Anyone have a Roomba?

[Clint Jones]

Im thinking about buying a iRobot Roomba Discovery SE as a gift. Does anyone have any experience with them??? How well do they work? How about on hardwood or tile?

[Ed Peters]

for over 3 years. It does a great job on all our floor surfaces, hardwood, tile and carpet. The difficult thing to remeber is cleaning the dirt tray before you push the start button. Make sure you get the model that self docks to recharge. The way ours works, when the battery charge gets down to a preset level, the unit begins looking for the recharge base while it is making it's rounds. It will dock on it's own and begin the recharge. We have had several incidents that required us to call their customer service. We found them to be very helpful in every case. "IF" our Roomba ever dies, it will be replaced the same day. A Scoba has been purchased as a christmas present for this year.

Ed

[Denny Rice]

My wife and I had an orginial Roomba and loved it till it died about 3 yrs after purchase. We thought we didn't need a new one until we went without it for awhile. We now have a "new and improved" roomba and I must say this one is even better than my first one, it cleans even better, and the docking station is really cool, I don't have to plug the thing into the wall anymore to recharge batteries, but just like other post I do find myself forgetting to empty tray but I love these things, they go underneath my furniture and we don not have to move heavy furniture anymore to clean. Iwould tell anyone these machines do a very good job of getting the "daily dirt" out of your carpets and floors but you will still have to run a normal vac about once a week or so.:D

[Jim Becker]

Yes, we've had a Roomba for a long time and are about to replace it with a new one once the addition is built. Our brick kitchen floor kinda beat the you-know-what out of the original one and it recently went to the great Roomba garage in the sky. The new one will not be used in the kitchen, just on the pine floors and we look forward to many more years of enjoyment with it. (we do not have any carpet in our home, nor will we in the addition, either) Just for the bedrooms alone, it's a fabulous solution, since it helps keep those dust-bunnies at bay, even if you have a housekeeping service from time to time. Everyone always forgets under the bed and other furniture. Even my kids...:eek:

Denny is correct, it's not a "deep cleaning" tool, but it's great for that more frequent upkeep that is hard to find time to do. Turn the thing on and let it loose while you do other things...what's not to like about that?? :D

[Greg Stanford]

You can't come here w/out learning something, this morning I had no idea what a roomba was & now I need one.

[Jim Becker]

You can't come here w/out learning something, this morning I had no idea what a roomba was & now I need one.

Unfortunately, they don't have one suitable for shop use...:o

[Tyler Howell]

Will they avoid falling down the stairs or is that something you have to teach them:confused:

[Darren Ford]

You guys got me interested again, so I just took a look at the iRobot website and they *do* have a shop version now.

[Matt Meiser]

On a related note, how many people love (http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?section=consumer&id=5686119) their roomba?

[Dave Lehnert]

I looked to buy one as a gift a couple of years ago. At the time ,after reading reviews on Amazon, I decided against it. Over all it looked like it worked well but quit working after just a short time. They may be better now.

[Darren Ford]

I'm a little confused by the Scooba, it is a suitable replacement for the Roomba if you have no carpet, will it sweep up anything as well as clean? Having a hard time figuring out if you need both the Roomba and the Scooba for a house with no carpet.

[Darren Ford]

Here is the link to the shop version. http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=272

On the home page the photo for the DirtDog shop Roomba shows it plowing thru sawdust.

[Denny Rice]

Will they avoid falling down the stairs or is that something you have to teach them:confused:

There are sensors built into the robot and it "knows" when it has reached a stairway or something it might fall from, it will stop and try to turn 90 degrees in either direction to "learn" the layout of the floor, if it cannot go right of left it will turn 180 degrees and go back the way it came. This is very cool, not sure how it really works. It also will comes with atleast one "virtual wall" that sends out a signal Roomba can detect that you can put in the walkway of a certain room you do not want Roomba to enter and it will not cross that signal.:)

[Gary Keedwell]

Here is the link to the shop version. http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=272

On the home page the photo for the DirtDog shop Roomba shows it plowing thru sawdust.
That it....gotta get me one:eek::p

Gary

[Jim Becker]

Here is the link to the shop version. http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=272

On the home page the photo for the DirtDog shop Roomba shows it plowing thru sawdust.

Whoda thunk it...and given it will work on rough surfaces, this may also be the solution for our brick floor in the kitchen since it beat up the regular Roomba so bad.


Will they avoid falling down the stairs or is that something you have to teach them

Denny is correct...the Roomba comes with a special little device that you can use at the edge of a room or the edge of a drop-off. You can also buy extras if you need that. (We have two)

[Walt Nicholson]

We have had one for about a year. We have a new upright vac that was well rated and cost about $150.00. We also have a medium sized Terrier. After we go over the carpets with the big vac the roomba will fill itself up with dog hair the big one missed. It is pretty amazing. We will always have one around for that reason and will look hard at the shop one for Christmas.

[Jim Tobias]

We bought one and tried it and I could not believe how much it does pick up off the floor. The proof of what they do is in the vacuum bag when you open it. The only (and I mean only drawback) that we could find is that you have to keep obstacles out of the way that might get tangled up in the sweeper (like electric cords, small rugs, etc.) Other than that, it was good enoug that I bought 2 more. You can pre program the newer ones to come on at preset times on certain days and vacuum while you are at work.

Jim

[Christopher Stahl]

We have two Roombas and a Scooba for about a year, and we wouldn't be without them. If you have pets, then you'll be thrilled to have one. We have mostly hardwoods and tile thoughout our house, berber in two rooms. We have both the Roombas scheduled to run each day, so we can keep the hair down from two dogs and a cat. They are life savers because we used to have to vacuum constantly.

Like Jim mentioned and others, they are not deep cleaning, but if you have them run frequently, then it's not a problem. You don't want to wait a month and then use one because it won't be able to keep up.

The Scooba works quite well. If you hate mopping, then you want one of these. ;)

[Dave Lehnert]

Have a look at this

http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=354

[Ed Breen]

Our roomba has two small pyramids which, when strategically placed will turn the sweeper and kleep it out ofr :verbooten" places like drop offs.
;););)

[James Wabert]

A friend of mine who has a roomba told me they also make one that continuously cleans roof gutters.