Customer Reviews

iRobot Roomba 550 / 551 AeroVac Technology Vacuum Cleaning Robot with On-Board Scheduling, 2 Extra Filters, 2 Virtual Walls, & 2 Extra Bristle Brushes

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I have had Roomba's for years... They do require a little maintenance (Brush cleaning, cleaning the pet hair from the ends of the rollers) but overall they are pretty great. Cleaning the brushes is no big deal, I do it when I empty the bin. It takes a minute or two to empty the bin and clean the brushes, and it's ready to go.

We have two pugs, and they shed constantly. The 500 series Roomba's are a pretty huge improvement in design (I am a mechanical design engineer) They have redesigned the roomba to make everything modular, so if something does wear out, it is very easy to replace. My old Roomba was the first model with the scheduling ability, and I did have to replace a few things. I had to replace some transmission parts, and the batteries. Of course, I had to replace the brushes and filters many times over the years. I upgraded the batteries to give it more time to vaccuum, but the 550 seems to be pretty great right out of the box. It can run for almost two hours sometimes, depending on how big the space is I want it to vaccuum. It is also much easier to program than the old Roomba, it took just a couple of minutes and you program it right on the Roomba itself.

The Roomba 550 is also much quieter than the old Roomba was... MUCH QUIETER! It slows down before it bumps into things and the vaccuum itself is not bad. That was the biggest improvement I saw initially, with battery life and ease of replacing parts coming in right after that... (It's nice that the parts are easier to replace, time will tell how useful that is... Hopefully, it won't need much beyond brushes and filters. :-0 )

The virtual walls are also improved... They only take 2 C cell batteries, and the batteries seem to last longer. On my old Roomba, you had to schedule the virtual walls as well as the Roomba using the remote, and it was a little clunky. The new virtual walls don't require any programming. The only thing that has ever malfunctioned with the virtual walls is the dogs have apparently played with them and they occasionally are not pointing in the right direction... It is also not as obvious as they used to be regarding which side is the front... I have found the roomba cleaning the room I wanted it to stay out of because the Virtual wall was aimed at the doorjam instead of across the doorway; apparently it got kicked and whoever set it back got it backwards.

The Roomba 550 is $250 at Costco, and if the thing does ever break, you can return it to Costco for a replacement or your money back. (One of the little perks of membership, if you are not satisfied they will take it back fairly indefinitely...):-)
That is the primary focus of this review... Why would you pay over $315 with shipping plus tax at whatever your states rate is?

I think the Roomba is a pretty cool little device, and I recommend that people who want to keep their house vaccuumed all the time buy it... But I would recommend buying it at Costco.

FIRST, if you haven't already, sign up for the Gold Box Deal email alerts.

I have no carpet whatsoever in my house. For reasons I won't go into other than to say you can never get the nasty stuff completely clean no matter how many times you vacuum and shampoo, I hate it. I have four cats, one very messy African Grey parrot and two elementary aged children so, naturally, I could sweep or vacuum every room in the house three times a day. Being an extremely busy person and wanting to do everything except sweep, a robotic vacuum cleaner sounded like manna from heaven.

I have drooled over the Roomba for a long while and have researched it endlessly. A co-worker has one and just loves it. Because of the price, though, I thought it was out of my reach until one day a couple of weeks ago when I checked my email. There it was---the Roomba was a Gold Box Deal and it was more than half off!!! Oh, yeah! Picturing the Roomba slowly rotating on a pedestal bathed in bright light my fingers flew across the keyboard as I rushed to order mine before they ran out or the deal closed. I'll admit that afterwards I had a little buyer's guilt. I could buy a whole lot of brooms for $179. When it arrived (lickity-split and with free shipping thanks to my Amazon Prime membership) I looked at the box a while and contemplated sending it back. Then I thought that I'd give it a test drive just once since I'd gone to the huge trouble of ordering it. (Just kidding!) I took it and the charging station out of the box. After giving the manuals a cursory glance I plugged in the charging station in an out of the way but Roomba accessable area. Out of curiosity I tried to get the on board demo to start and ended up turning it on to vacuum by accident (apparently it comes at least partially charged). Off it went with me, the children, and the cats sitting on the couch watching in awe (OK, maybe the cats were looking more with suspicion).

