iRobot Roomba 580 Vacuuming Robot | I am so in the future

iRobot Roomba 580 Vacuuming Robot | Impressive but still a toy

kitchen:

IRobot Roomba 580 ...

	iRobot Roomba 580 Vacuuming Robot iRobot iRobot average customer review:based on 31 reviews view larger image
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iRobot Roomba 580 Vacuuming Robot

I am so in the future

Roomba is even better than I had ever hoped. This flying saucer is like haveing maid service whenever I want. When they are able to perfect the bot to do stairs and maintain itself, living will truly be easy.

Impressive but still a toy

It deserves 3 stars in terms of functionality, but because I am impressed I'll give it 4.
The main problem is coverage of a large room with a lot of furniture (coffee tables and chairs). It has a set of nifty heuristics to deal with obstacles and corners. However, it doesn't learn the shape and size of a room - it uses another set of heuristic algorithms for coverage. The result? It gets "stuck" in some parts of the room for a long time for no apparent reason, like a creature with a fried brain. It all depends on furniture arrangement in a particular room. I bet it works just fine in an empty room. It compensates for this deficiency by running for a very long time.

In summary:
- it works, but the vacuum is not very powerful so the results are not perfect;
- the dirt compartment is small - you have to empty it after each use;
- it takes a lot of time - you might not care until the battery gets weaker;
- you may need extra virtual walls if you have spaces with many doors/openings (or you can use strategically placed obstacles);
- you may have to temporarily move furniture, remove cables (it "eats" them);
- the fun toy factor is a plus;

My house is rather large, but not a mansion (3 bedroom with large spaces).

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Roomba Rocks

First off the 4 star rating is for the actual Roomba product. I have used the Roomba daily for the past 2 months, and although it was a rather expensive purchase in my opinion for a vacuum, it has been well worth it. I rate its automated usefulness similar to a dishwasher or washing machine, and would not want to go back to living without this product. This would be a 5 star product if it didn't require so much maintenance in cleaning out the brushes every use.

We have 5 kids and a dog and therefore a lot of dirt, grit and hair ends up on the floors. I have laminate flooring throughout the house, so I can't attest to how well the iRobot cleans carpet, but it has done a great job on the hard floors. In one charge it can clean the main living areas of the home including the kitchen, dining area, halls and living room. It is amazing how much stuff it picks up.

It is a little noisy, but less so than many regular vacuums. It sounds about like a hair dryer, except you are not holding it near your head so it is not quite that loud.

The way it covers a room in a combination of following walls, spirals, and zig zagging around and bouncing off things takes it awhile to finish a room, much longer than I could manually sweep the floors, but the beauty is I don't have to do the work, other than clean out the dirt bin, filter and brushes.

With all the hair it picks up, I find I have to remove and clean the brushes with every use, as the manual recommends. Putting this off and using without proper maintenance only causes problems. I found brushes don't properly spin and work if I don't keep the hair and fibers cleaned out. This includes unscrewing the little side brush from the bottom and removing to get the stuff that winds underneath it.

I do make use of the lighthouses to control keeping it in one area until finished until moving onto the next, and also occasionally find the wireless command center to be handy. I haven't used the scheduling features as I prefer to manually set it cleaning when I want and this way I can make sure the kids have floors picked up of obstacles before it runs. If I didn't have a couple of toddlers that leave toys throughout the house, I think the scheduling option would be great.

iRobot sells this model directly and also calls it Item Number: 58001 with a total of 3 lighthouses, 11 brushes, 7 filters, wireless command center, charger, home base, and a silver faceplate. Amazon sells this with 2 lighthouses, 2 extra brushes, 1 extra filter, wireless command center, charger and home base as main package and also sells an accessory pack with the extra items including 1 more lighthouse, 3 bristle brushes, 3 flapper brushes, 3 side brushes, silver faceplate and 6 filters.

Make sure you know what comes with what you are ordering and review all options to order and what accessories are included! I ordered from Amazon, got a good price, and got the extra items included at the same price, but they should have it packaged the same as on the manufacturers website if they are calling it the same model and item number instead of selling some of it as a separate item unless you order it the right way. 0 stars to Amazon on this item for making this a problem for their customers.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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