Roomba Vacuum – iRobot Roomba Vacuum

Lowest Price

: 200

Brand

: iRobot

Model

:

Reviewer: JPV| Date:2009-05-29

you will know when this is running. i suggest you turn it on and leave the room, or better, leave the house and come back. you're not watching tv, reading, or listening to the yankee game when roomba's doing its thing.
other than that, seems to work fine and do a good job. picks up alot.

Review from Review from Amazon

Reviewer: J. You| Date:2009-05-17

I was as big a skeptic of the Roomba as probably anyone out there. My uninformed perception was that it was nothing but an expensive novelty and couldn't possibly clean very well. It wasn't until my boss (who's as pragmatic an individual as I've ever met) raved about his Roomba that I decided to give it a shot.

I've owned mine for about 2 months now, and I can't imagine being without it. There's a reason these things have such high ratings on Amazon- they actually work. It won't replace your regular vacuum, but it'll relegate it to the corner of your closet for a month at a time.

The Roomba isn't perfect though and brings some minor annoyances with it. As other reviewers have pointed out, bi-weekly or monthly maintenance is required to keep the Roomba functioning properly. Also, the manufacturer's recommendation is that the filter in the Roomba be replaced every month or two, and although the process is trivial, the filters are approximately 4 to 5 bucks a pop.

I've also found, as common sense would suggest, that the Roomba performs best when confined to smaller areas. I live in a small apartment, and the first time I used the Roomba I let it loose in the living room, and it haphazardly traveled from room to room until its battery died, never really doing what I felt was an acceptable job in any one room.

I've since altered my routine to confine the Roomba to a particular section of the apartment, and it does an impeccable job. I just carry it to whichever section of the apartment I want it to vacuum and turn it on before I leave for work. In this way, I cover the entire apartment in 3 day cycles. Note that there are other (more "capital-intensive" and elegant) strategies that people adopt for efficient Roomba cleaning- this is just mine.

My advice to any skeptics out there is to just try the Roomba for yourself. If you're not convinced that it's the next best thing since sliced bread, then you'll definitely be in the overwhelming minority. Also, if you have pets of any kind, the previous statement applies double to you.

Review from Review from Amazon

Reviewer: J. Powell| Date:2009-04-11

I live in an 900 Square foot apartment that has mostly hardwood floors, with a small area rug in each room. (with no fringe on the rugs)

There are basically 3 rooms that we use this for, the living room, the bedroom, small home office 10 x 10, and a long hallway.

Simply, this thing works, and works well.
Each time I set it down, in it's starting point, in the room, it immediately remembers the pattern of the room from it's previous cleaning.

It took me a while to sell my wife on this product, but after she saw how efficiently it cleaned under the bed, without her needing to get under there with swiffer's, she was sold!

The only real downside of roomba, seems to be the little extra time it takes to clean the unit. They provide a small tool for cutting hair from the rollers, and you can disassemble the rollers, but it gets a little messy. For me it's worth it, for a product that does such a thorough job. It really is very clever and ultimately a time saver in the end.

Review from Review from Amazon

Reviewer: S. Ho| Date:2009-03-30

I wonder why I didn't buy a roomba sooner. This Roomba is a basic model but it cleans well and is easy to maintain, and that's important to me. At $149, I still think it's good value (although I wish I had bought it when it was on sale for $70 something!). The only complaint I have is that the battery that came with it only runs about 40 minutes at a time. And that only cleans 1 room. I had to wait 2 hours for Roomba to recharge before cleaning another room. Also, the replacement filter is costly. But what I do is I wash the filter after each use, and it's like new again (while the filter is drying, another can be used). Rather than replacing the filter every month, I am hoping it will last for several months.

Review from Review from Amazon

Reviewer: Justin| Date:2009-03-07

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R12EQSQAYME7M9 Someone should have created a video review of this thing but so far no one has. So, I did it myself. You will probably find it in the description somewhere. Anyhow...

I won't bother telling you the things you already know from the description. Everything in the description is accurate except one thing;

The color! It's not even close to orange. Not even a little bit. It's red! I called iRobot tech support because I had a question about buying an accessory. I told them the product title said it was orange and they told me they don't make an orange one. Oh well, red will do.

Sure, you get to be lazy and not vacuum your floors and rugs but it comes at a cost. You must maintain the filter (3 for $20 bucks), and you must remove the hair that inevitably becomes tangled around the brushes, wheels, bearings, etc and inevitably you will have to replace those items. Maintenance is a breeze with this machine though. They sure made it easy. Comes right apart and doesn't take engineer to figure it out. It's all real basic. I'm getting quite good at doing it. In fact, it takes me about 5-6 minutes to complete the maintenance which is still a lot better than actually vacuuming my floors.

This thing is loaded with options that they don't give you and in order to use those options you must buy accessories (remote controls, schedulers, virtual walls, pet hair brushes, etc). However, it's SO fun. To me it's more than just a vacuum. In fact, this thing is bluetooth capable, it can whistle while it works. There's a ton of hacks for it for those of you who like to customize it.

Don't be fool though and buy accessories until you've had ample opportunity to test drive it a few times. Read the fine print about the "virtual walls" and you'll discover that if you've got a home base for this unit, the Virtual Walls may create conflict if they're not positioned properly. Plus, the virtual walls require batteries. I just used a piece of wood on the ground to keep the robot in the room instead of buying a $40 dollar virtual wall. If you're going to buy any accessories for it, I would recommend the home charging base (so that it may drive home itself) and the pet hair brush kit (both sold separately).

This thing is awesome and I just feel so modern having a robot clean my floors. My dog wants to play with it.

If my star rating should need to change or this thing falls apart or ANYTHING goes wrong, I will come back here and update this review for you.

Review from Review from Amazon