Pros: excellent cleaning action, you don't have to scrub floors
Cons: must sweep beforehand, short battery life, only cleans one room per run
The Bottom Line: Purchasing a Scooba won't completely eliminate your cleaning chores. It shifts and reduces them but you still have to clean the robot.
njchicaa's Full Review: iRobot 5800 Scooba Robotic Vacuum
Ah, the Scooba. I have been fantasizing about it for months now. There are lots of animals running around the house and it takes me several hours each day to catch up on vacuuming, mopping, washing bowls/crates and cleaning out litter boxes. A floor-washing robot sounded like an absolute necessity but the price was too high for me to be able to convince the man that we had to buy it. So I waited and pined for it until Christmas rolled around. I was so sure that he would buy it for me. WRONG. He got me a new pot and pan set to cook him dinner in. Typical.
The day after Christmas happens to be my mother's birthday so we were out trying to find the Roomba that my dad said she wanted. Roombas were all sold out. Scoobas weren't. Guess who bought a Scooba for herself on December 26th?
What Is A Scooba?
This machine is a little automatic floor-washing machine. It is about 4 inches high and moves around the floor, washing and mapping it out, so that it should eventually cover the entire surface area of the room. Scooba zooms around in spiral, room-crossing, and wall-creeping patterns to ensure full floor-coverage. As it moves around, it vacuums up dirt/debris, sprays cleaning fluid onto the floor, scrubs the floor, and then vacuums up the liquid. Doesn't it sound just divine?
Out Of The Box
I got home late that day and was so excited to try out my new gadget. A non-technical person like myself was able to insert the battery and snap everything together. Unfortunately the battery needed to charge overnight so I had to wait to play with the new toy. When the battery is doing a big charge, the "power" button on the machine will flash green rapidly. You know the battery is charged when the light is a steadily illuminated green.
Scooba comes with one battery pack, a charger that plugs into the unit, an invisible wall, a very small bottle of Clorox Scooba solution, a measuring cup and an "I Love Robots" magnet that, I'm not gonna lie, is proudly displayed on my fridge.
The invisible wall is an object that can be placed in front of a doorway, stairs, or anything else that you don't want Scooba to go near. It requires D batteries which are not included so I haven't tried it out yet.
The Clorox Scooba solution is a specially-formulated fluid that you have to use with this machine. I found it somewhat outrageous that they designed the robot to run only with their special cleaner until I read through the manual and discovered that you could use white vinegar or plain tap water instead. You cannot use any other type of cleaning product in the machine or you will produce excess foam and void the warranty. A bottle of the Scooba cleaning solution costs between $5 and $7 (depending on where you purchase it) and will last you for about 20 cleaning sessions.
The measuring cup resembles a 100 mL beaker or shot glass and has lines to show the user how much cleaning solution or white vinegar to pour into the machine.
Running Your Scooba
When the battery is fully charged, you are ready to use the Scooba! You press the silver lever on the body of the machine to remove the tank portion. (more on that later) There are two rubber tabs that seal the two tanks: "clean" and "dirty". You have to pull up the "clean" tab and pour in the Clorox solution or vinegar, if you choose to use them. Then you are instructed to fill the tank with warm water and to tilt it backwards to ensure that it is entirely filled with liquid. When the tank is full, you press down the rubber tab to plug the opening. I always wipe down the exterior of the tank to remove any liquid that could sink down into the electronic body of the machine. Then you place the Scooba tank into its slot and press it down until you hear a click. The robot is now ready to clean your floor! You can place the Scooba onto the floor, press "power" to turn it on, and then press "clean" to set it into motion.
Although this robot is called a "vacuum", it is suggested that you sweep or vacuum your floors prior to using Scooba on them. I have parrots that turn their wooden toys into splinters on a daily basis so I found the sweeping requirement perfectly reasonable. I'd never expect it to be able to deal with the disaster that they create. Supposedly Scooba can run without pre-sweeping or vacuuming though I would only recommend this for homes without pets or children.
As Scooba runs, it moves around the room in different patterns which are designed to help the machine maximize the amount of floor space that it covers. This robot is very loud and I would place it on par with a vacuum cleaner. I was disappointed to discover how loud it was because it dashed my dreams of coming home from work, turning Scooba on, and taking a little nap while it ran. (Hey what do you expect from someone willing to pay hundreds of dollars for this device?) My 3-bedroom ranch is too small for Scooba to run while I'm sleeping. If I had a two story home, it probably wouldn't be an issue, but as is the house is just too small to avoid the robot's noise.
