bit-tech Shopping: iRobot Roomba 560 Vacuum

Rating: 10

Time with product: 10 Days

Strengths: Makes vacuuming fun!Does a decent jobCan be scheduled to start itself, up to once every day of the weekHandles most obstacles wellNotifies you of any problemsNavigates back to its charging base

Weaknesses: Needs minor maintenance after every runSometimes mistakenly thinks it's stuckCan't handle black flooringIf you watch it expecting a normal cleaning pattern, you'll get frustrated

Summary: I bought this for my house because we're generally too busy or lack the motivation to vacuum ourselves. The house can take two hours to vacuum by hand. I scheduled this Roomba (currently unnamed) to clean the main part of our house daily when no one is home and it has been keeping the house much cleaner than we ever could ourselves. Our house layout is complicated, with many transitions between area rugs, hardwood, and linoleum. Many of the room entrances also have a 1/2" high wood lip across them. There are also some steps. The Roomba handles the carpet transitions perfectly (even the throw rugs with tassels, though it pushes around one of these) and very rarely gets stuck on the wood lips. It will pretty reliably detect drop-offs in time to back up without getting stuck, but it's not 100% accurate. Sometimes it will drive too far and stop itself until one of us puts it back on solid ground. It's never driven over the edge of a drop-off and fallen down, though. The Roomba sees black carpeting as a drop-off and won't clean it, but it handles just fine one of our carpets that has dark purple and dark blue areas. The vacuuming system is interesting: it's brushes are completely separate from it's vacuum. The brushes sweep large debris and hair into one section of the sweeper bin while the vacuum collects dust on a filter in another section. Since the Roomba is so short, it uses the force of the rotating brushes to pick up large debris rather than pure vacuuming force, so it doesn't need a very powerful vacuum. Since we first ran the Roomba, the brush bin has been getting more and more empty after each run, but we're still picking up a lot of dust. Because of the fairly small size of the robot, the sweeper bin is much smaller than that of most bagless vacuums. It is necessary to clean the bin after every cleaning run (which means daily for us). Also, the brushes tend to collect dust and hair, especially wrapped around the brush shafts at the two ends of the brushes. You will need to clean these regularly as well to keep the brushes in working order. This is a small price to pay for the extra cleaning and reduced hands-on time, though, and can actually be satisfying to see how much has been removed from the floors. I strongly recommend to keep your patience and let the robot work if you're watching it after you first buy it. It vacuums in an extremely irregular pattern and, if you watch it for only 15 minutes or something, it will seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in one area and hardly venture into other areas. The robot WILL eventually cover the whole area multiple times. It takes much longer to cover a room than a human, so you'd have to watch for at least half an hour for a normal sized room or an hour or more for a multi-room area to see that it covers everything. DON'T move it around while it's running to try to manually get it to vacuum a certain area. I'm guessing that this messes up its internally-generated floor map. Overall, I highly recommend this for people who can't or don't want to vacuum regularly, but still appreciate a clean house. It will take a while to work down the dirt in a dirty house, but it can run every day. It handles obstacles well (though you'll generally get better results with clear floors). I would recommend against getting it if you have small children (e.g. 2-6 years old) as they are FASCINATED by it and will probably treat it as a toy.

Rating: 8

Time with product: 30 Days

Strengths: It cleans everywhere in my house.

Weaknesses: It can't clean the corner.

Summary: I am satisfying this product. It does clean my entire house. However, it does have a problem to clean the corner. Its sharp is a circle and really hard for it to run to the corner. So, your corner may still dirty.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 15 Days

Strengths: easy to setup and use, works hard (as hard as myself), do clean the floor and carpet

Weaknesses: brush breaks really easy, sometimes will stuck, light house is confusing

Summary: I am a super busy guy, and always want to buy a Roomba to keep my living room clean, and I did.This baby works hard to keep my living room really clean, and every time when I clean it's gabage bag, I was supprised how much dust it collected,it's very easy to set up, and it runs pretty much on its own.Two things are not pleasing: sometimes I'll have to look around to find it, since it will stuck in cornersAnd 3 out of 6 side brushes broke after 10 days, but iRobot will send me a new set, so the service is good.Oh, forgot to mention, it does NOT work on black carpets, don't be fooled by the picture here, the cliff sensor doesn't work on dark surfaces. I have to place my area rug to make it work.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 7 Days

Strengths: Great improvement compared to previous models. Much less noises and does not get tangled or stuck easily.

Weaknesses: The part that bumps at walls or furnitures gets scratched easily and affects the appearance. I think it can be improved by replacing plastics with steeless materials.

Summary: This is one of the great product that really helps in your house. It does all the work for you and frees you to do other things. It has greatly improved compared to previous versions. Moves around much easily. The virtual wall works fantastically. The price is my main concern so shop around for better deals.

Rating: 8

Time with product: 1

Strengths: Scheduling, virtual walls/lighthouses.

Weaknesses: Small trash bin, weak battery, high price, can't walk on stairs :).

Summary: It cannot replace regular vacuum, but it does increases intervals between regular vacuuming keeping floor clean of the dust and small trash, making floor look clean what in turn makes my wife a lot happier. It returns to charging base automatically and with scheduling feature is great for one story houses.