Customer Reviews

iRobot 500 Series Roomba Vacuum-Cleaning Robot with On-Board Scheduling

5 star:		(78)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

First let me say that I agree with people who say that the robot does a competent job of cleaning. You should SEE the dust bin after vacuuming! I am also in awe etc etc, but I'm going to try to focus on things that others have not mentioned.

My 550 (560 actually, I think...it came with a few more odds and ends in the box) is actually my second Roomba. The first was the Discovery SE, one of the 400 series. The 400 was pretty good with two exceptions: 1) It would not work on rug fringe. It gets hopelessly tangled in less time that it takes to say "Wait!" The second problem with the older 400 series is that the battery dies fairly quickly if you do not use it VERY frequently. I use it once/week and by second battery is showing its age.

In any case, the 500 series is advertised to be able to deal with rug fringe, and indeed it does so reasonably well. It is also supposed to be able to do 4 rooms using these "lighthouses" that have been previously mentioned. To summarize, these are little gadgets that put out an IR (UV?) beam that the robot can see; it generally will not cross the beam, so you can use the beam to mark off rooms. After a certain amount of time, the robot sends out an RF signal to the lighthouse, and the LH lets it through into the next room. Repeat for 4 rooms if desired. Then the robot knows how to find its way back to where it started to plug itself back in to recharge. Cool.

Here are the problems with the lighthouse scheme: First, the beam gets wider very quickly. So there is a fan-shaped area in front of each lighthouse that never gets cleaned. In other words, when moving between the two rooms, the beam gets shut off but when cleaning either side, the robot will not enter the fan shaped area that the beam covers.

The second lighthouse problem is that the robot seems to use time rather than room size or complexity to decide when to move from one room to the other. In other words, for larger or more complex rooms, it simply does not cover the room before moving on to the next.

A non-lighthouse problem that you should know about with the 500 series is that I think they must be lower-slung than the 400 series. My 500 robot is not NEARLY as good is climbing up onto a rung as the 400. The 400 got stuck in fringe, but without fringe, it is nearly flawless. The 500 tends to push the rug around, bunch it up, and even get caught if it bunches up the rug in a corner that it has not way to get out of without getting back over the rug.

You MUST be sure there are no cords on the floor. For example, a floor lamp, a computer power cord, etc. My robot has gotten caught when I forget, and nearly pulled down a few items with dangling cords.

And finally, I have one room with hardwood floor and a rug about 6 or 8 inches smaller than one dimension of the room. So there is a 6+ inch "valley" between the rug and the wall. The 500 series does not clean the 6+ inch valley well at all. It goes along it, but does not pick up dirt well. I think it is probably that the brush is on the rug on one side and on the floor on the other, but is touching nothing in the middle. I end up taking a dry mop and going along the valley and pulling dirt out into an open area where the robot can get it.

Given all that, though, the robot saves a LOT of work. If there is something special happening, I would probably bring out the hand vac and get all the little corners and fans and valleys that the Roomba does not reach, but for every-day/week vacuuming, it is way easier than doing it by hand despite its problems.
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Update 3/24/2009: I've had two problems, both fixed/replaced under warranty. First, it refused to dock. It would nose up to the dock and keep pushing and pushing; then finally back up and try again. Repeat forever. Used email support (I think). After doing a bunch of tests that they requested, they sent me a new dock. All ok now.

Second, the robot started spinning in circles. Even if I used the remote to try to make it go straight, it would turn. Sounds like a drive motor on one wheel died or something. In any case, I think I phoned this time. After a bunch of tests, they had me return the robot (minus dust bin and top insert) and they replaced it.

Now it works well, and guess what? The new robot can get up on rugs much better than the old one. I don't know if there was a hardware or software change, or if my old one was defective in some subtle way that I did not know about. I guess I might give this new unit an extra star if I could.

Interestingly, my 400-series also had to be replaced once, but it has worked fine ever since. I hope that will be the case with this one as well.

