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I purchased the iRobot Roomba model
Discovery Roomba
about a year ago, fully expecting it to be a pricey gimmick, yet after
all these months, I'm, using it regularly, and still very happy with its
performance, convenience and functionality.
I have tile throughout my home, with some area rugs
and some rooms with wall to wall carpeting. The
Discovery Roomba
takes
all of these in stride, going from tile to rug, to carpet with no problem.
The wall to wall carpeting presents no problem to
to the Roomba. It doesn't handle the fringed rugs well, so I take the smaller
rug outside for a shake down while the Discovery Roomba does its thing.
With the larger rugs, I just tuck the fringe underneath
the rug, and the Roomba rolls right over, and onto the rugs.
The Discovery Roomba comes with two softball sized battery
operated 'virtual walls' - that send out an infra red light beam which the
Discovery Roomba will not cross. You have the option of choosing a 3ft or 4.7ft
or 8+ ft. beam. When the Discovery Roomba bumps into a wall, it will back off
follow them, the virtual walls are used to keep the Roomba vacuum out of any
area you do not want it to go. Once virtual walls are in place, the iRobot
Roomba will behave is if there really is a wall there. I suppose you could
throw down row of bricks to do the same thing, but virtual walls are a lot
easier.
When the
Discovery Roomba senses the wall, it will back
off, and take off in another direction. The virtual walls are used to keep
the Roomba vacuum out of any area you do not want it to go. And when encountering
stairs or any other drop off, the Discovery Roomba senses this and backs off
so it will not fall. The Discovery Roomba probably doesn't do too well on its
back.
Instructions from the factory tell the owner to replace
the filter every 3 months... At about $15 a piece, I can do better. I simply
clean the filter under warm running water, dry it in the sun and re-use it.
I’ve had no problem doing this, and the filter still looks perfectly good
and intact. I haven't replaced the filter yet, but it obviously wont last for
ever.
I like to run the
Discovery Roomba
in Max mode every
now and then to drain the battery. Rechargeable batteries like to be fully
discharged and then fully recharged now and then to minimize the effects of
charging 'memory'. Modern day batteries do not suffer from memory anywhere
near as much as those lousy, obsolete old NiCad batteries did, but a full discharge/charge
cycle every now and then gives a warm fuzzy feeling. Especially with a new
device, I always do a full discharge/charge cycle for the first few times to
ensure a healthy battery.
I always use the MAX setting. Although the Discovery
model comes with a wall mount gizmo I leave the Roomba on it's docking station
till I'm ready to use it again.
The Discovery Roomba knows when it rolls into a particularly
dirty area (in any of the Clean modes) and will concentrate on that spot until
it's clean! A feature called "intelligent cleaning". I'm not entirely
sure how intelligent cleaning works, or how it senses the amount of dirt in
an area, but it's pretty cool. You can test intelligent cleaning by sprinkling
a pinch of salt on hardwood floor, ceramic floor tile or any kind of home flooring
you might have. The Roomba will pause and concentrate its efforts in that area.
Since the
Discovery Roomba is a round robot, it cannot
get into square corners. It still manages to inhale fur balls from the dog
and two cats, but not the smaller dust. This isn't a problem though, all I
need to do is get those pesky corners with the Swiffer. If I remember beforehand,
I just swiff the corners out and let the Roomba collect the swiffings - hey,
a new word - swiffings.
One word of Roomba advise - the Discovery Roomba does
not notice lamp cord. Be sure to raise any cords off the floor before revving
up your Discovery Roomba, or your lamp could bite the proverbial dust. Of course
it would be the Roombas responsibility to clean up after itself upon knocking
a lamp over, but that hasn't been an issue..
So after almost a year of service, I'm still thrilled
with my purchase of the iRobot Roomba. It needs no feeding other than the electricity
from the docking/charging stand. It even docks itself if it's busy working
in the same room where the dock is located when its battery runs low. If the
iRobot Roomba runs low on power and infra red sensors cannot find its docking
station, you need to pick it up and move it to the same room before it will
dock itself for a charge. If the battery is completely run down just place
the Roomba directly onto it's docking station. I have found that placing the
Roomba docking station in an open space such as the hallway improves its chances
of being able to find the docking station when it runs low on power.
The iRobot Roomba has three different cleaning modes
- Spot, Clean and Max mode. The difference is this -
- In Spot mode, the Discovery Roomba will clean a 3 foot diameter area in
a spiral pattern. It's even smart enough to navigate around any obstacles
that might be within this 3 foot diameter.
- In Clean mode, the Discovery Roomba decides how long to clean based on
how dirty a room is, the size of the room, and how many obstacles are in its
way.
- And in Max mode, the Discovery Roomba goes from room to room cleaning
until it's battery runs low on power, then it tries to return its docking/charging
station. I put the "spot, clean, max" in the order they are on the
roomba.
Check
pricing and availability for the Discovery Roomba
There's also in optional iRobot Scheduler. It allows
you to program one schedule per day, seven days a week. With this, you can
program the iRobot Roomba to clean around your schedule. A different room
can be cleaned per day, at any time of the day. You can schedule the whole
week, and then have it run by that schedule for ever.
I do not have to worry about letting strangers into
my home to clean. And what I thought was a pricey (though a 20% off sale helped)
gimmick, has become an invaluable part of my home. Only now, I have the iRobot
Scooba to think about - The worlds first robotic floor washer - according to
the folks at iRobot.
Although the
Discovery Roomba is a great time saver,
if you're like me, you will need to take into account the amount of time you
will spend simply watching the Discovery Roomba, doing its thing, it's kind
of hypnotizing! When you first turn on the Discovery Roomba, it makes ever-enlarging
circles until gently bumping into some obstacle. Then it takes off, covering
every area back & forth, until satisfied that it's clean.
In short, the Discovery Roomba by iRobot is a buy. It cleans, it's cool,
it's has a more prestigious gadget status than anything going - except perhaps
for an HDTV. Hopefully, that will be the next review - spouse willing.
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