roborock E4 Robot Vacuum Cleaner, Smart Navigation Robotic Vacuum, 2000Pa Strong Suction, 200 min Runtime, Self-Charging, APP Control, Perfect for Pet Hair, Carpet, Larger Home, Works with Alexa

The robot vacuum post that you didn't know you needed! TL;DRRoborock E4 {$179-$269}Roomba i6+ {$549-$799}If you're looking to get a robot vacuum, I would like to say DO IT. As to which brand to pick, it's a toss up, and completely depends on your budget.I bought our Roborock on sale for $179 last year and have been very pleased with it. My heart was originally set on the more pricey Roomba self-emptying units, but since I am frugal and wanted to see if it would even work here, I went with the lesser expensive bot. We have a house full of old furniture and rooms so I didn't know if a robot would even jive here.I have been VERY pleased with our Roborock. It has done a great job over the last few months while we are not home. I would say, realistically, 8 out of 10 times it went off without a hitch. It went down our foyer stairs one time and had also gotten itself lodged under my sewing machine and other furniture a handful of times.Every day that it did its cycle (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9am) I would come home and empty the trap. It has a washable filter and I cut the hair from the brushes and cleaned the sensors. It has been well worth the $179 to not have to see cat hair, hay, gravel, stove dust, and leaves everywhere.A week ago I bought the unit I had had my heart set on. Well, the unit a tier above the one I had had my heart set on. The lowest priced Roomba unit with the self emptying dock has been at about $500 for the last year, the i3+. The next level up, the i6+, has run about $799. Last week, and even now, Amazon has had the i6+ for the same price as the i3+. My assumption is that a new i6+ is probably coming out soon so they're blowing them out. WHICH IS FINE, I want one.I don't spend a lot of money on goofy things, except 1978 El Caminos, so I decided to spoil myself with this i6+. To be honest they were similar in price LOL. I'm an adult with adult money, no kids, and a farmy kind of property with a dusty wood stove so I did it.After purging, donating, selling, and burning almost everything I owned in the fall, having a clean house feels absolutely amazing. Having a clean floor 24/7 is almost euphoric. I enjoy being home and no longer have those nagging feelings of dread about things I need to be cleaning. I also very much enjoy the kitty cats and Chris and I have raging allergies so I need something to clean up the hair.My feelings so far on the two:Quality of the clean:Roomba and Roborock seem to clean the same. I was very pleased with both. The Roborock generally took a little more than an hour and would get down to about 30% battery life. It was also slower than the Roomba. The Roomba is a faster unit, almost a bit more violent, and takes about 3 hours to complete the first floor. It does seem to be more thorough and charges itself halfway through a first floor cycle.Apps:I didn't want to get another brand so I'd have a second app, but I went with the Roomba anyway. The Roomba has a far superior app. And by far I mean, from here to Australia. The Roborock app is great and easy to use, but very primitive. You also cannot choose certain areas to clean with the E4. It cleans everything or nothing. The Roomba i6 created a map of our house and will just do certain areas that I tell it to. It can do certain rooms on different days of the week or on command. Both tell you when to perform regular maintenance on the machines, when they are stuck, or if software updates are needed.Parts:I like that the Roborock company and Roomba BOTH offer replacement parts at affordable prices. I have been able to take apart and clean out the Roborock really easily. I won't have to do anything to the Roomba for a while, but I will have new brushes, filters, etc. on hand for when it is due.Clumsiness:The Roomba is definitely a superior machine, but it should be, at 3x the price of the Roborock. The Roborock is very primitive but very gentle. Like I said, only 1 time out of dozens of cleanings did it go down some stairs. And it was probably my fault for not cleaning the sensors. The Roomba is much, much faster and almost more violent, sometimes bashing pretty hard into my furniture and woodwork. I think after a few cleanings, it will figure itself out and no longer hit so hard. The Roborock is definitely a more simple, slower, and more methodical machine. Roomba goes in curvier lines and seems to have a method to the madness. Roborock says eff this madness, I need to go in a straight line or I'll die.Convenience:Both are great in that they are vacuums that I don't have to push around. We have so much wood floor, furniture, and trim - it is super cool to not have sheh just pushed up against it. I also cook a lot so the crumb thing was driving me bonkers. I do have to manually empty the trap on the Roborock, but it's not bad at all. A few seconds and I'm done. The filter is also washable, so it lasts a long time. The Roomba has the base that sucks the dirt out of the machine and into a disposable bag. 1. The base sounds like a god dang jet taking off when it gets the dirt out of the vacuum. 2. I haven't quite gauged how long it will take to fill the bag. Now I'll have to purchase bags from time to time. I'm not sure how I feel about it. But having to not have to remember to empty the little bastard is convenient since I have it running 3 days per week.Sounds:Both are god dang vacuums. They sound like vacuums. Run it while you aren't home. I hate seeing people complaining about the noise in online reviews. IT'S A effING ROBOT VACUUM, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?Physical differences:They are approximately the same size and weight. Both are black and have cameras and sensors in approximately the same areas. Major differences are that the brush on the Roborock is 1 actual bristled brush, while the Roomba has 2 rubber "brushes" that work simultaneously to pull dirt between them, instead of sweeping dirt up into a bin like the Roborock. Both seem to function very similarly, but I'd have to give the blue ribbon to the Roomba.I want to point out that the other reason I went with the Roomba was that the higher quality Roborocks [$500-$800] only come with vacuum AND mop features, and I did NOT want a mop feature. They also do not come with a self-emptying dock. I personally don't see how you can jam a mop system and a vacuum system in a bot the same size and not compromise the vacuum capabilities. I also read a lot of reviews that the mop part is just a glorified restaurant pre-packaged moist toilette and having it drag that around my entire first floor seemed kind of gross. It's just us and the cats, I will mop when I need to.

