We bought a robot vacuum! 買了一台機器人吸塵器!

One of the things we bought during this last Thanksgiving season (it's already "last year!"), also the biggest ticket, was Roomba i8+! We got it from Costco for the price seen in the picture below. We picked it up at the store, which was actually unintentional! We had placed Roomba in the shopping cart on Costco.com but couldn't finish the check-out process the minute the sale began. It was odd. We tried everything we could think of like log off then log in again, empty the shopping cart then put Roomba back into the cart again, but none worked. The price on the product page was reflecting the special sale price but that final page for check out showed the wrong price. Customer service was down at the time because it was past midnight, so we decided we'd just go with our luck at the store the next morning! 😂

這次感恩節(其實已經是去年了!)我們買了一台Roomba i8+機器人吸塵器! 整個感恩節季節裡單筆花費最高的就是它了. 這台是在Costco店裡買的 (完全不在預期中), 價錢就是以下的照片裡標示的. 原本在Costco網站上 把Roomba加入到了購物車裡, 在折價活動開始的時候馬上去做結帳動作 但是出現狀況導致無法完成網路購買. 說起來滿怪的. 當時也試了各種想的到的"可能可以debug的方式" 像是帳號登出重新登入, 跟 把購物車先清空, 重新加入商品, 不過都沒用. 在網站的商品網頁 看的到正確的折扣價錢, 但是在要結帳的那個網頁就顯示錯的價錢. 當時客服沒人(因為是午夜12點), 所以我們決定隔天早上試試運氣 去店裡買吧!

The store was set to open at 9am so we got there just a quarter prior.  Given the situation of...a pandemic, we thought the store shouldn't be "packed." Well, it wasn't packed as how it was during "normal Black Friday" but it was still very busy. The parking lot was almost full before 9am! Thankfully, we got what we wanted very quickly! Upon entering the store, an elderly man in front of us was looking for the exact same thing we were looking for, so we followed him and thanks to him, we both put one inside the cart so quickly! Actually, a stack of Roomba i8 was just near the entrance!

店是9點開門, 我們在8:45就到了. 因為疫情的狀況...我們原本預想店內應該不會到"滿人"的情況. 結果, 是沒有到過去黑色星期五血拚日那樣"爆多人 人擠人"的狀況, 但也還是比疫情時間的平日人潮多.  停車場還不到9點就幾乎是全停滿了! 還好, 我們很快就拿到了想要的東西! 一進店裡的時候, 有個老伯伯在我們前面 剛好也在找一模一樣的Roomba, 於是我們就跟在他後面 也感謝他 所以我們都很快就抱了一台放進推車裡! 其實, 入口附近就有"一疊"的Roomba!

 

We actually didn't unbox it until...a week later? I read the instruction booklet carefully and watched a few videos on YouTube before setting it up. Right out of the box, it was already charged with a bit of battery but we let it finish charging before that first running of the map. Duke, Beibei, and Lulu were so so so curious about it. Duke followed it EVERYWHERE whenever it was on the move and even laid in front of it to keep his eyes on it while it went back to the docking station for charging.

我們其實買了大概一星期後才開箱. 有先小心地看了說明書 也看了幾個教學影片 才做那些設定的步驟. 從箱子裡剛出來的Roomba其實本身有一點電, 不過還是讓他先充滿電才讓他去做第一次的"掃地圖"(還沒吸地, 只是到處輕碰牆壁家具來達成描繪地圖)動作. 家裡的三隻毛傢伙對Roomba超級好奇! 一開始Duke是黏著Roomba 到處跟著他走, 完全的跟屁蟲. Roomba充電的時候, Duke就趴在Roomba的對面盯著它.