The Roomba is unreal. You can see it working out where everything was in the room. It would bump into something and turn a little bit then go again bumping along until it figured out what was in front of it. As it went by something straight it would hug the edge and vacuum away. Table legs were not a problem either. The Roomba would bump them and then vacuum in a circle hugging all the way around the table leg. The final test was whether it would get stuck and force me to constantly come to its rescue which would defeat its purpose. So I watched in anticipation as it approached the birdcage. (Did I mention I have a really messy parrot?) I want to note here that the cage had a case of soft drinks sitting a little off to one side. First it bumped a leg then adjusted its position and under the cage it went. As with the table legs it would move around bumping and adjusting as it vacuumed. Then came the make or break challenge. It scooted out from under the cage through two cage legs that were just wide enough for the Roomba to get through and bumped into the case of soft drinks. I could see that there wasn't enough space for it to just turn and go the other way. Surely it was stuck. Not so! I watched while it turned and bumped several times until it got itself lined up just right and went right back through the same narrow cage legs and then continued about its way. Test passed with flying colors--it was a keeper. The docking function is totally cool as is the cheerful tone it gives when you need to empty the dirt cup. I hate to admit this but because it goes over the floor so many times it does a better job of getting all the dirt up than I do.

Now after a week of using the Roomba its become a member of the family. I'll sheepishly admit that I talk to it as it works. Once, when I walked into its path as it was vacuuming its little heart out, I stopped and said, "Excuse me." which is completely ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as me chasing it down to get the magazine it had sucked onto and was dragging across the floor and saying, "Give me that back!!"

Final analysis: The Roomba is an innovation comparable to the dishwasher and even the washing machine. I can easily see a future where everyone has one or more of them at work in their homes. It is yet another way to multitask in our busy lives. I couldn't recommend it more highly.

You know, the makers of the Roomba also have a robot to mop your floors. Hmmmm

First the good. It probably works better than your current vacumn cleaner. It really does vacumn well. We have a vacation rental home that is vacumned every two days. The Roomba made it even cleaner. Customer support is good, while the vacumn is under warrenty. Once its out of warrenty, it is out of warrenty. I would buy it with a credit card that doubles the warrenty. Will discuss further on the ugly section.

You do have to "set-up" your house for the vacumn. But it is no big deal. It will stick under some cabinets. Placing a piece of wood solves that problem. Fine cords need to be picked up, before the vacumn does it for you. Some furniture legs that are about 3/4 inch high will high center the machine and stop it dead in its tracks. It will vacumn about 800 sq. feet on a charge fairly well. We quit using the Guards after one or two uses and just shut doors or blocked off doorways.

The bad. This vacumn cleaner generation is equivalent to the Model T version of the automobile. You do have to be involved in the care and feeding of your Roomba. Maintenance is on-going and will probably include partial disassembly. It comes with a charger base that the Roomba returns to after each cleaning and recharges. The scheduler will also restart it automatically on the program you set. This seems like a neat feature, but to keep the Roomba running you need to clean it AFTER EVERY use. So the feature loses quite a bit of its attraction.

Do NOT throw away your old vacumn cleaner! To keep the Roomba running you really need to vacumn it after every use. So you need to vacumn the vacumn!!

Most problems with the Roomba and their finally death rattle is related to the gear box on the side of the brush compartment. It gets hair and dust in there and clogs up the gears. The Roomba gives you an audible warning to clean your brushes. If your brushes are clean this usually means your gear box is jammed. There are instructions on the internet on how to clean the gear box. The gear box could be improved by using metal bearings and better seals. This is really where the Model T analogy comes in. You take a screwdriver and take things apart and clean them. The good news is that under heavy use the gear box probably will need cleaning after six months or so. The first time it happened to us IROBOT repaced the unit. The second time after the warrenty expired we were on our own.