If Scooba has a problem while running through its cycle, it will stop and beep at you. Beeping could be because it is stuck, the tank isn't snapped securely into place, or because it has run out of cleaning fluid. I have had it run out of cleaner but I chose to just clean the machine out and recharge so I could run it again in the same room.
When the machine is finished with an area, it will beep at you and turn itself off. This is your cue to start the post-cleaning maintenance that it requires after every cleaning session.
Putting Scooba To Bed
When the unit finishes a cleaning session, it requires a bit of maintenance on your part. First, you have to dump out the "dirty" water tank. When you are done being appalled at the color of water that comes out, you need to rinse out the water tanks with warm water, rinse off the filter, rinse off the scrubbing brush and empty the vacuum port. It sounds like a lot of work but it takes about 5 minutes tops. After cleaning everything, I plug Scooba into the battery charger so I can use it again fairly soon.
Cleaning Performance
Once I saw the robot start to move around the linoleum floor very quickly in an apparently haphazard fashion I was skeptical about the cleaning action. I must admit that this machine did an admirable job in my kitchen which is very irregularly-shaped these days with an island, a kitchen table, and two puppy crates. It even managed to make its way through the maze of chair and table legs to completely scrub underneath the table. The floor looked good after one pass. It looked great after two. This is a surface that I thoroughly mopped just 3 days earlier. After running the fairly-loud Scooba twice in one day, my boyfriend was completely annoyed so I cleaned it out and started re-charging it because I wasn't finished with my kitchen experiment. I ran the machine once the next day and twice the next. Every single session yielded filthy, almost black water being poured out of the dirty water tank. My horror was about equal to how I felt when I first ran a Dyson Animal through my home. I thought this place was clean. I have the sweat stains to prove the effort. After 6 passes, the kitchen is still producing nasty-looking water which isn't too surprising since I have 2 foster puppies who bring in all kinds of mud and dirt. I also have run Scooba on just plain water for kicks to see if the water came out equally as dark and filthy as it does with the Clorox solution. It did.
This wonderful little machine also can be used on sealed hardwood which is lovely since 4 of the 6 rooms in this house have hardwood flooring. I was a bit apprehensive about the amount of water that would be left standing on the wood after being cleaned by Scooba. There was no need to worry: most of the "wetness" is vacuumed up before the robot moves on its way. It leaves no more liquid behind on the floor than what WetJet or a mop and Murphy's Oil Soap does.
This machine does a great job of scrubbing floors to remove dirt, dust, and even more difficult stains like pomegranate juice or smashed blueberry. I did not expect it to be particularly effective on the dried bird poop that occasionally hits the floor when the cats decide to play with the newspaper. Scooba surprised me by doing a very nice job of tackling it. The stains were not completely removed but I'd estimate that the robot removed 50% of them. That may not sound impressive to most folks but those who clean up dried bird poo on a regular basis will understand.
The best part of letting this little machine do the work is that it sucks up the dirty water as it moves to a new space and only uses fresh, clean solution to scrub the floor. No matter how well I rinsed out my mop, no matter how many times I dumped out a dirty bucket of cleaner and mixed a fresh batch, I always seemed to find a dried spot or two of dirt that had been left behind by the mop. That isn't an issue when this robot cleans your floor.
Stopping Scooba In Its Tracks
As I mentioned earlier, I have been thinking about getting this robot and the Roomba for quite awhile now. Because we have mostly hardwood with some area rugs and mats, I was afraid that it would stuck on rug-edges or in corners. I have yet to see this robot get good and stuck to the point where it shuts itself off and requires my assistance. As soon as it touches a rug, wall, baseboard, mat, etc., it immediately changes direction. It has run right over the newspaper that I have down around the base of the macaw's perch. That is my own fault for not picking the paper up before running it but I doubt that such a situation would be an issue for most people.
The front of the machine is very sensitive to any pressure exerted by objects in front of it. In fact, when I first put Scooba together, I kept trying to press the loose front "bumper" into the body of the machine. I was listening for some kind of click to indicate that it had been pressed into place. Eventually I realized that it is designed that way to make the robot immediately aware of objects in its path.
The Pets Thought That Scooba...
