She loves it, I hate it
Written: Oct 21 '06 (Updated Sep 05 '08)
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Pros: Retires your old vacuum cleaner, works as advertised
Cons: Sloppy engineering leading to in use issues after a while
The Bottom Line: Once you buy it you are addicted. This is an emotional unit. Surprise at it's capabilities, happiness about it's utility, despair about the whirly dance..
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| leisure_larry's Full Review: iRobot Roomba 4105 Bagless Robotic Vacuum |
This review covers the IRobot Roomba Sage, a dark green vacuum disk. I bought this one for 199 USD at Sams Club about a year ago. Sams Club has what I consider the 'sweet spot' offer.Has what you need in one package, but saves you about 50 USD against the normal equivalent.
The Roomba comes with following contents.
Green Roomba with 3 functional buttons: Clean, Spot, Max.
3 hour floor charging station
IR barrier to limit field of roaming for roomba
couple of filters and a 'cleaning' tool
IR remote control
This was the first household item ever I gave my wife as a christmas present. A 'vacuum cleaner' !!!
I don't think many husbands would even dare and fewer would survive giving a vacuum cleaner as a Christmas present.
It worked.. she was thrilled !!
We were about to move into a new home with all hardwood flooring and the prospect of vacuuming the cereal 'droppings' of our kids each morning to protect the floor didn't thrill her.
This little marvel of technology was supposed to do it all.
We tried it in our last house on carpet and hardwood floor and the family had a great time watching 'Karlson' zig zag around the house busily cleaning the floor. (Once you buy it, this little machine expresses such an 'cute' ant like busy behavior, that you can't avoid nicknaming it).
How well does it work?
My detailed wife's assessment: Cleans about 95% of what she would get, with an added bonus underneath tables, chairs, cupboards and beds, that he is low enough to crawl under. No more getting on your knees to vacuum dark corners.
The fun part: With a push of a button you can send it to work every day. We have about 1100 sqft for this little bugger to clean and it busily zips around each day.
The patterns look 'random' and you will see it crossing it's path quite often, but going for about 2 to 3 hours it will cover the entire floor over time
Corners: A little extruding rotating brush takes debris from the corners, even if the vacuum doesn't get in.
The Roomba has a little laser distance device on one side, so it can 'feel' it's way along a wall, and will go parallel close up actually doing a good job along the walls.
3 functions:
Clean: Will send the unit on it's cleaning mission
Spot: Will send the unit into circular motion describing and expanding and then shrinking circle. Neat feature: if you are against a wall and use spot function it will move in a rainbow fashion in and out vacuuming in a half circle. Very handy feature to clean undeneath breakfast tables etc.
Max: Supposedly adss extra power to the vacuum, we haven't found this function to add much to the cleaning power. Practically never used
IR Remote: You can give commands to the unit via IR. Also practically never used,as the typical cleaning operation would go something like this: Pick the Roomba up from it's base station, carry it on it's flip out lid to the break fast table. Start it in spot function to clean the largest mess around the kids side. This function will stop after completion. Send the Roomba around to the rest of the house by pushing 'clean'. In other words: You don't need the remote. Some of the later remotes have a timer on them to send the Roomba automatically. That might be a nice feature. We still woulnd't use it, as it is easy enough to send the unit going when you leave the house. A timer combined with the base unit below, might enable to have you fully automate the cleaning. I doubt you would be satisfied with that combination though. If nothing else you need to empty the vacuum container every 3-4 days.
IR Barrier: Nice feature if you want to limit the Roomba to one room without closing doors and such. Just send a IR ray with this unit and the Roomba will see it as a wall. I recommend to have at least one in order to block off 'sensitive' sections of the house or limit the roaming field .
Base station: This is a nice floor set unit, which is an upgrade from the basic red Roomba sets. The Roomba parks on it and two pins at the bottom start charging the unit.
Supposedly the Roomba automatically returns to the base unit when his battery is low, such automatically recharging at the end of a cleaning cycle. It is interesting to watch when the Roomba tries to climb the base station. Sends a sensation of a mating ritual. Very funny to watch. We have found though, that unless you are prepared to have your Roomba in plain view in a single room, chances are he is not going to make it back to the base station and rather ends up sending 'lonely' beeps from where he ran out of battery in a distant room.
The base station loads the roomba in 3 hours compared to the lower end units, which have a plug in loader that takes 7 hours. I wouldn't mind the longer load times, as you likely used the Roomba just once a day, but it is more convenient to 'drop' it on the base station.
Vacuum function: So apart from the cuteness and the high tech appeal of 'semi intelligent' bahavior. How well does it clean? We found it to be a match to a regular vacuum machine, maybe not quite as intense then a regular high power Hoover, but overall results are WAY better on carpet and hardwood floor, as you vacuum about 15 hours a week and that includes most 'dustbins' at hard to reach locations.
Vacuum container: Will last about 2-3 days depending on the dirt level you catch. First couple of rounds you will be amazed how much the unit can catch from a supposedly 'clean' house. Just do your regular vacuuming and then send the unit behind it...