The ugly. They do not last forever. We ended up having a life of 18 months per vacumn even with daily maintenance. Granted we ran the vacumn every other day and we have DOGS . Long hair of any type is hard on the Roomba's. What convinced us to purchase were all the reviews of people that have dogs. It does keep your house much cleaner. So your basically looking at the cost of the unit for about 18 months until replacement. Expensive, and I bet you still have a 10 year plus vacumn laying around. Well, your Roomba will not live that long.

So why the five stars? It works as a vacumn and well. If you have a dog or cats it will keep your house much cleaner especially if you hate vacuming. For some reason cleaning the Roomba is much easier than dragging the vacumn all over the house vacuming. You save some time, but not as much as you thought you would. But the house is much cleaner!! Worth the money is our case. It might not be in your situation.

They came out with a new product geared towards pets. Not sure how effective that is, but if the gear box is not better sealed or tougher it would not make much difference.

What we would like is a Roomba that needs cleaning only once a week and lasts ten years. It might be a few years for that though.

The Roomba is as close to the Jetson's house cleaner as we are going to get in 2009/2010. It won't replace Hazel or an undocumented housekeeper, but it will pick up most light debris off the floor. You will be satisfied if you do not demand fastidious housecleaning. No, it won't pick up all the hair off the floor from a shedding dog or an aging husband, but it is excellent at capturing those pesky dust bunnies. The technology inside the crazy critter is more impressive than its cleaning prowess. The thing docks itself for recharging like a shuttle docking with the space station. How cool is that? The two electronic lighthouse/invisible walls included in the package either guide or block the machine's entry into an adjoining room. Possibly the most impressive feature of the Roomba is its low profile that cleans underneath the dining room table without having to move all the chairs. Roomba is simple to use and a lot of fun for those with pets as long as you can keep them from sending Roomba to that big carpet in the sky.

I read plenty of reviews and did a lot of research before buying my iRobot Roomba 550 from Costco. There seemed to be a mixed bag of reviews from consumers who either hated the Roomba, or absolutely loved it. I fit into the latter group.

I live in a 700 square foot apartment that has a tendency to get very dusty. Dust is visible on the floors and furniture after only a few days. I don't own any pets, so pet hair was never a problem. My main objective in buying a Roomba was to reduce the number of times I had to take out my Dyson stowaway to get rid of the dust.

Getting started with the Roomba is very easy. You simply charge it overnight, and then press the Clean button. The real challenge is keeping the unit clean. You have to empty out the dirt bin and ensure the brushes/wheels are free of hair and obstructions. If you don't, the robot will likely break down quickly and can potentially damage your floors and furniture.

The very next morning the Roomba cleaned all 700 square feet of my apartment for over an hour. When I came home from work I found the Roomba parked in its base, fully charged for its next go-around. It doesn't have problems with the cords I have along the baseboards. It does get caught up in it, but it manages to wiggle itself free. It knows when it can't fit under something like a floor heater or a nightstand, but it still spins around trying to get as much dust from underneath using the side brushes. After a few cleaning cycles, my floors were noticeably cleaner and dust-free, and all I had to do was spend the five to empty out the bin and clean the brush.

The Roomba spends about 25 minutes in an average-sized room cleaning the same areas over and over again. It won't pick everything up in its first few passes and it doesn't have the strongest suction power, but the fact that it makes multiple passes ensures that the floors get cleaned.

While maintaining the Roomba seems to be a chore, I compare it to taking out the trash once or twice a week. The time it takes me to clean out the Roomba is about the same as it takes to get my Dyson, unpack it for vacuuming, and pack it up again.