The cats were divided in their opinion of this machine. I honestly thought that they would be freaked out by it--and that is coming from a person who changes their food, litter, litter boxes, etc. at a whim. I knew they wouldn't care when I got an automated litter box. I was sure they would be afraid of the floor-cleaning machine. I was wrong. The adult resident and foster cats did the best job of rolling their eyes that they could and proceeded to walk right through the kitchen floor as if there wasn't a noisy, zooming little blue thing in their space. The kittens thought that Scooba was the most entertaining thing in the world to stalk. They would stalk, chase, and pounce on it and then run away to start the process all over again. None of the cats cared about it.
The foster puppies, I thought, would be more frightened because they are direct from the shelter, unsocialized, and afraid of everything. Nope. They slept through several Scooba experiences in their crates as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
The parrots were divided on the machine. My Eclectus was unfazed by the noisy thing scooting all around under her perch. She laughed at it and told it to "step up!" about a hundred times. My Blue and Gold Macaw was frightened by it, though, and he flew through two rooms to find me when Scooba got stuck under his perch.
Overall, the animals handled the robot's presence better than I had expected.
Cost and Availability
The IRobot site sells this Scooba for $299.00 plus shipping. I purchased it for $250.00 at Kohl's on sale. Expect to pay anywhere between $250 and $325 for this machine. Scooba is sold in home good stores like Target, Linens N Things, Kohl's, etc. If you can't find it in your area, you can order it directly from the IRobot site.
My Disappointments With the Scooba
This machine is very easy to set up, run, and clean out. It is very effective in cleaning the floors and reducing your workload. There's no denying that. I do have a couple of issues with it, though:
1) The battery lasts only for one room-cleaning session and then requires an hour or two to re-charge. Anyone with a job will only be able to get one or two rooms worth of cleaning out of their Scooba each day. I will probably purchase an extra battery and rapid-recharger but at $250 for the machine, I shouldn't have to go there. The battery should last for far longer than it does.
2) Scooba does require a good sweeping or vacuuming before use. I used the machine in my hardwood hallway last night but left it unattended. It worked its way into the front room and under the Christmas tree. Because it was under the tree of someone who slacks off so much that they pay hundreds of dollars for a machine to do their mopping, Scooba sucked up about a zillion pine needles. It wasn't slowed down one bit but it did slowly dispense the needles it had sucked up as it moved around the house. It was almost like it was pooping pine needles across the floors. Freaky. Based on that one experience, I would never set it free in any room without sweeping.
3) This robot prefers nice square or rectangular rooms. I have watched it move through my kitchen with various obstacles many times and it just gets confused about where it should move. Sometimes it tries to cover too large an area rather than a smaller one completely. During the hallway floor experiment, it wandered into various rooms at each end of the hall, including working its way under the macaw's cage. He was thoroughly freaked out. Though I have not used the Invisible Wall piece, I can already see the value in it. You can lock the machine into a limited area to prevent pine needle accidents, wandering and such.
4) I don't know what is up with the "push here to release tank" lever on the top of the Scooba but there's an engineer somewhere who needs to be reprimanded. You press the metal piece down into the body of the machine to release the tank which is, ironically, connected to the lever. You press it down and then have to devise a way to pull the tank up and out. The pretty silver lever looks like a great thing to hold onto as you pull the tank up but, unfortunately, you have to be pushing it down in order to free it. I still haven't worked out a very good way to remove the tank portion of the robot even after a dozen uses. I press the lever down with one hand and then try to guide one of the tank sides up with my other hand--usually this requires a couple of attempts to actually remove the tank.
Overall Opinion Scooba is a fun little gadget to have in your home. Is it worth almost $300? I can't say that it is. (I'll never admit that to my boyfriend, though!) It does a great job of scrubbing my linoleum and hardwood floors but it's like having a high-maintenance girlfriend. The machine requires pre-cleaning before you can use it, it's loud, it only cleans one or two rooms per day, and it requires rinsing when it's finished with that room. Sometimes I think it'd be easier just to get down on my hands and knees and scrub the floor..... then I laugh at such a thought and set Scooba on its way. That's what we slacker-types do.
Features: A fully charged Scooba Battery powers Scooba to clean 250 square feet per charge One full tank washes up to 250 square feet Autonomous cle...More at Newegg.com
iRobot's award-winning floor washing robot gets floors reliably clean every time. Ideal for washing smaller floor areas, the Scooba 5800 cleans up t...More at GoVacuum
Kick back and let this Scooba floor washing vacuum clean your floors for you. Sensors within the vacuum allow it to clean beneath cabinet edges, table...More at Best Buy ®
Floor-washing robot cleans sealed hardwood, tile, linoleum, and more Can handle up to 250 square feet on a single battery charge Uses water, water and...More at Amazon
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.