Do I really need it? No. Is it awesomely fun? YES!
Written: Dec 06 '04
Product Rating:
Ease of Use:
Durability:
Ease of Cleaning:
Style:
Pros: doesn't need supervision, cleans efficiently and quickly
Cons: battery dies faster then i'd like
The Bottom Line: Although the technology will continue to improve, we've arrived at a point where this is no longer techno-geek fun, but in fact something the average person can use.
zoogelsnof's Full Review: iRobot Roomba 4210 Bagless Robotic Vacuum
I live in a very, very old, very small apartment that I share with 5 other people, 2 of whom are possible the most disgusting human beings on earth. Granted, considering the size of my apartment (guesstimate 1,500 square feet, but that is just a guess) we would do fine with a traditional vacuum cleaner, but I love gadgets! Oh do I love gadgets, I love gadgets like you don't even know! So when time came to buy a vacuum I wasn't going to go traditional, I was going to get the most high tech fun piece of equipment I could find, and the Rumba is definitely that piece of equipment.
What's in the Box :
The unit itself, instruction manual, battery, charger will wall mounting accessories, and two, "virtual walls."
Ease of Set Up
Set up was incredibly easy, plug the wall unit into the wall, plug the battery into the battery into the unit, put the unit on the charger and charge it up. It took maybe a total of 15 minutes once I got everything out of the box (getting everything out of the box was harder then it should've been, they over pack the stuffing out of this guy.)
How it works
There are 4 buttons on the unit, power, which, duh, powers it on, clean, which sets it going to do its work (if you push clean, it won't stop until either it decides the floor is totally clean, or the battery is about to die), spot, which intensely cleans an area about 3 feet square from where the unit is when you push the button, and max, which just makes the until go until the battery dies, even if it thinks things are clean. I always just push clean, and once pushed, the little guy starts wandering in every increasing circles around the floor, sucking up just about everything in its path. When it pumps into something, the front bumper lightly taps it, and then it turns and goes in a different direction. It doesn't clean the entire floor by doing it systematically, it tries to do it by being lucky, it figures if it runs around long enough, eventually it'll clean most of everything, and generally this assumption is correct, I've never had it miss any big blind spots of dirt. Also as a cute feature, in addition to the big sucking engine that it uses when it wanders over dirt, coming off the two front corners are small whisker brushes that are constantly spinning, and help to turn up dirt/paper/plastic that may get sunk into the rug, so that when the unit runs over them it can pick that sort of trash up more easily.
Bumping into stuff
You'll hear a lot about how you need to pick up certain things first so it doesn't run into them, but I say that's silly. As long as you've got nothing shorter then a magazine on the floor, it'll just pump into it and push it away, or be pushed away depending on how heavy it is. (Although, granted, you do need to move magazines out of the way, also shoe laces, but otherwise I haven't had it get stuck on anything).
How well it works
My room has nasty 30 year old vaguely carpet like material that is very short, and linoleum, and it never misses a single spot of dirt on either. I'll grant users have reported problems with shag carpeting and rugs etc, but I don't have either of those, so I can't vouch as to the units efficiency on those surfaces, but for my very short carpet it works masterfully. It goes under tables, gets in corners, goes around couch legs, it's just a wonder that it manages to get so much. And, of course, the ultimate yard stick of efficiency is how much dirt you end out throwing away, and the hopper is always full of dirt by the time the unit is done wandering about the floors.
Ease of Cleaning
The unit is very easy to clean, the dirt hopper pops right off to be dumped into a trash can, and the small filter inside of it pops right out and also gets tapped off. The brushes are held in by an easily removed metal lattice work and are themselves easily taken out and tapped off. After every 3 or 4 uses I generally give it a good cleaning out that takes, tops, maybe 10 minutes. One problem is that dirt does tend to get stuck between the cleaning brushes and the, "roof" of the unit where dirt shouldn't be, and this can be a bit more annoying to get at, usually involving some vicious shaking of the unit itself, I don't know if it's actually a problem, but I worry about dirt getting too close to the circuit boards and whatnot.
Special Features
Supposedly it's smart enough not to wander off stairs, I have no stairs, but I have no reason to disbelieve this claim. Supposedly it has official sensors that detect dirt, I don't know how it would detect dirt, but the thing works, so once again, no reason to disbelieve that this is true. It comes with two, "virtual walls" which send out a signal saying, "do not cross this line! (which it projects outwards)" if you want to keep the unit out of a certain area/room. I don't use them, but I tested them, and they do work to do exactly that. The unit has a battery life of between 30 minutes and an hour depending on its mood, and it should be noted you will be greatly tempted to anthropomorphize the unit, and you should do this liberally, mine has a name and everything.
Overall:
I'm not going to bother scoring this specifically, it gets A's across the board, and I love this thing and can't imagine it working very much better then it does!
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