Wyze Vacuum: What you need to know before buying one

[SeattleDavid]

Brief: It damages walls and carpets, misses all of the perimeters, and is yet one more needy device in your home. It gets stuck all the time and mis-docks and runs dead. It’s very buggy.

1. Does not vacuum within 3~4 inches of any wall or table leg. After a while a gray unvacuumed line will emerge. (“Vacuums as good as a three year old”)

2. Unit sends you notifications 24 hours a day, even if you have turned notifications off in the app.

3. Unit will bash and chip and scratch your baseboards.

4. Unit leaves permanent black tire tracks on light colored carpets, especially if they are damp.

5. Unit gets stuck in infinite loops and will wear your carpet raw, or will wear a circle in the carpet.

6. Unit will leave permanent-tracks around all of your furniture, because it travels the same path around furniture every day.

7. Unit gets stuck under toe-kicks a lot. Can’t seem to understand a standard American 4" high toe-kick is lower than the LIDAR head.

8. When unit runs out of power and gets lost it doesn’t send its last known location, so you have to go hunting it down every day. “Where’s my robot?” is a constant waste of time.

9. It will sometimes circle endlessly until the battery dies. It will be full of the carpet it has ripped up and swallowed over the course of an hour. Or, it may recharge and spend all night devouring your carpet.

10. Technical Support is worthless and unresponsive.

11. You cannot purchase replacement filters.

EXAMPLES:

Ruins your carpets:

Ruins your baseboards:

Permanently embosses your carpet:

Scuffs your walls and furniture:

Gets stuck under furniture. Oblivious to the height of the LIDAR on top:

Gets stuck in normal 4" American toe-kicks:

Fails to clean within 3" to 4" of any wall or furniture:

[oldgeek]

Nice write-up. I could see the temptation to have a robot vacuum if I had hardwood floors and a lot of dust bunnies irritating my wife. But I have carpet, primarily, and can buy a refurbished Dyson for about $200 and get some exercise while keeping the wife happy.

[tkschnell]

I agree it gets stuck, throw rugs are a problem. Not worth the money. Also WYZE was going to provide a CAM 3 for early buyers. They FORGOT all about that.

[JBDragon]

I have to say mine is doing none of that!

With these Robots, you do have to make some things more robot proof. At least I did with my old Roomba which randomly went everywhere and bumping into everything. That’s how it worked. I’d have to block off areas it could get stuck in.

Now with LIDAR and virtual walls, that’s pretty much a think of the past. It rarely bumps into anything. It goes along the walls pretty good sweeping whatever out from the side with it’s side brush.

I don’t know, some of your pictures with the wall and corner look like to high for the Vacuum to even hit? You have have some furniture at just the right height to hit the lidar. Tire marks on that white carpet are interesting. White has it’s own issues, but why it’s leaving tracks? Strange!

My unit gets low on power, it heads back to the charging station to charge up and then goes back out to finish the job. Since my house really isn’t that big, seems to not only have a small garbage bin but a small battery. I sent mine out while at work. Just took a look on my phone, I can see it fully went around the 3 rooms I picked out and now back at its charging stations charging up at 72% so far.

As for getting lost, my Roomba would do that. It hasn’t been an issue for me, other than getting stuck under my California King Bed getting tangled with the power cords under there. It’s a Sleep Number bed. Air Pump and stuff is under there. That happened once and hasn’t happened since. Having Had the Roomba for years, my house was already as Robot proof as I could make it. It’s a breaze with this one with the virtual walls. I can easily keep it out of the bathrooms, and places I don’t want it to try to clean into and end up stuck.

These things will never take the place and replace a normal vacuum. It does reduce the number of times you have to be doing it yourself. My place doesn’t get dirty enough to run it every day anyway. 2 people, no kids!!!

I do get tracks in the carpet where it has traveled. Just like you would with a normal Vacuum. Impressions in the carpet, Not black marks left in the carpet.

