I like the Roomba, but this is expensiveI have had Roomba's for years... They do require a little maintenance (Brush cleaning, cleaning the pet hair from the ends of the rollers) but overall they are pretty great. Cleaning the brushes is no big deal, I do it when I empty the bin. It takes a minute or two to empty the bin and clean the brushes, and it's ready to go.
We have two pugs, and they shed constantly. The 500 series Roomba's are a pretty huge improvement in design (I am a mechanical design engineer) They have redesigned the roomba to make everything modular, so if something does wear out, it is very easy to replace. My old Roomba was the first model with the scheduling ability, and I did have to replace a few things. I had to replace some transmission parts, and the batteries. Of course, I had to replace the brushes and filters many times over the years. I upgraded the batteries to give it more time to vaccuum, but the 550 seems to be pretty great right out of the box. It can run for almost two hours...
As revolutionary as the dishwasher!FIRST, if you haven't already, sign up for the Gold Box Deal email alerts.
I have no carpet whatsoever in my house. For reasons I won't go into other than to say you can never get the nasty stuff completely clean no matter how many times you vacuum and shampoo, I hate it. I have four cats, one very messy African Grey parrot and two elementary aged children so, naturally, I could sweep or vacuum every room in the house three times a day. Being an extremely busy person and wanting to do everything except sweep, a robotic vacuum cleaner sounded like manna from heaven.
I have drooled over the Roomba for a long while and have researched it endlessly. A co-worker has one and just loves it. Because of the price, though, I thought it was out of my reach until one day a couple of weeks ago when I checked my email. There it was---the Roomba was a Gold Box Deal and it was more than half off!!! Oh, yeah! Picturing the Roomba slowly rotating on a pedestal bathed in...
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly TruthFirst the good. It probably works better than your current vacumn cleaner. It really does vacumn well. We have a vacation rental home that is vacumned every two days. The Roomba made it even cleaner. Customer support is good, while the vacumn is under warrenty. Once its out of warrenty, it is out of warrenty. I would buy it with a credit card that doubles the warrenty. Will discuss further on the ugly section.
You do have to "set-up" your house for the vacumn. But it is no big deal. It will stick under some cabinets. Placing a piece of wood solves that problem. Fine cords need to be picked up, before the vacumn does it for you. Some furniture legs that are about 3/4 inch high will high center the machine and stop it dead in its tracks. It will vacumn about 800 sq. feet on a charge fairly well. We quit using the Guards after one or two uses and just shut doors or blocked off doorways.
The bad. This vacumn cleaner generation is equivalent to the...
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