daughter-in-law said she had set it to start by itself at noon, but it didn't do it. Apparently, it can't even tell time.
So, bottomline. I like the idea. And if I were ever to buy one, I would do my homework and select the best of the lot for the money. I would probably find out if it's also Echo compatible, since we have one or two of those floating around the house.
I love technology, but only when it works. Otherwise, you get Tony Stark's "Dummy" robot he was constantly chiding in the first Iron Man movie. In fact, this Eufy reminds me a lot of it.