iRobot and their Roomba product line is riding on their namesake only. Roborock and other competitors are miles ahead of them when it comes to technology. It took a top of the line Roomba from 2021 about 4 hours to fully map my downstairs. Meanwhile the top of the line Roborock from 2022 did it in 15 minutes with its Lidar. And this is just one example. My roborock literally mops, cleans and dries its own mop, refills itself, empties itself, I can two way video call with the damn thing, it's just insane.
iRobot has not innovated their products in any meaningful way in over a decade.
I read an interview of the founder of roborock a long time ago and it was clear at that time that he had so much attention to detail that the product turned out to be superior. These days roborock behaves like it has definitely "solved" the robot vacuum problem and has transitioned to researching hardware for self-driving cars. I cannot yet decide if that's a brilliant strategy or a monumental waste of money that will hinder their continued development of robot vacuums.
> iRobot and their Roomba product line is riding on their namesake only. Roborock and other competitors are miles ahead of them when it comes to technology.
Yeah, I was looking for a robot vacuum a couple years ago and figured surely Roomba was the top of the line. Nope, not even close. The big killer, like you mentioned, is not having Lidar, so instead the Roomba has to bounce off of walls and obstacles repeatedly in order to map the room.
I ended up buying a Dreametech Z10 Pro, which I combined with a rooted firmware and Valetudo. No more phoning home to China!
iRobot also lost the thing that made them a little better than Roborock, the dual brush design patent. And as soon as that expired Roborock had one ready to go.
darn, I bought a Roomba Black Friday this year, and didn't know about Roborock.
To be fair, though, I don't really care about the speed of vacuuming operations. It's easy to schedule it when I'm out of the house, and it's not like I'm paying the robot an hourly wage.
iRobot has not innovated their products in any meaningful way in over a decade.