I purchased one of these from Costco. Two days later I bought a second for the upstairs since I was so impressed with it. I couldn't believe how well it picked things up, especially cat hair. I love the fact I can schedule it to clean our downstairs everyday at 3am and it's quiet enough now to disturb our sleep. I can come down in the morning to find crumbs from the kids gone, cat litter that spilled out of the litter box gone, etc. It only takes a minute to dump the bin and clean the rollers. The first view runs it was packed with cat hair, etc, but since it's been running daily it has less in it and it's obvious to see why when you look around the house and see how clean everything is.

Another plus is the unit returns to it's charging base when it's done, or if it needs to recharge during it's cleaning cycle. I was blown away by how well it gets around my place. I was prepared to return it when I bought it thinking it would have trouble getting from room to room as we are in an older home and there are un-even door jams, area rugs, etc. This thing makes it over everything. I was impressed again today when our upstairs unit made it over a marble door jam that I thought might be a bit too high, but it wasn't. Then I was impressed again when it went over our thick bathroom mats and dealt with them with robotic prescision. :) Also the fact that it won't go down the stairs is nice as you don't have to worry about blocking the stairs with something, it goes up to the edge and sees the drop, and stops and goes the other way.

I will still probably bring out the big vacuum, but I won't have to vacuum as frequently. It's nice to know bits of food from the kids, and cat hair from the pets, will be taken care of daily! This is such a time saver.

This is our second Roomba, we had a Disco series (biglots $149, we got it on sale for $109) before this for two years. After over 600+ uses our R2 unit decided to join the angels :(

We love the roombas and they have been very useful in our house.

The 500 series irobots are about 50% as loud(not very loud) as the 400 series (discovery)and have a few cool new features. Examples are: better suction, better main brush, digital display, onboard scheduling... and a talking lady that actually tells you what the error might be, such as "please clean the main brushes". FYI, the older robots worked off "beeps" (e.g. - 1 beep after the uh-oh beep meant to clean the brushes). It should be noted that the Disco we had got stuck from time to time and could not dock with the charging station 99% of the time, however the 500 series (550 - from Costco $269) seems to always find its home and amazingly has never gotten stuck! The future is now.(har d har)

For those people who have never had a roomba, YES they really do work and no I don't have stock in the company (hmmm, are they publicly traded?). However it should be noted that our house is 80% hardwood and really does not have alot of obstacles.

Lastly, I tell you this... our robot runs everyday and still manages to find all sorts of dust bunnies and debris... it's actually kind of gross.


C & N

This is our first Roomba, I understand that this is a fifth generation so I can't comment on how this version differs from previous ones.

Overall it works great, cleans and returns back to it's base as described. There are only a few small pitfalls we've discovered:

- Documentation is a little sparse on how roomba actually works. For example, what if you leave roomba cleaning a locked/closed room? In our experiment it just kept on going for over 1 hour and wouldn't stop. Had to stop it by hand. Maybe we didn't wait long enough for it to consider the room clean who knows.

- we have a rug that Roomba does not go over. It's about half inch thick, but Roomba would not go on it, and once placed on top of the rug would not go off the rug. So we have to clean the rug first, then clean the rest. Only slightly annoying considering that marketing materials and other reviewers claim that it goes over their rugs.

- You really have to clean it after each cleaning to get the most effectiveness. Manual says after every third cleaning, but our house packs Roomba's dust compartment after each cleaning. The good news is that cleaning it is extremely easy. Remove the main dust compartment, then pull the lever inside to open a secondary dust enclosure.

Finally, our cats find Roomba extremely amusing. So it's a great cat entertainment as well :)

We bought our first Roomba two years ago and needed replacement parts after seven months. It broke down completely after another five months and then was replaced under the warranty. This replacement lasted less than a year and then was no longer under warranty. When the 500 series came out we were assured that improvements were made and we bought a new Roomba in January 2008. It broke down in February and we received new wheels and a new cleaning head module. By April the arms of the side brush had disintegrated and we were told that no replacement brushes were available. The Roomba kept working till May when the cleaning brushes would no longer turn and the Roomba moved with a loud knock. Customer service now asked us to return the Roomba minus faceplate, battery and all other accessories and at our expense. They said they would send a replacement unit only after receipt of the faulty machine leaving us without a Roomba for who knows how long. If we do get that replacement the warranty will not go beyond the original period and it is not clear whether the replacement is new or merely a rebuild of another customer's return. We will not buy a Roomba again.

