Newer robots from companies iterating on the technology, like Roborock, can detect cables/shoes/stuff left on the floor and just drive around them. They're a lot better than what Roomba is selling, and much better at dealing with the average home. I've been really impressed with ours after having a similar, frustrating experience with one from iRobot.

This is accurate. Their competitor, the Ecovacs Deebot, just push an OTA update making cable detection way better. In a way the previous comment encapsulates all the misconceptions about robovacs. I was recently surprised to learn how good they are because my only basis for comparison was my friend's failure of a Roomba that's always getting into shenanigans.

Right–that's what I found so weird about the Amazon acquisition of iRobot is that Roombas are clearly a few generations of technology behind their competitors like Neato, Ecovacs and Roborock...but they must have a bunch of similar technology currently under development and on the way to market. What Roomba does have is name recognition, which seems to mean that most people think that robot vacuums aren't very good–I suspect Amazon sees they get tons of sales on their platform, has a good R&D team/patents, and smells an opportunity to own the space by pouring money into it and helping them compete (and, of course, putting them to the top of Amazon results, as they always do).

I've always felt like these products were mainly designed for people who live in single-level small-ish apartments, but then it's confusing because manually vacuuming those isn't very hard either. I just don't understand the market.

It's for wealthy people who have large homes with large open spaces. People who have enough storage that they don't have clutter on the floor.

I grew up next to a neighborhood of 5000sf+ homes, and I never saw clutter in any of them. Some of them had house cleaners, but even the ones that didn't, they had storage everywhere, so everything got put away. A Roomba on every floor would be perfect for them.

I moved away before Roomba existed, but I imagine a lot of them have it.

I have a large home with large open spaces and little clutter on the floor. But I'd need something like 8 Roombas to cover it all because of the changes in levels, doors that are normally closed, etc.

Also, as a semi-wealthy person with a large home, I hire people to clean it including vacuuming, and I don't need an annoying robot roaming the house to do it.

I'm sure there's some correlation between wealth/space and lack of clutter. But my observation is that some people are just much more inclined not to leave a lot of loose things either on floors or table. I'm pretty sure I could have a house that was twice the size and it would still look very lived in.

It's mostly my kitchen/dining room/"mudroom" area that can use regular quick vacs between full housecleanings. But looking right now I have some shoes and other things scattered around and it's literally about 3 minutes to do a touchup with my Dyson stick vac which has been great.