Customer Reviews

iRobot 4110 Roomba Floor-Vacuuming Robot, Sage

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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!

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.

Nearly two years after my first Roomba experience, I decided it was time to update my review. My original review is below the revised one.

Revised review:

I never want to be without a Roomba again, but this model has more than it's share of problems. If you have furry babies expect to do a lot of maintenance to keep your Roomba running. The good news is that I can say with confidence that Roomba is capable of keeping carpeted floors pretty clean if you run it at least once a day, preferably twice. The bad news is that fur really gives the unit problems which can lead to damage if not properly cared for. What I do is probably more than most people would bother with. Fur gets everywhere inside this thing - so much so that there is generally as much fur or more wrapped around the brush and in the various crevices as there is in the dust bin. If there are two parts which are not physically bonded together, you will soon find a build up of fur between them. Many of these areas are not easy to clean. I've actually removed several screws permanently to make it easier to reach in and remove fur wrapped around the various moving parts.

I bought my Roomba locally and have returned and exchanged it more times than I can remember due to worn out parts. Most of my Roombas didn't last a month. With each Roomba I learned a little more about what parts needed to be cleaned. I now have two of the same (4110 model) and I've been able to keep them in good operating condition despite running each of them twice daily. I takes me only a few minutes before each cycle to clean out the problem areas, but certainly longer than just emptying the dust bin. Still, it's faster and easier than dragging out the full-size vacuum and I run the Roombas far more frequently than I would ever vacuum the old-fashioned way.

If you have no pets I expect you would have little to no maintenance issues and it would be as simple as emptying the dust bin after each cycle. If you have more than a little pet hair odds are that you will not enjoy the maintenance and should look into the newer model which addresses many of the problems I have encountered.

Original review:

First off, I definitely have the 4110, which is featured on this page. I say that because in reading a lot of reviews it was not clear if each person had posted their review about Roomba in general or the specific model I was viewing on Amazon.

My experience has been limited, and mixed. I've had the Roomba for only three days. So far, I have run it a minimum of twice a day on each floor of our home.

We have three dogs, and lots of dog hair. It clearly has no problem picking up dog hair on hard floors like tile and pergo. Rugs are a different story. When I moved some objects that had a large amount of hair gathered around them, the roomba clearly picked up the excess hair in one cycle. If you look closely, though, there is still a lot of hair all across the carpet.

After some cycles, the dirt bin is packed full with hair and dirt, which really impressed me and made me wish it had a larger bin. After other cycles, there is hardly any hair in there at all. Mind you, I've been running it so much, there is the possibility that it's picking up less because the floors are cleaner.

I've already had hair get stuck in the sides of the brush roll, causing it to stop turning and making the Roomba stop. You definitely need to do a little maintenance after every cycle. Some of that is because the design of the brush roll is very good. It picks up a lot of hair, but most of the hair winds up stuck in the bristles.

Someone else on this page said their's ran very quite. If you compare it to a full size vacuum, then yes it is, but by any other standard it is quite loud. The motor turning the brush roll always sounds like it's struggling, too.

Despite any negative issues, I still think the Roomba is worth the money. In our home, hair clumps on the pergo flooring daily. My only hope for the Roomba was that it could keep on top of this problem, which it has. Anything else is just a bonus, and it does seem to have an affect on carpeted surfaces. Just don't expect it to replace your Dyson.

Fired mine up for the first time last night, and it worked great. I started it in the family room with fairly high pile, which was fairly clean to being with. It then went under the couch, and the lights came on indicating it detected dirt.

I then took it to the bedrooms with burbor. Same thing, detected dirt when it got under the bed.

Took it to the kitchen with linoleum floors. Worked around the table and chairs, picked up everything.

OK, enough of the fairly clean rooms. Took it onto my enclosed back porch where the dogs stay, which is ceramic tile. Needless to say, far from clean. Let "Sage" go under close supervision due to the amount of dirt and dog hair. It worked! Picked up MOST of the dog hair and dirt! I was amazed. It did not leave the room spotless, but considering the hand it was dealt, very good work.

