 "2nd Roomba- love it, but is it built to last???" | 2008-10-09 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2ZHMEN9T1K8C0 |
| This is my 2nd Roomba, my first one died months after the 1 year warranty expired. And while I love my new one, I'll be getting nervous when my 560 reaches its 1st birthday. Lots of moving parts here and these wonderful little machines do break down. I always took great care of my Roomba and cleaned the brushes after each use, and will continue doing so with my new one. IRobot also does not offer extended warranties with their products- I think they know reliability is questionable too. br /br / |
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 "Roomba 560 is Great" | 2008-10-08 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2PNC6TLE2R5UB |
| I was given a Roomba 560 for xmas and just love it. I showed it to my cousin and she asked me to order one for her. I did so and she just loves her roomba too. I also have the dirt dog and a roomba 530. The only thing is that they do not dust the furniture but they are great for vacuuming the floors in the house, basement and garage. They really do well under the bed, since it is hard to get under the bed with a regular sweeper. I would get them anytime. |
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 "Excellent SUPPLEMENT to vacuuming" | 2008-10-01 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1FKF03VCG01NE |
| If you are living in a moderately small house, townhome or apartment and want something to supplement your normal cleaning duties then the Roomba is something worth looking at. So to get this out of the way, does the Roomba actually work? It surprisingly does. It moves around your home in what appears to be an erratic fashion and cleans the floor just as it says it does. Now unfortunately it is not exactly what you might think it is. As a vacuum cleaner it is not all that powerful. Instead think of it more like a motorized broom. It picks up quite a bit of dirt and dust but it is not going to get the nitty gritty stuff that a regular vaccum will get due to its lack of suction. It gets the stuff you see, but probably not the mites you don't. br /br /The Roomba 560 is rather "smart" avoiding most cables in your home. The sighting mechanism is not perfect on it though and it will occasionally run into things pretty hard, especially if they are irregular in shape. In most cases though the Roomba will not get tangled up on cords or stuck on rugs. br /br /The dust compartment is rather small so you have to take that into account on how you use him. You cannot use him once a week as your main vacuum cleaner or he will just get too full too fast. Instead set him to go daily and be sure to empty him daily. That seems how he works best. br /br /Other than that the Roomba is a striaght forward little robot that is super low maintenance and can pretty much take care of himself. Schedule him to run when you are out of the house and he will clean the floors for you just as you expect him to for the most part. He is best at hardwood and tile since he can really get into that. As I said before he just does not have the suction to dig into carpet, especially longer carpet. |
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| "I Love This Product!" | 2008-09-30 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1D8M08TEMO061 |
| My neighbor loved her Roomba so much she demanded I purchase one. I did and absolutely love it. No, it's not perfect (mine is having a hard time finding its docking station when it's done cleaning--no big deal to me) . . . but it sure is better than nothing. I use it daily and find the floors to be vastly cleaner than ever before. I highly recommend. |
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| "A real labor saver" | 2008-09-27 |
| - Reviewed By User: A24XAPT45CD3ZL |
| We have pets that shed and so if we wanted to keep the hair up off the floors and carpet we needed to vacuum more than once a week. The Roomba does the job for us now. It runs three times a week and keeps our living room, dining room, and kitchen swept clean of dirt and hair. Granted it doesn't do deep vacuuming of the carpet but we can do that on a less frequent basis than before with our full size vacuum.br /br /You will need to learn the fine points of using this wonderful device. For instance keep stuff up off the floor, don't leave cords exposed, and shut the door to the areas of the house that have such stuff exposed.br /br /Overall I am very pleased with my Roomba and would recommend it to anyone. |
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| "We liked it so much, we bought another (a 580)" | 2008-09-24 |
| - Reviewed By avrwc |
| We had a 560 for about a year now and, because we have a relatively large house, recently, we decided to go for a second. It's a 580 (because a bigger model number should be 'better') but, now that we have them both, we found that 99% of the time we are NOT using the 580's Command Center so, unless you like playing with remote controls or you must have your Roomba 'in black', the 560 should be adequate.br /br /__________br /Operation:br /br /The robot itself does a pretty good job at fully covering the area and removing the dust. It is VERY good in a fully carpeted room or a bare-floor room. However, many times, it finds it difficult to climb from the floor onto the carpet. The side brush goes under the carpet and, eventually, the robot backs off and tries again later. It is usually successful, following several attempts but this may result in it over-cleaning one area and not spending too much on elsewhere. Our 560 actually ended up breaking the rotating brush following numerous under-the-rug incidents and we had to get a new rotating brush kit from Roomba. br /br /Another, somewhat weird behavior