Roomba Review

For Christmas this year, Santa brought our family an iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner. It's small, red, and we named him "Rusty".

Roomba Review Summary
We charged him up and set him on the task - vacuum our small but dusty apartment. It took about an hour to make it through about 1000 square feet, and I have to say it did pretty good job for such a small machine, that only cost about $150.

Roomba Review Problems
The Roomba isn't perfect. Mine got stuck in two spots and was unable to recover, eventually shutting itself off and issuing a distress call (think unhappy robot sound). One spot was admittedly challenging - half on the rug, half off, under a table, with a power cord to get tangled in. The other spot has to be more common, simply under the couch sofa, where is got stuck by the flap.

Another issue is the Roomba's ability to figure out its way from a "trap". In my case, the trap was a dining room table chair, where the Roomba found itself unable to find its way out for approximately two minutes. I was so impressed when the Roomba finally made its way out from under the chair, only to be disappointed when less than 15 seconds later it went right back in. Again it took over two minutes to find its way out again. It repeated this process one more time before I intervened and set it on an entirely new course.

This really surprised me, as I expected that the design team, working with a limited supply of battery power would pull out all the stops to prevent wasted energy, like in the case of the "chair trap".

Roomba Review Benefits
I recommend the Roomba. It is inexpensive, small, lightweight, and automated. Therefore, the convenience factor is high, and the storage requirement is low. Any consumer product that has a positive return on investment (ROI), is gets a positive review in my opinion.


Do you own a Roomba? If so, I'd love to hear about your experiences with it.