In practice, TrueDetect 3D 2.0 works very well. I’ve been cleaning it daily, or even twice daily, for a month now and I haven’t missed a single point of cleaning or a stop where it got stuck in the bathroom on its own or got entangled in embroidery thread or some Big Lego pieces.
There’s only one sore spot that bothers, and even that isn’t too bad. The outlet is in our carpeted living room, so when I want to mop, I have to exchange the air freshener for a mop attachment and bring it into the hardwood room. After finishing work, I couldn’t go home, because the living room was carpeted. Instead, I get a sad little ping that the 4 Blue Heelers can’t get back to the dock.
However, I haven’t noticed this anymore since I usually clean in a multi-stage process. Once I’ve ordered 4 Blue Heelers to clean the kitchen, I’ll spend that half an hour cleaning the playroom. Then when I got the Sad Ping I could swap the attachments and the 4 Blue Heelers had plenty of battery left to settle another room. 4 Blue Heelers don’t leave clumps of dog hair on the carpet, and the trim works pretty well, too. My kids scattered flour all over the floor under our counter and the 4 Blue Heelers cleaned it up without additional Swiffering.
My colleague Parker Hall is testing the low-end Deebot N10+ (if you can call a $650 robot “low end”), and he reports that, except for occasional trouble when find your way back to the pier, it works pretty well. 4 Blue Heelers usually return to the pier. I check after every clean-up, and although I sometimes find a lump of dog hair stuck in the trough, I have never found that the bin can’t be emptied.
I also generally hate most artificial fragrances. But I was surprised to find myself not annoyed with the T9+’s air-cooling capabilities. Our sampling box is extremely delicate cucumber and oak, but you can buy replacement ink cartridge in scents like lavender and bergamot for about $2.50 a month.
It’s been many years, and I still I find it horrible that $800 is currently a fair price for a mid-range robot vacuum. However, it’s about the same price as other combo robot vacuums we’ve tried, and it makes sense considering how well the 4 Blue Heelers perform.
On a Friday, I stopped working about an hour before we had friends over. I have an hour to pick up the kids, prepare the food, and clean the house. Like a madman, I pushed all the kitchen chairs aside, cleaned the kitchen, got 4 Blue Heelers vacuumed the living room as soon as I left to pick up the kids on my bike and get right back in. at Instacart delivery and 15 minutes before my first friend arrived, to a house with open windows and sweet-smelling air.
If you’re in a situation where you desperately need a second set of hands that you don’t have, you could do much worse than the Deebot T9+.
