iRobot 500 Series Roomba Vacuum-Cleaning Robot with On-Board Scheduling
by iRobot
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of iRobot 500 Series Roomba Vacuum-Cleaning Robot with On-Board Scheduling
Customer Review: Was a skeptic - am now a fan!
Summary: 5 Stars
We got our little Roomba last week and I've run him ragged this weekend! Basically I setup 3 zones in our house using the lighthouses/virtual walls and ran him through each zone to see how well he'd work and if the battery would last through the entire zone area.
I'm pleasantly surprised at how well it calculates the areas, covers the entire space even spanning several rooms, and the with the power this little guy has. He really does well even on low-pile carpet. And I tested his cord-rejection technology too and was amazed when he spit it right back out after swallowing it. Each and every time he's found his way back his dock and never got "lost".
So here's our zone setup:
Zone 1 is our family room. This room is set down one step from the kitchen/dining room so it's sort of self-contained and is a parkay (wood) floor. Roomba does his thing in this room with no virtual walls. Roughly 350 sq. ft.
Zone 2 is our kitchen/dining room. Laminate flooring and around 320 sq. ft. We use one virtual wall to close-off the hallway and keep him contained in the two rooms. Because the family room is down one step, the cliff sensors keep him from entering the family room.
Zone 3 is 2 bedrooms, hallway, and a bathroom. We use a virtual wall to block off a 3rd bedroom that we don't want Roomba in right now and the other virtual wall mentioned in the dining room to keep him from leaving the hallway. This is the largest zone and has laminate and carpeted rooms.
Basically I've setup a schedule for Roomba to run when we're not home and each day when I return home from work, I clean Roomba and move him and the dock to the next zone. So while our whole house doesn't get vacuumed at once, we do get good coverage and know the house has been vacuumed throughout every 3 days :o).
Hope this info helps someone in configuring their zones to get the most out of their Roomba.
Oh and I should mention that we have a long-haired cat who sheds like nobody's business. Roomba seems quite content to suck up whatever he leaves behind.
Customer Review: DELIGHT OF MY LIFE! And my Mother's!
Summary: 5 Stars
I am in loooooooove with my Roomba. I've had it for about a year now, with zero problems. I always thought these were kind of a gimmick, but then we adopted a pair of rabbits, and I promised my husband, who tends to have allergies, that I'd vacuum every other day to keep up with the hair. After a few weeks of lugging the vacuum out of the closet, unwinding the cord, etc., I gave up and bought a Roomba. Now "I" vacuum almost every day while I'm drinking my morning coffee and/or taking my morning shower, our house remains pet hair free, and everyone is happy.
The Roomba, in my experience, does almost as good a job as a regular upright, because Roomba goes over the same spot on the floor multiple times in the same cycle, meaning it spends far more time on any given spot than you ever would in vacuuming. More importantly, though, because all you have to do is press a button, you are likely to use Roomba far more often than you would ever vacuum with an upright, which means for most people, your floors will be cleaner than they ever have been or ever could be any other way. I can't believe how much dust and hair Roomba is able to vacuum up each and every day - it's totally unbelievable, and I can roam happily around the house barefoot, feeling the clean. I am a busy working person, like anyone else, so there's no way I could ever in a million years keep my floors so clean and pet hair free if it weren't for Roomba. After four months of ownership, I was so impressed with my Roomba that I talked my family into pooling our money last Christmas and buying one for my 7-cat-owning mom, who now says it has literally changed her life.
Bottom line: I don't know how anyone with pets lives without a Roomba. Scrimp, save, buy refurbished, beg, borrow, or steal one if you have to, but really, if there's any possible way you can get your hands on one of these, and you're a pet owner, do it! Roomba is worth every penny.
Customer Review: Great Product for In-between Cleaning
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great little machine for keeping the floors dust and grime free between those intense cleanings,and also works well on our area rugs. We use it for downstairs only - all hardwood, tile, linoleum, and area rugs. I would not use it on the second floor with the wall to wall carpeting and in the upstairs baths where we get ready in the AMs. I have very thick hair, and I fear that the Roomba would clog with the excess hair and fiber from the carpet. We use the Dyson for those jobs.
