Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Anyone have a Roomba?

My wife has been dropping hints about a Roomba and a new plat panel TV for the living room. I know, free ticket for a new TV, I should be picking that, unfortunately, I am over budget (like ALWAYS) on Christmas, so the TV I want (I mean SHE wants) will have to wait. So I am looking into Roomba's. Any thoughts about them?

I can get a Roomba 535 (special package for HSN.com) for $212.42 delivered. It seems to be the best deal right now, but I don't know if it is more than what I need or not enough.

Basically, my wife's biggest gripe about cleaning floors is in our dining room, laundry room, and hallway (all connected and hardwood floors) because our stupid cats seem to track cat litter around. We've put rugs by the litter box in the laundry room, but then the rug needs to be vacuumed, plus it tends to pick up some smells over time. It ends up being a daily issue with the litter, so it would be nice to hit the Roomba when the last person leaves the house for the day, and come home to a clean (or at least cleaner) area.

Just share your thoughts and experiences. Thanks!

Just ask Buster Bluth about his experience.

Yeah, Lupe got replaced by a Roomba, but outside of the <sarcasm> true world of television </sarcasm> does anyone know how well they work?

I have a Roomba Disco 570 and a Scooba.

The 570 is good but I had the 1st gen and the spinning brush kept breaking off arms. I think it was a known design issue and it's since been re-designed. They replaced my brush heads for free, under warranty. For us, it's fairly useful because we have hardwood floors, low profile carpet and not much floor clutter. However, I do have to pick up the kids' toys just so nothing gets trapped. If you have rugs/drapes that can easily get caught in the big brushes, that'll be a problem. If you pets, you may have to get the pet version because it'll fill up w/ hair and clog easily. I do like that it returns back to it's charging base. But you have to make sure to control the room size so it doesn't get so far that it runs out of power before returning 'home'. The remote control is a gimmick, it's really not very useful. Don't pay extra for that.

The Scooba started out great. BUT, it does require a bit of maintenance. You have to make sure clean out all the sections after each use, it gets REALLY dirt fast. If you don't, you end up with a tempermental unit.

The biggest issue is that you have to follow their battery charging rules to the letter. I left my Scooba on the charger and later found out they had f/w issues. As such, I've had to buy 2 replacement batteries at my cost.

If you consider these as secondary, maintenance tools, you might be happy. Don't consider them to be you main cleaning methods, or you'll get frustrated.

Yep, just maintenance tools, not a replacement to regular vacuuming. Also, the 535 has the newer "no snag" technology that prevents sucking up cords and rug tassels, so hopefully that isn't a problem.

I have no personal experience with a Roomba. I have seen them demoed a few times at various stores. I've always been somewhat unimpressed with the performance. Didn't suck much up on carpet and on hardwood floors it didn't seem to do a whole lot more than what 5 minutes and a Swiffer wouldn't do. Of course, hard to say what kind of life these demo Roombas had led up to that point. I wouldn't be surprised if a well-cared for Roomba set up properly would work significantly better.



I do have a pair of cats though, so I know what you're talking about with the litter. Two things solved that litter tracking problem for us. 1, enclosed litterbox. Cats can't throw litter around - accidentally or purposefully. And 2, something like this in front of the litterbox. Between those two things, there's very little litter that makes it to carpet. The little bit of litter that they do track out of the box stays in the rubber mat that's easily dumped. Requires much less cleaning of the area around the litterbox, in my experience.

But then again, the cats are one reason why we don't want a Roomba. One is scared of most everything and would likely be terrified of an automated robot tearing through the house during the day. The other cat is fearless/insanely curious and would likely play with the Roomba to the point where he (or the Roomba) could get hurt. In either case, my wife and I just didn't feel comfortable leaving 'the kids' home alone with a Roomba. Weird, I know.

I have a Roomba Discovery because I'm a lazy gimp . I run it every single morning for its full cycle. It is two years old and just yesterday I purchased a replacement kit (which includes filters, brushes etc.) and a new battery. I am more than happy with the unit as it does an excellent job cleaning and has eliminated any sweeping. I only use it on my vinyl flooring even though it does a great job on carpet; but for longevity purposes stays off the carpet for the most part. I would suggest getting a more powerful model for regular carpet use. The most important part is to keep up with general maintenance, like any vacuum cleaner. I had a golden retriever service dog with long hair and would constantly shed and it didn't pose any issues. I would have to respectfully disagree with the remote control comment above, I use it all the time to control the vacuum from my wheelchair, and even though I have no use of my fingers, I find it easy to use and very useful. I wouldn't purchase it if you plan on letting the vacuum do the work on its own.

We picked up a Roomba 580 in August and I could hardly be more disappointed. We have 2 cats with medium long hair and the hair gums up Roomba's rushes and it takes almost as long to clean the brushes as it does to vacuum myself to the same degree, certainly not a deep clean, more of a touch up/broom sweep level of clean. Ruby (yes we name our appliances, the Garmin GPS's name is Carmen) mainly prefers dust/small particles of dirt only and doesn't like anything big, e.g., dry cat food is out of the question, she might be OK with kitty litter but not a major spill.

We have mostly tile and wood floors, maybe Roomba works better with rugs. One of the brushes broke after a matter of weeks even though I had been cleaning it as recommended, the rotating brush broke after maybe 2 months.

I feel like I don't have time to devote so much maintenance of something that's supposed to save me time. I've been waiting all these years to try and frankly was surprised to find it had the build quality not much better than a toy.

In my view, Roomba's still not ready for prime time, to me it would only correspond to late Alpha stage of development, but if you look at reviews on Amazon, lots of people love them, so it may depend on the application. I must say I'm very skeptical about using one to clean up after cats though.

I think this is more an insight into the users here...

SatKartr names his appliances...
PeterChenoweth calls his cats "kids"...

To add something to the original intent of the thread - a lot of the guys at the range have Roombas and everyone seems to be happy with them. But we're also a collection of "novelty geeks" and tinkerers.

Bren R.

I have a friend that has and he says it works great.