Roomba

Raised as a usability problem by 12 people on Hacker News over 19 years (2008–2026), in 10 threads.

People raised many different problems with Roomba, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 12 complaints

Terms are deliberately long, unreadable and shown at inconvenient moments to force acceptance2026-07-09
Robot repeatedly yells charge reminders at night with no way to turn off2025-12-19
Gets stuck on carpet and walls, and sometimes fails to charge at its dock2024-11-27
Gets stuck in cables and under furniture, needing constant babysitting2024-02-01
Gets stuck in cables and hair, needs constant managing, too slow2024-02-01
App constantly shows connection errors, so the user can't check which rooms were cleaned2023-01-12
Can't find how to reset an area it got stuck in, so it keeps avoiding it2022-08-05
Robot vacuums cover floors poorly and are useful only in limited circumstances2022-08-05
Map takes forever to build, can't find rooms, and fails to update, forcing restarts2022-06-09
Smartphone app is a usability regression compared to physical buttons2019-01-12
Gets stuck and misses the dock, then wanders off instead of backing up2016-12-21
Takes more time to look after than a regular vacuum2008-08-02