iRobot Roomba 560
If you haven’t seen a Roomba in action, you’re missing out. The question is – is it more than a toy?
iRobot’s line of Roomba vacuum cleaners were some of the first and are the most famous robotic vacuums available. They promise freedom from vacuuming, an appealing proposition.
For someone with the right type of home, a Roomba might largely make good on its promise – if you have a huge house, however, even this fanciest of Roombas may not be the best choice.
To use Roomba, you turn it on and the robot automatically drives around the room vacuuming. It does not learn the shape of your room, but uses an algorithm to automatically navigate and guess when it has covered the entire space. The most surprising thing is that in most normal rooms, it works really well. Roomba will cover the entire area, even driving under furniture and getting fairly close in the corners (despite its round shape). It’s actual vacuuming/suction ability is on par with most decent vacuums, and it handles very dirty or animal hair covered floors with aplomb.
Despite its usefulness, Roomba has a number of limitations. First, it has a small dustbin and limited battery life. I find it can usually only finish one or two rooms before its battery dies. If you don’t run it very often, those one or two rooms will also completely fill up its dustbin. The second problem with Roomba is that it cannot find its way all over your house and clean. It will work in the room or two that you put it in, and then stop when finished (and would run out of batteries long before cleaning a large home).
So is a Roomba worthwhile? I recommend it for people living in small, one or two bedroom places. It will only take a couple runs for Roomba to clean your house, and it is wonderful watching the little robot run around doing your chores for you. If you own a larger home, Roomba is great entertainment and can be nice to clean a room or two, but it’s overambitious to expect the little guy to cover your whole place.
The 560 is the highest end Roomba, including 2 virtual walls (use infrared light to keep Roomba in a particular room), and is able to automatically return to its charging station (although the reliability of this feature is a bit suspect). You can find pricing on the Roomba 560 at both Amazon and eBay.
