Customer Reviews

Remanufactured iRobot Roomba Vacuum Cleaning Robot with Scheduler, Case/Color May Vary

5 star:		(104)
4 star:		(64)
3 star:		(25)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(38)

 

 

I love love love our Roomba!!!!

Roomba is perfect for our situation. We own 3 cats -- indoor/outdoor -- and before Roomba, we'd have to vacuum every day to pick up all the cat hair and dirt they drop or track in. We have all hardwood floors with a few throw rugs (some are taped down, some aren't, Roomba cleans them all no problem). Roomba handles floor-level changes like they aren't even there, cleans under the couch and tables and chairs, and so far has completely cleaned our floors without once scratching or marking our brand-new furniture. In the far corners there may be a few grains of dirt she couldn't reach, but overall we are ecstatically happy, and our hardwood gleams.

We schedule Roomba to run around every day we're at work. Every day we come home, and Roomba is back on her charger and full of cat hair. It's awesome.

Once Roomba got stuck under a couch, or so we thought, but it turned out she wasn't stuck at all -- just automatically shut down because she was so packed with cat hair, she couldn't even make it back to the charger. There was a lot of cat hair under the couch. :) Now I watch when she goes under the couch, and she never gets stuck, so I am 99% sure it was the cat hair (1st time cleaning).

If we had bought an IntelliBin, Roomba would tell us when the chamber needs cleaning. But we opted for the Scheduler ($199 refurbished), and just clean the bin once every time Roomba cleans. Cleaning the bin is done in one simple motion and is MUCH easier than big vacuum chambers.

On the pet side, our cats didn't freak out as much as we thought they would, in fact 2 out of 3 just ignore it, unless it comes straight at them. The third one just sits and stares at it with the evil eye whenever it's on.

This is the best purchase we have ever made. Picks up all the cat hair our three cats leave everywhere! That's all we wanted!

I just got my roomba 4230 package from Amazon. The Roomba 4230 works great cleaning my house and is intelligent enough to navigate around an obstacle course I call a home. It picks up alot of dirt and debris. I definitely recommend it.

I only have a few gripes about it:
-The debris bin is not big enough so it has to be emptied often, maybe once per day.
-It does not pickup bigger pieces of debris like a quarter size piece of paper.
-It will get tangled up on adapter cords if it runs across them
-It has trouble finding its recharging base when sweeping is complete.

I'm waiting for my iRobot Scooba to arrive and see if can really mop my floors. This is cheaper than the $25 dollars per hour the maid services are charging.

I bought a Roomba 4230 "remanufactured" vacuum robot from Amazon last week. I was really excited to get it. Plugged it in, charged her up, and pushed the Clean button. Dang.

It said Uh-Oh. E-mailed IRobot tech support. That was over a week ago. Still waiting for their response. I called tech support last Friday. They told me the same thing that I read on their website. The cliff sensors think they are obstructed. Roomba uses cliff sensors to keep it from falling down the stairs. Tech support suggested spraying compressed air into the sensors, and sent me RMA forms, knowing the air thing would never work.

Surprisingly, the compressed air worked. Roomba worked for 5 minutes. It was a beautiful thing. But then it quit and said Uh-Oh. More air. It ran a while longer. More air, it ran even longer. Emptied the dirt out several times. It ran out of juice, found its home base and parked on it for a refill. Amazing and wonderful and cute. It did a decent job cleaning too.

After it recharged I put it in my bedroom and pushed the button. It ran about 10 minutes and died. No amount of compressed air would revive it. Rather than pay to ship this lemon back to IRobot, I sent it back to Amazon postage paid. I miss it already, even though it never ran more than 10 minutes without needing some kind of attention.

After reading a bunch of postings in the Roomba forums I learned that it's not unusual to go thru 3 or 4 of these units before getting a good one.

My suggestion: Don't buy a remanufactured Roomba. Your chances of getting a lemon are much higher than with a new unit.

