Home > Consumer Reviews > iRobot Roomba Pro Intelligent Floorvac Robotic Vacuum

I am living in a small appartment, with wooden/stone floors. The appartment needed some adjustements before Roomba could work all by itself: The sofa was slightly too low so I raised it, and I had to organize power cords. Now I just push one button and my kitchen and living room are cleaned while I am away shopping (I always take a look around on the floor to remove any object that will disturb the cleaning, but this is realy not bothering me). And I often vacuum the bedroom or the bathroom while eating. It really does pick up all the dust, and walks everywhere. It's quite fun watching it work. There is no problem with capacity of dustbin or battery. I hope it will last for a long time... I guess people with a lot of mats might get some more problems with the robot getting stuck...

This is the best! With a 1 and 3 year old, house-cleaning (and especially vacuuming) often get pushed to the bottom of the to-do list. Now, I can do 2 things at once ... vacuum and whatever else I want to do. It's great to leave the house and vacuum while I'm gone! And finally, under the beds is clean as well! I've got 2 animals, both shed terribly. The Roomba picks up all the hair on tile and on carpet. My 3-year-old even thinks it's "cool!" In fact, she cleaned her room just so she could have Roomba vacuum her room! It's nice and quiet too - fine to do while the kids are sleeping!

Short and sweet, It works, it's fun and it's limitations are easy to work around.

1. Buy the pro instead of the basic to get the extra virtual wall unit.

2. Buy the rapid charger so that you can do several areas per day

3. Clean out the dirt cups after each area...takes only 2-3 min

4. Not for use with shag carpets

5. Not for use in REALLY filthy areas (Like the work area in my basement unless you pick up the visible piles of sawdust, doghair blown in leaves, etc.) It's not that the unit won't work...it's just that the dirt cups are not big enough to hold it all. I use the shop vac to pick up the big stuff and the Roomba goes after the rest. In the other parts of the house...the Roomba works alone.

6. It REALLY works well along the edges of walls and cabinets and it is great with doghair.

I bought the pro elite unit. Initially (for the first 2 weeks) it worked great. Than the problems started. These range from battery drained too quickly (worked 15 minutes on a fully charged unit) to the unit getting stuck in the middle of the room and turning itself off (while the battery were charged). After exchanging of several E-mail messages with Irobot technical support department and several long telephone conversations with their customer support department they admitted that there is something wrong with the unit and issue me a RM # (which is an authorization to return the unit for an exchange). Of course they demanded that I paid for the shipping (another $20+). It took over 3 weeks before I received another unit. When I opened the package it turned out that they sent a different model (cheaper - of course) I called again their customer support. I told them that I will agree to keep the cheaper model, but that I wanted them to refund me the price difference. They refused to do that and issued me another RM #. This time they agreed to pick up the cost of returning the unit. However it took another 2 ½ weeks (and numerous phone calls) before the unit was picked up and another 2 weeks before I got the new unit - the right model this time. I charged it and turned it on. The same old problems occurred again. It takes much more time and effort to clean the room with this "automatic" unit than with a conventional vacuum cleaner since you need to turn the unit on again and again every few minutes. Bottom line - this is a worthless product. Since I cannot give it a rating lower than 1 I have given it a one star rating. In my opinion it should be rated with one big fat zero.

I had this for about almost year and half. Just today, I got my third warranty replacement vacume. First two were acting funny after cleaning a very dusty rooms after construction. I think internal sensors got messed up with dusts. However, warranty service is fantastic. Each time, they send me a brand new machine. Customer service reps were very friendly and helpul.

After I got this, I rarely use my regular vacume. I just let it runs around the house. I have a rapid charger with extra batteries. So one runs out of battery, I just plug in a new battery. Major time saver.

Newest model is much quiter and has many improvements. I am hoping that it would be more durable. I won't let it vacume after the construction. It has a year warranty so as long as it breaks down before a year, I am ok. However, I would still buy one even after warranty. I love this machine.