Customer Reviews

iRobot Roomba 4105 Intelligent Floorvac Robotic Vacuum, Sage

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I have the Roomba 4110 which looks just like this one, but is part of a special combo kit that bundles a few accessories such as aninvisible barrier unit, remote control, and the charging station which acts as an automatic home base.

Overall, this Roomba does its job fairly well, but has problems in certain situations. Will this replace your handy vacuum cleaner? Absolutely not. It does help with daily surface cleaning, which is good if you have pets that shed constantly for example. If you run the Roomba every few days or so, it will help make your regular vacuum chores easier (the bag will fill up less often, less rigorous cleaing will be required, and so on).

Below are some limitations I have discovered. Also, I have found some issues with the available accessories that you might want to consider as well.

The manufacturer isn't kidding when they suggest clearing your floors just as you would if you were to vacuum normally. See my comments below for some specific issues.

Keep in mind that this "intelligent robot" is really just a vacuum cleaner with wheels that wanders around blind until it bumps into something, which in turn causes it to turn and wander off in a new direction.

It picks up dirt, dust, and pet hair pretty well. It seems to be handy for places like under the bed which are difficult to vacuum with a normal vacuum cleaner. It also does a pretty good job of cleaning the edges of floors along walls and furniture. Over time it will cover the majority of the floor space in a given room. It is interesting to watch it wander around and do its job (and be ready to rescue it if it gets stuck).


The Roomba *will* wander all over your house if left unattended. You can buy the "electronic barrier" accessories to keep it in certain rooms, but I found it just as effective to simply shut doors or block doorways or halls with a laundry basket, child gate, or a similar barrier that you have handy around the house.

It seems to have problems with small carpets, throw rugs, or door mats that are thin and light. Ours likes to get caught up on the corners of those kind of rugs and get stuck until rescued. We have wall-to-wall carpeting in some rooms which doesn't seem to bother the Roomba. That kind of carpetting does seem to slow it down a tiny bit as it rolls across, but doesn't really bother it. I imagine "deep pile" or very thick carpeting would give it major problems though.

It can usually bump and turn its way around large tables and furniture, but if we leave small lamp tables or "TV tables" out, ours seems to get stuck between the legs and will bounce around in a circle until rescued.

Our Roomba kit came bundled with the automatic recharge unit that allows this Roomba to "find its way home" to recharge. I found this feature "cute" but not really all that useful. If I press the button sequence to command it to "go home," it could take upwards of half an hour wandering around the room trying to find the charger. It gets worse if there are any obstacles (such as a shoe or table legs) in the middle of the floor of the room with the home base chager. If the battery gets low while it is wandering around another room, there is a good chance that the battery will run out as it wanders around trying to find its way home. In my opinion, don't bother buying this accessory. Just set the Roomba on the manual charger when you are done running it.

Lastly, our bundle kit also came with a remote control unit that lets you drive the Roomba around manually. This works fairly well and is good if you want to help it navigate around some tricky furniture or corners. I have found one issue though. If you happen to use the remote in the same room as the home base charger I discuss above, our unit will randomly decide it is time to "go home," regardless of battery status or how I am trying to control it with the remote. The only way to prevent the Roomba from getting confused when I use the remote control is to unplug or cover up the home base charger so the Roomba can't "see" it. This is a pretty annoying "feature."

Update [1/20/2006]:

After about a year, the battery became weak and had to be replaced because it would not hold a charge. I have heard from others informally that the batteries last around a year before needing replacement. So in addition to my above comments, I would add that it looks like there is possibly a $50 a year "maintenance fee" in addition to the purchase price of a Roomba due to the potentially limited life expectancy of the rechargable battery.

Update [3/20/2006]

The main roller brush no longer turns due to to the gears jamming and the plastic brush assembly cracking. In the end, it looks like I got just over a year of useful service from this product.