I was worried about a reconditioned product but when you open it up it's in perfect condition. I've scheduled a cleaning between two rooms every day while I'm at work and it's been amazing. You have to pick up any cords it might run into, and anything else that it might snag on. Just really takes some common sense and watching it run for the first few times. Now it makes it back to it's charging base ever time.

The only thing I didn't expect was the cleaing of the brushes. I have a cat so the hair gets spun around the brushes. Not that big of deal though since it only takes 2 minutes a few times a week. Before Roomba I came home to clumps of hair and dust on the carpet that was blown from all over the house. Now I come home to a completely clean floor and carpet every day. Oh, and you have to empty the bin EVERY DAY! It's small...don't forget.

If you expect to open the box and have it running perfectly within 10 minutes it's not for you. With a little trouble shooting and common sense it's amazing. Highly recommended!

While the lure of a robotic vacuum may be strong, after our experience with the remanufactured product (as well as iRobot support) we're returning the 4230 and have decided not to buy another iRobot product.

The unit we received was nicely packaged, all pieces were present. The actual plastic housing of the robot was fairly heavily scuffed but this was not surprising considering it's remanufactured, and the brushes and filters looked new.

After charging the unit fully, we ran the robot twice. The first time, the robot ran about one cleaning cycle but the battery died before it found its way home. It charged fully again and we sent it off to clean. It managed to do a fairly good job and find its way home again this time.

One impressive aspect of the robot is its ability to keep from getting stuck; the little guy refused to get stuck amid table and chair legs, crossed a fairly rough carpet/linoleum boundary multiple times, and did a good job getting into most every nook and cranny.

Of course, it did take it 60 minutes to accomplish what would otherwise take 5 minutes with a broom and vacuum, and it's fairly noisy; think dustbuster mounted to radio-controlled car noisy. Yet we were content thinking that the Roomba would do this daily without fail, and we could trigger it as we walked out the door to run errands (or put on headphones).

But then it DID fail. Upon parking itself at its home base the second time, all lights went out in the base and the robot. After some troubleshooting it appears the AC power supply had died. Not very encouraging, considering similar problems people have had with the remanufactured versions.

Instead of just starting the Amazon return/exchange process as we should have, we followed the request in the manual and contacted iRobot directly for help. They agreed that the power supply was likely the culprit but wanted us to send everything back just to be sure, and we'd get a replacement. In four to six weeks. Only after they received this one. On our dime. After a significant amount of arguement, they finally agreed to send a UPS label to pick it up, but all this would still be done UPS Ground (sadly cross-country) and there'd be around two weeks of processing once they received it.

Unfortunately the combination of a painful exchange policy, previous owners' testimonies on horrible customer service experiences, and our own abrupt and inflexible CC experience has soured us considerably on iRobot products. We'd rather not risk having to be without our vacuum for over a month any time a problem arises with the unit.

If the above factors are acceptable to you and you're still intent on buying an iRobot product, you may want to think twice about choosing the remanufactured version over one of the brand new ones.

I have the original first generation of the Roomba. It's still going strong, still does it's job, still holds it's charge, and still entertains me. The newer generations are only getting more clever. I have never regretted my purchase of the Roomba.

Love those Irobot products and everything they're capable of doing. In fact, this was my third purchase, but my first remanufactured product. What a headache! The product worked correctly just three times, then died. Both technical support and customer service from Irobot were helpful and prompt, but still took weeks to resolve the issues. I tried a different way of recharging, which didn't work. Then they replaced the battery, but that still didn't solve the problem. Ultimately I had to send the product back, then waited more than a month for a replacement, which was on backorder. Finally, they substituted a different model, and which works just as advertised. I'd never buy another remanufactured model. But I still believe in Irobot.