It's our first time using a "robot vacuum," so I can't say much about the difference between this and newer/older versions of Roomba or other robot vacuums. I can only say....it is very convenient in keeping the floors clean without much labor. We still manually clean the floors in situations like when Beibei or Lulu throws up hairball, and when we felt like a mop would better clean something. Roomba has its' own app. Everything from telling it to clean a specific area to setting up a routine cleaning schedule can be controlled from the app. We also tested connecting Roomba with our Google Home, and it worked, though we noticed not all on-app features could be utilized when Roomba's connected with Google Home. So we disconnected Roomba from Google. I really like the schedule feature on the app and have set up a few different cleaning zones/schedules based on need and traffic. For instance, there's one schedule that tells it to clean kitchen/dining room/living room/entrances every other day and another schedule for sweeping the entire first floor once a week. That's actually more cleaning than what we used to *manually* do. So, in essence, this "toy" (as W calls it) actually does more cleaning and keeps our home cleaner! 

這是我們第一次使用機器人吸塵器, 所以無法說覺得這台和舊款的/新款的有甚麼不同, 無法跟別牌的做任何的比較. 只能說....有它真的很方便, 方便在保保持地板乾淨同時也節省人力. 有些時候我們還是會手動去整理地版, 向是貝貝或Lulu吐毛球, 或覺得拖地比較好的時候. Roomba有自己的app. 用app就可以做各種設定像是開啟一個固定的打掃時間或指使它去某個固定空間吸地. 我們一開始還測試有Roomba和Google Home連在一起, 也成功了, 但是有發現自從和Google Home連線後, 有些Roomba app的功能就無法正常操控 於是就又取消連線. 我個人是很喜歡一個功能: 預約打掃. 根據平常在家的流動量, 我設定了幾個不同的專屬區域的預約打掃. 像是有一個預約設定是"每隔日 去廚房/餐廳/客廳 " 還有一個是"每個星期天 整個一樓所有的地." 其實這樣的打掃份量比我們在買Roomba之前還要多. 所以, 可以說這個玩具(W說它是玩具lol)其實有比我們更勤奮的吸地, 把家整理得更乾淨! 

 

Our home has two floors. We used it on both floors and it has successfully finished mapping for both floors. The first floor took 2 full cleans to finish mapping while the second floor took 2 full cleans and 2 mapping runs to complete (once completed, the app shows a floorplan of the floor it finished mapping for). After several uses, we found it to clean better on the floor than carpeted areas and since the second floor is mostly carpeted, we decided to mostly only use Roomba on the main floor. Another reason for that is because with our setup, the only way for it to finish all cleaning on the second floor is for us to take down the pet gate. It's kinda annoying to have to take down the pet gate and put it back up every few days so...meh, we bring Roomba upstairs for a sweep only on occasions. Meanwhile, the old vacuum (completely manual!) is still being used upstairs every now and then.

家裡有兩層樓. 兩層樓都使用過也跑過"掃地圖." 一樓部分 Roomba跑了2次"整層吸地"才完成了掃地圖動作, 而二樓花了2次的整層吸地外加2次的掃地圖 才真的完成系統裡的家裡地圖描繪("掃地圖"完成後, app裡可以看到那層樓的平面圖). 使用幾次後, 我們發現清理地板比清理地毯效果還好, 而因為二樓幾乎都有地毯, 所以乾脆讓Roomba大部分只待在一樓. 另一個這樣做的原因是因為二樓有個寵物門欄(pet gate), 若讓Roomba在二樓打掃的話還得事先把它拆了 然後吸完地後再組裝回去...所以現在只有偶而會帶Roomba上樓整理. 二樓就還是靠舊的吸塵器來手動吸地.

  

After a couple of full runs, the furry ones have stopped paying attention to Roomba, period. They still look at it sometimes but it's more like "ugh do I want to wait for it or do I wanna walk across it" and "should I wait for it to finish or should I drink my water now" (and risk a leg getting bumped by Roomba)😂

幾次自動整層吸地後, 毛傢伙們已經對Roomb沒甚麼興趣了. 他們還是有時候會冷眼看一下Roomba 但眼神像是說"痾, 我要等它移動完 還是我要現在跨到對面?" 跟 "等它弄完我再喝水還是現在就喝?" (冒險被Roomba撞隻腳) 

💗 CM