Customer Reviews

iRobot Roomba 4900 Self-Charging Drive-On Home Base

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Between the lowering of the charge time to 3 hours from 7 hours AND the fact I can leave it in a room and have a 90% certainty of it being on the base charging when I get back to it, this has made my roomba red incredibly more useful. I can drop it off to work in my bedroom when I get up. in the middle of the morning put it in the baby's room. Then grab it when I put her down for her nap and let it do the living room and have it recharged in time to have it do the basement or another room before dinner.

With the quicker charge time and the automation of charging it has stopped me from considering spending the money on a second roomba since I get so much more out of my one.

If your roomba did not come with the fast charger and the docking base, this will make your roomba so much more useful. Oh and no more finding the little guy stuck in the middle of under a bed.

This item won't change your life, but I do believe it makes the basic functionality of my Roomba better. I highly recommend you think about whether this base will work for YOU. In my case, I live in an apartment where all four rooms come together in a common corner. So I put the home base there, where the Roomba will pass it anytime it leaves any room. And my Roomba has found its way back literally 100% of the time.

What I like about the Home Base:
* My Roomba is always there, where I can find it.
* In the morning, I just walk over to the home base and tap the "Clean" button with my toe. I know that about an hour later the Roomba will be right back where it started.
* When the roomba is on the base and I push the "Clean" button, it makes an adorable construction-equipment like beep as it backs up!
* Three-Hour charge cycle. (I bought the base for my Roomba Red, which only comes with a 7-hour charger.)
* I don't have to come home and search for my Roomba, which used to stop under the bed or in the darkest corner of my closet.

What I don't like:
* The Roomba actively avoids the home base while it's cleaning. That means that about 6 inches around the home base never get vacuumed. This is obviously a safety feature, so that the roomba doesn't eat the base's power cord, but it means that I sometimes have to pick up the home base and move it elsewhere if I want that spot vacuumed.


So... the home base turned out to be a great investment for ME, because my floor plan works out very well. If you're living in some monstrous mansion where the roomba might wander a quarter mile off before coming back to the base, this product likely isn't right for you. (And then again, you'll probably have a maid instead of a robot vacuum)

When Roomba is getting low it WILL seek out its home base. You do however need to place the base in the middle of the cleaning area with plenty of visiblity. If this is done, Roomba will find its way home. This feature is also nice because it will charge the Red in 3 hours instead of 7.

If you have an L shape floor, well that is what the virtual wall is for. For example, you clean one area (living room, Dining room) and then you do the other area (Family room, Kitchen). Not to tough to figure out.

The manufacturer states that after Roomba has completed its "mission" or the battery is running low, it will automatically seek the home base to recharge. However, after its "mission" is completed it simply stops and emits plaintive signals until it is turned off. On the other hand, when the battery is running low, it does attempt to return to the base but not always successfully since it moves about randomly and may exhaust its battery before the base is found. It is otherwise a good product and a great convenience.

This is the second base I've purchased. The first was for myself; the second for my mother to accompany her Roomba Christmas gift, so obviously it works okay. In my opinion, the robot vacuum cleaner needs it so you don't have to search the house and crawl under beds to find it when it's done. The homing ability should be part of all the Roomba's base packages.

On the down side, if you're letting the Roomba meander all over the house, it has only about a 50% chance of returning to base. Also, when it docks, about half the time its charging light doesn't come on and you have to kick it a bit. This detracts from the total automation concept when you come home and find it in its base, but not charging when it should be fully charged.

I was told that emptying the dust bin helps overcome this (opposite end of the contacts so it's a counterweight) but again, if you have to be there to empty the bin when it docks it's not fully automated.

It's worth the money for the 50% it works well since you'd be searching for the robot, carrying it around and plugging in the charger 100% if you don't have it.

This is much better than the standard charger. Charges faster, and when the charge gets low on the Roomba it finds it on its own and mounts it.
That sounded wierd but it works well.

This product does not fully work with the Roomba 400 base model. It merely acts as a charging station that you manually have to set the Roomba 400 on. The Roomba 400 does not have the technology or cabability to find and return to the Home Base, nor does it have a button to direct it to do so. Do not buy this product to go along with a Roomba 400. Use the plug-in charger that comes with it instead.

The way this dock works is infrared. Roomba doesn't know where the dock is until it is in the dock's vicinity and it catches the IR signal. You can tell this is so because Roomba will actually go out of its way to avoid the dock when its battery is well charged. When the battery is low, however, if the Roomba catches the IR signal, it will attempt to dock. This will work just fine, but only under a pretty narrow set of circumstances:

1) Your house must be small enough and/or uncluttered enough that the Roomba catches the IR signal on a pretty frequent basis.
2) Your dock must have roughly 4 feet of clear space on all sides for the Roomba to maneuver into the dock well.
3) The contacts on both your dock and the underside of your Roomba have to be absolutely dust-free.
4) The dock wasn't turned cockeyed by Roomba's reversing out at the start of the cycle.

The dock needs to be heavier and/or have the ability to be screwed into the wall. I have found that Roomba will frequently drag it along sideways until it finally just starts its cycle and by that time the dock is in a position that makes it difficult for Roomba to dock.

All that said, if you have the right set of circumstances and keep your Roomba pretty clean, it really does work, so it's not all bad. It's just not quite the hands-off miracle it is portrayed as. Perhaps the next generation will have some kind of radio triangulation that the Roomba can actually work toward and therefore dock with more frequency.

The base works just fine, but wihtout the scheduler, your Roomba will not resume cleaning once it is finished charging, making the self-charger useful only if you want to come home and find it charged to put in another room.

I have used this charger with my Roomba Discovery for a few months now. It works well if you read and understand the directions and have a little understanding of how it works.

1- The Roomba can be in a room other then the charger and fail to find it if the battery runs out. If this is a problem try the virtual wall they give you to limit the area in which it is working. Or buy a second base for other rooms or for very large rooms. You can have more them one. Just place them so they don't interfere with each other.
2- The limit on the distance that the IR can be detected is about 10ft and must be line of site to the Roomba. So place the unit where you vac will pass through the beam, ie: If you room is L shaped, place it in a corner with a path between both areas looking into the room. Or place it in an area looking into the largest area in the room. The beam is like a flash light beam, so it will not pass through furniture or other obstacles. Obstacles will create shadow areas where the vac can't see the beam, keep this in mind when you place it.
3- The base does not stay put when the vac moves off of it. Try a piece of double stick foam tape on the bottom on wood floor or carpet tape on carpet. Problem solved, they should put a piece with the unit.
4- You should be cleaning your unit after a few runs, so clean contacts should not be a problem if you are taking care the way they suggest. The vacuum is not maintenance free.
5- Place it in an area with the clearest possible view into the room. It still won't work every time, but I found that it works fine about 90% of the time. The other 10%, I bend over and pick it up. Or, you can press the spot and clean buttons together when the battery indicator turns yellow and it will start to look for the dock right away while it continues to clean. Doing this in yellow instead of red will give it much more time to find the base and still provides good cleaning for the average size room.
6- This unit works with the Discovery units only, so don't try it with others. If you do, failure is guaranteed.
7- Hope this helps you get the most out of your unit. I gave it 4 stars because they should give you the tape to secure it to the floor or wall.