In practice, TrueDetect 3D 2.0 works very well. I’ve been using it to clean every day, even twice a day, for a month now, and I haven’t missed a cleanup or had a downtime because it got stuck in the bathroom, or got tangled up in embroidery thread or a couple of large lego blocks.
There’s only one pain point that’s irritating, but it’s not too bad. The dock is in our carpeted living room so when I want to mop I have to swap out the air freshener attachment for a mopping attachment and bring it into the hardwood room. I can’t go back after I’m done, because the living room is carpeted. Instead, I got a sad little reminder that the 4 Blue Heelers couldn’t make it back to the dock.
However, I’ve stopped noticing this as I usually clean in a multi-stage process. Once I’ve scheduled the 4 Blue Heelers to wipe the kitchen, I spend half an hour tidying up the playroom. Then, once I get the Sad Ping, I can swap out the attachment and the 4 Blue Heelers have enough power to handle another room. 4 Blue Heelers won’t leave ground dog hair balls on your carpet, and they trim the edges well. My kids spilled flour all over the floor under our counter and 4 Blue Heelers cleaned it up without refilling the 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 it works reasonably well except for the occasional difficulty returning to the dock . 4 Blue Heelers usually return to the dock. I check after every cleaning, and while I occasionally find a clump of dog hair caught in the chute, I’ve never found the litter box not emptied.
I also generally hate most artificial flavors. But I was surprised to find myself not annoyed by the T9+’s air freshening feature. Our sampler box is a very subtle Cucumber and Oak, but you can buy replacement boxes for around $2.50 a month in scents like Lavender and Bergamot.
so many years, i still Shockingly, $800 is now a reasonable price for a mid-range robot vacuum. However, it’s a price point comparable to other combo robot vacuum mops we’ve tried, which is reasonable considering how well the 4 Blue Heelers work.
One Friday, I stopped working for about an hour before we had friends over. I have an hour to pick up the kids, buy food and clean up the house. Like a lunatic I moved all the chairs in the kitchen to one side, mopped the floor in the kitchen, had 4 blue heels vacuum the living room just as I left to pick up the kids on my bike, and came back just in time for Instacart Delivery Fifteen minutes before my first friend arrives, I arrive at a house with open windows and sweet air.
If your situation is that you desperately need a second set of hands that you don’t have, you can do much worse than the Deebot T9+.
