Customer Reviews

iRobot Roomba 4210 Discovery Vacuuming Robot, White

5 star:		(318)
4 star:		(124)
3 star:		(46)
2 star:		(57)
1 star:		(87)

 

 

I've been a Roomba user for almost two years, so I know the benefits of a little automated vacuum. However we had three primary complaints that iRobot has addressed in this new version:

1. Inconvenience of coming home to a dead battery
2. Difficult to clean
3. Noisy
4. Could not focus on dirtier areas; only cleaned randomly.

1. We have gotten into the habit of, as we are walking out the door, putting the Roomba to work. However, we always used to have the problem of coming home to Roomba with a dead battery (inevitably it would die in the worst spots, like under our bed just out of reach). Then we would have to plug him in to our charger (which we had to shell out sixty bucks for) and wait for two hours to use him again. That was complaint one for the old version.

iRobot has fixed the battery issue on the Discovery. The fast charger (which we had to pay for before) is now built in. Secondly, and what has proven to be my favorite new feature of the new Roomba, the little vacuum automatically finds his docking station when his battery is about dead. I do have two recommendations on this note, however. The docking station appears to work just like a virtual wall, Roomba doesn't know that it is there unless it crosses its path, so you make sure that it is in a wide open room where Roomba is sure to cross its path in its waning minutes of power. Secondly, now you have to be extra sure to Roomba-proof the room so that he doesn't get stuck. If he's stuck he won't be able to find his way back to the charger.

2. The new version has gotten much easier to clean, especially the main brush. All the pieces now pop in and out of place easier and there are no screws to remove any of the pieces that need cleaning. This has proven to be a huge benefit.

3. The Discovery is noticeably quieter than the older versions, especially on tile surfaces.

4. The new line of Roomba Floorvacs comes with sensors that can detect dirt. That was the first thing we tested when we got our Discovery. I had pieces of Styrofoam broken into small pieces and it detected it and automatically performed a spot clean on that area. Then I put him in the kitchen where I had accidentally dumped a bag of cereal on the floor and then managed to step on it...Roomba focused on that area and cleaned up every little crumb.

I love my Roomba. I 100% recommend that you get one. [...] I bought mine at a local store in the mall and had to return my Pro Elite version 4 times before I finally got one that wasn't buggy. Then, under the warrantee, after my fourth one went on the fritz I was able to upgrade to the Discovery for free. So far after 2 weeks, the Discovery has been bug-free.

Nevertheless, because of the many issues that I have had in the past, and as with any new and emerging technology, buy it where you can purchase an extended warrantee and easily return defective devices.

Notwithstanding, buy a Roomba. Even though my wife and I never have time to clean our floors have been spotless for the last two years.

I hope this helps.

This was a pretty hard purchase for me. The reasons were 1) It was a pretty expensive item and 2) The reviews for this product were very extreme--from high praise to the pits. (See previous review about the person who returned *four* of them. Hard to believe, actually.) But the promise of an automated robot that would do the daily vacuuming was too much to turn down and I decided to take a chance on the Roomba Discovery. The odds were in my favor as the store I purchased it from offered a 60-day money back guarantee. If it didn't work, no problem.

I unpacked the Roomba Discovery and found these items packed with it: the Roomba, battery pack, charger, two infra-red "wall" devices, a cleaning utility brush, a couple of extra air filters, a wall mount kit, the home charging base, a remote control and associated manuals, advertisements and offers.

The Roomba Discovery and all its contents were fimrly and snuggly packed inside their foam enclosures. After reading the manual, (yes, its a good idea to read the manual), I plugged the Roomba into its home base charger and took it for its first test run around the house the next day. An insert note says that the Roomba needs a 16 hour uninterupted charging cycle the first time around, so if you are in a hurry to clean your house, you'll have to wait at least a day before you can. The Roomba is easy to use and uncomplicated even for a non-techie to use. There are four control buttons on the top of the unit which allows you to turn it on, set it to "clean" mode, another to "max" mode, and one other button to "spot" mode. Each one of these commands tells the Roomba how to clean. Clean is the generic command that allows the robot to freely roam, while the max mode tells the device to clean till it runs out of power. The spot mode allows for the cleaning of a small area.

