I don’t know if they’re better, but from watching reviews I believe Roborock and Dreame are considered pretty good competitors. I’m certainly happy with my Roborock (which has no cameras, and their latest model also comes in a no-camera variant)
FWIW, production Roombas don't send pictures back to the mothership. The scandal was that pictures from development Roombas -- explicitly expected to be reviewed by humans -- leaked.
In what ways? The Roomba J7 I'm using is pretty amazing at what it does; the only thing I'd appreciate would be a remote control for some manual cleaning. The automatic stuff is pretty great.
For starters, the best Roborock supports improved mopping, including a dock with self-emptying container, self-cleaning mop and proper refills. Together with noticably better obstacle avoidance algorithm.
The new Xiaomi versions now even sport extendible arms to reach corners fully.
On mops: The newest Dreame model can actually disconnect the mops and leave them in the dock, so because of the relationship through Xiaomi people seem to expect that to come soon to Roborock as well.
Does it matter? We are talking about fun consumerist novelties facing a shrinking population with shrinking disposable income. No one needs these "things."
That’s the real issue. As far as I can tell everyone who wants a robot vacuum already has one, and if they’re crappy enough that you’d upgrade, they’re also crappy enough that you’ll likely just give up.
If they work, you’d not feel the pressure to upgrade.
