Carpet Cleaning

Nifty, but fragile - iRobot Roomba Intelligent FloorVac Robotic Vacuum

Lives up to advertising hype. - iRobot Roomba Intelligent FloorVac Robotic Vacuum I have 3 long-haired cats, a husband and 2 kids to clean up after and it did a great job of picking up everything....

What it is and isn’t - iRobot Roomba Intelligent FloorVac Robotic Vacuum What Roomba isn't: a full replacement for a high quality upright vacuum, although it comes close. What Roomba is:...

The prospect of a robot vacuum cleaner sounds great. Think Rosy from the Jetsons. We have a toddler who crawls all over the place, and keeping the floors clean enough is a challenge. Roomba sounded like the perfect answer. Oh, we also have 3 cats that contribute lots of fur to cleanup, and one of the people in the house has very long hair, reaching most of the way down her back.

We went to Brookstone to look at the unit. It was pretty impressive. It cleaned under the store shelves, under our stroller, etc. The noise level wasn’t too bad, and it didn’t seem to get stuck in some seemingly challenging situations.

So we ordered it from brookstone.com, because their physical store folks claim you can return it to any store. We may just get to test that claim out soon.

It arrived last week, and had to be charged for 12 hours before trying it out. Oh, and we had to run out to get 2 D batteries, because they’re needed for the “virtual wall” containment unit, and weren’t included. They really should add the batteries.

So we set it loose. It did a reasonable job cleaning the room. The first time, we had to empty the “particle” bin a few times, but that’s gotten better with subsequent cleanings. Roomba gets to places we never did with our vacuum cleaner: Under the recliner, under the coffee table, etc. We have a table with 6 chairs. To vacuum it normally, we have to move all the chairs. Roomba actually manages to navigate them as is. Pretty cool.

However, when it does get full, the particle bin is a pain to clean. You pull it out and dump it in the trash can, but then you have to remove a filter and dump it again, and clean the filter again. This has to be done pretty much every run.

It cleans 2 or 3 rooms, but couldn’t get the whole house (1100 sq. ft) in one run. Because the “small/medium/large” room basically just changes how long it runs, you either have to cut it off mid-program, or overclean in a lot of cases.

It takes a long time to clean a room, and it isn’t very quiet, though it’s much quieter than our normal vacuum.

On the plus side, you don’t need that “virtual wall” just to block a doorway. A pair of shoes does the job nicely.

I’ve been impressed by Roomba’s ability to get unstuck from some situations, but it still needs rescuing occasionally. It will stop what it’s doing and try a bunch of maneuvers (turning off the vacuum and brushes while it does so), and that gets it out of most situations. Occasionally it gets stuck, and then it sits there beeping at you piteously until you rescue it. We’ve had to rescue it probably 7 or 8 times in a week so far. So it’s not quite the unattended magical solution that we’re looking for.

Today, it broke. :(. It pulled a string out of one of the rugs, and it got stuck up in the spinning “Brusher”. After a few minutes of this, the brusher broke off.

That gave me an occassion to look at the unit pretty closely. There was a fair amount of hair and fur wound around the main brush, and it was a bit of a pain to get out. And the unit looks pretty scuffed up after only a week. I can’t wait to see what it looks after a year.

The broken part looks like a field replacable unit, but I’m not sure. I’ve got an inquiry into their tech support via email (which is 9AM-7PM M-F eastern time by phone. Very sub-ideal).

If they can just mail me a replacement part and I can install it, I might keep the unit. However, it only took it a week to break. That’s not encouraging.

UPDATE: Roomba express mailed me the part within a week of my complaint. Looks easy to install the part, though I haven’t installed it yet. Haven’t had any further problems with the unit. Upgrading from 2 to 3 stars based on their good customer service response.

More hype than anything else - iRobot Roomba Intelligent FloorVac Robotic Vacuum Used it around 5 times. Started giving me trouble after using 5 times. Had to do use the vacuum cleaner anyway. ...

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Roomba is great , not sure about iRobots though.., - iRobot Roomba Intelligent FloorVac Robotic Vacuum I love my Roomba and I couldn't imagine life without it. Now I have to because if your Roomba breaks and is over ...

Just in the nick of time…. - iRobot Roomba Intelligent FloorVac Robotic Vacuum I purchased roomba last week after checking out the eopinions site. I have two bulging disks in my back and since...

Wanted to love Roomba, but I don’t! - iRobot Roomba Intelligent FloorVac Robotic Vacuum I've been so excited to try the Roomba, but I have to report (sadly) that it is not going to work for us. I'd read...

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