Alright, how does it do? My first test was to set the Roomba Discovery to "clean" mode. It promtly made a few musical notes to let me know it was ok, and started on its mission to clean my house. To be perfectly frank, I did not have very high expectations for the machine. But as the unit bumped and moved along, I was quite amazed at the cleaning power of the Roomba. It was able to pick up a ton of dog hair, debris, and dirt that would challenge most uprights. The onboard computer was able to get the Roomba out of small corners and various other traps around the house and proved to be a very intelligent little robot. The Roomba was able to work continuously for about an hour and a half before it started its run for the self charging station. The power button alerts you to the status of charge of the Roomba--green means full charge, yellow means less than half, and red means almost empty. The Roomba determines if it needs to dock with its station, depending on the state of charge it is in. As the unit started to go down in charge, it started towards the docking-charging station, and out of a scene from NASA, the Roomba homed in on the power station, docked succesfully and started to charge itself. Amazing.

The Roomba Discovery does a fantastic job of picking up dog hair, which was one of the primary reasons for us getting an automated vaccum robot. The daily chore of doing this was pretty time consuming and the Roomba scores an A+ for its ability to reach areas that an upright couldn't possiblty reach. We were all surprised and quite pleased with how the Roomba works. The reason why the Roomba Discovery didnt garner a perfect "5" (I'll give it a 4.5) was due to a few minor issues. First, while the Roomba does a great job of picking up dirt, debris and dog hair, the brushes on the Roomba need to be cleaned of all the wrapped animal hair and fibers occassionally. The second issue revolves around the battery life. While you can get up to 120 minutes on a flat hard surface, if you have lots of carpets,(like we do), the Roomba will run out of gas in about an hour and a half. The third issue is price point. The Roomba will cost you as much as some uprights, if not more. This issue may be one of the primary reasons why many, and until recently, myself, have held off on purchasing the unit.

The Roomba Discovery is easy to use, highly efficient in its vacuuming chores and will save you untold hours of time. If you save up for one and decide to make the leap, just make sure you buy it from a dealer which offers you a money back guarentee. As for the person who had to return four Roomba units, the cause is probably user error, more than anything else. Most probably, the person had thick shag carpets which got caught in the Roomba's brushes. As with any product, it pays to read the manual first.

I've been a Roomba user for almost two years, so I know the benefits of a little automated vacuum. However we had three primary complaints that iRobot has addressed in this new version:

1. Inconvenience of coming home to a dead battery
2. Difficult to clean
3. Noisy
4. Could not focus on dirtier areas; only cleaned randomly.

1. We have gotten into the habit of, as we are walking out the door, putting the Roomba to work. However, we always used to have the problem of coming home to Roomba with a dead battery (inevitably it would die in the worst spots, like under our bed just out of reach). Then we would have to plug him in to our charger (which we had to shell out sixty bucks for) and wait for two hours to use him again. That was complaint one for the old version.

iRobot has fixed the battery issue on the Discovery. The fast charger (which we had to pay for before) is now built in. Secondly, and what has proven to be my favorite new feature of the new Roomba, the little vacuum automatically finds his docking station when his battery is about dead. I do have two recommendations on this note, however. The docking station appears to work just like a virtual wall, Roomba doesn't know that it is there unless it crosses its path, so you make sure that it is in a wide open room where Roomba is sure to cross its path in its waning minutes of power. Secondly, now you have to be extra sure to Roomba-proof the room so that he doesn't get stuck. If he's stuck he won't be able to find his way back to the charger.

2. The new version has gotten much easier to clean, especially the main brush. All the pieces now pop in and out of place easier and there are no screws to remove any of the pieces that need cleaning. This has proven to be a huge benefit.

3. The Discovery is noticeably quieter than the older versions, especially on tile surfaces.

4. The new line of Roomba Floorvacs comes with sensors that can detect dirt. That was the first thing we tested when we got our Discovery. I had pieces of Styrofoam broken into small pieces and it detected it and automatically performed a spot clean on that area. Then I put him in the kitchen where I had accidentally dumped a bag of cereal on the floor and then managed to step on it...Roomba focused on that area and cleaned up every little crumb.

I love my Roomba. I 100% recommend that you get one. However, as much as I love Amazon, I do not recommend you buy Roomba online, unless you do it right here where you can return it to local Sharper Images. I bought mine at a local Sharper Image store in the mall and had to return my Pro Elite version 4 times before I finally got one that wasn't buggy. Then, under the warrantee, after my fourth one went on the fritz I was able to upgrade to the Discovery for free. After 2 months, the Discovery has been bug-free thus far.

Nevertheless, because of the many issues that I have had in the past, and as with any new and emerging technology, buy it where you can purchase an extended warrantee and easily return defective devices...like Sharper Image.

Notwithstanding, buy a Roomba. Even though my wife and I never have time to clean our floors have been spotless for the last two years.

I hope this helps.