I don't feel as though this is a replacement for a larger more powerful machine, but Mommies Little Helper to assist in those big cleanings to be a lot less often. It allows me to multi-task while the cleaning is going on. I made nachos while the living room was being vacuumed!
For those of you who wrote about the Roomba getting tangled in cords and such. I have to ask, would you vacuum over that kind of stuff with a larger machine? Would you not remove those hazards anyway? Come on, guys.
This is not a "magic" machine that will allow you to schedule and go and then you're done with the heavy job forever- we're not in the Jetson's era as yet. This is merely a great little device to assist in your cleaning job to be lighter and less frequent. Enjoy the fun of watching it roam around the room, learning about furniture placement and those virtual walls you can place anywhere. Oh! Thought - if you are concerned with cords and just cannot reach down to pick them up for whatever reason, why not place a virtual wall where those hazards exist? ;) Bet that would work just fine for anything you do not want the machine to get near.
Bottom line, we love this little guy for helping us to make our lives easier. A replacement for the heavy cleaning is not what this is about, but to make it so the heavy cleaning is a lot less often.
Enjoy! We are!
Customer Review: I am amazed by the 550 Roomba!
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased one of these from Costco. Two days later I bought a second for the upstairs since I was so impressed with it. I couldn't believe how well it picked things up, especially cat hair. I love the fact I can schedule it to clean our downstairs everyday at 3am and it's quiet enough now to disturb our sleep. I can come down in the morning to find crumbs from the kids gone, cat litter that spilled out of the litter box gone, etc. It only takes a minute to dump the bin and clean the rollers. The first view runs it was packed with cat hair, etc, but since it's been running daily it has less in it and it's obvious to see why when you look around the house and see how clean everything is.
Another plus is the unit returns to it's charging base when it's done, or if it needs to recharge during it's cleaning cycle. I was blown away by how well it gets around my place. I was prepared to return it when I bought it thinking it would have trouble getting from room to room as we are in an older home and there are un-even door jams, area rugs, etc. This thing makes it over everything. I was impressed again today when our upstairs unit made it over a marble door jam that I thought might be a bit too high, but it wasn't. Then I was impressed again when it went over our thick bathroom mats and dealt with them with robotic prescision. :) Also the fact that it won't go down the stairs is nice as you don't have to worry about blocking the stairs with something, it goes up to the edge and sees the drop, and stops and goes the other way.
I will still probably bring out the big vacuum, but I won't have to vacuum as frequently. It's nice to know bits of food from the kids, and cat hair from the pets, will be taken care of daily! This is such a time saver.
Customer Review: Don't laugh! It's for real
Summary: 5 Stars
Received a model 550 for Christmas 2007. Had always dismissed them as a techno joke. Not any more. It really does as good a job on carpet as our bulky, noisy upright AND does hard surface floors BETTER. Our upright spewed loose items on hard surface - Roomba sucks them up. This model can be programmed to run when you are away or at night. It is very quiet, unlike uprights so if you use it while you are home you barely hear it. It gets places you usually don't vacuum with an upright. When was the last time you vacuumed under your sofa and beds? The Roomba is 3" tall and gets under beds, the sofa and the china cabinet. We have a short-hair cat and Roomba picks up the hair very well. It takes between 45-60 minutes to do a room. The dirt cup should be emptied after each room. Easy to remove. The dirt cup has two compartments; one for debris and one for dust that has a filter. Unlike our upright that goes crazy until you fish out solid items like a map pin, the Roomba competently sucked two of them into the debris area this morning, no fuss. I turn it over and remove hair, string etc. from the brushes after each use. There are two ways to confine it to one room. The first is to shut it in the room. If a room does not have doors, the second is to use what they call the "lighthouse" [2 included w/the 550] which gives off a signal and creates a boundry. Roomba transitions effortless from hard surface to area rugs. We learned to pick up small throw rugs after it once got wedged in front of the kitchen sink. It also sucked up and got stuck on a cord from the window blinds. Other than doing some minor picking up of small items which you would do anyway with an upright, it really saves time and effort and does a good job. We love it!