Robot vacuum cleaners like the Roomba from iRobot are the ultimate in cleaning convenience. The intelligent dirt sensors let them identify and clean even tough messes, while the scheduling capabilities mean it can clean up your home even when you’re not there. The big question for most people when they’re looking at these vacuums is whether they’re actually as versatile as a full-sized vacuum. The Roomba claims to be able to tell what floor type it’s cleaning and adjust, but does Roomba work on carpet and hardwood?
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Does Roomba work on carpet and hardwood?
The short answer is yes. The patented AeroForce cleaning system gives you a three-stage clean that improves the performance across floor types. The combination of brushing, suction, and agitation allows the same brush that cleans hardwood floors to pull ground-in dirt out of carpet fibers.
The Roomba’s intelligent sensors, meanwhile, are able to automatically adjust depending on what floor type the vacuum is cleaning. The extractors counter-rotate to catch more debris, and they use a rubber tread design that can extract debris from carpets and grab dust from hardwood with equal ease.
Perhaps the more in-depth question that most people are really asking when they pose this question is: Does Roomba work on carpet and hardwood equally well? This more targeted question will have a slightly more complicated answer. The Roomba is a dream on hardwood floors.
The spinning brushes on the side of the machine force dirt and debris underneath it, where it is pulled up by the robot vacuum’s impressive suction power. Even larger particles like spilled cat litter or food dropped in the kitchen are easy for the Roomba to handle.
Because of its light weight, it’s also less likely to cause damage to hardwood floors than traditional uprights. In many ways, you could call the Roomba the ideal vacuum for a hardwood floor.
When it comes to carpets, the effectiveness of the Roomba’s clean really depends on how thick your carpet is, what color it is, and which version of Roomba you’re using. Any Roomba model you can buy today will be able to effectively clean both hard floors and relatively short, low-pile carpets. If you have thicker carpets in your home, you probably want to look at a model from the 800 line or higher.
The Roomba 860, for example, was the first to introduce Tangle-Free Extractors, and also gives you improved suction power over previous models. This lets it clean heavier carpets more thoroughly, and has the added benefit of needing less maintenance, since hair and other long fibers are less likely to get wrapped up around the brush.
The color of your carpets can have an impact, too. Since the Roomba uses visual sensors to detect dirt, it has a harder time cleaning dark surfaces. Again, the more advanced the model, the more likely it will be to work on trickier carpet types. Give your vacuum a test run when you first get it home.
Set it cleaning the carpet you’re concerned about and supervise it as it makes its way around the room. If it doesn’t work, you can always use the Virtual Wall barrier to section off that area and let the Roomba clean the rest of your home.
So does Roomba work on carpet and hardwood? For most homes, absolutely. Especially on the more advanced models like the Roomba 960, which have a long enough battery life for an entire floor of your home, you can trust the Roomba to detect what kind of floor it’s cleaning and adjust its hardware accordingly.
If you do have carpet that’s especially thick or especially dark, the right Roomba should still get the job done.