It's very easy to set up: I just plugged in the battery and the charger, pressed the buttons like the little instruction guide told me, and it hopped on there and started charging.

I let the Roomba wander around for a half hour this morning, and aside from a horrible mishap with my bath mat it did well. Although somewhere inside its little chipular head there is a rhyme and reason to its journey, I could not discern it.

Sometimes it gets stuck, and I just keep an ear out to hear if it needs help. It spent a good two minutes trying to hump a floor lamp, but like an errant cat I swatted at its bumper and it was discouraged.

It's not as loud or as powerful as I thought it might be--it's a different kind of vacuuming. It's basically a sort of robust electric sweeper with a brain. It sometimes has trouble with rug tassels and edges. The acrylic rugs, which are light, peel up off the floor easily and obstruct. The wool rugs are heavier and less trouble.

If you let it wander long enough, it do cover the whole place, though. And that is its big strength.

So does it clean? At first I would have said "so-so," but then I pick it up and go to empty the dirt hopper. Ohmigod. There's cat fur in there from the Jurassic period. I think the big selling point here is coverage--your big human brain is not really built for the mindless repetition of going over and over and over the floor, covering nook and cranny after nook and cranny. Roomba, on the other hand, is completely turned on by the prospect of it. So it gets a lot of the stuff you'd have missed because vacuuming is a mind-numbing chore, and you give it a coupla passes and then say, "Good enough." Roomba has no criteria other than battery power or its sensors telling it there's no more dirt (and with cats that will never happen). So like the Energizer Bunny, it keeps going.

The cats are less frightened of it than a regular vacuum (less noise). They are fascinated with it. Boyo had a little Tiananmen Square moment when he deliberately sat in its path and waited for it to come and bump him. Just like in 1989, the tank won.

So yeah, I think it's pretty dang good. And certainly better than doing it yourself.

I'm just ordering my second Roomba Discovery for a friend. Having done the research, read the side-by-side reviews, and observed much information on discussion sites about the previous generation of Roomba vaccuum robots, I was hoping the one I ordered for myself last month would be a Real Thing, not just "a toy with a mission".

And it is the Real Thing.

Our house has three levels, mixed medium carpet, lino and tiles. We have a long-haired dog, and we used to manually vaccuum only intermittently -- once every couple of weeks.

Roomba took one look at our "looked pretty clean" lounge and filled itself up with dog hair and dust in the first hour or so. It's still filling itself on passes a couple of days later.

Our lounge is *complex*, lots of furniture and corners. A couple of lightweight mats had to be lifted, a heavy one was ok. Got cords and scattered clothing/books etc. out of the way, and that was enough.

Having tried it more than once in most of the house now, I can conclude:

a) COVERAGE, even in odd corners, is remarkably good (it can't get right INTO an inside corner of course, but nearly)

b) CLEANING is excellent, at least as good as we would do manually -- also goes places we normally would not

c) RELIABILITY seems fine -- that is, no problems experienced after about ten working hours so far

d) UNSUPERVISED OPERATION is good enough. It goes through *remarkable* hoops to try and get untangled from a couple of situations that can arise in our house (low overhangs, etc), and it usually succeeds. About one run in three it finds a jam it can't extract itself from. That's tolerable, given the geography of our place.

e) MAINTENANCE is adequate -- we have a LOT of accumulated long dog hair, which fills the bin and tends to wind around a couple of internal brush axles. This means I need to check those axles carefully after every clean, and spend a few minutes using the tool provided to remove it. If you don't have lots of long hair around, you won't have this problem. And nor will we, I expect, once our long-term accumulation is reduced by running it regularly.

f) SEX APPEAL is excellent. That is, if you've been waiting for *years* for a real household robot to come out of the science fiction pages, this IS a real household robot. Nobody who sees a Roomba in action, getting into and out of incredible fixes AND ending up with a full dustbin and a clean floor, is going to be saying "it's just a toy, get a life".

This is a practical tool. Think of it like a 1970s dishwasher --it just got good enough to buy, and use.

I was shopping at Home Depot where they were giving a demonstration of the I-Robot. Seemed to work well and I have a new office building with 400 linear feet of hallways and 11,000 sq ft of office space. I thought this would be a method by which we could keep the "dust" down on a daily basis until the cleaning crew made a weekly heavy duty cleaning. The unit works GREAT, runs 3-5 hours per day, but the employees just sit there watching it. Someone shut it in an unused room today as it was cleaning and would not have found it except for the knocking at the door. Plan to purchase another one to keep the first one company. Seriously, the building is an Internet Data Center with short carpet and some tile floors. The unit works well and has collected an unbelievable amount of dirt. I see a great potential for small offices using this product. I also have one at home (hardwood floors only). Dog does not seem to mind it. Remote control seems a waste, lazy enough to have a machine clean for me, much less ordering it around from the couch???

