10 ways to make Roomba quieter

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Your life has been changed for the better. The daily drudge of having to clean up after the kids at breakfast or chasing round those tumbleweed- like clumps of pet hair are over. 

Hooray for my Roomba!

But there is just one pesky annoyance with the blasted device and that is the noise that it creates, which at times can drive you bananas.

Is there a way to make my Roomba quieter?

In this article, I look at 10 possible ways that you can make your Roomba quieter, without resorting to ear defenders! 

And some of my suggestions are a bit tongue in cheek.

Let’s start off with the practical and serious first.

1] Clean It. 

If it is making weird and worrying sounds, service your Roomba. 

[2] Choose the quiet option

Although the last few generations of Roombas have been intelligent enough to adjust their cleaning power to match a specific floor surface, if you have an S series model, you can manually override these settings. 

Choose between detailed, quiet and custom cleaning on the app. 

[3] Rewind

If the noise that your Roomba is making is driving you nuts, give him a holiday and put him in the cupboard.

Now get your old upright or stick vacuum out and clean with that for a week. Then reassess. Was your Roomba that noisy?!

[4] Absent 

Another great way to make your Roomba more quiet is to go out whilst it is vacuuming and then guess what? 

All of a sudden, your Roomba is silent…

After all, these machines are designed to operate with minimal interference…

[5] Carpet time

Any vacuum cleaner, robotic or not, sounds much louder when it is cleaning on a hard floor such as wood, tiles or linoleum as opposed to cleaning on a carpet. 

This is because on a hard floor surface, there is nothing to soak up the sound. Whereas, when a Roomba is cleaning on a carpet, the carpet helps to absorb some of the noise. 

So, if it is possible, restrict your Roomba to just cleaning the carpeted areas of your house. 

My next two tips are actually hacks. Now I don’t expect you to try these in fact I specifically ask you not to (just in case you break your machine) but they show the lengths that some people will go in the quest for a quieter life.

[6] What, no suction power?

This Roomba owner wanted to test out an old wive’s tale about Roombas- that they are just as efficient at cleaning with just the brushes working (and no suction) as they are when  the brushes and suction are both working.

It took him quite a bit of time to disassemble his Roomba, but he was very impressed by how good his machine was with just the brushes running.

[7] Stop the beeps

This Roomba employee wanted to make his Roomba quieter by turning off all the beeps.

And with some help from members of a forum, he was shown a tutorial demonstrating how to get to the internal speaker in a Roomba. 

[8] Sssh, it’s new.

Buy one of the latest models as they are known to be quieter than their predecessors. The Roomba S, which was launched in 2018, had its engine moved in order to make it quieter. 

The engine in most previous models was placed in the dustbin but from the S7 onwards the engine is now housed within the main body of the vacuum. 

 [9] Is it a bird or a plane?

Another important fact to bear in mind when thinking about the latest Roomba models and how quiet they are, is their efficiency.

Compared to earlier generations of models, the 900 or S series will clean the same areas much quicker.

This means that not only will your Roomba be quieter as it cleans but it will not need to be operating for as long, meaning that less of your day is polluted with noise.

[10] Switch Brands

If all else fails and you value quiet above all else, you might consider buying another brand of robot vacuum.

Eufy are known to manufacture a couple of very quiet models. They are much cheaper than a Roomba but they don’t have anywhere near the same functionality either, so it is a bit of a trade off.

An Eufy 30C is so quiet that some users were unsure if it was working at all. 

Closing Thoughts

And so there you have it.

In truth there are only a few things that you can do to make a quick change and to stop your life being blighted by noise.

And they are to:

  • Service and clean it
  • Schedule it to clean when you are out
  • Change the power setting within the app.

If all else fails, try using your old vacuum to see if the noise coming from your Roomba is really that big a deal after all!