Customer Ratings & Reviews

Doesn't pick everything up and it keeps going to the same spot over and over instead of the rest of the room

I wouldn't buy a Roomba not unless you like damaged baseboards and furniture

As a mechanical engineering student at the University of Oklahoma focusing on robotics as my field of interest, I was a bit skeptical of the iRobot Roomba's ability to properly clean about 1000 square feet of flooring in our house. While robots are designed and built to solve problems (in some cases solving "problems" created by our human laziness), I thought that commercial robots still existed as more of a gimmick. The appeal was strong though because, unlike humans, the robot doesn't complain about its task. It exists to serve one purpose and that is to clean the floor. This was a task nobody in our family wanted to pay enough attention to complete properly. Our problem is simple, we spend a lot of time in the back and front yards of our house, and as we re-enter the house from the front and back, we track in a lot of dirt and debris from outside. My skepticism grew from the great deal of dust and dirt we track in and from a negative review I had read on this website. However, I'm writing this review to provide another perspective on the iRobot Roomba 770 model robotic vacuum so that other consumers can weigh the positive and negative aspects. As I have not tried other robotic vacuum solutions, I will not be comparing the iRobot Roomba's design and techniques to other competitors. I will answer three questions raised by previous reviews and logical thinking, and make a few statements about how to approach owning a robot. Can the robot intelligently navigate the floor? Something to keep in mind when talking about "intelligent" navigation is that robots are far from intelligent at this point when it comes to navigation. Even the most expensive MIT research robots run into the issue of uncertainty. Uncertainty is a difficult problem to overcome in robotic navigation, and the Roomba offers a nice solution. It eschews complicated mathematics and expensive infrared sensors and uses creative algorithms and a combination of sonar and touch sensors to navigate the floor. To the casual observer, the motion produced by this method of navigation appears random and "stupid." However, watching the robot work and checking the floors for cleanliness reveals that the Roomba does a thorough job of cleaning despite the apparent randomness of its motion. Think of a Spirograph and how it tends to cover the entire area of a piece of paper as you spin the gears, with the right pattern of motion total coverage can be achieved. Additionally, the Roomba exhibits some behaviors that are quite intelligent, including wall-following and spot cleaning (sensing and repeatedly passing over particularly dirty areas). Will I never have to vacuum my floors again? Here, sadly, I must ask you to curb your expectations. The robotic vacuum does a great job of cleaning hardwood floors and does alright on carpets, but large carpets and open hardwood floors have maintenance requirements that the iRobot Roomba cannot fulfill. Mopping and thorough carpet cleanings will still be necessary. Certain hanging cabinet styles create areas that are inaccessible for the Roomba which will require your attention. The robot itself also requires regular brush cleaning, which is easy (a tool is even provided), but required after every three vacuuming sessions for best results. Our house has large open floor areas which are perfect for the robot to navigate and clean. And, not only does the robot solve the problem of our laziness in running the dust mop and/or vacuum it teaches us a lesson in clutter control. The robot has the limitation of being unable to clean your clutter up off the floor for you. For the robot to effectively clean, it is left to the user to pick up their clutter, clean up their wires, and provide the proper environment for the robot to operate in. Is it worth the hefty price tag? The answer to this question is rather complicated and subjective. If you expect to lounge around eating bonbons and drinking coffee whilst the Roomba works tirelessly to completely clean your floors, then it wouldn't be worth your money because it cannot fulfill that expectation. If you want to reduce the amount of work required to keep your floors clean by a substantial amount, you'll be very pleased with your purchase. Robotics research has indicated that, when robots exhibit any level of apparent intelligent, they automatically take on a somewhat human personality in our minds. Along with eliminating much of the work involved in cleaning your floors, this little robot will quickly take on a role in your family much like a pet. Comparatively, a pet over its lifetime likely costs more when you take into account vet bills, food, etc. and certainly doesn't help you clean. Granted, the Roomba doesn't provide unconditional love, so that's a trade off. However, if you haven't named your Roomba within a week, I'd be surprised. Finally, weigh your ability to properly prepare your rooms for the Roomba to work in and which rooms you would rather continue to address with standard cleaning equipment. Preparing rooms entails: removing chairs, clearing large debris and foodstuffs, routing cables off the floor, and cleaning areas the robot cannot clean. If the percentage of your house is greater than 50 that you could easily guess the Roomba could comfortably clean, I'd say it's worth the price. For apartments or fully carpeted living spaces (the latter of the two requiring dumping the collection bin more often) I'd suggest finding a simpler alternative such as adopting habits that track less debris onto your floors. For our family, we can happily run in and out of the house accomplishing other tasks, rest assured that the Roomba will clean up after us.