has to do with dark objects that it should be avoiding. The Roomba seems to detect bright walls and objects and slows down and only touches them gently at the end of the approach, it usually slams into a dark wall or whatever dark object might be in its way. It seems unable to detect darker objects.br /br /On the 580 you can schedule future jobs either on the main unit so that your robot would wake up, let's say, every Wednesday at 2 a.m. and do some serious cleaning. We did not find this capability very useful because we have more rooms than Roombas and we decided that we did not want to run our lives around the Roomba's cleaning schedule and move it around as expected. Whenever we want to clean a room, we take the Roomba there, set the virtual walls/lighthouses and push the 'clean' button.br /br /The virtual walls/lighthouses are VERY useful. Each Roomba comes with 2. You would sometimes need more. While we were a one-Roomba household we manage to keep the robot within its designated area in our 'open floor' first floor by blocking it with various objects. Now that we have 2 units, we have 4 of these so all is perfect and easy downstairs.br /br /While it's noted in the product description, I should mention that the 'going back to base' feature works VERY WELL. The Roombas almost always manage to find their base and go into the recharger when their batteries go low.br /br /We had no problem with the battery life. Our one-year-old 560 seems to have as much stamina today as it had on day-one.br /br /____________br /Maintenance:br /br /After every other cleaning run, you will have to empty the dust bins, clean the filter and clean the brushes.br /br /Taking out the dust is easy. And so is the cleaning of the filter. Cleaning the brushes is another story and problem is 'hair'. It's not terribly difficult but... you will be dealing with 'dirt'. I found that with the help of a pair of scissors or a small (sharp) knife you can clean the brushes in a couple of minutes.br /br /_________________br /Customer support:br /br /As I mentioned before, the little 'helicopter' brush unit had to be replaced. I did not find Roomba's off-shore based support team to be very helpful. It happened a long time ago so I don't recall of the details but I remember them first being unable to understand the nature of the problem. Then, some unfriendly foreigner told me that they are not obligated to send me a replacement immediately, given that there was some '5 business days' or '10 business days' in the warranty. Anyways, I eventually got my part but it happened after a relatively long wait and too many calls and too much time spent with these lovely people. The funny thing was that, as soon as I placed my first phone call, I received an email asking that I rate the quality of the 'service' provided. MANY such surveys followed.br /br /__________________br /My rating: 4 starsbr /br /We are actually using these and they do a good job for us. The fact that we now have 2 of these, shows that we find them worth the expense. The Roombas do what we expect them to do - which is clean the room without us having to watch them doing it. They are well-built, durable and efficient. For all of the above, they get a 5-STAR PLUS rating. I am taking out 2 stars for the not so good customer support and for the little problems the Roomba seems to have climbing on carpets. Therefore, the fair rating is a 4-STAR. |
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| "I want another one!!!!" | 2008-09-18 |
| - Reviewed By User: A232198LRK85BZ |
This is the best thing since sliced bread!
I injured my back (herniated disks) three years ago, and have been unable to use a broom or vacuum cleaner since. There is something about the motion of sweeping that causes me great pain. This has been very frustrating because I have indoor cats and a large hairy dog.
I had my floors redone all in tile to keep down the dust and hair, but going even one day without sweeping caused little "tumbleweeds" of pet hair to roll across the floor. (Those of you with carpet have NO IDEA!) My husband was just unable to work (he worked seven days a week) and sweep the floor every day. I couldn't afford a maid. It was terrible.
For Christmas, 2007, my husband gave me a Roomba 560, and a Scooba 5800. I love them!
This is not a toy! It picks up as well or better than a vacuum!
I use my Roomba every day in my living room, kitchen and dining room. That is as far as the battery will last, but it is a very large area. I am amazed at how much it picks up every day. It is simple to start (push a button) and simple to clean (remove the bin and empty into the garbage; remove the brushes and pull out any accumulated hair.) The Roomba 560 can also be programmed to come on automatically every day, but I don't use this feature because I have cats (cats can up-chuck at will and I don't want that in my Roomba!)
I have a 2100 + sq.ft. house and really need another Roomba to cover the entire house. With just the one, I have to let it re-charge before I can do the master suite.
While the Roomba does make some noise, it is considerably quieter than a vacuum cleaner. My cats are not afraid of it, but they are terrified of a vacuum.
I have to admit that I did have some problems with my Roomba at first. Every time I had a problem, I called IRobot and the technicians helped me. They sent me replacement parts on several occasions. I don't know how many times I called, but they were polite and helpful every time and sent parts for free. Finally, they realized that my particular Roomba had a defective cleaning module. They sent me a new one for free and that solved all my problems.
This product gets five stars! The Roomba performs better than I expected and the company really stands behind their product. I couldn't be more satisfied.