Update almost 3 years later, purchased Nov. 30, 2020, today is August 20, 2023. The Roborock E4 is still going strong running daily on high, for a total of 849 hours so far and 387,000 square feet cleaned. I didn't double check his math but my son says that came out to 73 square miles, and maybe so! We did do a factory-reset today because she was getting a little lazy, but it ran like a bat out of Hello again after the reset. I hope they keep making this model, if this one ever dies it's definitely the one I'd want to buy again. Tons of dogs, tons of dog hair, muddy shoes and messes and we're not very kind to her, she's been dropped and kicked a lot over the years. Roborock Company, if you're listening, keep making the E4~~~!!!!!EDIT AFTER 6 OR 7 WEEKS OF USE:I still love this vacuum; as my Great Pyranees and German Shepherd start to shed their winter under coat however, she clogs often. It's not her fault (the vacuum), it's just a schit-ton of hair and clumps. That said, it is still so easy to remove the brush and clean it out, unlike standard vacuum brushes. I really love that you can clean out the brush with no tools needed. Just pop it out, take the hair off of it, and pop it back in.Been using this every day for a week now. 1100 sq ft home with laminate floors, two kids in and out all day in rural America (no side walks just grass and diry/mud) with dirty feet, three very large, very hairy dogs, and two cats and the pets also in and out all day tracking in dirt when they're not just dropping their hair every where all day long.This will sound like a paid review but it's not. We have been using a $1200 Hyla water vacuum for the past several years and while the Hyla has it's many positive features, it's also a huge, heavy, messy pain in the butt to use - therefore we did not use it as much as we should. Even when we did, the very next day we would have what looked like snow drifts of dog hair in all the corners, under the furniture, every where. It was a constant battle we lost on a daily basis. There was this love-hate relationship with the pets because their hair was EVERY WHERE and so gross no matter what we did! For this reason I was skeptical about the Robo-Vac, I just didn't think it could handle the work load.My teen boy did research on robo vacs for a year trying to talk me in to getting one because the boys are in charge of vacuuming and hated the Hyla. The one he recommended finally went on sale so I got it as a family Christmas present. WOW. I love this thing!We named her Rhonda. Rhonda not only keeps up with the work load, she doesn't clog with dog hair the way the Hyla's hose did. That hose would clog several times per cleaning, any little old bread tie wire, wad of hair, little scrap of candy wrapper - clog. Thirty minutes taking it apart and cramming coat hangers down it's throat to clear it. Rhonda doesn't clog. There is no hose to clog. The suction is amazing. We have found an entire dryer sheet and a key chain in her dust bin that she sucked right up with no trouble. She did pick up a rock yesterday and gave us the error message to remove the rock (what the heck is a rock doing in my house? who knows).She also goes under the sofa, chairs, tight corners, under the book cases, right up against the walls, every where the Hyla either didn't fit or was such a bulky pain to use we didn't sweep regularly.Because we put down these laminate floors last year, we put felt pads on the bottom of all our table and chair legs so they wouldn't scratch up the floor. Ever seen what mass amounts of dog hair does to felt pads? Every table and chair leg had a mass amount of hair stuck to them, looked disgusting, everything had dirty furry feet! The Hyla could not get this off. Enter Rhonda! Rhonda has those rotating fingers that scrub up against everything, she pulled all that mass of stuck hair off her first run and has continued to keep it clean since then.Another problem was kids and couch blankets, or any blanket. Blankets end up on the floor, covered in dog hair. No more! Last night watching TV I noticed my boy wrapped in a blanket that was no longer covered in dog hair! Because they love her so much, they also keep their shoes and socket and stuff up off the floor so she can clean.Rhonda wakes up every day at 8am and starts cleaning. It takes her about an hour to do the entire house, bedrooms, pantry, laundry, both bathrooms - all those places the kids and the Hyla generally ignored. Usually we empty her dust bin twice. Because it's so fun and easy to use, sometimes we run her a 2nd time during the day. The noise level isn't bad at all. She gets on the throw rugs by each door awesome, they are cleaner than ever. It is so amazing that I don't have snow drifts in the corners, or wads of hair on my socks. These dogs are Great Pyrenees and German Shepherds - nothing but hair, all day long, hair hair hair! Not anymore!Yesterday we washed the filter. It takes much longer to dry than they say, so I should by a 2nd filter to use. We cannot sweep this morning due to the filter still damp, and Rhonda told me this with an error message that her filter was wet.I can't say enough about this robo vac, I love it love it love it. It's not a gimick tech toy, it's a hard working floor cleaning machine.