iRobot

Van Johnston

Van Johnston

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Van Johnston
Anyone have any of the iRobot products, like Roomba or Scooba? (IRobot.com) Work as advertised, or not so much?
 
I have a roomba, pet hair edition, that I've had for a couple of years and love it. It's running as I type.

I tried an earlier version about 6 or 7 years ago and it sucked. It spent far too much time cleaning along the walls of the room and not nearly enough out in the middle.

But they apparently tweaked the programming and the newer version is far more equitable as to where it spends its time.
 
Yup I have the pet edition as well and love it. Works as it should, you just have to make sure to clean it out each time. Not hard to do but just remember to do it. I just wish mine was the one we could schedule. Oh well...next time.
 
I can schedule mine but I gotta admit...I never do.

BTW...one of the funniest customer feedback comments I've ever read was on the roomba site...or on amazon regarding roombas. A guy (yes, it was a guy) lamented that he was extremely disappointed that his roomba doesn't do stairs.

Really?

Either it was a joke or he has to be the biggest idiot on the face of the planet.
 
Van Johnston said:
Anyone have any of the iRobot products, like Roomba or Scooba? (IRobot.com) Work as advertised, or not so much?
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Have two Roombas. I like them. They're not as good as my Dyson, but if you use them frequently, you won't need to use the Dyson as much.
 
timwinters said:
I can schedule mine but I gotta admit...I never do.

BTW...one of the funniest customer feedback comments I've ever read was on the roomba site...or on amazon regarding roombas. A guy (yes, it was a guy) lamented that he was extremely disappointed that his roomba doesn't do stairs.

Really?

Either it was a joke or he has to be the biggest idiot on the face of the planet.
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That's funny, but wouldn't you love it if there were a robotic vacuum that could do the stairs? I use the big vacuum, and it hurts my back.
 
We have one, I try to keep it clean but animal hairs eventually start getting into the gearbox for the brushes and I have to take it apart and clean it out.

They do work decently for maintenance cleaning though.
 
Nancy is ours. She is great for 97% of the dirt on our floor. However, you still have to vacuum corners, behind furniture, or any place she doesn't fit. We have her on a daily cycle and vacuum with a regular vac maybe monthly. She does the main living area daily and the bedrooms weekly/monthly. She is great for cleaning up after the kids, you just have to Pick up all things on the floor and under the beds. I wish I could attach one to each of my kids! We have pets, so cannot comment on that
 
Also, make sure you keep it clean. Takes about 30 min per week to clean my girls hair out of it.
 
Margy has one of the iRobot sweepers scooting around the basement. It mostly works, sometimes it gets stuck and goes "uh oh" and shuts down.

There are competitors out there though that use a more methodical approach to covering the floor.
 
I've had several iRobot vacuums that never really performed all that well (they were older models). I currently have a Neato vacuum (http://www.neatorobotics.com) and my wife and I love it. I can't say how it stacks up against current iRobot models, but it's definitely better than the older ones. We run it on a schedule and are very pleased with it. I also like the magnetic floor strip that Neato uses over the IR "virtual walls" of the iRobot vacuums.
 
darrell said:
I also like the magnetic floor strip that Neato uses over the IR "virtual walls" of the iRobot vacuums.
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Yeah I can say I do not like the virtual walls. I use one to block off a certain room down the hall and while it keeps it out of the room, it sometimes keeps it from going down the hall.
 
We got the Roomba 780 model this year and find it's a great wood floor/golden retriever combination. I could probably build a new dog every month. It has lighthouses (sensors) that can keep it in/out of a room and it finds its way back to the base most of the time. The scheduling feature is nice, too.
Can't say enough about our customer service experience: I dropped it from about 4 feet after holding it by the back, removable bin (stupid) which came out just as the engineers intended. The sensor for the lighthouse and docking station broke. Didn't think that would be covered by warranty, but when my wife called they immediately sent us a new one and just asked that we send the broken one back.
 
I have a Roomba. Should have gotten the pet version since my hair is so long. It takes a while to clean the brushes. Like it a lot, but the battery has been running down quite a bit, so need a new one. Also, it doesn't like it when a toddler tries to take a ride. My version is able to stay in the room I want, but rather than put up the gates, I just lay something in the doorway that I don't want it to pass.

I will get another when this one quits.
 
Old Geek said:
How well would one work on a concrete hanger floor?
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Probably fine if the floor is relatively smooth. It works well on our brick paver floor in the kitchen and a few other first floor rooms.

I can see at least two challenges:

First, oil, grease, gas spots. They would likely ruin the brushes

And

A hangar is probably too big to be cleaned on one charge so you'd need a programmable machine and split the room in half with lighthouses.
 
timwinters said:
I can schedule mine but I gotta admit...I never do.

BTW...one of the funniest customer feedback comments I've ever read was on the roomba site...or on amazon regarding roombas. A guy (yes, it was a guy) lamented that he was extremely disappointed that his roomba doesn't do stairs.

Really?

Either it was a joke or he has to be the biggest idiot on the face of the planet.
Click to expand...

Done.

http://youtu.be/CznrscKo7pA
 
cowman said:
We have one, I try to keep it clean but animal hairs eventually start getting into the gearbox for the brushes and I have to take it apart and clean it out.
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Is your brush/gearbox green or gray?

If green then call them up and ask for a gray one, depending how long you've had your machine they might replace it under warranty. If not, they're not outrageously priced.

The gray boxes are the new, improved, better than before, version and they corrected some of the shortcomings of the green ones.
 
Had one of the "first generation" units, I suppose. Took more time to clean out the tiny collection bin and brushes that it did to take out the real vacuum and just do the whole room manually. Maybe they're improved since then.
 
