The robot revolution began over 25 years ago when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology team came out with the first robot vacuum. Today, the iRobot vacuum company has sold millions of robots, and continues to make them smarter and more efficient as they carry out their cleaning duties. But, how well do these mechanical maids clean up after our four legged friends? Does Roomba work with dog hair?
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The Roomba line of vacuums has come a long way in the last 25 years. With the inclusion of Wi-Fi and smartphone apps that allow you to schedule and control you bot vac, keeping your home clean has never been easier. When it comes to dogs, though, cleaning goes to another level. So the short answer to, “does Roomba work with dog hair?” is yes. Read on to find out which models work best for dog hair.
The Complete Answer
We could have just left you with the easy, “yes.” However, we feel that we owe our readers a better and more detailed explanation. Roomba is the umbrella name for the line of vacuums that actually has several models, and not all of them are created equally.
Every model available will have the ability to suck up loose dog hair from your carpets, but iRobot has engineered specific models just to deal with dog hair.
What is the problem with dog hair?
Our dogs shed so much that sometimes we wonder how they even have hair left. The problem with all that hair laying siege to our floors is that it tends to clump and stick together. Over time it can integrate itself into the carpet by weaving around with carpet threads. On hard floors, the pesky hair finds its way under every piece of furniture we have.
Upon setting a vacuum loose, the dog hair goes into survival mode, and seems to attach the vacuum by wrapping itself around brushes and clogging filters. The Roomba line of vacuums is designed with a 3-stage cleaning system that agitates carpets and dirt on hard floors to break the pesky clingers up.
The Roomba 614 and Roomba 690 are great at attacking the dirt, but dog hair can get trapped up in the sleek vacuums’ brush rollers. This requires a little more hands attention to your automated pal, as you have to work to unravel and extract the entrenched hairs.
The tangle-free option
Pulling on their 25 plus years of robot vacuum experience, iRobot engineers developed the tangle-free rollers. In place of your traditional brush rollers, the tangle-free version is comprised of rubber treads that snatch up dog hair without giving it the chance to lock on to the roller.
For the times when you have to deal with extra stubborn hair, the Roomba line comes with a brush that makes extracting easier.
CONCLUSION
We threw the Roomba 890, 960, and 980 vacuum bots into our shop to try to clean our test floor. We put dog hair all over the floor to see how these bots actually sucked up the stubborn hair. All three bots did a great job of attacking and removing the hair piled up across the test floor. Even when the hair got stuck the bots continued to power on. We did have to give a little tlc to extract some of the hair, though.
Does Roomba work for dog hair? All the Roomba vacs are able to handle the hair, but the models with the tangle-free rollers definitely dominate the dog hair, with minimal hands on required.