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421 of 422 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Know what you're getting, September 5, 2006
This review is from: iRobot 4110 Roomba Floor-Vacuuming Robot, Sage (Kitchen)
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. On a side note - all of the units have the same capabilities. So I would recommend that you buy a slightly cheaper unit like this one to test it out. If you really like it, then buy the schduler seperately. The high-end vacuum is no different than the low end one. The only exception is the red - which doesn't have "max" clean mode. This particular package is very good because it has the home base, which is very useful. You can let it run while you are gone, and it will charge on it's own when it's done. I did not find the remote to be useful. If I want the roomba to clean in a specific place, I pick it up and carry it there. You cannot use the remote to drive the roomba onto the charger, and the instructions are pretty clear about that. So, I do think it is a useless component.
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 smaller 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 while we are gone during the day in the heavily travelled areas once a day and in the less travelled areas once a week. We thought we'd use it more, but honestly, the floors have been so clean - there is no need to run it in an area more than once a 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. It picks up dust and pet hair very well. 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 room - you will have very clean floors very quickly. It takes the Roomba a few runs to reach an "equilibrium" where it's picking up about the same amount of dirt each run. But expect it to pick up a lot of dust and dirt the first few runs.
Let me tell you what not to expect of the Roomba. 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 if you use it on carpet. 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 and it can't do everything on it's own... 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.
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87 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
not a complete miracle, but very close, December 29, 2006
This review is from: iRobot 4110 Roomba Floor-Vacuuming Robot, Sage (Kitchen)
The first time I used the roomba, I was amazed. Be prepared to let it spend plenty of time on your floor, and babysit it the first time you use it to see how it works. It's entertaining to watch! I was impressed at how it spun in a circle around the legs of my dining room table and coffee table. Our living room has an area rug and hardwood floors, and the roomba detected the difference and spent more time on the rug. The sound of it changed, too, from hard floor to carpet. It will hug the edges of a room sometimes, and kind of "scoot" along them. Our living room was very dirty (we have 5 cats), so we emptied it out partway through the cleaning. We plan on using the roomba often to keep the cat hair down. My housecleaning just got a lot easier. All hail the Roomba!
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63 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I love it, November 27, 2005
This review is from: iRobot 4110 Roomba Floor-Vacuuming Robot, Sage (Kitchen)
I just got a model 4110 today and the first time convinced me that these things really work. This thing is great and I wish I bought one years ago. I'm runnning it for the second time as I write this.
I'm a single guy and I am not Felix Unger....the place is cluttered. To complicate things, my apartment's kitchen has a ton of odds and ends that are getting sold/given away/donated tomorrow so it's an obstacle course.
This thing is a lot quieter than I thought it would be. It's not whisper quiet but quiet enough that it can barely be heard in the apartment downstairs. Here it is 11:30 at night and I'm running it without worrying about ticking off my neighbor.
It navigates really well. To put it simply, tt more or less bumps into things then turns and goes somewhere else but you can tell the Roomba's programming just isn't that simple. I was amazed while watching it work its way around a three-legged guitar stand. It got between all the legs. The iRobot website has a video representation of the path of a Roomba and I'll say my Roomba did what i saw in the video.
It found its way into the maze of boxes, chairs and stuff in my kitchen and actually found its way out. It also navigated the clutter of guitar stands, cables, an amp or two....to say nothing of navigating around the coffee table and couch. It got hung up when it crawled up on a coiled up guitar cable but I can't blame the Roomba for that.
It only stopped moving - sort of - in one place in my apartment and that's where the carpet meets the tile of the kitchen and one part of that joint is frayed. That got stuck a little in the brushes but the Roomba figured out it had a problem and worked its way loose in about 20 seconds. It scooted back out of the area via a different place and went back to carpet duty. It did a pretty good job of cleaning the tile floor but there's too much crap in there right now to judge the Roomba on it. It cleaned what it could reach.
It went under and around the bird cage and cleaned up all the seed shells that my bird dumped, including sunflower shells (the bird seems to enjoy watching the Roomba). I get two new kittens in a few weeks and can't wait to see how they react (they'd better learn to get used to it).
I'm not sure if it's as good as a regular vacuum cleaner or not but I didn't think it would do nearly as good a job as it does. A key point, I *think*, is that it doesn't have to do as good a job as my super sucker expensive vacuum since running the regular vac is a pain in the neck. Running the Roomba is "fire and forget" so I'll be using it far more than my normal vacuum.
The auto dirt sensor thing works. When the Roomba got to the bird cage (and all the seed shells) I saw a blue LED come on and it 'went to town' in that area. It did that a few other times as well.
I was about to say that it ended up missing a spot about a foot wide but it just went over that area twice.
I wanted to see how quickly it would find the home base so I leaned over and pressed the 'go home' buttons (press CLEAN and SPOT simultaneously). It seemed to get a little confused because it had to navigate around several things to get home but it finally made it in about 3 minutes...vacuuming all the way. It was definitely doing some different navigation thinking than during normal cleaning.
The spot mode is pretty cool but I didn't have much of a reason to use it other than to see how it worked - the dirt sensor kicks it into spot mode when it finds a dirty area. In spot mode it turns in a tight spiral and slowly moves away from center to hit that area hard.
I didn't test the virtual wall unit so I can't say anything about it. I would never bother to pay for one - I have no need to block off any area in my place.
All in all I have to give this Roomba 5 stars. It's not a perfect vacuum cleaner but it works really well. It didn't quite get all of the bird seed off the floor but a 'dustbuster' picked up the few pieces the Roomba didn't. I only plan on using my regular super sucker expensive vac for vacuuming right before I clean the carpets.
This Roomba is great and I recommend it to anyone interested. I had been thinking about buying one for a few years and finally bought one. If you're close to buying one but aren't sure, go buy one.
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