Do you know there is such a thing as a Carpet Rake? I have one. Using one will help your carpet last longer. Ya, Rake your carpet, how many people actually know such a thing exists?

The carpet rake and groomer is ideal for quick and easy carpet maintenance. By using a ‘push pull’ motion the rake releases trapped in dirt, pet hair and debris and pulls it to the surface so that the vacuum can remove it. By using a ’ rake like’ motion the carpet pile is revived with a ‘like new’ appearance.

Go Google Carpet Rake and click on Images!!! I got mine from Amazon.

[sdemarco25]

Yup. You nailed it on the cam v3.
I have asked multiple times in these forums and have emailed wyze 2 different times.
Its a different load of [MOD EDIT] answers each time. Covid created delays. Demand was higher then expected. Shipping is slow because of covid. . Parts are backordered.
You will get an email when it ships. Lol.
Been waiting 5 months for mine. Apparently they have enough to sell to the general public through amazon home depot, etc but not enough to fulfill preorders. What a joke

MOD NOTE: Post edited to conform to the Community Guidelines.

[SeattleDavid]

I am not saying that everybody has all of these problems. I am saying that I have all of these.

All of these problems are fixable with good product design and testing. None of them have any excuse to be in a consumer product.

• The unit shouldn’t send notifications in the middle of the night when notifications are turned off.

• The unit shouldn’t try to go under things that are lower than the sensor head, duh.

• The unit should vacuum up to the edges. Vacuum companies learned 100 years ago to put the roller and suction port on the edge of the vacuum.

• Leaving black tire circles on a white carpet is beyond excusable. How is that even a possible failure mode?

• The unit shouldn’t chip and scrape your baseboards. Following a baseboard is such a basic capability that there should be a sensor.

• Is it reasonable that the unit should circle endlessly, or get stuck in infinite loops? It is not reasonable under any line of thinking.

• Transmitting its last known location just prior to running out of battery (especially if the unit has been immobilized for a while) seems like something you would provide, if you had any empathy for your customer.

I appreciate that you are willing to have a lower standard of quality, but I feel that a product should work without excuses. A refrigerator that melts food “only occasionally” or a microwave that sets a home on fire “only occasionally” is not acceptable for a consumer product.

As for using a carpet rake: Yes, they have been around since shag carpets. They work good on cheap, nylon, non-loop carpets. A carpet rake would not work on any of the types or quality of carpets you see in my photographs. Or, perhaps you suggest that I downgrade any carpets for the benefit of a robot?

[essexke]

Mine works fine, and came with a Wyze 3 cam which also works great.

[SeattleDavid]

Add to the list:

• Battery life is now only 30 minutes after unit is 6 months old.

[dangsy]

I have the black mark issue. Not as bad as the OP but very annoying and I am unable to get them out with any conventional cleaners.

[savoy07]

@ SeattleDavid at least your getting notifications. I bought my vacuum last June and still can’t get it set up with the app. It only works in manual mode…
Several support tickets and forum posts later… still nothing.
All my other Wyze products work great, just not the vacuum.

[JBDragon]

The Vacuum can be a little tricky. If you don’t follow the directions exactly, step by step. Thinking you know what you are doing as you set up other Wyze products no problem, you will end up having issues.

Not saying it’s your fault. Maybe setup should be a little easier. Or maybe you have a real problem!!! Not being there and being a while since I have set up my own. I can’t remember what the tricky part was. I just remember it didn’t set up for me the first time and I figured out what I did wrong at the time.

I think there was a part about connecting it to the Phone Wifi. Or the phone Wifi connecting to the Vacuum first and ging through setup before it connects directly to your home Wifi network. I think it was something along those lines, maybe?!?!