The Roomba is perfect for people who want to keep their floors dirt and dust-free on a regular basis. It's not a vacuum replacement; it's more of a complement to your current vacuum. Whether or not it's good value for the price is entirely up to you. Personally, I hate dusty floors and I like saving time as much as possible. The Roomba satisfies both of these points.

If you're looking for a completely hassle-free, low input solution, the Roomba won't suit your needs. Like any machine, you have to maintain it to keep it running smoothly.

I picked up the Roomba 550 a week ago being that in our household (a one bedroom apt. less than 1000sq ft.) and all hardwood floors was being vacuumed by my Fiance everyday. To the extend of her cleaning i thought this would not only save us time but headache as well!

This is our first Roomba and product made by iRobot and i would definitely recommend it to anyone with hardwood floors, (we don't have carpet so that review is N/A). The quality of the robot is spot on and they really have thought of everything with the new design and functionality. Whats even better is in the box they have included some great maintenance items to keep your robot running smoothly (and let me tell you they are really made perfectly for this device - the brush cleaner and finger comb/hair razor blade contraption).

Now onto the product doing its job cleaning! It works great! I will say for hardwood floors this thing is a must, it hits all the corners and than some and goes back and forth in your area for what seems like hours - than cleverly goes back to its home and re-charges itself, it couldn't be easier! Some things to note though after a week of use (set on the digital schedule to clean once a day at 12pm lunch time).

1. The 3 arm brush works nicely for corners etc. but when it comes to a spill of food or dirt it tends to sweep in all over the place and the robot will not pick it up unless it goes directly over the spill in the center portion of the device (where the large spinning brushes are)

2. The robot has a problem with paper, it will jam the machine instantaneously, and a red light will show up and shut her down, this is not small bits of paper but sheets of paper or in our case the puppy training pads we had on the floor for our new dog -

3. The new slow down bumper technique works 75% of the time and the other 25% it will slam into an object like a coffee table or pot etc. its not a major problem and its part of the design as that tells the robot to change direction but it should slow down to all obstacles and not just some - you will get scuffs esp. on the black bumper from this -

4. Weekly cleaning of the underside is an absolute must, but is very easy, with the supplied cleaning tools its a 5 minute fix and all pieces come out very easy when the unit is flipped over, only the sweeper brush needs a screwdriver to swap out -

Now onto the good!

1. Picks up an amazing amount of material you had no idea was even on your floors - and it always seems to have a large dust bunny in its filter -

2. Cleaning the unit is very easy, the bin is easy to clean as are the filters and brushes as weekly maintenance (it even comes with 2 extra large brushes for the center, and 2 paper filers for the bin)

3. The schedule of the device going out on its own and cleaning its amazing! The re-charging of the device is even more amazing, as when we get home the thing not only cleaned but is re-charging itself for the next day -

4. Yes its somewhat noisy but what vacuum isn't this is neither good or bad imop -

While this review seems somewhat weighted with bad over good its actually very neutral which i consider a good thing, all electronics need cleaning and being this is a vacuum you would have to already know it needs occasional love, as for the longevity of the machine well that will be the million dollar question and i suggest you go to your local (C big box store) and buy this for $40 cheaper which comes with a very nice warranty no questions asked -

Overall this machine will save you time and energy and keep your hardwoods clean of dust of all sizes, will it replace your upright, no, as you will need that for furniture etc. but this robot has cut down on our cleaning big time and works great!

**UPDATE** December 9th, 2010 ***

This thing is great! One month in and wow does this thing find dirt, debris, and hair (lots of hair) - I changed out one of the paper filters already (those don't seem to last unless your constantly cleaning them off, the dust adheres to them big time) and now this one seems to be getting filthy already -

Also I realized that you have to really clean this unit out every 3-5 cleanings, i think every other is to obsessive but it prob. will help the robot last longer. Aside from the regular cleaning i do (bristle brush, rubber brush, bearings on both, sweeper brush and underside and obviously the vacuum bin, i realized you can take apart much more and its very very easy. I was plagued this week with the front roller ball that guides the machine with hair on the sides actual ball. I couldn't figure it out how to clean the thing until i realized irobot makes it very easy to clean the entire robot! Just pull up the rollerball and pull out the ball from the holder - wow was there alot of hair trapped on the sides -