I can't say enough good things about my little guy. He frees me to do other things. I don't use the scheduling feature because I move him around quite a bit. I've ordered three more--one for each of my daughters--who have also reported loving them and an extra for myself. I clean him after each run with canned air, a damp papertowel, and make sure he has a clean filter. The filters are easy to wash out and then dry for the next run. I have several and rotate two until one is too far gone and then get another new one. He reaches places I can't get to with my huge cannister electrolux or my self-drive Kirby. I cleaned for hours before starting the first run to give the little guy a good shot. He managed to find some dust and a moth's wing. Where I can't imagine. I like that he goes over the surface many times and picks up the nap of the carpet. With him around my floors are debris free. I've even rearranged furniture so that he can reach every little place--something I've never done so that I could vacuum the area. The only thing I caution is if you have some furniture that hangs a little too low and he gets kinda stuck--I don't think that's good for him. It might spring his wheels. I live in Southwest Kansas and so far he's managed to pick up sand, gravel, dust, string, hair, and bug parts. Some would say Roomba's nothing but a glorified carpet flick. I'd say, "so what?" At least he can get along the baseboards whereas every other vac I have leaves that tell-tale 2 inches of dust along every edge--my little guy doesn't! He also makes sure that while I'm doing the dusting because of unexpected guests--he's doing the floors. GET ONE--you won't regret it. Oh, and customer service is fantastic. Just call them and they'll help quickly with any problem or question.

My remanufactured Roomba is good as new. Your results may vary, but mine had no blemishes, has plenty of battery charge, and leaves my carpet feeling clean. Its first trip around my apartment filled its bin, which I believed to be a good sign. After the first few vacuums the bin will be much less full - since you are now cleaning your floors more often!

It also works as a great dust pan. The Roomba does pretty good on hard floors, but the edges of the walls it just doesn't always clean perfectly. So occasionally I use my regular broom to sweep debris next to the wall into a little pile, then let Roomba suck up the pile. My dustbin is now a thing of the past. No more bending over to sweep dust into a little pan, yet still leaving behind that little line of dirt in front of the dustpan.

The scheduler works as expected, but two caveats:
* Scheduler does not automatically change for daylight savings time.
* Walls need D batteries (not included), which are neither easily nor cheaply found in rechargeable varieties. Wish they would switch to AA, and eliminate the little orange blinking (maybe that would save on battery?)

This Roomba is wonderful. It makes my floors, and my apartment, feel cleaner with minimal work. That's the robot's ultimate goal, and it succeeds. Totally recommended.

Really impressed with the performance of the remanufactured Roomba Scheduler. I recently had my entire house done in ceramic tile (single story, about 2000 square feet), and fully swept it the day before the roomba arrived. After charging the unit, we set it off on its way, watched it for a while, and then let it do its own thing while we continued to straighten up and move furniture around. After a couple of hours, we heard it play a little tune, and found that it had returned to its charging dock. When we checked the dust bin, we were amazed at how much stuff we had missed when we swept up the day before. Very fine dust from the new tile grout, along with long black hair (my wife is chinese...), and loads of dust bunnies. Each time I watch this thing it amazes me. It navigates under the dining table, meticulously working around each chair. As it finds an object, it manages to find its edges and move along the edge, and when the virtual walls are set up, it hits the invisible barrier and moves off in another direction. It's a little noisy, but if there is a clutch mechanism inside that uses the powered rear wheels for steering, it is understandable that it would have the same coffee grinder sound that my Tamiya RC Tank makes. Regardless of the noise, it is nowhere near as noisy as an actual vacuum cleaner. It seems to have some issues with area rugs, and whatever you do, don't leave rubber bands lying around on the floor. They get wrapped around the beater bar and the brush unit and the unit aborts its mission.
Cleaning is really easy. Dump the bin each time after it cleans, and do a full cleaning once a week. If you use one of those rhino-razor letter openers (the kind with a rhino horn on it that conceals an integral razor blade) to cut through the long hairs that wrap around the brush, remove the small ball bearings from the end of the beater bar and brush, clean the hair and debris off the spindles, rinse the beater bar and brush (NOT THE BEARINGS!) and let them air dry. Remember that it is a tool, not a toy, and as such it requires some maintenance.
If you are generally good at keeping house, you will love this machine. If you have a lot of junk, newspapers, plastic bags, rubber bands, or other snags laying about, this little machine will get snagged, abort its mission and sit there beeping at you. Under these circumstances, you are probably better off hiring a maid.