I needed an extra "quirky", fun gift for my wife for Xmas and saw this advertised on a shopping network. I had remembered how she was in awe of it at a neighbor's house, so I ordered one. Well, a week later, the thing has barely stopped! We use it everywhere; rugs, carpet, barefloors.... the thing cleans very well and is very thorough. It won't "deep clean" or replace your regular vacuum, but it is good for a general cleaning or spot cleaning. A regular vacuum, in my opinion, should be used every couple of weeks. Where this robot really shines is under beds and furniture. We brought it to my parent's house (where my mother keeps an impeccable house) after Christmas to give them a demo and let it rip in their three bedrooms. The machine turned itself off in two of the three rooms because the bin filled up with too much dust collected from under the beds! Of course, logically, the next time those rooms are done, the dust volume won't be as much and the machine will complete it's "mission". I can't say enough good things about it. The model I bought came with two virtual "walls", six extra filters and the hanger to store and charge it on the wall. I also sprang for the self docking charger. When the Roomba gets tired or is done cleaning, it will seek out the charger and "dock" itself and begin charging for the next session. It will not leave the charger on its own! It's worth the extra 50 bucks to see this thing line itself up for docking. Kinda like the space shuttle approaching the internatinal space station!

OK. First let me say that this product is amazing and well worth the money. As an engineer, this thing has amazing obstacle avoidance software, and it navigates rooms extremely well. I put a good deal of research into this vac before I bought it - so let me tell you what you can expect, and more importantly- what not to expect. The majority of reviews that are negative are from people with defective units or people who expected something completly unrealistic.

My wife and I have about a 1500 square foot house. To really get the most out of the unit, we divide our house into 3 areas, and we move the roomba each day into whatever area we want to clean (one large bedroom, the living room, and two smaller rooms joining a bathroom). We then run it in there 2-3 times that day and move it into the next area the following day. I was suprised at how well it will navigate between rooms if you leave the doors open. Anyway, the floors are very clean - much cleaner than they ever were with an upright. The roomba really does a great job on the baseboards and under furniture. The suction is NOT as strong as an upright, but the unit will cover most areas several times - and after several times, it will pick up as much or more than most uprights. It has to hit larger pieces of debris head on to be picked up. There are some cases where the roomba may hit a small spot only once or miss a spot completely after a full 1-2 hour cylcle. However, if you run it multiple times in a day in the same place - you will have very clean floors.

If you think you will buy this vacuum, set it in the middle of your house, punch a few buttons, walk away - and your floors will forever be clean - do not buy this vacuum. This vacuum does requre that you empty the bin at least once a day. It does requre that you find out what type of items it may get stuck on the first few times you run it. It does reqire that you make sure you don't have cords or tassels in its way. It does requre that you clean the brushes every few uses. The roomba cannot do anything a normal vacuum does not. It cannot clean over tassels, it cannot magically hop over 1/2" thick area rugs, it cannot run over wires and ignore them. If you are willing to do these few things, such as "roomba-proof" the room, and clean the brushes - it is MUCH EASIER than a traditional vacuum. It will keep your floors very clean, and you will be very happy.

Let me tell you a story about why the robot is still a robot... My wife and I were watching TV and the roomba was cleaning (it's not really louder than a dust buster). We have a puppy... Well... the puppy pooped on the tile entryway while we were watching. The roomba... ran over the puppy poop and drug it all over the carpeted floor next to the entryway while smearing the poop all over itself (brushes, small places, dust bin). Needless to say - it was not pretty - and we had caught it after about 5 minutes. One and a half hours, and 150 Q-tips later - the roomba was clean, the carpet was clean - and the puppy was outside. Lesson learned - watch what the Roomba may run into. It's not completely fool-proof. It did it's job... and if I had watched the puppy - things would have gone well.

This is a great product if you don't have unrealistic expectations. It's a great product if you don't get a dud. The jetsons are not here yet - but I can honestly say my carpet and hard floors are much cleaner than they have ever been, and the unit is very easy to use. It is well worth the money.

