Move over Jetsons, the new space-age families are here. You have your housekeeping robot, Rosie? Well, we have our vacuuming robot, Roomba. True, Roomba doesn't dust, do the dishes or feed the pets, and it's not without its flaws, but it's off to a solid start.

The Roomba Basics

Out-of-the-box, the Roomba 500 series (we tested the 560 model, specifically) is easy to get rolling with the basics. Simply take it out, pull out a little tab to activate the battery, plug up its charging dock, and set it on the dock. After a few hours this little character will be ready to start cleaning your floors. A simple press of the big button on its top kicks it into action. It's truly amazing to see the Roomba go about your room(s), tenaciously performing one of your typical household chores for you. It's difficult not to be endeared in some way to this little happily whirring machine. We found ourselves talking to it, despite our better judgment, as if it were a pet or small child. It's darn cute.

 

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Setting the Roomba 560 on a schedule to automatically vacuum your floors is also extremely easy. It's basically as simple as, and very similar to, setting your alarm clock (with an 'alarm' for every day). Once set, the Roomba will back out of its dock on the days and times you set and begin cleaning the area around it. The Roomba will clean every area it can reach until it either senses the floors are clean, or it runs low on battery power, at which point it will attempt to return to its dock to recharge until its next scheduled run.

The Roomba 560 does an excellent job of cleaning up floors without being completely halted by obstacles. Because the Roomba can run daily, it kept our floors immaculate to the eye. We even found its debris cup to be full of all sorts of dust and hair that our professional vacuum left behind. This was initially surpising as the Roomba isn't a particularly powerful vacuum. However, it became clear that its endless patience to repeatedly vacuum an area allowed it to catch things that one or two passes with a more powerful vacuum may have missed. It's significantly quieter than a standard vacuum as well, though you'll likely want to schedule it to run during times you're not around; we found it difficult to hear television and music while it was running, without turning up the volume a significant amount.

We found that it generally does a good job at navigating around obstacles, avoiding stairs, and handling cords and cables in its path. The Roomba 500 series can detect objects as it approaches and slows down before gently bumping into them, which is great for delicate furniture or pets. The Roomba also contains "cliff sensors" that make it do a prompt change of direction when it finds stairs or other high drops. Large cords such as power cords were never harmed by the Roomba, and the Roomba generally moved over them with nary a hiccup. Smaller cords such as those the size of speaker or telephone wire would occasionally get caught and dragged a bit more by the Roomba, so you'll need to 'Roomba-proof' your areas a little bit with this in mind.

Roomba Advanced Setup

As easy as it was to get started with the Roomba, we gave it only a 6 out of 10 for ease-of-use. If you're looking to have a little more control over the Roomba's operation, Roomba's setup might get quite a bit more complicated, depending on your home's layout, the furniture in your room(s), etc.

Our review model (560) included two small hut-shaped units that perform double duty as 'lighthouses' or 'virtual walls'. To quickly clarify, 'lighthouses' are intended to serve as a beacon to the Roomba telling it "this is where you're supposed to go next", or "this is the way back to your dock". In 'virtual wall' mode, they behave differently and project a narrow invisible infrared beam across any space, creating a wall that the Roomba will not pass. This is useful for keeping Roomba confined to one room, as you can place it by an entrance that does not have a door, or by a door you'd prefer not to physically close.

Largely, the virtual wall mode worked as advertised, keeping the Roomba contained to the areas we desired. However, we did experience a couple of instances of the Roomba barrelling through the invisible wall, but these were rare exceptions and only occurred a tiny percentage of the time.

The lighthouse mode is where things get particularly complicated. In theory, lighthouses are brilliant. Essentially they allow you to direct Roomba to the rooms you wish to have cleaned, and allow the Roomba to find its way back to its dock (the Roomba can only find the dock if it has a clear line of site to it). The general premise is to place the lighthouse within view of the dock, the next lighthouse in view of the last lighthouse, and so on, creating a chain of beacons that the Roomba can follow into the rooms you want cleaned as well as breadcrumbs back home.

In completely empty rooms this works generally as advertised. However, since Roomba requires a clean line of sight to either the nearest lighthouse or the dock to find its way to and fro, the process often breaks down during normal use in rooms with furniture. The Roomba 500 series will bump around until it happens to discover a beacon again, but frankly it's consuming its battery the whole time it does this, and often it does not have enough juice to make it back home by the time it finds the beacon. This is compounded by the fact that it has a pre-programmed (and unchangeable) timing per room. It will try to spend 35 minutes in the first room, 35 minutes in the next, and so on. Between this behavior, and the amount of time it 'wastes' looking for its way back home, sometimes it just can't make it. This is not utter tragedy, but it will mean a few minutes looking for the Roomba the next time you walk through, and carrying it back to its dock much like an errant pet. You'll end up doing a great deal of experimenting with the placement of the lighthouses before you find an orientation that works reasonably well for your layout and furnishings. The iRobot (Roomba's manufacturer) Web site contains forums with nice animated diagrams demonstrating how the lighthouse beacons work which, for our needs, were a little clearer to understand than the diagrams included in the manual. iRobot's forums are also a great place to get help from other Roomba users, and there's a surprisingly healthy and helpful community around these machines.

 

Maintenance & Other Considerations

 

Being a compact unit, the Roomba 560 contains a small reservoir for capturing the debris it cleans up. As such, you'll find yourself emptying it out at least every other day or so, depending on the traffic your home gets. This isn't terribly inconvenient, as it's quick and easy to dump out and replace. However, the Roomba will refuse to operate under certain circumstances such as if its brushes get particularly dirty and tangled with hair, etc. In our tests, this happened almost daily, and we found the task of removing the brushes and cleaning them to be a bit tedious, although iRobot is to be commended for making it extremely simple. We also found that Roomba's battery gave it enough juice to clean two large rooms (living/dining room size). Depending on the size of your home or area you'd like Roomba to clean, you may need to consider more than one unit. If you have a multi-story home that you'd like Roomba to clean, you'll definitely need to purchase one Roomba unit for each floor of your house (again, Roomba doesn't go down stairs). Roomba's battery will likely last you for some time, however, it is replaceable, and it, along with several other internal parts are fairly easy to replace at home, without the need to send off your Roomba for service.

As simple as Roomba's brushes, parts, and accessories are to clean, remove, and replace, their convenience comes at a premium. Replacement and add-on parts are not cheap, but one might argue that these prices are the cost of cutting-edge technology.

The Bottom Line

All-in-all we found the Roomba 560 to be a very impressive tool. In its simplest mode, it's as easy to use as pressing a button and walking away. For more complex homes, or those that desire a scheduled cleaning of more than one room, setup can be more complex. However, once you've got it working the way you like, the Roomba simply requires periodic, easy maintenance to keep it rolling and cleaning. If you have a simple room layout or the patience to set it up, the Roomba is certainly worth a try.

The Roomba is highly recommended for the elderly, disabled, or anyone with mobility issues, as it handles the most mobile of household chores for you. It can also be very handy for any household, reducing your overall housekeeping time significantly, provided you're not expecting Jetsons-era operation ... at least, not yet.

 

Retail Price: $379.99