A filter against a new robot vacuum

On price, comfortably. At around $15.29 against a median machine price of $309.14, the repair is about 4.9 percent of a replacement, well inside the usual half price threshold. The real question is whether this part is the cause, because a cheap part is also cheap to waste on the wrong diagnosis.

The usual service rule is that a repair is worth doing when it costs less than half the price of the replacement you would otherwise buy, and the machine has more than a third of its expected life left. It is the line the appliance repair trade has used across categories for decades, and it works because a repair only buys the machine's remaining life. Past that threshold, the cost per remaining year usually exceeds what a new machine would cost per year across its whole life.

Yes. Filters, bags, belts, brush rolls, batteries and hoses are all designed to be changed by the owner and need nothing beyond a screwdriver. Between them they account for the clear majority of household vacuums that are thrown away while fundamentally sound, which is the whole reason this site exists.

3 to 6 years is the usual range, which works out at roughly $68.70 a year at current median prices. Where a machine sits in that range is what decides whether a larger repair is worth it: the same quote points one way on a two year old machine and the other way on one near the top of its range.

Then do not order anything yet. The suction loss triage tool works through the causes in the order a service counter checks them, cheapest and most likely first, and most people find the answer within the first two or three steps without spending anything. Ordering on a guess is how a cheap repair turns into three cheap repairs.