I thought I’d take a break for a minute while I still sort out my next piece for the Building a Smart Home Series, and talk about something in my house that is both smart & practical. I’ve been using for the last couple months the Roomba 980 robot vacuum and I must say I think I’m impressed. So let me tell you a bit about my experience with the Roomba 980.
After a relatively easy sign up and setup on the mobile app, you’re pretty much done. From the app you can set a daily schedule when the Roomba will begin (mine is set for 8am Mon-Friday, I give it off on the weekends lol), you can find it if missing (definitely comes in handy if you come home and it isn’t on its base), and see the cleaning history. You can also quickly kick off a cleaning cycle if you’re too lazy to push the button on the unit itself. My favorite feature from the app is by far the cleaning history. There you can see what square footage or an area it cleaned, dirt detected, and the run time it took to clean the space. But my favorite is the little floor map it creates. If you ever need a quick DIY floor map of your house, just let the 980 do its thing!
With the Roomba, it really is a set it and leave kind of thing. You’ll go back to it when the trash bin needs to be emptied and the occasional times it somehow gets itself stuck on something. Other than that if you set your schedule for it to run when you’re not home, it will do its thing, and your floors will constantly get cleaned (because seriously who really is sweeping/vacuuming their entire floor of the house 5 times a week!). Where the Roomba 980 really shines is in the way it does its job.
First off I wouldn’t recommend watching the Roomba clean every time it does (it is only entertaining for the first minute, and quite boring after), but the 980 with the new imaging mapping technology, seems to navigating its cleaning path most efficiently. Carefully going up and down the floor. When it bumps into something, it is a light bump and then it alters its path. With the camera inside it, I’ve seen it carefully vacuum around the edge of an item instead of constantly bumping into the item as it makes it way along it. This is an improvement I’ve seen from older models. The 980 makes these older models look quite clumsy when compared.
All in all my floors always look clean, and I never have to think about it. Even when I know a slight mess has been made, the next day it is gone thanks to the Roomba 980. While that price makes it a high level of entry at $899.99, in the end I think its worth it. You’ll never have to worry about the floor not being cleaned, and you’ll welcome the time not having to spend worrying about cleaning a level of your home. Check out this video of the Roomba 980 in action below!