Got a Roomba Sage (the $199 model - same as Discovery but no docking station) about a month ago and was actually quite surprised at how good a job it did cleaning up the dog's hair and getting underneath objects like night tables and beds. While the dust bin is much larger than previous models, I still found myself having to clean the unit after each vacumming to get the hair out of the brushes - in particular, the hair wound around the ends of the rollers and seemed to jam up the rollers. I guess the extra cleaning is a trade-off compared to the labor saved vs. a regular vacuum.

I had read reviews of previous models and how they often crashed "electronically". Well, after running this model 6 or 7 times - CRASH!! The charger did not fully charge the unit on the last try and it cleaned for about an hour on that charge before dying completely. No BEEPS - no lights - no NOTHING!! I had hoped Roomba had solved this particular problem - WRONG!!

I noticed someone posted similar comments for a Roomba "Red" here on Amazon. Probably just me but for $200, these things oughta last a bit more than two weeks!


Oh well...back to the ol' Electrolux :(

I bought the latest roomba model in a package that came with one virtual wall unit, the "home base" recharger, and the remote control. The model number / namining convention for roomba is a bit confusing. From what I understand, this combination is virtually identical to the "Rommba Discovery". I think the Roomba Discovery comes with a second wall unit and is a different color. From the product descriptions it appears all the current generation roombas (including Roomba Red) are essentially identical. I believe the Roomba Red may come with a battery that requires 7 hours to charge however.

In any case, if you buy a unit I suggest you consider the following:

1. Make sure it has the advanced battery pack that only requires 3 hours to charge. The roomba can only clean one or two rooms on a typical charge, so to get the house cleaned in a reasonable time you do not want to have to spend 7 hours recharging the battery.

2. The "Home Base" charger is a great idea. Make sure your unit comes with this recharging option. With the Home base, you can start roomba when you leave the house. When it's battery runs low, it will automatically returning the the charging base. If you are out for several hours, roomba will clean as much as it can, then return and be fully charged for its next assignment when you return.

3. Get at least one "vitrual wall"; two is better. With the virtual wall you can prevent roomba from wondering off into other parts of the house. Since it realistically cannot clean a whole floor in a typical home on one charge, the virtual wall is critical to ensure it completes the one or two rooms to which the virtual wall(s) confine it.

Overall, I am happy with roomba. As a minimum it gets a great "wow" factor rating when the neighbors stop by, and that is always worth something!

My main complaint regarding roomba relates to the "home base" recharging. I had hoped that roomba would return to the "home base", recharge, and then resume cleaning the foor at the point it had left off before recharging. Unfortunately, it does not do this. Instead, when it returns to the "home base", it "forgets" where it had been. As a result, if it has not completed a room before it returns to recharge, you are out of luck, and will have to start over on that room.

The only way to minimize this problem seems to be to confine roomba to a relatively small space, in my experience less than 600-700 square feet, with the virtual walls. Place roomba and its home base in the confined space, and let it throughly clean that area. It will then recharge itself, and you can repeat the process in another area of the house.

Almost all the rave reviews of roomba, whether by magazines or indiduals, are written after a short period of use. I even wrote one myself. The truth about roomba is that they do not hold up, often failing within weeks, certainly within months.

There seem to be two failings:
1) The units, made in China, have poor quality control and poor parts.
2) The units work well when clean, but vacuum cleaners are designed to work in a dirty environment. Dust gets into places that you can and cannot clean.

Irobot will replace a roomba for almost any reason during the warranty period. However, there is no repair service available after the warranty period. At this point, you either become a vacuum cleaner repairperson yourself or junk it. I suspect that a large number of the half million roombas that have been sold are now gathering dust or have been thrown away.

I think that a robotic vacuum cleaner is a great ides and wish the manufacturer Irobot well. However, the truth is that roomba never should have been sold for general use. I hope that in the future Irobot can produce a dependable version of roomba.