This thread inspired me to take over maintenance vaccuming duties. Er... Finally order a robot. LOL.

Well that and we didn't have carpet in the old house.

Gonna try the Neato. Did some reading and I can live with the quirks in return for not just randomly running around the room which always seemed stupid with Roomba. Bothers my OCD. Ha.

Went with the Nintendo colored "pet" one since folks who've disassembled them say there's virtually no difference other than case color and filter type and filters appear plentiful from a bejillon sources. And the company charges extra for earth toned plastic apparently. (That's sketchy. Bad business.) On the flip side they seem to follow the Lightspeed headset folk's model, RMA everything we'll replace it all. Doesn't matter what broke.

Will try to remember to post a review once it's here and running. I'm great at breaking things. :)
 
Got a 770 in the mail yesterday... But it's a wedding gift, so I've gotta wait 3 more weeks to try it out. :D
 
Bought Roomba and Scooba, 5 or so years ago, my folks still use them successfully.
I picked up Mint instead - hardwood floors in the house, no real need for Roomba - that's just a dry/wet swiffer (literally. Just stick a dry or wet swiffer pad in there, hit the wet or dry mode button and it works beautifully). Great little unit for the money, had it for 3 years now.
 
denverpilot said:
On the flip side they seem to follow the Lightspeed headset folk's model, RMA everything we'll replace it all. Doesn't matter what broke.
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Same experience here. Our Neato started running for less and less time to where it spent more time charging than cleaning, and after a few calls they just sent us a brand new battery free of charge. This was after maybe a year of owning it.
 
Now you guys got me started thinking about one of these. Do they tend to get tangled up or caught in anything? We usually have cat toys on the floor. Even if we pick them up at night, the cat will drag them back out by morning. And we have a rug with fringes around the edge.
 
Matthew said:
Now you guys got me started thinking about one of these. Do they tend to get tangled up or caught in anything? We usually have cat toys on the floor. Even if we pick them up at night, the cat will drag them back out by morning. And we have a rug with fringes around the edge.
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They can, thats why I'm kind of glad we don't have the scheduled one because you have to prep the floor. Small cat toys I would think it would just push it out of the way. Towels, clothes, and bed sheets would be another story. But pet food bowls we have to move cause it will make a mess! But honestly they are awesome. We use it every other day and use the big vacuum as need, usually once a week. Go for it you won't regret it!
 
Can't comment on the fringed rugs...don't have any.

BTW...whether you have pets or not, I'd highly recommend the pet version because the bin is far larger than the standard version.
 
Matthew said:
Now you guys got me started thinking about one of these. Do they tend to get tangled up or caught in anything? We usually have cat toys on the floor. Even if we pick them up at night, the cat will drag them back out by morning. And we have a rug with fringes around the edge.
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According to reviews of all brands, sure. You learn to pick up stuff if you schedule it, which a number of folks say created a good habit anyway in their lives. ;)

Flip side, you don't have to schedule. It's fine to pick up every few days and then go push a button and let 'er rip while you get something else done.

You can also keep the machine out of a particular area and make that the clutter room where it doesn't go unless you put it in there. Some users of the devices judging by their reviews do a thing where they pull the machine off the charger base, carry it to a room, put it in, start it, and shut the door behind them. Heh. Kinda a strange little mechanized indentured servant. They come back later and put it back in the dock after it finished or gave up and shut down for low battery.
 
denverpilot said:
Some users of the devices judging by their reviews do a thing where they pull the machine off the charger base, carry it to a room, put it in, start it, and shut the door behind them.
Click to expand...

That's what I did with my kids.

We have one of those corrugated cardboard scratching posts that the cat uses all the time. That leaves little scraps of cardboard all around that corner of the room. We use a little sweeper all the the time, and then the big vacuum usually once a week. It would be nice to get a little robot sweeper for all that.
 
timwinters said:
Can't comment on the fringed rugs...don't have any.

BTW...whether you have pets or not, I'd highly recommend the pet version because the bin is far larger than the standard version.
Click to expand...

Problem is I think our pets would eat one
 
Matthew said:
How do those things do on area rugs with fringes?
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Royal pain in the rump. If I decided to keep the rug in the room, I tucked all the fringes underneath and then I still had to untangle the thing from time to time.
 
AuntPeggy said:
Royal pain in the rump. If I decided to keep the rug in the room, I tucked all the fringes underneath and then I still had to untangle the thing from time to time.
Click to expand...

This particular rug is in a hallway we could block off.
 
I got one to tend to our little log shack, so it would pick up the bugs and such during our extended absences. Unfortunately, I thought (mistakenly) they all had timers, so it was of limited utility, would only run when you push the button. In any event, while it remained charged on the base, the battery failed after eight or ten uses. Runs for, maybe, three minutes and gives up, saying something like "Roomba battery discharged."
 
Some are programmable, Spike, apparently though, yours isn't.

You definitely got a bad battery, we've had ours for four or five years, run it a few times a week, and it's still going strong.

Call 'em. Someone earlier in this thread said they replaced a battery at no charge for them.
 
They all seem to do that once in a while. Batteries are pretty taxed running motors like that. Most folks won't put up with the thing parking itself every 15 minutes and charging for hours on a nice slow charge that's good for the battery, so the designers go for a trade off.

It'll run most days without intervention and after a year or so you have to replace the batteries so their discharge rate matches the firmware.

Just a sign of the current state of the art at these price points. None of them will maintain a house completely unattended yet.

The variable at your cabin that wasn't accounted for was probably battery temperature.

Folks say they find the little guys stuck in odd places with their batteries dead from time to time too.
 
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