I have 2000 sqft of hardwood floors and sweeping/dusting is just a back breaker. The roomba is a good option to help me out. Pros: Self propelled, has room barriers to focus on specific areas, works on carpet and wood, returns to charge. Cons: need to section large areas to get best cleaning, blows dust around so cycle misses a few spots; too tall for crown molding around counters. Would be great if they added an option for pad to help the blowing around effect. But overall I love it

It was very hard for me to spend this money on a vacuum cleaner, but boy am I glad that I did! It is well worth the money. I have dark hardwood floors that show every bit of dust. This has made my life so much easier. I have it programmed to clean every other day. It moves from the wood to rugs without a problem. I'm so happy that the hard places like under my bed and dressers stay clean all the time! It even maneuvers between the breakfast table chairs to get under the table. It has gotten stuck a time or two. And it did grab my iPhone charger, unplug it and drag it around. But that's my fault and it was easy to get it loose. You will not be unhappy with this vacuum. Buy it!

Bought this because i thought it would be easier for cleaning. It didnt do the job I thought it should, didn't cover the whole floor and filled up quick

This is the greatest thing ever! I swept my tile floors before I used it and I couldn't believe how much I missed. This little guy does a good job. My husband was skeptical at first but when I pulled out the dirt tray and showed him he was very surprised. I have 2 dogs and one sheds a lot and it's hard to keep up with it. I have allergies and this is going to help out a ton. When your a busy mom with kids or constantly on the go this is perfect to help out! I absolutely love it! I definitely would recommend this. I only had it for a few days and can't believe that I didn't get it sooner.

I was a bit skeptical that a battery-powered automated vacuum would work very well, but the Roomba 770 has done a nice job so far. It is thoughtfully engineered, so dust and dirt generally don't escape it, and it's easy to clean and maintain. Which is a good thing, because our two dogs (Australian shepherd mixes) leave behind lots of hair, so the brushes need to be cleaned a couple times a week. Cleaning them is fast and easy and has turned out to be much less of an annoyance than it seemed like it might be. The same can be said for emptying the dust bin, which we need to do daily. In return for this small bit of attention, the Roomba scours most of our home's first floor every day. It is quite a pleasure to sit or lay on the carpet any time and not become a human dog-hair magnet. The biggest downside is the cost. We have replaced the brushes once already (less than 6 months), so the expense does not end with the initial purchase. In a home without pets, this would probably be less of an issue. Roomba 770 has other minor imperfections, such as rarely getting itself stuck or having trouble finding the charging base (our first floor is fairly large, so this is not a big surprise). Also, I'm sure it does not clean as well as a larger machine, especially one powered from a wall outlet. Still, as an engineer I understand these challenges and think it does an admirable job. To anyone who just can't keep up with vacuuming (especially due to shedding pets), I would strongly recommend the Roomba 770.

This product wanders aimlessly and cleans itself on every carpet edge making a bigger mess than not vacuuming? Took back within 15 mins

I thought long and hard about buying a robot vacuum. How great could it really be? But with two little kids and not enough time to get out an upright vacuum this little robot has been a lifesaver!!! Not only is my house always nicely vacuumed but it helps keep the house cleaner because the kids know that they have to clean up their toys before "BotBot" comes out or he will eat them. It is great! Nothing like walking into a house with fresh vacuum marks, knowing I didn't have to be the one to vacuum. Plus, I have tile, laminate, and carpet and the vacuum has no trouble cleaning any of the surfaces.

