iRobot Roomba i3 Robot Vacuum

I've had this vacuum for a little over a year and it's really just been an annoyance. My review is summarized below, but I would also suggest a quick Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo search with the terms "roomba terrible reddit". Confirmation bias is a thing, but so is astroturfing and premature reviewing, both of which are prevalent on this site. Let me go ahead and get the one positive out of the way: The vacuum is pretty strong. It pulls more crud from between hardwood boards than my Dyson vacuum. Yay. -----After owning an i3 since July 2022 here are my takeaways:----- * Automation should make life easier and this fails so hard it's almost impressive. I spend less time manually vacuuming and maintaining my Dyson than I do futzing around with the Roomba unit and app. It does get stuck occasionally. I knew that going in, but all the hand-holding the unit requires really adds up. * The Smart Map feature has yet to work for me and I've tried it several times. I think it was only recently added as a feature for the i3 when I purchased it, so I assume it's a feature that's been shoehorned in and that I should be grateful for their generosity. Basically, the unit will roam around the house not vacuuming. I will assume it's doing it's mapping thing, but it's not doing that either. By the time it's done not creating a map, there's not enough battery power left to really do any vacuuming. I mainly purchased this vacuum for the vacuuming feature so the Smart Map feature seems at odds with that. * The unit gets so close to cleaning the corners of rooms. So close in fact, that it's easy to forget that the robot didn't clean the corners at all, ever. This one's not a secret, but what else can't this thing do! Keep reading to find out! * The iRobot app says I have to replace the filters in 5 months. I've barely used this vacuum, and haven't had it running on a schedule in months. However, the app (as of today 8/13/23) suggests I spend $65 on new filters. It even sends me push notifications telling me that iRobot needs me to buy their filters asap. Why? Is it simply on a timer? I do have an option to "Reset" the "High Efficiency Filter" on the Product Health screen. Is that option there because it's unreliable? Is it being misdiagnosed by the app or faulty sensors within the unit? No way to know! * The app is rough. I'm not sure why honestly. It's hard to describe because the issues are so sporadic and intermittent. Maybe it's because iRobot has to support dozens of different models with marginally different feature sets in a single app. I get secondhand embarrassment even opening the app and this is coming from a person who has used the HBO Go, HBO Now, and HBO Max apps. I'm curious if the makers of my cheap, automated catfood dispenser are also MIT roboticists and engineers, because that app has more features and has been completely hands-off since the 15 minutes I spent setting it up 3 months ago. * The unit draws more power than it needs. I'm probably a stickler for this, but I'm surprised my cheap, Amazon-purchased cat toys don't draw nearly as much power continually once they're fully charged. I'd love to test it more and get some insight as to what's going on but then I wonder: to what end? So that I can get my terrible vacuum back up and running or something? Maybe it's because it's communicating to the cloud that new filters are desperately needed in 5 months! -----A couple of side notes for anyone still reading this 🤷:----- * I'm not surprised the Automatic Dirt Disposal unit is no longer for sale. I remember nearly purchasing it a year ago until I briefly skimmed all the negative review. Just now I checked the iRobot website and they indicate that there's an entirely different slew of issues there. Their business model with accessories seems to be: create the disease to sell snake oil. * iRobot, the manufacturer, uses green for its primary brand color but the design is not environmentally conscious, in my opinion. Unless my unit is very specifically defective, I think this is misleading. But at least they can say the logo was colored green back in the 90s before green = environmentally conscious. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they're just not good at branding or robots. Keep up the g̶o̶o̶d̶ work! Lastly, iRobot support, please don't respond to this review. If you do respond, please acknowledge that you decided to ignore this part of the review.