Win the War Against Shedding with a bObi Pet Robotic Vacuum

As a member of the Etsy affiliate program and an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

This post is sponsored by Bobsweep. That said, it is our commitment to you to only ever write about products that we use and love ourselves. All opinions expressed are our own.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a squillion and 12 times: Kolchak sheds like it’s his job.

At any given time, my apartment could be mistaken for the wild west there are so many dog hair tumbleweeds. I find dog hair on myself even after I leave the house. The other day, I pulled a black hair off my lunch plate at a restaurant and I wasn’t even mad; I could instantly see that it was one of Kol’s. I don’t know how that boy isn’t bald.

Kolchak aka Nortorious ShedBeast

It’s not like I don’t try to keep the dog hair at bay.

I groom Kolchak religiously. I vacuum pretty much every day. I’m wasting my life vacuuming! I did the math on it once and I spend like 7 thousand 300 minutes vacuuming every year. That’s more than 120 hours. Vacuuming.

For real? WHAT A WASTE OF TIME.  Do you know all the great stuff I could do with 120 spare hours in a year?  SO much. You can imagine how abso-woofing-lutely excited I was when BobSweep asked if we wanted to review their bObi Pet Robotic vacuum. Excited, but… skeptical. I know how hard it is to keep up with dog hair. As much as I wanted to believe that I could be done with vacuuming, it just seemed…unrealistic and too good to be true. I decided to really put bObi to the test and see what she could do. I didn’t vacuum for three days before she arrived. By then, you could have knit a sweater with the hair on my rugs.  I left varying levels of debris out to get vacuumed up – just to see if this vacuum could handle it. I left toys out to get run over. You guys, I set this vacuum up to fail – hard.

 Imagine my surprise when the bObi Pet took every challenge I threw her way and handled it like a boss.

the bObi Pet Robotic vacuum has totally changed the way I clean my floor.

I haven’t pulled out my canister vacuum in two weeks and my floors are cleaner than I think I’ve ever seen them. bObi encourages me to be a bit lazy with ZERO guilt and I kind of love her for that. You don’t even have to remember to turn her on every day. The bObi Pet is fully programmable, so not only can you set her to run at a specific time every day, you can vary that time each day, so if you want her to run at 2 pm on Tuesday, but 11 am on Thursdays? That is totally possible. Set her up once and she’ll practically take care of herself.

I have trust issues though. I wasn’t ready to just program bObi and let her run wild in my house.

I had to make sure she was ready to handle life with Koly and Fe. I was very concerned that my dogs would be afraid of a robotic vacuum. I was worried that Felix would leave his toys out and one would get sucked up into the vacuum gears. I was worried that bObi would ram them if they didn’t get out of her way.

Fe and bObi in an epic showdown for territorial rights to the craft room door.

My fears might have been a bit ridiculous. The bObi Pet is super quiet.  Way quieter than my canister vacuum. Most of the time, we don’t even notice the vacuum is on. At first, when the dogs would notice that she was wheeling around the house they were a little apprehensive. At the first meeting, Felix and bObi exchanged words. There was a little barking. A little cat and mouse chasing, but bObi is great with nervous pets due to her sensors. She has these fancy sensors that tell her where to vacuum and where to not vacuum, so when she rolls on up to Felix, she senses he’s there, spins around and heads in another direction.

She does the same thing when navigating walls, furniture and even less solid things, like dog toys. We shared a video on our Facebook page, showing just how unconcerned Kolchak and Fe are about bObi doing our vacuuming and how cool the navigation is. 

As good as the bObi Pet is at avoiding obstacles, she also knows when to push through and get the job done.

She has no problem transitioning from my carpet onto the kitchen floor or from the carpet onto our shaggy area rug. She’s gotten hung up on a throw rug with a curled up corner once or twice, but it’s really cool to see how the vacuum rocks back and forth, changing directions to get herself free. I call this her “off roading”.

There are a few things to know about the bObi Pet Robotic Vacuum though.

She is pretty darn amazing, but she isn’t…magic. I have a terrible habit of dropping hairpins everywhere I go like a deranged hairdresser and she’s made it pretty clear that I need to knock this off. (She’s not wrong.)

And as it turns out, I also shed like it’s my job and unlike Kolchak’s hair that gets sucked up into the filter, my much longer hair gets wrapped around the rollers. Taking a few minutes every few days to unwind my hair makes sure the bObi Pet can do her best work.

One of the benefits of this vacuum is that it’s small and powerful. That’s also its biggest challenge. A vacuum this small can only have a dust bin so big. We run our bObi Pet every single day and it does a great job. This means that regular emptying of the dust bin and the filter is absolutely necessary. I empty mine at least every 48 hours and man! Every time I am impressed by just how much dust has been sucked up and gotten trapped in the filter. I had no idea my seemingly clean house was so filthy.

She’s a powerful vacuum and that means she needs power. The bObi Pet comes with a charging station that she knows to find and return to automatically when her battery dwindles. This means you never have to worry if she’s got enough juice to do her job right. In order to help you find her charging station, Bobsweep recommends leaving 2′ on each side and 10′ in front of the charging station clear. Um…that’s like my whole dining room. If we’e being honest, I’ve pushed the limits of this guideline and there isn’t *quite* 24″ on either side and luckily, so far, she seems to be doing OK.

A bObi Pet isn’t cheap. 

There’s no point in me pretending that she isn’t a bit of a splurge. I get it. It can be really tough to justify spending a bunch of money on a vacuum – especially if you already have a great vacuum. The thing is? The vacuum is WORTH it. She is very cool, works very hard and has a ton of features I didn’t even mention because I’m pretty sure you guys don’t want to read a 96-minute article on how giddy I get about vacuums. All that functionality (and look at how darn stylish it is) does come at a price. Freeing up that much time and eliminating that much dust from my house holds a lot of value for me. I have big plans for ways to spend those extra hours. I can already notice that my house feels so much less dusty. Felix sneezes less. I don’t have to use up valuable closet space (which I need about 200% more of) on a big bulky vacuum. For me, the benefits far outweigh the cost. The bObi Pet is well worth every penny of her price tag and if you’re a savvy shopper, you can totally watch Amazon or other sale websites to grab one on a hot sale.

So, ask me anything. Based on all the messages and emails, I’ve gotten, you guys have bunches of questions.

I promise, I want to answer them all. And if you happen to be one of those people who are concerned that your pets will be afraid of or antagonist towards a robot vacuum, stay tuned! We’ve got some easy, fantastic tips to help you prove to your pet that bObi is their new best friend.

Check out the Bobsweep website for more information.