Customer Ratings & Reviews

First introduced in 2002, the Roomba is a round robot vacuum which is marketed to do the job for you! I don’t know about you, but I’m not in love with the chore of vacuuming, so the opportunity to have the Roomba take care of it while I go about my business is quite appealing. There are of course several different models, but for this review we are looking at the Roomba 890. Unboxing and setting this little guy up was pretty easy. It needs a few hours of charging before you can play with it, but that’s ok. Once the charging is done, use the instructions in the box to set up your Roomba and connect it to the iRobot app on your smartphone. You don’t have to use the app if you don’t want to. If you just want to see it go, press the big “Clean” button! The first time that we pressed “Clean”, the whole family of four was in the living room. I have to say, it’s somehow pretty riveting. I don’t know what it is about watching the Roomba roll in different directions, stop, spin, go another direction, spin, go straight, bump into a table leg, etc., that is so fascinating. But all four of us were locked into watching it. It was oddly reminiscent of that episode of Gilmore Girls that opens with Lorelai and Rory in their living room watching the pink Roomba. Anyway….. The Roomba just kept cleaning and cleaning…..until we tired of it and put it back. At this point I’m not sure what makes it go “home” to the charger other than using the app to tell it to. And I’m not sure that works all the time either….I tried it a few days ago and the Roomba just kept going around in the kitchen (the charger is in the living room), so I finally just turned it off and carried it back. Here’s a few other random thoughts: -The scheduling function of the app is pretty cool. You can set days and times of the week for it to clean. I set it for twice a week while at work…that way it won’t get in my way and I won’t get in its way. -It’s still pretty noisy compared to your run of the mill vacuum. It wasn’t very comfortable to carry on a conversation while it was running. Plus, after probably 20 minutes of my son watching tv in the same room, he finally made a comment that the noise was annoying. So, best to let this thing do it’s job while you aren’t home. -It seems to have good sensors. Yes, it did bump into chair or table legs, but then it seemed to “learn” to slow down by them and go around. Pretty cool. -It senses drop offs and doesn’t go down steps. -I was not looking forward to emptying the bin, first of all because I’m terrible at figuring out common sense things like that and reading the user manual never helps, and second of all because vacuum dust sucks (haha). In reality it wasn’t bad. There is a release button on top and the bin comes out like a drawer. Then there is another flap (with yellow arrows to use as a guide, thank you) to open and you just dump the dust into the garbage. There is also a filter that is supposed to be cleaned periodically, but I haven’t gotten to that point yet! -It looked like it did a thorough job cleaning, based on the amount of dust that I emptied! The Roomba is not a cheap household gadget…this model comes in at $499. Unless you really hate vacuuming and are ok with the noise or letting the Roomba do it’s job while you aren’t home, I don’t think it is worth the money. Traditional vacuums are pretty light weight these days, and you can get the job done a heck of a lot faster. The only cases where I think it would be a wise investment would be people with pets (who have to vacuum way more often; I, on the other hand, don’t need it more than once a week), people with physical ailments, or elderly people. It would be nice if the price tag was a bit more accessible for those that could really benefit from it.

Not as great as the TV ads says. Get’s tangled in any through rug or dog toy on the floor. I would not recommend the iRobot to anyone.

This has had a few issues with connecting and needj g to constantly get recharged

Works well on short carpet or hardwoods. Doesn’t do very well with thicker carpets or where a pet may bring in dirt.

So I purchased this as I thought it will help out with cleaning.Boy was I wrong it won’t even go over regular rugs and it get stuck everywhere and also the battery dies super fast.I returned it.

This is my 3rd Roomba in 5 years. My previous 2 were GREAT! The biggest issue I have with this Roomba is the app only function. Just know that if you purchase this model the ONLY way to program it is through the app. Roomba should have allowed you the program it manually if you wanted. This is a huge issue. I called Roomba and they verified it was app controlled only. In their advertising they should emphasize this . I will never purchase another Roomba again, this unit is worthless to me.

Might be really good if i had all hardwood but not that great on carpet. Especially since i have pets. I retuned it.

