PALWalrus's Full Review: iRobot Roomba 560 Robotic Vacuum
Who Are We...
We are a Roomba family. We have had Roombas from the very first models through the Discovery series and finally to the latest purchase, the Roomba 560 series machine. Before I get into the full review of the product a little background on the family and therefore the type of use that the Roomba gets.
What Does The Roomba Have To Deal With...
We are a typical busy family with seven inside dogs, yeah I know that isn't very typical. Anyway the seven dogs are four Newfoundlands, a Flat Coat Retriever and two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. Needless to say we have a hair problem, and I don't mean premature baldness. We run the Roomba almost from dawn to dusk. The house that the Roomba cares for is mainly carpeted with some tile in the kitchen and bathrooms. The house is all on one level so the Roomba does not have to deal with stairs and the such. We have rugs everywhere.
How Does It Cope...
Right out of the box the Roomba looks sleek and slightly slimmer than our previous models. Reading the leaflet we find that they have added a demo function which basically allows your Roomba to show and tell you a little about what it can do, not a bad idea, but for the one time that you are likely to do this perhaps the time could have been spent on something. We put down the docking station and let it finds its homebase and charge itself fully by pushing the docking button, we know that it is going to take between twelve and sixteen hours before it is ready to get to work...
First Run...
I was interested to see how much they had improved the AI and also how it would cope with rugs, dogs so when it had finished charging I just told it to clean, didn't arrange anything and let it run. I must say I was impressed. The old er Roombas and even the Discovery series would have snagged on something, be it a rug, dog, furniture within minutes. This Roomba ran for about an hour with hitting its first impediment, a chair with a circular bar base that the old Roombas could never deal with. This Roomba got off the base the first two times, but finally got stuck on the third attempt. It handled rugs with little or no problem and it seems that the spinning side brush is used a lot in determining what the obstacles are and how to get around them. Pretty impressive. After the hour though it was ready to be cleaned. This Roomba also seems to be able to get back onto its docking station much more consistently than the older models.
Cleaning...
I can't comment on cleaning this Roomba without drawing comparisons to the previous models. Firstly the dust tray design is vastly better than previous models. The tray assembly seems much more sturdy and the teeth along the bottom edge seem to catch a lot of dog hair. The filter system is now built into the tray and it swings open easily to clean. I was amazed how much dirt and dust had been picked up. We have found that we have to clean out the tray and filter (we blow the filter clean outside using a dog grooming blower, works great) every time we run the Roomba. This keeps the Roomba cleaning very efficiently.
The brushes have been improved and are extremely easy to remove and clean off. The brush design with the click on runners and caps make it very easy to remove the hair that used to be a major effort with previous models. My only concern is the side brush, I removed this to make sure no hair was accumulating there, it wasn't but the design seems a little flimsy for the amount of work it is doing sensing rugs and the like.
How Well Did It Clean...
I have always been surprised by people who claim that this cleaner doesn't do a very good job so we did our normal test. We vacuumed a room thoroughly with our Oreck XL and then let a clean Roomba have a go. The results are amazing, when the cleaner finally stopped the brushes were covered in hair and the dust tray was full. The pile of the carpet feels better, like it has been lifted. I am sure if we emptied it and ran it again it would get even more dirt up.
Anything Go Wrong...
Okay we have been running the Roomba basically non-stop for two months now and we have had a couple of issues. All of these issues were easily resolved and basically came down to how you clean the Roomba out after use. It is imperative that you keep the axle caps and axle rods of the brushes clear of all hair. This will build up (rather quickly in our case) and can cause some erroneous messages from the Roomba (it tells you when it needs its wheels cleaned and brushes and tray emptied but we never wait). We also started to get a clean wheels message that wouldn't let us start it up. We called support and they were very helpful. We have now found if we get any odd messages we just remove the component, air clean it and put it back and all is good to go again. The modular design of the new model makes replacing wheels, brush mechanisms etc. very simple, although none have failed yet.
So Is It A Keeper...
I must say I am very impressed. This may be more from the fact that we have been through all the other models and are very familiar with what needs to be maintained and how much it has improved. If you are buying this model as your first Roomba you may not be as impressed but stick with it and you will have a clean floor and much more time free that you would have wasted vacuuming by hand.
Any Last Thoughts...
Just a couple. We bought our Roomba through Sharper Image and always get the three year replacement plan. I am normally against such extended warranties, but the way we use the Roomba it is never going to get to three years without dying so it is an inexpensive way to get your replacement and perhaps even more improved model in a couple of years time for little out of pocket expense.
The Roomba comes with a scheduler function but to me that is just a waste of time, as I said ours runs from dawn to dusk as long as the battery is still charging. Rather than a scheduler function, the ability to tell it to start again as soon as it is charged back up would be a nice feature.
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