May be the best purchase I have made in years!! I have a pinched nerve In my back that pops up now & then--usually after I run the sweeper. Those days are gone. It was expensive but worth every penny! Sure I could pay my cleaning girl many times with that money but usually I need to sweep in between so I have to do it myself. The Roomba is like having your cleaning service right there when you need them. Cleans up so much dirt I couldn't believe my eyes ! You won't regret making this purchase.

I don't know how I lived without a Roomba for so long. I just love it so much, it requires little care and charges itself and runs alone. All I have to do is empty it out and clean the brushes every once in a while and it works like new every time. When it runs you can hear it but its not as loud as a regular vacuum so the noise is very bearable. However, with the setting you can set it up to run while you are work and you will never hear it. The bonus is my kids get a kick out of watching it run, they just love following it around so it keeps them entertained! Get one, you won't regret it!

This little thing is pretty cool. I have hardwood floors and tile in 90% of my apartment. The wood is very dark and every speck of dust shows up on it. I was constantly sweeping or vacuuming my place. After getting the roomba I don't have to really do anything. I have it set to run 3 times a week and each time it always junk in its bin. It crawls under tables, under my couches, around base boards, and gets almost everything. There are times where there will be something left on the floor, I think that is due to the exhaust blowing it around and back to where it already vacuumed (this i can live with). The only thing so far that it has an issue with is the bathroom mats (but my normal vacuum has issues with it also so not a deal breaker) It does come with some sticker shock, but all in all its been a great buy. Every time that it has run it always makes it back to its home base (I have an open floor plan, but the way my furniture is set up i figured it would get lost). One thing that I keep seeing on the reviews is that its "loud"... well its quieter than any upright or even stick vacuum that I have ever used, and for me I didn't buy this to clean while I was at home anyhow... I just set the timer and it goes while I am at work.

I have 3 dogs and a cat so it is very easy to get behind on vacuuming, I wasn't sure about this product as I was not certain it could handle the job. Boy was I surprised! I set me iRobot to clean every day at 1:00PM and I come home and don't notice hairballs or dust bunnies anywhere. I clean the unit every morning or evening and it is usually 1/3 to 1/2 full. Overall, I'm very impressed.

Sucked really bad did no do what was promised missed spots noisy

Amazing! I vacuumed my hardwood floors with my Dyson just prior to using the Roomba for the first time - it filled the dust bin with just my living room, dining room and kitchen - there shouldn't have been any dust! It works incredibly well, is a lot of fun to watch, has a great personality (we call her BaBa), and transitions seamlessly from the floor to the rugs and cleans them just as well. Favorite part of it is that she docks herself when she's done cleaning, to recharge! Easy to program for daily cleaning, we have her set to clean while we're at work, she isn't noisy, but you can hear her going along the walls sometimes. LOVE not having to get on hands and knees to get under the beds anymore. HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

I don't see a reason to buy this vacuum for $500 when I can get the Neato Robotics competitor for nearly $200 cheaper which is far more technologically advanced. I own them both, and I must say that the Neato brand is far superior. The Roomba just bounces around my house, aimlessly searching for dirt. It tries to make an educated guess as to when it is done cleaning, but really, it doesn't know for sure. It sometimes takes the Roomba 30-minutes or so just to find its home base as it aimlessly wanders around my house. It sometimes even seems to employ some kind of backfiring artificial intelligence (more like artificial stupidity) which more-or-less makes it more difficult than it should be to find its base. If the battery gets low, the Roomba will surely run out of battery before it finds its charging station. They recommend placing the charging station strategically so as to allow the best possible chance of Roomba finding it when it needs to, but that basically means putting it somewhere where there's high-traffic and it will get stepped on by visitors or my 100lb dog. The 770 model, (the only model I could find in my local store) doesn't come with the "lighthouse" navigation aids of the more expensive 780 model. Further more, you can't buy lighthouses for the 770 at ALL (has their marketing department ever heard of "upselling"). But EVEN IF you were able to get your hands on a $780 for $100 more, or buy lighthouse accessories for the 770, it's navigation capabilities are still far, far, far inferior to the $329 Neato XV-11. Roomba's primary competitor, the Neato NV-11, is absolutely BRILLIANT at navigating through the house and is currently selling for nearly $200 cheaper. If its battery runs low, it knows exactly where to travel to find its charging station even if I hide it in some isolated dark corner. It knows EXACTLY when it is done cleaning and makes a single pass over the floor, then returns home efficiently. It can clean the entire first floor of my house (1000sq ft) in the amount of time it takes the Roomba just to find its dock after roaming around aimlessly on the second (smaller) floor of my house. Even if the Neato doesn't pick up debris quite as well as the Roomba, the fact that it is reliable enough to do its job dilligently every single day adds up to more overall cleaning power. I expect to come home from work today finding the Neato quietly resting in its dock. I expect to find my Roomba dead under the couch. The most ideal vacuum cleaning robot would be a hybrid of the two. Maybe I'll wait for the LG Hom-bot 2.0 to hit the USA and hopefully Best Buy's buying department is smart enough to understand the products they stock on their shelves. Overall, I must say that the Roomba 770 is a big disappointment for the price. I feel like I paid a premium just for the Roomba brand name and got an inferior product. Without the intelligent laser-guided navigation of the Neato robot or the crazy dual/triple cameras and ultrasonic and infrared sensors of the soon-to-be released LG Hom-Bot 2.0 "TripleEye", the Roomba is YEARS behind the competition.