So in closing this thing picks up alot of things you don't even see and the fact that it runs while we are all at work is amazing! Now regular vacuuming with an upright is lessened to monthly (like the furniture etc. ). A bit of advice for keeping your robot running smoothly is maintenance. Don't be afraid to really take the thing apart, and get in there ... this unit is pretty bullet proof but the hair builds up and binds in the same spots weekly so take care to remove it or it will jam the machine one day - other than that this things is great and saves us weekly headaches of vacuuming (one thing less to do during the week). Haven't tried the virtual walls but i will say that if you have an open bottom coffee table with a lip around the bottom the robot may get stuck inside, happened a couple times so far but i never expected it to be an off roader machine - most of the time it figures out how to get out -

**Remember when ordering replacement filters, this robot takes the AERO-VAC blue filters NOT the yellow flat ones, they are only available on irobot.com ... ***

4.5/5 Stars - (i rarely give 5) as it needs to last at least a year for me to be super-satisfied!

This unit is equipped with a special "AeroVac dirt bin" and requires special filters. They are NOT the ones pictured in the "Frequently Bought Together" section of Amazon's web page. If you get a maintenance kit, be sure that it has the right kind of filters too. Many people who have the AeroVac bin (you can buy it as an accessory from iRobot) think that it is better than the standard bin, especially if you have pets.

Here is iRobot's site for the right filter:[...]

I love the vacuum, but like all vacuums it breaks down. When it does break, YOU CANNOT GET IT FIXED! There are no local repair shops. Irobot offers warranty service that requires you to ship the item to an authorized repair center... EXCEPT... there ARE NO REPAIR CENTERS! You have to do all repairs yourself with parts they send you based on a telephone diagnosis. I also bought the add on warranty which is even worse than the Irobot manufacturers warranty. The Amazon add on warranty by "NEW" charges you to ship the item to their repair facility and then just doesn't repair it at all and sends it right back to you. They will do this a total of three times hoping you give up. If you beg plead threaten and demand that they satisfy the warranty, they just give you your money back and refuse to do the repair. Great vacuum but there is NO SUPPORT, NO SERVICE!

I LOVE it. We love it so much we bought two, one for upstairs and one for downstairs. We have carpet, rugs, tile and hardwood (not all in the same room, that would be wierd). Roomba has no problem on any of those surfaces. We have pets and it is wonderful to not have to use the stick vac every day. Is it perfect? No, but neither was my stick vac. What is perfect is that it picks up the majority of pet hair and if it misses something today it will probably get it tomorrow. After running it every day for 2 weeks the only pet hair I see is on the sofa's, so I still have to lint-roll. If only roomba could climb... Sure, it gets stuck under my coffee table sometimes. Big deal. I move it a bit and hit the start button again. It's truly not that taxing.

I debated whether or not to buy an expensive Dyson (roughly $800-$1000) or the Roomba. Best decision ever. I would still have had to push the Dyson around every day for 30 minutes, plus lug it up and down the stairs. I got two Roomba's ([...]) so it was still cheaper than one Dyson AND most importantly, it does the cleaning without me. AWESOME!

I've had the roomba since August and it is the best money I have spent in a while! My dog sheds A LOT and before the roomba, I would have to swiffer every other day if not every day just so that my house did not look nasty. Ask me when the last time I swiffered after getting the roomba and I cannot tell you.

I have it set up just downstairs where it is all hardwoods and it works great! I would not say that it is 100% perfect, but since we run it everyday, it picks up what it might have missed the day before. I cannot say if it works on carpet because we don't use it on that; it does work pretty well on low pile rugs.

It took us a few tried to set up the lighthouses to our configuration of furniture.

I would recommend this to anyone who has pets....absolutely worth every penny!