Believe me. If I had reviewed this product when I first got it, I too would have given it 5 stars. It sucks up dirt, it runs like a dream, and totally helped vacuum up the dog hair. Even if I disliked cleaning the hair out of the brushes, it still was worthwhile, because it can go can go places your regular vacuum can't.

Unfortunately, after about the 8th mission, Roomba started making a thumping sound. I read online about hair being in the gear box (a cheaply made piece of plastic), but after cleaning it thoroughly, still made the sound. We returned it to the store and got our money back.

Too bad. I really loved roomba. But there is no way I'm messing with getting replacement parts for a new product that's seen so little action as this thing did. I might get another eventually. But only if a local service center/instore warranty will deal with fixing it when it breaks down. Right now, from what I gather, spare parts are backordered.

We've had our 550 for about a week. So far it works great. We have a large open dining room, living room and kitchen (about 1000 sq. ft.) and the 550 can clean the whole area in about 1 hour.

Pluses: The 550 is quiet; one can easily talk on the phone or watch TV while it is running. Docks itself when done. Gets under furniture that is hard to move. Moves back and forward between and cleans well on hard tile surfaces and carpets.

Minuses: We have Pony Tail Palm tree with long leaves and we have to make sure none of the leaves are hanging down for the 550 to tangle itself in. We have a coffee table that has the same clearance as the height of the 550 and it gets wedged under the edge. The 550 nicely shuts itself off and waits for help.

With our open floor plan, we are still trying the determine the best placement for the Virtual Wall Lighthouses.

Would we buy the 550 again, at this point the answer is a big Yes.

Received a model 550 for Christmas 2007. Had always dismissed them as a techno joke. Not any more. It really does as good a job on carpet as our bulky, noisy upright AND does hard surface floors BETTER. Our upright spewed loose items on hard surface - Roomba sucks them up. This model can be programmed to run when you are away or at night. It is very quiet, unlike uprights so if you use it while you are home you barely hear it. It gets places you usually don't vacuum with an upright. When was the last time you vacuumed under your sofa and beds? The Roomba is 3" tall and gets under beds, the sofa and the china cabinet. We have a short-hair cat and Roomba picks up the hair very well. It takes between 45-60 minutes to do a room. The dirt cup should be emptied after each room. Easy to remove. The dirt cup has two compartments; one for debris and one for dust that has a filter. Unlike our upright that goes crazy until you fish out solid items like a map pin, the Roomba competently sucked two of them into the debris area this morning, no fuss. I turn it over and remove hair, string etc. from the brushes after each use. There are two ways to confine it to one room. The first is to shut it in the room. If a room does not have doors, the second is to use what they call the "lighthouse" [2 included w/the 550] which gives off a signal and creates a boundry. Roomba transitions effortless from hard surface to area rugs. We learned to pick up small throw rugs after it once got wedged in front of the kitchen sink. It also sucked up and got stuck on a cord from the window blinds. Other than doing some minor picking up of small items which you would do anyway with an upright, it really saves time and effort and does a good job. We love it!

UPDATE:
iRobot has repeatedly fixed my 3rd roomba under warranty by sending me new "head cleaning units". This 3rd head cleaning unit (on roomba #3, you do the math) is a new "improved" design. I think it might actually hold up: instead of plastic-on-plastic roller housing, they have metal housings that the plastic snaps into. This should prevent hair from entering the gear assembly of the head cleaning unit. I have high hopes that newer roombas are finally "built to last". I still can't imagine life without it but will leave it as "1 star" since it requires so much effort to keep it working.

CHANGED RATING:
Based on failure of two units over 3 months, I have to say that these devices are not engineered to last. I will be returning the second unit and can no longer recommend them. My original (5-star) review follows. Everything in that review is still true but now I've learned that these are poorly engineered.