When it works the Roomba is very nice to have. Unfortunately the unit does not last very long.

Bought a Roomba Discovery after Xmas 2004 - which died due to a faulty charging circuit inside the Roomba. In April 2005 the second replacement died (brushes stopped turning). In November 2005 the third replacement died (short battery life, horrible mechanical noises, then the brushed stopped turning).

This all despite regular careful cleanings. The problem is simply that the unit is not designed well enough to handle dust(!) and pet hair.

If you are to buy the Roomba, go to a store offering an extended warranty with instant exchange (like Sharper Image). Odds are you will get your money's worth on the extended warranty.

I really would like to be able to recommend this product. Watching the Roomba bump around is pretty cool. The cleaner-than-usual floors with much less work is great. Some of the engineering in this product is very well done. If the little beastie lasted longer and did not get clogged up so easily, I would have given a very enthusiastic 5 star rating. Oh well.

Update: Back in 2006 my fourth(?) replacement Roomba stopped working. It still runs around, but no longer picks things up (dead vacuum?). The unit is under warranty, but I just gave up. When it works this is a great product. Was prompted to update this review after seeing the new models from Roomba - I am tempted - but wonder if they will last any longer.

After reading many reviews on this product, I went ahead and purchased the Discovery unit. Several things I found impressive...

- We have several fixed doorstops on our hardwood floors and the Roomba was able to manuever around these stops in tight corners, picking up dustballs and hair.

- The Roomba is able to vacuum under my bed and is short enough to fit under the edges of my kitchen counters, picking up all the kitchen debris

- We have a very thick pile carpet, and after emptying the debris, it seemed that the the roomba did a very good job picking up dirt from the carpet- and a lot of hair!

- Run time was adequate to clean five rooms before needing to be recharged.

-We've left the roomba alone in the house 3 times while it was vacuuming, and each time we returned, it was already docked in its homebase recharging itself.

My house is much cleaner than it's ever been. Our old vacuum cleaner was cumbersome to drag around, and having the Roomba means that the house is vacuumed more often, and that we pick up more often so that the Roomba can run undisturbed.

The few small cons I have noticed are...
-When the Roomba goes from hardwood to area rug surface, some times extra debris spits out from the rotating brushes as it changes level, and there are small piles of dust/fur balls around certain edges of the area rug, which it has a hard time cleaning up afterwards.

- With the remote control manual mode you can change the direction of the Roomba to get to certain spots. However, as soon as you lift your finger off the direction button, the Roomba stops vacuuming, so your finger has to be constantly on one of the direction buttons in order for the machine to keep running. It would be nice to have an option for the roomba to keep running and the press of the button to change the direction without the machine going into total manual mode.

-Under one of my couches where there is a slope from high to low,the roomba has sometimes gotten wedged and stuck, so that it needs to be rescued.

Other than these few things, I've been impressed with the cleaning power of this small machine, and would definitely recommend it to my friends. My parents even saw the roomba in action at my house and now want to buy one of their own!

ADDENDUM: 11/22/04
After 3 weeks of use, my Roomba went kaput. Every time I turned it on, it would spin backwards and shut off. After going to the troubleshooting website, buying some canned air for cleaning and talking to the roomba rep (who was quite helpful), I returned it at Bed Bath and Beyond, where I bought the product (sorry Amazon, but I had a 20% off coupon there). The Roomba rep suggested I do this, and stated that it was probably a sensor malfucntion.
I must say that BBB has a GREAT return policy. They simply took the old one and handed me a new one, no questions asked, no paperwork. I am hopeful that the new one is bug free. The BBB clerk said it didn't matter to the store, I could return it even 10 times til I get one that works right. Hopefully this will be my only return.

The first question everyone asks me when I tell them I have the Roomba is "does it work?" For me the answer is yes! If left to my own devices I will not vacuum the floor more than once a year and then I never seem to get to all the rooms. Roomba beats me hands down in that respect.

As far as being able to pick up dirt goes, Roomba is a trooper. It moves around a room in a pattern that eventually covers every part of it. It doesn't look like it does but I have an off-white carpet that shows Roomba tracks and I can see in it that the entire surface is covered when it is done.