She loves it:
Our regular vacuum is pretty much retired and we run the unit each morning after breakfast. Roomba diligently cleans up our kids cereals and dusts under coffee table and sofa. (As long as you have a couple of inches in height for him to crawl under). When the first unit broke down as the vacuum engine gave out, I had to order a replacement immediately. Taking the normal vacuum out each day did not make her happy.
I hate it:
Well actually I love it too, I was intrigued by the simplicity of electronic resulting in high quality of work.
The sensors on the unit will prevent it from running down stairs, when the little bugger gets caught in a dead end it will back out and an engineer will spend some funfull hours exploring some intelligent functions of the unit by building 'race courses' and traps. Also after a while you will adapt your habitation layout to make it Roomba fit. There is two things the unit doesn't like. Cupboards which are high enough for the disk to fit under, but not the protruding IR sensor on top. I have found that the unit can actually wedge itself then and get stuck. (Solution are a couple of small wood strips glued under the cupboard). The other one are loose cables. The unit will suck them in and get stuck. No problem with removals and no damage done, but nevertheless it gets stuck. Other then that the unit is intelligent enough to switch itself off when contained in an unescapable spot.
So what is to hate then?
With all the ingenious programming to have the unit cover all floor space, there is some sloppy engineering on the unit, leading to the dreaded 'whirly' dance. The unit moves forward then goes into circular spin, stops, backs up, does it again and then repeat. This seems to happen quite regularly, as you will find in may internet forums. Reason are photo sensors in the wheel case. There are little toothed wheels rotating through and infrared beam that shines onto a sensor, giving the unit motion information. If the wheel gets' stuck' the unit will back up. Well the wheel cases are poorly insulated from dust. Where the cables enter there is actually and opening that lets dust in easily and the covers are butted against each other without a seal or a nudge, leaving space for dust to enter as well.
Doesn't take a major brain to predict what will eventually happen to an optical sensor in a VERY VERY VERY dusty environment.... Yeah.. it will dust up and cease functioning. Nothing you couldn't fix with a compressed air can, but you need to get to the wheel case, which literally requires you to take apart the entire unit and even then there is one screw on the wheel case you can't get to very easily, so you end up with loosening about 20 screws on the unit, 'wedging' the wheelcase open and blowing compressed air into it, which sometimes will, sometimes won't fix the problem. I have found on our replacement unit (which was a refurbished red Roomba 4100= that they had closed the wire intlet with hot glue, an improvement, but I don't think it will be sufficient. I ended up using my hot glue gun to seal the entire gasket and the wire inlet, which gave me piece for about 8-12 weeks at a time. Still no 100% fix.
So this is the Achilles heel of the unit. They should replace it with a magnetic sensor and some steel rotators and the problem would be fixed forever. Minimum I would expect a much tighter seal and an ability to get to it for cleaning without taking the whole Roomba apart.
There you have it: I spend hours cursing at the hardware engineers at Roomba for this lousy construction, while marvelling at the programmers for their ingenious design.
Would I still buy it ? My wife LOVES it.. what more can I say.. and I LOVE it too, when it doesn't run in dreaded circles.
When our unit died after about a year we 'downgraded' to the Roomba 4100 entry level model. It is essentially the mechanics, just in a cheaper looking red plastic cover, without the 'max' button, which we didn't use anyway, but works just as well. Seems they have improved the software in the mean time as it seems to run a tad more 'intelligent', but no fix to the Achilles heel.. So I keep my screwdrives and air can handy....
Update June 2007: We are on our third IRobot now. Both former models had issues with the desribed whirly dance, but both eventually died as the vacuum motor gave out. The robot is happily running around with an eerie low noise level, not sucking up a thing. So I have to add that motor to the list of under engineered components. Both motors were gone within 15 months.. just outside the warranty period.
The latest one we bought seems to try to address the issues. The wheel casing is much more tight (haven't opened it up yet, as we are still under warranty, but I would guess they are STILL using optical sensors). The vacuum motor has definitely changed, as the noise level has gone down dramatically (which is VERY nice) and has a different frequency to it.I hope this engine is also more robust then the earlier ones. Keep fingers crossed that these new models are not going to last just past the warranty period. If this one breaks down, I'll go competitive.
September 2008 Update:
The latest units seem to have adressed the wheel case issue and the vacuum motor issue. We have TWO Roombas running for over a year now. The weak point has now moved on to the battery. I had one battery each giving out in each unit after something like 200 to 300 cleaning cycles. The OEM replacement batteries run at a whopping 50 to 60 USD. For the entry level units that is almost 50% of the new unit cost and for refurbished ones it is 75%. With the wear and tear the units are going through at least at the entry level end, I would always recommend to buy a new unit instead of just replacing the battery. At all times I recommend if you buy a battery, go for an alternate source, they go as low at 30 USD, or you can have them with extended run times at similar pricing, which is really nice. For now I have enough batteries left from the early units.
At last I am upgrading my opinion towards repurchasing a unit, rather then switching to a competitor, as the units are approaching two year life time with the weak point becoming the battery, which is an easily replenishable part. At 50 to 100 USD cost per year, I certainly won't spend time on manually vacuuming ever again !
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 199
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Epinions.com ID:
leisure_larry
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Member: Leisure Larry
Location: US
Reviews written: 57
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
Electrical Engineer. Engaged Computer User. Hobby photographer.
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