ORIGINAL REVIEW (was 5 stars until the second one died)
Great for wood floors/dog hair.

If you have wood floors and pets, I cannot recommend this product enough.

We have a house with all wood flooring and 2 large dogs that shed year round. Even with diligent cleaning, our floors were usually filthy within 36 hours of vacuuming. The Roomba 550 has changed that! Every day while we're at work, our trusty Roomba wakes up, vacuums the first floor of our house, and then unobtrusively finds it's way back to it's charger base and waits for the next day. The only reason we even know that it's run is that it is full of dog hair and the floors are spotless.

The only thing I've noticed that could use improvement is that the Roomba 550 doesn't work perfectly with small rugs- sometimes it gets caught on them or pushes them around. This never stops the cleaning though- it just backs up and works around the rug. If I had a lot of rugs, this might annoy me but as I have very few, it is not a problem at all.

Thanks to the Roomba 550, our house has gone from filthy most of the time to spotless all of the time!

Note: I do not use the roomba on any carpeted floors. This review explicitly covers houses with wood/pergo/tile flooring.

UPDATE: After 2 weeks of use (about 8 or 9 sessions), two of the "arms" broke off of the side brush component. This is a $5 part that is sold in 3 packs on the roomba site and clearly meant to "wear out" however I contacted roomba support since the part only lasted two weeks. They responded to my e-mail within 2 hours and said a new part would be shipped promptly. I'll report back when I get the new part. If it dies a quick death too, I will lower my 5 star rating on this product (though I can no longer imagine life without it...)

UPDATE2: Roomba customer support sent me a new side brush and they appear to be of the same construction as the original. I have no doubt they too will break over time. As the temperatures have heated up, my dogs' shedding has increased to the point that the roomba can no longer keep up with them, even when run 7 times per week. If fills with dog hair and stops about 90% through a mission. The amount of hair that it is picking up is amazing and it is difficult to think of life without the roomba. Basically, the roomba is keeping three large rooms clean but often can't find it's way home to the charger because it's too full. Not a big deal for us.

The marketing materials from iRobot imply that it can clean four rooms however in my house that is not the case. It cleans each room for 35 minutes and runs out of battery while cleaning the 4th room. This was before my dogs' shedding increased so I do not believe that the load was a factor. This makes sense since the I think I read that the unit had a "2 hour battery life" and clearly four rooms @ 35 minutes each is > 2 hours.

When the roomba experiences a problem like a clogged brush, it actually speaks the solution to you. My wife was so surprised and happy when the roomba one day told her "please remove and clean the brush". Great usability iRobot!

My summary of the roomba is that life with it requires just as much effort as a weekly vacuuming session however it keeps our house 7 times cleaner! If I had an extra few hundred dollars I'd buy a second one in a heartbeat so that I could divide my downstairs in half.

This is the best thing you could ever have if you have little ones constantly dropping crumbs, pet hair, etc. This vacuum literally saved my sanity and maintains my floors clean. You can schedule it to run at your convenience and works best while it's not broken down. It navigates around those hard-to-reach, corners, and around furniture areas,and it also self-adjusts from carpets to hard floors and back again smoothly - AMAZING!!! You do need to empty the dust bin and the brushes before each cleaning. With one charge, you can clean up to 4 rooms (2-3 large rooms). It automatically avoids stairs, drop-offs and off-limit areas which is awesome! The lighthouse modules work really well, allowing you to set limit as to how far you want to vacuum to go. A few drawbacks - (1)those rotating brushes take a lot of abuse and they need frequent replacements (2) once it breaks, iroomba.com not only has the worst customer service - IT'S NON-EXISTENT!!! My first Roomba was still under its 1-year warranty when it broke down (only 7 months after it was purchased) and I was glad I purchased it from Costco. I returned it and they refunded with no questions. I did get another one because I just CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT IT! So if you are considering on purchasing one, HOLD ON TO YOUR RECEIPT AND THE ORIGINAL PACKAGING BOX. You never know when it breaks down. Enjoy while it works!