Does anyone have a Roomba? Is it something worth having? I always see them pop up on Woot. With six in my family. plus my indoor cat, and my minpins storming in every once in a while, I'm wondering if I should invest in one of these.
That's a great question! I'd like to hear feedback as well. The only second-hand experience I've ever heard of was my wife's cousin. He had one in college and it ended up just sitting in his closet- he said it wasn't powerful enough, but he did admit that he had read that the newer versions were much better.
I got a Roomba last Xmas from my brother and I returned it for store credit after 1 week. I don't remember the exact model but it was the yellow one. It would keep getting stuck while going in reverse (no rear bumper sensor) and the suction power on that thing was weaker than my 3 year old Hoover. I have two boxers so this was nothing but a toy to them. I eventually invested in a Dyson off of Woot.
epinions has some reviews of it: http://www.epinions.com/Vacuums/skp_~1/dl_~1/search_string_~roomba/adv_search_~1
I have had a Scheduler for over a year. We love it. We just had to replace the battery and one other part in the past month. (totaling $100). But it vacuums our living room and dining room automatically on a timer twice a week while we are at work. All you have to do is empty the tray and keep the brushes clean. While it was out of commission the carpet look like crap. Our stand up vacuum didn't even work great on it. As soon as we got it going again the carpet looked 100% better. I was amazed at the job it did. It only has enough juice for a couple of large rooms at a time. But I think you can program newer models to rotate cleaning different rooms on different days. We will have a roomba for ever.
Very helpful for hard floors, less so for medium pile carpets but still helpful. You will be surprised how much it can pick-up. Our battery died after a couple of years though; have not replaced it yet.
Save the money for a Dyson Vac. Ours is nuts. After we use it ont he couch you would not even knwo we had a cat.
I bought a refurb online a while back. Died in a day. Still waiting for the new battery to get here. Go new. Skip today's woot and stay away from refurbs.
What is so special about Dysons? The price on those things is outrageous so they better be damn good!
I've been looking into the roomba's myself. One of my wife's friends has one and she swears by it. HSN has a good deal, actually better than roomba.com. For $250 you get a sensor a mid-high level roomba and the self-charging center. Same deal on roomba.com is $300. The customer service issues I've read about have all been handled well. I've toyed with the idea of a dyson vs. a roomba but since I don't do the vacuuming, my wife has knocked out the dyson idea.
bought a refurbed scheduler off of woot last year for ~$100. it works great. run it at least 3 times a week. you need to clean it often though, other than that its great. we have 2 cats and dog and I run it exclusively on the carpet downstairs. I haven't manually vacuumed downstairs in at least 6 months So far its one of the best things I have bought in a long time
I think they sell them on Woot all the time...My friend told me that some of the last bag o crap had some included...very cool...
We just got on from Costco last week and it's been pretty cool. We have the hardwood laminate floors and it's perfect for us. It works well on our large rug in the middle of the floors.
