ROOMBA--Does it work?

I also have wood floors and a small dog. Always wanted a Roomba but it ended up more effort than use after the novelty wore off. It kept getting stuck in corners and would not go in between legs of side table. A rug I have on the floor was a problem too, although it is flat and not bushy at all. If you have an even shape room with no furniture legs in the way it will be great, otherwise get a cordless light vacuum, guicker, cheaper and all together more efficient. Just my 2 cents worth.

I found it to be more trouble than it was worth. Its AI sucks. It missed certain areas all the time so I had to go over it myself -- it kind of defeats the purpose. And then it does not clean very well. Of course, I did not expect much, but I was expecting more. Maybe it does better on carpets than it does on hardwood floors?

I ended up buying a Kenmore canister vac for around the same price ($225), which does the job just great. Of course, I have to do the vacumming, but its better than picking up the roomba every 20 minutes just to make sure it is vacumming where it should be vacumming.

you bascally need wood floors with no carpets. the more objects touching the floor in the room, the tougher it will be.

so it's great if you need to vacuum the roof. nothing gets in the way.

I sold mine and grabbed a dyson, with the motivator being I only paid $79 for the dyson.

too loud, works best on hardwoods only, no carpets or area rugs. did i mention it will wake the living dead?

I bought one back in May. Works great, and picks up a lot of stuff. Sometimes it hangs up for a second or so on the small throw rugs, but it's only gotten stuck once or twice. I've got 2 cats, 3 small kids, and carpet in most of the house. I forget what model it is, but I love it and wouldn't get rid of it. The noise isn't too bad, especially when compared to a regular vacuum. I've run this plenty of times when the kids were asleep, and they've never woken up.

Overrated. We tried to like it, but ended up just being a PITA.

If you want to get rid of your Roomba.

Two words

Roomba + Frogger

juser said: diacritic said: ...
I ended up buying a Kenmore canister vac for around the same price ($225), which does the job just great.

So a $120 robotic vacuum does not work as well as a vacuum that is double the cost. Imagine that.

My $.02 - If you vacuum on a frequent basis and musthave a clean house, it isn't for you.

If you have a open floorplan and need something to get most of the stuff so you can do something else, go for it. Its fun, it works (by that I mean, its dustbin gets filled). We set ours loose in the family room and basement between cleanings.

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Thanks to every one for the feedback.

Yes, I have to admit, there might be a certain entertainment value to the Roomba.

It seems like better sweeping, motion control sensors and battery life would improve the product over time.

Durful1 said: If you want to get rid of your Roomba.

Two words

Roomba + Frogger

drdublin said: I hear it works but you have to have absolutely everything up off the floor. Curtains, cables, etc will all be sucked up. Plus it really doesn't have much power but you could have it running all the time.

Um... OP was looking for answers from people that actually have experience with one.

Because, it doesn't "suck", it sweeps and rolls the dirt into a container. Mine can run three hours before it heads back to it's base.

If you check some reviews, you'll see that it does clean better than most vaccuums. Except that it takes much much much much much much much longer to clean a room. That's why I let it go when I leave the residence!

I use the Discovery BTW. I heard the RED and SAGE aren't nearly as good.

Durful1 said: If you want to get rid of your Roomba.

Two words

Roomba + Frogger

Kinda cool, but more like: Wow, that's dangerous! It's one thing to have it in a test environment, but what if a car sees it, swerves, and hits others cars/things in the process?

Anyway, the Roomba sounds cool, but like the others said it only works well in the ideal environment. It reminds me of the semi-automatic pool vacuums that are shaped similarly. It works, but it takes heck of a long time. My dad had to recently replace one and it was $250 on sale. Meanwhile, the manual vacuum has the replacement cost of $20 (if you have the handle already).

I have one and it works great for me. I have had friends that have had it and they didn't like it. Seems to me that the major difference is that I do not have any thresh holds or changing in the level of the floor in my downstairs. I have complete hardwood. My downstairs is so large though that I have to set up the walls so the roomba only does half the downstairs at a time. I do have a 4 year old, 15 month old and a small dog and it does a wonderful job of picking up all the dirt. I have to empty it about once or twice a week, but I run it every night. Before you buy it, I would look at the area you are wanting it to clean and see if there are any variations in the flooring or thresh holds. Regardless of what the company says, I have two friends that hated it because it wouldn't make it over the thresh hold. Also, anything that a normal vacuum cleaner couldn't go over, a roomba can't either. I have two fringed rugs at my front/back doors that I have to pick up. Overall, for me it is a blessing. I can't even imagine having to sweep 2,000 sq ft of hardwood every day. THAT would really bite!! I would LOVE to get the scooba, but for some reason my DH doesn't think it would work for our wood floors. Anyways, good luck!!