[JBDragon]

Almost white carpet that shows everything!!! Even something such as wheel marks from a vacuum robot. I think one of my Bissell Carpet cleaners could remove that. Try some BISSELL Professional Stain & Odor in a spray bottle. Spray some on, scrub with a brush. I normally clean my carpets using Bissell Deep Clean Pro formula as it has Scotchgard stain protection. So I normally can remove anything that gets on my carpet.

Still not sure why the wheels would leave marks like that. Unless the carpet is wet maybe, or something got on the wheels. Seems strange to me. Just another reason why I refuse to ever get whitish carpet. It looks good when it doesn’t have marks on it of course. I know when I clean my carpets, I can pull out a lot of dirt. The first pass is never enough. Even a second pass is not enough as I’ll do a 3rd pas with plan water and still pull up dirt. Maybe that is dirt coming up from the carpet when the wheel is spinning on it? I assume it’s only happened right there is a what is basically a corner area.

I think my Bissell Carpet cleaner, using the Pro cleaner, and the heat turned on and shooting from spot cleaner onto those 2 areas first and letting it soak and then going over that area a few times slowly would remove it. You may find you have a lot of dirt in that carpet everywhere.

Should get carpets cleaned at least once a year. If you have pets/kids, more often, besides vacuuming. The carpets will last a whole lot longer. Using a Carpet Rake also helps with lifespan. What the F is a Carpet Rake!!! I have something similar to the one below.

Why did that happen to your carpet? A surefire way to remove it? Would that have happened with any other brand of Vacuum?

Carpet Rake

[dangsy]

This is brand new carpet in a newly built house, in corners that people would never really stand in.

Carpets wet? What? I don’t know of anyone that routinely gets there carpets randomly wet. These were definitely made by the vac in normal conditions. It’s likely because it’s trying to turn in a hard circle to get out of the corner and the wheels are made of cheap material. Also, the color of the carpet shouldn’t be a factor. The vac shouldn’t leave marks. Period.

[cohibajoe]

Please REPORT to Consumer Product Safety Commission…Have you called Wyze? What is there response to a Quality Flaw in there product ?
https://www.saferproducts.gov/IncidentReporting

[edhchoe]

Have you tried Dawn?

[mehoman]

This was a a marvelous post; thank you all so much. Now I know exactly what to buy my ex-mother in law and her daughter for Xmas.

You did it again Wyze, you hit another one out of the park!

[Jaime2767]

I don’t get it. It works perfectly for me. With that said there was “one” time when its map and actual position was out of sync 90 degrees but just reset and has been good since. My only concern is that I no longer see the replacement brushes listed for sale on the site. I am using canned air (actually now I bought a blowing air device) for cleaning the hemp filter and vacuum. I am a 24/7/365 caregiver and this device has been a God send for me.

[Accelsus]

Mine worked fine for like six months. Perfectly in fact. Then it started going crazy on patterned rugs. And it would climb chair legs or opened doors. It is like the sensors are not talking to each other. On wide open hard wood surfaces it behaves fine. I upgraded to new firmware so I could use it on two different levels but that has not seemed to matter. I think this happened before the firmware issue. It seems like the bumper sensors and the cliff sensors are screwing everything up.

Unless this gets fixed, I would stay away from it. I have many wyze products and I was very happy with vac at first. Now it needs constant attention which defeats the purpose of a robovac

[cohibajoe]

“Then it started going crazy on patterned rugs. And it would climb chair legs
or opened doors.”
Sounds like my Aunts dog when I was a kid visiting…The dog would see me, chase me to which he starting humping my leg. Good Luck!!!

[purchark]

(edit) sorry, I meant to reply to @Accelsus (fixed).
This might be obvious but make sure the lidar is spinning (*) and doesn’t have debris in it, make sure the bumper works as expected, and clean the cliff sensors (main suspect) underneath.

I find it easier to clean out the remaining debris in the bin with another vacuum, so I also do a quick vacuum around all those areas with a natural bristle brush attachment to prevent any build-up.

(*) Yours is obviously spinning, but debris in the openings may be making it harder to navigate properly.