I read the reviews here before buying and some of them have proven to be accurate. If you are looking for a good vacuum cleaner, don't look for the robot. You will not get what you want. On the other hand, if you are hoping for automation you will be pleased. Personally, I have nothing but good things to say about my Roomba.

I have waited 6 months to write this review to be sure I was not just talking about my infatuation with my new toy. Today I am entirely satisfied with my purchase. I was rating my choice to get the robot against hiring someone to come in to clean. From that point of view it has been a bargain. My floors get cleaned frequently, about once every week or so, and I can do something else at the same time. It's taken me months to stop following it around and watching what it is doing at every step of the way. And there is something wonderful knowing that it has cleaned under the bed, dresser and couch. It does a pretty good job of getting into the corners, too.

There are some drawbacks you should know about before you purchase. For me the biggest is with electrical cords on the floor. Roomba will pull them out of the wall if it gets tangled in them. It took me a while to work out ways to separate Roomba from my cords. It also has a problem with fringe on carpets. I have folded my fringe under the carpets I have but they always seem to get some part pulled out during a cleaning.

The dustbin area is pretty small. I think it would need to be cleaned after every second cleaning in my house. I dump it out every time so I haven't tested the maximum capacity. Someone here complained that Roomba left a trail of dust balls behind it. When my Roomba first arrived I had to run it about 4 times before it actually cleaned out all the herds of dust bunnies. The first time I ran it, I had to dump the dustbin about half way through the run because so much stuff was coming out. That's more a comment on how badly I was doing as a cleaner, not on Roomba's performance. When it gets full a few dust clods come out behind Roomba. After I let it clean enough times to get the majority of dirt picked up from my floors, it stopped trailing dust behind it.

Ok, sometimes it leaves some specks hanging around that I can see. But Roomba is more or less blind. It usually gets those the next time around. It can go right past a piece of dirt and not pick it up.

I have several kinds of rugs in my house. Some of them have fringe. The fringe is a problem for Roomba but the carpets are not. Throw rugs that are light enough for Roomba to pull up cause all kinds of problems, though. I keep them away from Roomba. I even eliminated one.

I clean the brushes ever time I use the Roomba. I have long hair and it has been the death of even some robust, old metal vacuums. So I need to be proactive in taking care of the brushes. It is very easy to remove them. They pop right out and fall back into place just as easily. I usually get a handful of hair after every cleaning cycle.

Roomba is made of plastic that is getting some serious wear over time. It does a lot of bumping into things as it follows its program to cover the floor. Today my Roomba is pretty banged up. One of the small corner brushes got ripped off within a few weeks of using it. I did tend to vacuum every day back then. Someday I will replace it. I often wonder how long the plastic pieces are going to be able to last.

I put the docking station in a place that isn't very open. It is shielded on 3 sides with walls or furniture. There is about 45 degrees of open space in front of it and Roomba finds it most but not all of the time. It's pretty amazing considering all the obstacles I have around that it can find it. And it's one of the best features. When it is done vacuuming, it goes back to its base and recharges for the next time. Love that.

Speaking of obstacles, if you have delicate objects on lightweight tables, you might not want to use Roomba too close to them. I am sure it can move light furniture. Sometimes I have been bumped when I wasn't paying attention. I always expect it to be a little forceful but it's more like a kitten bumping into me. It's very gentle. I also find it a bit scarier than I expected. Even when I know it is running, if I walk around a corner and see it moving on its own, I am a little scared of it. The rest of the time I find it to be very well crafted to make me feel warm and friendly toward it. It even has a singsong voice to communicate its needs.

After a good two month wait, I received the new Roomba Discovery. I had just moved into a new home that consist of hardwood plank floors and marble (no carpet) and thought this would be idea to get the dust bunnies. I watched in amazement how it went all the way around chair legs and under my sofa. It seemed like a perfect tool for my home and I knew it was cleaning based on the amount of dust and fuzz retrieved from the pull out tray. BUT...I soon found out it was not perfect after all. The sunlight had peeked through my blinds and to my horror, I discovered circular scratches and lines all over the floors. I had just put a floor restorer over the floors 1 month prior to receiving the Roomba and KNOW that this came from this unit. I turned the unit upside down and felt the bristles and found them to be very course. I emailed customer service and asked it they had a softer brush but was told that they didn't. I was told that it would not clean as well without the harder brush. I sadly returned my Roomba. I understand if you had carpet that the stiffer brush would be good. I feel that people with my circumstance would NOT need the hard bristles to do the job that this machine does. I again encourage the irobot company to reconsider offering a softer brush that will not scratch hardwood floors! Anywone with hardwood floors should consider my review.