BLUF: While the Roomba 890 won't change your life or bring about world peace, it works surprisingly well. INTRO: For various reasons, I'd resisted getting a Roomba or other automated vacuum cleaner for a long time. My big concern was how well it would work around the various obstacles in our house, such as area rugs, floor thresholds (between rooms with different types of flooring) and randomly-placed objects like chairs. Obviously, they can't take the place of a normal vacuum for all tasks (like vacuuming the stairs) and it was tough to justify the price. Now that we're several generations into the automated vacuum cleaner era, we figured it might be worth a try. CLEANING: Actually does a pretty good job of vacuuming up the areas it runs over. We're using it primarily on bare floors, so it's pretty easy to tell if it's gotten everything. It will re-vaccum spots if it thinks that it hasn't gotten everything, which helps. The pseudo-random vacuuming pattern is a little odd to watch; it achieves good floor coverage but it takes a while (about 45 minutes to cover our 900 sq ft first floor). It does seem to be getting the job done incrementally more quickly as it maps out the area. We dump the bin daily, and after the first few times, haven't had a problem with it filling during daily vacuuming sessions. (The first few times, it vacuumed under some furniture where our regular vacuum couldn't go and picked up very large loads of dirt.) SETUP: My non-techie wife was able to get the charging station configured without any trouble, and was able to download the iPhone app and get it working with the Roomba - that's pretty high praise for the ease of the setup process. She set up a daily cleaning schedule, and was able to use the iPhone app to fix problems (such as a full dust bin on the first day). Aside from troubleshooting, the iPhone app doesn't add a lot of value; you can't use it to set boundaries, for example, nor can you schedule more than 7 cleaning events. CAVEATS: While the Roomba can get under furniture that we couldn't reach with our upright vacuums, it's not perfect. For example, to get it to vacuum under our dining room table, we have to stack the chairs out of the way, as it's too large in diameter to fit between the legs. When vacuuming with an upright vacuum, you can just slide the chairs out of the way one-at-a-time; you basically have to prep the dining room for the Roomba before it vacuums. Also, because the Roomba follows a pseudo-random process for deciding where to vacuum, my wife gets annoyed with it when it doesn't vacuum the area she wants cleaned first. There's no way to tell it to just clean one room. OH YEAH: She named it Maleficent, after the Sleeping Beauty character.

the product is not easy to use. my floors do not take full use of the device

it does not reach home base at times. had a cheaper robot vacuum with better performance.

It seemed to do ok on my hardwood. We have a Jackrat dog who sheds course hair which gets stuck in the entry rug. Once the vacuum would get to the rug, it would stop and asked to be moved to another spot. It just moved the dog hair around and didn't pick it up. I bought it specifically to use for that rug so I didn't have to vacuum it 2-3 times a day.

The power on the carpet was fine but on hard wood isn't the best

I was so excited to buy and use my Roomba. It was a Christmas gift and I set it up and started a schedule about two weeks after I received it. This product does not work in a house that young kids live in, has throw rugs on hard wood, has furniture with nlegs, has a sectional couch... I mean the list goes on. The Roomba never finished a job, there was always some kind of error. I had to spend one evening on my hands and knees a trying to figure out where the “cliff” was that it was stuck on (under neath the couch) And then to top it off, the “extended return” policy that Best Buy has in place (which was never communicated) ended 3 days ago so I am now stuck with a vacuum that doesn’t work. I was even willing to get a merchandise credit to buy a vacuum that would work for me and my family. You can guarantee that I won’t recommend Roomba to anyone and I won’t shop at Best Buy again.

Only balled up Border Collie pet hair and did not suck it up. Did not deep clean, only surface cleaned.

I had this product in my home for about 18 hours. I didn't even run this once and I already had to call support twice. The battery doesn't charge, software updates don't work and customer service advised me to continue charging for 16 hours and to call back. Returning and buying Samsung.

Had to move it from under the chairs manually in order to get it unstuck from under the chairs

Other than paying a lot for this item, it sucks. Mine just kept going over the same areas. It gets stuck in offsets, foyers, and closets. I put small articles of trash in front of it and would not pick it up. Returned after a couple uses.

Automation can be great and simplify normal everyday tasks to give us more free time to do what we want to do. The Roomba 890 by iRobot tries to help and take care of cleaning up your floors when you’re not around or you’re just pre-occupied with other things. Depending on where you place this robot, it can definitely handle the task of cleaning up. The problem is, you need a fairly open unobstructed area for this robot to work properly. For example, I mainly used this robot in my kitchen area that has hardwood floors and also has a table and a few chairs nearby. The robot would constantly route itself into the table area and struggle with the chairs as it tries to clean. It made the effort to try and avoid the chair it confronted, only to be met with a different chair and a new challenge. The first time setup is very simple and straight forward. You can give your robot a name and connect it to your WiFi network, so that you can control additional features on the robot. Like setting a cleaning schedule, remotely start or stop the robot, and so forth. The charging base works as the robot’s home base and will make a solid effort to return to the charging base after a cleaning so that it charge itself. As you can imagine, the robot had its moments trying to get onto the charging base and was hit or miss. Overall, this robot is great if you have a wide open space that needs to be cleaned, with little or no other objects in the way of the robot. The simple to use mobile app allows you to know what your robot is doing and control certain functions remotely with your smartphone.

I was really excited to get this vacuum, but was disappointed after watching it vacuum a few times around the house. It doesn’t vacuum up and down or back and forth, it vacuums all over the place missing many spots in the room. I returned it after seeing this. I tried the Neato brand with much more success.

worked good but upgraded after 2 days to the 960 for the mapping capabilities.