Roomba Works! Robotic Vacuums for everyone!
by Kevin Dangoor
Waiting for us when we returned from our trip was a brand new Roomba Pro Robotic Floorvac, which we got from Linens & Things for about $185 + shipping, which is well below the typical $230 price. The short review is just what they say on their site: Roomba works! You set it down, turn it on, and it vacuums your room. You can tell that it does a decent job when you empty out its particle bin and see how much stuff, dust and lint it collected.
As a computer guy, I had expected that Roomba would do something snazzy like build a mental model of the room it is working in. After watching it, I’m not so sure that’s the case. It seemed to repeatedly go over one section of a room I watched it do. (Why was I watching it? It’s kinda mesmerizing the first time you run it.) But, it did seem to go everywhere in the room. And, as I mentioned earlier, it picked up a lot of stuff. The floor looked nice and clean when all was said and done.
Roomba Pro comes with two invisible walls, so that you can restrict its movements when you have large open areas or hazards you would like Roomba to avoid (like the stairs!). The invisible walls are conical in shape, which is a little hard to work with. That cone gets pretty large when you’re working with a large opening, so it becomes a bit more difficult to create a straight-line wall for Roomba to stop at. I’m sure with just a little practice, I’ll get it right. On my first run, though, Roomba missed a couple sections of the room because of this.
Roomba takes longer to do a room than a person would. Who cares? You’re not doing the work. I find it a little quieter than a typical vac, so it’s possible that the noise will get to you if you’re sensitive to that kind of thing.
Unless you enjoy vacuuming or have a maid, Roomba is a good investment.
Well, it works for some floors. We had to return ours because our carpet pile is of medium density. The unit sank into the carpeting to where the crosswise scraper dug into the carpet and caused significant drag, while the drive wheels spun ineffectually, unable to get traction on the pile and unable to reach the backing. If the pile were denser so that the unit wouldn’t sink in and the wheels could get traction on the pile, or thinner so the scraper wouldn’t drag much and the wheels could reach the backing, or uncarpeted, it would’ve worked, although I suspect that we would have quickly tired of making the room “Roomba-safe”.
That’s a good point. I should’ve mentioned that we have dense, low carpet and wood floors.
It’s actually not unusual for us to make our rooms almost the equivalent of “Roomba-safe”. For those times when we’ve got a specific area to clean up, we can use Roomba Pro’s spot mode and get just that area without monkeying with picking things up elsewhere in the room.
For us, it’s already proven to be a big timesaver. Maybe saying “robotic vacuums for everyone!” is going a bit far, but I do think that the future of such devices is promising… and I’m quite happy even with this generation. We’ll see if I still feel the same next year.
Would you consider Roomba a “cold-dead-hands” tech toy like TiVo or a “nice thing to have” like an iPod? Substitute your own values for TiVo and iPod if you like.
That’s a fine question. We’ve got a 4 month old baby, and for us the Roomba makes the difference between clean floors and, well, dirty ones
I don’t think Roomba is really a life changer. It’s more of a timesaver. If it was Rosie from the Jetsons, that might be different.
Nothing wrong with saving a bit of time, though. Someone on epinions had tried to compute how much it was costing per hour of labor saved or some such, and their figure was $0.50. I know my time is worth more than $0.50 per hour.
So, take all that as you will.
“You can tell that it does a decent job when you empty out its particle bin and see how much stuff, dust and lint it collected.”
While it’s true you can see how much stuff, dust and lint it collects by looking in the bin,
that is not a reliable indicator of how much sand, dust and lint remains in the carpet !
Low power vac’s and central vac’s are great for hard floors and light surface pick up poor for deep cleaning.
With over 18 years exp. cleaning, I can tell you only the Consumer Reports Top 3 reated vac’s + Kirby’s will do a decent job.