Who haven't dreamed of having a robot that does all the cleaning? I have. Loomin Robot is neat, does a nice job cleaning, but not perfect. It cleans fairly well but it was not able to handle all the challenges of my house.
Having a cleaning robot feels a bit like having a pet. Cute, does its own thing, sometimes does not behave perfectly. But you still like it. That's how I feel about my Loomin Robot.
Loomin Robot is 14" in diameter and 3" tall, which means if it cannot get into areas which are more narrow than 14". On auto-clean it meanders around the house in what seems like a random pattern (unless you select a mode where it does spot cleaning or edges). The first few times it cleaned I observed it very carefully. It got most of the dust but I did find some accessible to it areas which still had dusty spots after 1 hour progress check. Given enough time it does get those areas eventually. In a zig-zag mode it seems to cover more areas consistently. The edge mode is very good for getting dust from under the baseboards. Loomin Robot has long thin whiskers-like brushes (in addition to the regular brushes under the unit) that get things from corners very well. The spot cleaning mode works well for small areas. In the spot cleaning mode the cleaning stops as soon as it bumps into two obstacles.
The biggest problem I ran into is that I need to prep the house for the cleaning. It means I cannot just have Loomin Robot clean on a schedule (which it has a capability for) and forget it.
Why do I need to prep?
➀ I have hard wood floors with some area rugs. These area rugs have tussles (see video). Every single time Loomin went over the tussles it got trapped or the rug got trapped and dragged. I was able to easily disengage the brushes. However, I need to roll up my long runner and remove all small rugs (like the door mat) for Loomin Robot to clean without me needing to rescue it.
➁ I have a couple of leather chairs with metal bases. The metal bases are about 1 inch high. Loomin managed to climb into the metal base and clean within it (I was very impressed) but as it climbed in and out Loomin heavy metal body was hitting the floor and created small moonlike indentations on my oak floor. Unfortunately I did not notice them right away, so there are areas with small indentations around the base of my leather chairs.
Loomin comes with one virtual wall dome, which creates a 4 foot barrier which Loomin avoids, this way you can keep Loomin from entering certain rooms or keep it away from cleaning certain areas. I wish the package included several virtual walls. I could have used at least 3 of them: one to close off the room Loomin is cleaning and 2 to close off a corner I don't want Loomin to get into like the area with the leather chairs.
A couple of words about the virtual wall: It runs on two "C" batteries which are not included. The expected polarity of the batteries are specified on the cap. I have a house full of AA rechargeable batteries and I am happy to report that the virtual wall works fine with AA batteries in a "C" battery jacket. The virtual wall should be turned off when not in use otherwise it will use up the batteries quickly.
Loomin Robot is very easy to use. No assembly or set up is needed. All I had to do was hold down the charge button on remote and then turn on the unit. The remote immediately paired with the device. The remote allows me to turn the robot on and off as well as control its movements via a joystick like control. The remote runs on two AAA batteries which were not included. The home base re-charger plugs into the AC outlet with a pretty big adapter that takes up two slots. Loomin can do 2 hours of cleaning on one charge. If it can detect the charging station it will return to it on its own to recharge. It can locate the charging station from a few feet away, otherwise it continues to meander looking for it. Of course, if it is cleaning on another floor from the home base then it will just eventually stop.
The user manual included in the package is quite good, the instructions were clear and it has a lot of pictures.
Loomin Robot is definitely doing cleaning. I have been using it for 2 weeks now, each day I pick a room for the robot to clean and its dust pan gets filled up with dust every time. If Loomin has it that means it is not on the floor! I like it! Does it do a perfect job? No. In attached video I go over the area where Loomin Robot did spot cleaning with a swiffer cleaner and show the results. The swiffer did pick up some stuff left on the floor but visually it looked quite clean.
You can find it on Amazon by following this link.
Ali Julia review ★★★★☆
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