Should I buy a robot vacuum?

Love my roomba, I just let it loose in the carpeted rooms in my house once a week and am always amazed by the amount of dust it captures.

My roombas do the top of stairs and are factory programmed never to fall down a step

Horses for courses, I like the roombas for privacy tbh and use a microfibre duster on a longer handle for skirting tops, the roomba goes right up to skirting bases so no problem there. Microfibre glove with fingers makes very short work of normal dusting. I like housework, good exercise for me and certainly not for everyone

We have weekly cleaners, they do much more than a Roomba could do unless it can dust, wipe skirting boards, wash the kitchen floor etc.

I do not have carpets anywhere and only rugs on the landing and my bedroom. Mine could not get on or off the rug in my bedroom as that one is quite thick.

I had to block off the top of the stairs or it was going to commit suicide by falling down the stairs.

I agree with Phillipa111 that one would have to spend a fair amount to get something half decent.

My son bought one that wasn't a known brand, which didn't last. My Roomba is as good as new.

You do have to empty the rather small dustbox pretty often. They say to do it every time it is used, which is a bit overkill, but if you leave it too long it drops more than it picks up.

You also have to watch out that you don't leave thin fabric trailing on the floor - a scarf for instance - as it gets caught in the brushes and the robot then shrieks for you to come and rescue it.

I was inadvertently very cruel to mine. I had it scheduled to sweep most of the downstairs carpets before I got out of bed, but forgot to firmly close the door of the one room it wasn't to go into. When I came down, I found that door was closed, and the desktop computer in that room wouldn't work, though I tried everything. Then I saw Roomba, huddled dejectedly in a corner. My first thought was that there had been some kind of electrical disaster, but no.

It seems it could push on the outside of door enough to open it a bit further and get in, then it hoovered diligently until it came up against the extension lying on the floor with the computer plugged into it and ran over the switch on that, turning the computer off. After that it must have continued vacuuming until it came up against the INSIDE of the door and pushed it closed. Then, of course, it couldn't get out to go home to its recharging station and switch itself off, and could only keep on sweeping until it ran out of power and had to wait to be found.

After that I was very careful about whether doors were wide open or completely closed.

I bought a lower-mid range one as a trial and it's not great. It's sitting in it's box unused after the first month. It whirred around the house for ages which I found irritating and didn't really clean very well. Yes it did a superficial clean but couldn't get into my corners. Also I had to have all wires and any other small items lifted up or blocked off as it eats them up and then gets stuck and whirrs away on the spot. It also enjoys chewing the fringes on rugs.

I think like karmalady you need to invest quite a bit in a top of the range one to get her good results.

I bought a Lefant 213 at Amazon, so avoid that.

It was the "weekly" cleaner I was thinking about karmalady. I am ok with hoovering at the moment but have to split up the standing time. I can see that may be a problem in the future.

I may have to have someone for some of the jobs (unless we can find an automatic sheet changer), but if I could make human intervention less frequent, it would be worth buying into more technology

yes. I have had roomba for a long time, the 8 series, had one from 2003 and the second one from 2007. One upstairs and one downstairs and they are still going strong in my new house. All I have to do is clean them from time to time and that is an easy job. They were worth every penny and each one paid for itself within 9 months compared to the cost of my neighbours weekly cleaner. My sister has one and is equally happy

I just press a remote and they do the job and then dock themselves to re-charge.