-Donna ><> |
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 "Worst tech support ever" | 2008-09-16 |
| - Reviewed By vaughnj1@bellsouth.net |
I bought the 560 directly from iRobot as a birthday gift for my wife. I received the unit on 8/28/08 and have yet to see it clean anything! Upon initial charging, it gave a "Charging error 5." The owner's manual gives no explanation of what are apparently up to 20 different numbered error codes. The only explanation is "call tech support."
So I call tech support, after waiting on hold for about 30 minutes, of course I received someone with barely comprehensible english. After waiting for her to get her own model in front of her and disassemble it, she decided my unit was defective. I was then informed, via email, that I would have to send my unit to iRobot (at my expense) and they would, in turn, send me a replacement. It is now 9/15/08 and I have yet to receive the replacement.
This may be the greatest floor cleaning product ever, but I honestly wouldn't know. Their tech support is truly awful and I'm still in disbelief that I have to pay to ship back a product that was defective out of the box. I'm also somewhat amazed that I have to wait until they receive my unit before I receive a replacement. Every other company I've dealt with has sent a return label with their replacement. P*ss poor customer service and, thusfar, a worthless product. I did call today and according to their automated system, they have a 10 day delay time upon receipt before they ship another unit. Need I say more? |
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| "Warning: Unreliable, bad product support" | 2008-09-13 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2H2ZSUSAF86VO |
Unreliable, bad product support
If I could go back in time, I would not have bought the Roomba. I used the I-robot to do light maintenance vacuuming during the week in my house. We have no pets or kids, and we take our shoes off at the door when we come into the house from outside. I read the manual, and treated the I-robot with considerable care. I cleaned and emptied the vacuum after each use, I made sure it would not get tangled or caught on cords, I checked the Brush to make sure that hair (etc..) was not wrapped around it, and so on. A month after the Warrantee period, the Roomba stopped working. I would turn it on, it would go a few feet, appear to catch on something, and stop. Then it would give the "uh oh" beep. I called customer support, they had me bounce and spin the wheels, blow compressed air into the wheels and wheel wells, and do several other useless exercises before telling me I should buy a new I-robot as none of the parts on the Roomba can be replaced, and no service is offered (even if you are willing to pay for service, they do not service these machines...period).
Paying 200-300+ dollars for a vacuum that works for only 13 months is a bad deal. It is also suprising that there are no replacement parts and no service available for the Roomba. If anything goes wrong, replacement is the only option (so they told me).. Here is a list of reasons why I would not recommend this product - some are facts, some are opinions:
1. Roomba is a light duty vacuum and does not clean well enough to replace your regular vacuum
2. Roomba cannot really be left unattended -it needs tobe supervised
3. The company is not going to do you any favors if the product goes wrong - they are "by the book" - my warrantee was 1 month past expiration and I-robot offered NOTHING. I was very polite, and spoke to several people. Both my wife and I called - both with the same result. When we were first speaking with them, and could not remember exactly when we purchased our Roomba, The representative from I-robot pushed for a date. When we told them about a year, they were quick to suggest dates that would have placed us outside the warrantee period. we eventually found the receipt.
4. No service is available - if something goes wrong, you have to replace the whole system (except brushes and filters - those can be replaced).
5. Questionable reliability - dust and hair can work into moving parts through very small spaces. For a self propelled vacuum that is designed to turn off when it hits an obstacle or gets stuck, this is not so good...
6. no way to clean the wheels or other internal parts. In fact, if you take the Roomba apart you void the warrantee...
7. Many of the positive reviews you read on this product are probably from people who purchased recently - when I first bought it, I liked a lot it as well - I told everyone about it. That is because it is a cool idea. However, I am not so happy with my purchase now... I feel like I was ripped-off.
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 "Step forward, two steps backwards" | 2008-09-11 |
| - Reviewed By papushin |
This is our second Roomba which we bought to replace the older model which battery has died abruptly.
First impression we had was very positive. 560 could get onto an area rug old one could not climb on, it wouldn't get stuck on rug fringe, and in general i seemed "smarter" and would vacuum better.
First thing we noticed that plastic thingy was broken in internal brush (probably when we received it) and needed a replacement. Big problems started when side brush broke and we waited for replacement to arrive for a few weeks. Needless to say the replacement has broken too pretty soon and side brush is not working anymore. Roomba complains that it needs brushes cleaned several times during a cycle. Since side brush is not turning it cannot get out of hard situation and gets stuck trying to get onto area rug often.
Overall it seems that iRobot went with cheaper parts and bad quality to keeps the costs down and it really hurt the product.
It probably will be our last toy from iRobot since they don't seem to work properly for more than a year. |
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