First thing when I brought it home and started it up, it got stuck under the TV Stand. After I did a little modifing to the furniture, "Hal" went around and did his business. I love this thing. Momma’s little helper. The cost was a little high but worth everything I paid for it in the long run. The floors stay cleaner with little or no work from me. I don't know how I ever lived without it.

Roomba definitely has some impressive aspects. I started my robotic vacuum adventure by purchasing a used bobsweep on ebay... The bobsweep would mop and sweep our floors spotless but it almost never made the transition into our bedrooms on its own: more often than not it would get stock trying to go through the little bump (about an inch) at the door frames... We had to close the doors and pick it up and put it in the bedrooms to clean. After a few months we decided to give Roomba a try and see if it does any better. We charged it overnight and let it run in the morning... To our surprise the Roomba made the transition, NO PROBLEM! So we decided to move the Bobsweep to my wife’s studio that has smoother transitions and keep the Roomba in the house, although it doesn’t have the mopping feature... Roomba (Tania) would also run for over 90 minutes at full charge, while the average we noticed with Bob was about an hour. After a week or so of having Tania we noticed that she isn’t as efficient in picking up hair, especially long hair, as Bob is... I thought it might be because bobsweep’s longer brush but with closer look at them both I was able to connect the dots in my observations: Bobsweep sits much closer to the ground than the roomba does, which explains it's stronger vacuuming and better sweeping results but also its inferior transitioning abilities. We don’t have pets so we still decided to keep Tania around the house. Roomba gets her way around the house, like Bob could only dream of: she’s much more aggressive and relentless when it comes to climbing and pushing through areas that Bob would have difficulties with. The Roomba might be an overall simpler robot but it definitely requires much less attention and does what it does straightforward.

My girlfriend and I bought a very large home here in SETX. I work for a power company as a electrical lineman, and I am subject to get called out at all hours day and night and be gone for hours or days. So the idea of having a robot to help clean our floors sounded like a really good idea to us. We chose the Roomba 770. We have two dogs 1 little one and a very large black lab that sheds a lot. We have stained concrete floors down and keep Roomba there. The carpet up stairs is taken care of by a canister vacuum. The Roomba keeps up, never gets stuck on anything. We have ran all power cords off the floor and have heavy short fiber rugs. We also use door stops to keep it from getting stuck in any one room, and it cleans the whole bottom floor with no problem. The only thing I wish they would change is adding a moisture sensor to stop it when it runs over or sucks something up that is moist. Learned this the hard way when my lab got sick while I was out on an extended power outage and no one was home, she went to the pooped on the floor and I think you can put 2 and 2 together lol. Roomba did not stop until it sucked up one of my girlfriends shirts that was hanging off the couch but it was too late. It had cleaned the whole bottom floor.... or at least tried. I'm sure the Roomba still works but, we will go ahead and get another one. I still love it though I will keep our dogs outside from now on when we leave.