I got mine as a Christmas gift, and as my boyfriend's dog sheds COPIOUS amounts of hair it was definitely a needed thing around the house. We ran it every day, sometimes twice a day for 4 months without ever having an issue. We went through filters a little faster but I don't mind that so much (2 filters in 5 months) We did have to discharge and recharge the battery once in the first 6 weeks, then it was fine again.

It picked up wonderfully, and as my place is only 1100 square feet, always got the entire place before the battery ran out. My floors were amazing. You have to vacuum ocasionally to get corners and behind the couch, since the roomba can't always get everywhere, but it saves me so much time and endlessly amuses me.

Last week we had to send it in because it stopped sucking things in as effectively. It still worked, but for the price, it should work perfectly. I emailed and then called Customer Service, and both times receieved prompt curteous service. I sent the unit in for replacement, and am waiting for it now. If we get it back in the estimated timeframe (10 days) and it works like it did, I will still be thrilled with it. I'll be sure to post if I have a bad experience but so far, I love it.

I think my one complaint is the musical keys for everything that goes wrong. If they put in technology to play a different song for every thing that could go wrong, why doesn't it just SAY "Out of battery", "I'm stuck". Not a big deal, just an observation.

If you have kids and/or pets, you need a roomba! I can't not even explain what a time saver he is - with little kids I need to vaccum several times a day, and with Roomba that happens. And let's just talk about under the beds - I let Roomba go in our room and he got SO much dust from under our bed I was actually a little disgusted! The carpets upstairs look great because he goes over the same spot several times, fluffing it all up and he runs in our kitchen after every meal. He is going to replace a normal vacuum, there will still be times when you'll need one, but I doubt I'll be using it more than a few times a month.

And let's face it - it's fun! The whole family enjoys watching him go. We got a kit with the home base and remote, which are great to have. When he's done, he drives himself home and recharges. Very handy, he's always ready to go.

I love my Roomba!

I bought Roomba for my mother for Christmas. She is an animal lover with allergies, so Roomba seemed like an ideal way to keep the fur under control. Roomba worked wonderfully at sucking up dust and pet hair. The Spot feature was wonderful for targetting an area, the Max function was great for letting it thoroughly clean a large room. Best of all, it was so quiet that she could let it run in the living room while still watching TV. With 4 cats and 2 dogs, she ran it every other day and was finally able to keep up with the vacuuming.

However, after a month of this heavy use it stopped sucking. The Roomba would run, but not clean. The good news is that the iRobot website had plenty of easy to use troubleshooting ideas. When that didn't work, a quick call to customer service resolved the problem: after we send back a part with the serial number on it, they will replace the entire unit! The customer service rep. assured me that the defect was unusual and from a defect in a small plastic part. With a company that stands behind its products this way, I would not hesitate to recommend it to a friend.

I've now had my Roomba for over a year. Here's my bottom line:

1--it is great on pet hair. It does a better job than either of my two vaccuums, and almost as good a job as my shampooer.

2-- it gets stuck very easily. Sometimes it even gets stuck up on a wall that it's tried to climb. I've learned not to let it into odd shaped areas, niches or side areas where I know it won't figure out how to get out. Repositioning is not hard, of course, but it's a pain to walk in a room you were hoping to be clean only to find that it got stuck and needs to start over.

3--the battery doesn't last very long. It will be worn out before it finishes 1 room and will take at least 6 hours to re-charge. It really takes 2 full charges to get a living room or master bedroom area.

4--it doesn't pick up a lot of dust. It mostly picks up surface hair, lint, bits of gravel, etc.

5--you have to clean it every time. The manufacturer says to clean it after very 8-10 uses, but that's impossible. If you don't clean it every time, it will do a terrible job the next time. And if it gets too clogged, it gets stuck and can't move.

I still use it frequently, but not as often as I used to.