This thing is great! Also, with the docking station, it's home is out of the way under the couch. Just press the button as you walk out the door for the day, and let it go...

I've only had this a week. However, it sure does seem to do the trick. We've had family in for holidays. Several people have been using our home... cooking, kids, warm weather tracking inside, and pets. I cannot believe how much it has picked up in our house.

I think they are very practical and my wife loves them. We have two of them and they work together to claen the floor. All of our floors are hard wood and the robots do a good job cleaning. The stair sensor will not work 100% of the time. I guess the step sensor only works if the robot is going striagt, but not so good in an angle. They are a bit loud, but we have them clean during the day so is no big deal. I recomend this product for light duty only, like wood floors.

I bought this for my old house when I had a lot of carpet. Now I have moved into a large home with hardwood floors and large rugs, I do not use it very much. It has frayed the edges of the rugs and gets caught on them. While using it at my old house, I LOVED IT, but now I don't have a a lot of use for it. Also, in our bedrooms, the carpet has large, loopy pile, it runs very slow and sounds as if it is struggling to work. I don't want to ruin the motor! Great product all in all and I would recommend (and have) to friends and family.

Moderated with realistic expectations, this is a nice little vacuum. I can set it going in one room of the house while I do something else (work, read a book, cook, or whatever) in another room. It saves me a little time, and I avoid getting the cloud of vacuum-dust in my face - a real boon for me.

I really like the fact that the Roomba consistently cleans UNDER my furniture - this makes a huge difference for people with dust mite allergies.

Before running the Roomba, I do have to do some tidying - pick up any small objects on the floor, get loose cables out of the way, move any floor carpets it may catch on - which is a bit of a hassle.

We have all hardwood floors, and a dog, along with a family full of allergic people. Before I got my Roomba this Christmas, I could sweep the house four times a day and still be chasing around little balls of black lab fur. Not to mention the various little bits of dry cracker crumbs and cereal bits that my 3 kids seem to leave a trail of wherever they travel. Now I run the Roomba once a day, and my floors are clean. Having a Roomba is like having a perfectionist maid whose only job is ridding your floors of debris. That said, you should know there are caveats before you buy:

1. Make sure your kids don't have a bunch of stuff under their beds. Mine are notorius, and I ask them before I run the Roomba, "Is your room Roomba ready?" If not I shut their door's while they make it so. If the Roomba sucks up a string or some loose paper, it will stop and make a sound that is actually beeps but sounds to me like it is saying, "Uh Oh" until you fix the problem, then it will make some beeps that I imagine are saying, "Ok, back to work."

2. Some people have complained about the lack of room for dust and debris in the bin. I haven't found that to be a problem. I empty it about every two cleanings. It is really easy, and doesn't bother me.

3. If you want to have clean window sill's you'll still need your vacuum with the crevice tool. The Roomba does not magically jump up there and suck up all the little crumbs that your children drop in the window track as they look out the window while they eat and wish that they were outside. Although it would be nice, which brings me to...

4. It isn't completely self sufficient. Before I told my husband to go ahead and buy me the Roomba for Christmas (who am I kidding, I ordered it myself and had my Mom wrap it up and write that it was from him) I debated the pro's and con's. After reading some of the reviews I told him I wasn't sure if I wanted to spend the money or not. When he asked me why I told him I wasn't sure if it was worth it, since you still have to empty it, clean the brushes, plug it in and turn it on when you want to vacuum, not to mention ridding the floor of stuff that could hurt it. He just laughed at me and said, "So what you want is something that will clean the floor, without you having to lift a finger, provide any maintainance, or expend any effort for under 200 dollars. I think you need a wife."

That said, I don't regret the purchase at all. It has really sped up my routine, because I just start it when I wake up, after I pick up any thing that it could choke on. It cleans the floor while I go about my other chores, and by the time I'm finished, it usually is too, so I empty it and guide it to the charger, no big deal.

My floors have never been cleaner, especially under the furniture. I'm so happy to not have to be worried that I'll find my 8 month old with a dust bunny in his mouth, or that an inopportune gust of air will blow a heap of hair out from under the piano right when we are having company. Really it is the best 200 dollars we have ever spent.