Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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73 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Generally competent, but it has its foibles, November 24, 2008
First let me say that I agree with people who say that the robot does a competent job of cleaning. You should SEE the dust bin after vacuuming! I am also in awe etc etc, but I'm going to try to focus on things that others have not mentioned.
My 550 (560 actually, I think...it came with a few more odds and ends in the box) is actually my second Roomba. The first was the Discovery SE, one of the 400 series. The 400 was pretty good with two exceptions: 1) It would not work on rug fringe. It gets hopelessly tangled in less time that it takes to say "Wait!" The second problem with the older 400 series is that the battery dies fairly quickly if you do not use it VERY frequently. I use it once/week and by second battery is showing its age.
In any case, the 500 series is advertised to be able to deal with rug fringe, and indeed it does so reasonably well. It is also supposed to be able to do 4 rooms using these "lighthouses" that have been previously mentioned. To summarize, these are little gadgets that put out an IR (UV?) beam that the robot can see; it generally will not cross the beam, so you can use the beam to mark off rooms. After a certain amount of time, the robot sends out an RF signal to the lighthouse, and the LH lets it through into the next room. Repeat for 4 rooms if desired. Then the robot knows how to find its way back to where it started to plug itself back in to recharge. Cool.
Here are the problems with the lighthouse scheme: First, the beam gets wider very quickly. So there is a fan-shaped area in front of each lighthouse that never gets cleaned. In other words, when moving between the two rooms, the beam gets shut off but when cleaning either side, the robot will not enter the fan shaped area that the beam covers.
The second lighthouse problem is that the robot seems to use time rather than room size or complexity to decide when to move from one room to the other. In other words, for larger or more complex rooms, it simply does not cover the room before moving on to the next.
A non-lighthouse problem that you should know about with the 500 series is that I think they must be lower-slung than the 400 series. My 500 robot is not NEARLY as good is climbing up onto a rung as the 400. The 400 got stuck in fringe, but without fringe, it is nearly flawless. The 500 tends to push the rug around, bunch it up, and even get caught if it bunches up the rug in a corner that it has not way to get out of without getting back over the rug.
You MUST be sure there are no cords on the floor. For example, a floor lamp, a computer power cord, etc. My robot has gotten caught when I forget, and nearly pulled down a few items with dangling cords.
And finally, I have one room with hardwood floor and a rug about 6 or 8 inches smaller than one dimension of the room. So there is a 6+ inch "valley" between the rug and the wall. The 500 series does not clean the 6+ inch valley well at all. It goes along it, but does not pick up dirt well. I think it is probably that the brush is on the rug on one side and on the floor on the other, but is touching nothing in the middle. I end up taking a dry mop and going along the valley and pulling dirt out into an open area where the robot can get it.
Given all that, though, the robot saves a LOT of work. If there is something special happening, I would probably bring out the hand vac and get all the little corners and fans and valleys that the Roomba does not reach, but for every-day/week vacuuming, it is way easier than doing it by hand despite its problems.
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Update 3/24/2009: I've had two problems, both fixed/replaced under warranty. First, it refused to dock. It would nose up to the dock and keep pushing and pushing; then finally back up and try again. Repeat forever. Used email support (I think). After doing a bunch of tests that they requested, they sent me a new dock. All ok now.
Second, the robot started spinning in circles. Even if I used the remote to try to make it go straight, it would turn. Sounds like a drive motor on one wheel died or something. In any case, I think I phoned this time. After a bunch of tests, they had me return the robot (minus dust bin and top insert) and they replaced it.
Now it works well, and guess what? The new robot can get up on rugs much better than the old one. I don't know if there was a hardware or software change, or if my old one was defective in some subtle way that I did not know about. I guess I might give this new unit an extra star if I could.
Interestingly, my 400-series also had to be replaced once, but it has worked fine ever since. I hope that will be the case with this one as well.
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88 of 90 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I am amazed by the 550 Roomba!, October 21, 2007
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.
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55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
5th gen Cylon, they have a plan, November 28, 2007
This is our second Roomba, we had a Disco series (biglots $149, we got it on sale for $109) before this for two years. After over 600+ uses our R2 unit decided to join the angels :(
We love the roombas and they have been very useful in our house.
The 500 series irobots are about 50% as loud(not very loud) as the 400 series (discovery)and have a few cool new features. Examples are: better suction, better main brush, digital display, onboard scheduling... and a talking lady that actually tells you what the error might be, such as "please clean the main brushes". FYI, the older robots worked off "beeps" (e.g. - 1 beep after the uh-oh beep meant to clean the brushes). It should be noted that the Disco we had got stuck from time to time and could not dock with the charging station 99% of the time, however the 500 series (550 - from Costco $269) seems to always find its home and amazingly has never gotten stuck! The future is now.(har d har)
For those people who have never had a roomba, YES they really do work and no I don't have stock in the company (hmmm, are they publicly traded?). However it should be noted that our house is 80% hardwood and really does not have alot of obstacles.
Lastly, I tell you this... our robot runs everyday and still manages to find all sorts of dust bunnies and debris... it's actually kind of gross.
C & N
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