Got one about a year ago. For someone who HATES to vacuum, I love this baby! It does a decent job although you will have to dump out the dust after each use or even more frequently, depending on how dirty your carpet is. I have carpet, wood floor, and tile. The Roomba Discovery goes over all surfaces pretty well, except like most people said, you have to prep your floor first. I took it to my sister's house who has long carpet and it doesn't work as well on that since it's not heavy enough to get under the thick carpet. If you can find a FW deal, then it's worth it. Personally, my floor and carpet feels much cleaner because I actually CAN vacuum every other day now versus manually I'd probably vacuum once a month if that. If you have people with allergies at home, it's probably good.

Now I'm just waiting to find a FW deal on the iRobot Scooba to clean the floors, then I'm set!

I think it works well for hard wood. But it didn't get all the dog hair off our carpets. Also the brush holds too much hair and you have to clean it often. Sold it and got a Dyson.

Matt

I had the Roomba Scheduler and i gotta say.. when i first bought it I thought it was the greatest thing.. but found a lot of flaws with it. You have to make sure not to have anything laying around.. even the littlest things like papers, etc. I scheduled my roomba to vaccuum everyday when i'm at work, and i'll come back to find it upside down stuck on a rug, or even clothes. A lot of times i find it just vaccuuming one part of the room and going back to the base station, that is if it can find the base station. I think the creators of the Roomba assumed everyone lives in a 10 x 10 perfect square room with no furniture. I wish they would have put some kind of memory feature, so it would remember the size and dimensions of the room. When my Roomba vaccuums, it's like a blind man bumping into everything. One time i left a cup of water on my coffee table and when i came home the Roomba bumped into the table so much, it knocked it over and spilled it all over the place.. nice.

However when it does work, it nice because of the convenience of never vaccuuming again, and you don't feel the little crumbs on your feet when walk around the carpet.. Because of my laziness, i decided to keep it until it started doing this stupid circle dance. It turns out that when the sensors next to the tires get dirty, it has no way of knowing where anything is, so it just goes in circles and stops. I air can blew the sensors and it started working properly until about 2 weeks later it permanently started doing the circle dance. I replaced all the parts on the Roomba, and still nothing. I just ended up returning Roomba and getting my money back, well credit. I would say i used the Roomba for about 3 months before rendering it completely useless. Now i have $350 in credit at Linen and Things.. lol.. great.. time to buy some over priced curtains and bed sheets!

RapaciousEbayer said "And i paid only $79.00 for the dyson".

Can I ask where you got it for $79.00? If it was on eBay that was a fluke.
They seem to bring top $ on eBay.

Was it a refurb/used and how would you judge it?

Thanks for the info!

We just purchased the highest end, newly released model available exclusively (so they advertise) from Hammlicker-Schlemmer. Anything purchased through them has a life time money back guarantee. I wanted that before I put out $350!

The newest model is A HUGE IMPROVEMENT over previous models. A much larger dirt container. Light that tells you when the container is full. Much improved suction. We have all hardwood floors or low carpets. It's fantastic so far.

It is a MUST for allergy sufferers. Picks up cat & dog hair like crazy. And bubble gum wrappers, legos, etc. So don't leave anything out that you don't want sucked up.

The noise isn't that bad. Much less than the sound my teenage son's stereo puts out.

Never in a million years did I think this would work as well as it does. Definetely pays to buy the high end model. Lower end models are crap.

I'm on my second Red in two years (and the second battery pack on the refurb replacement for the one that went bonkers). I have a cat and it's great at picking up the hair.
BUT, the brushes are a PITA to keep clean if it does pick up a lot of hair because you have to clean them all the time. If you don't, the Roomba doesn't run worth a crap after a few runs. This is almost all carpet, btw. I'm sure it would be better on a mostly bare-floor house, but for the average pet owner it's hard to say whether it's worth the trouble. It does pick up tons of hair but that's the trade-off - the more it picks up, the more you're cleaning brushes.

Plus as I said initially, I'm on my second one already and had to buy a replacement battery pack from a seller on fleabay, like chefjoe. Saved a little money soldering in the new pack myself but not easy for the average homeowner to do. Would run you about $50 (half the cost of a new Red) otherwise.

I just bought the Roomba Discovery about a month ago and it works great. Here's my set up to kind of give you a framework. I have a 750 sq. foot apartment with hardwood floors, a jute rug in the living room and low shag carpet in the bedroom. The place is furnished minimally but has all the basics (couch, desk, couple chairs, stereo, computer, etc...) For my setup it works great and it navigates the terrain well. The only prework I have to do before I run it is pick up a couple chairs and fold my hallway rug with tassles (he doesn't like tassles) under. I turn him on, go do my thing and when he's done he docks back on his power station and we're done with it. Yes, it's a he. I've named him Reggie. I'm thinking about getting him a girl friend (albeit a butch one) with the Dirt Dog.