I was just researching and watching a video about robot vacuum cleaners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D677jDPeAs The features are all well and so, but what I'm lacking from all of those videos is information about reliability.

I had a Roomba one for 11 years and while it didn't have almost any features and just randomly ran around the floor it got the job done for 11 years just by replacing the battery and the brushes a couple of times. I was very happy with it.

Then I bought one of those Xiaomi Lydsto S1 ones with very cool features, an app and self emptying bin, lidar, mopping with water and so on. It was a terrible experience, every one or two weeks it would forget the mapping and would need to do it again and me setting up the areas where it should not go every time. The App was terrible and I started closing the door to some rooms and vacuuming by hand there because it was easier than setting up the barriers so often in the app. The connection to HomeAssistant needed a very hacky solution which would break all the time, no local connection, only through the cloud. And then finally after a year it stopped charging. I cleaned all the contacts, I replaced the battery (which helped for one month) and sometimes when you pushed it manually against the charging metal strips it would charge, but sometimes not. So in the end shortly after one year we threw it away and do the vacuuming by hand which is shit work but at least works.

I think my next one will be a Roomba again, I just hope that packing them full of features didn't make them shit.