iRobot 560 Roomba Vacuuming Robot, Black and Silver

Customer Reviews

Part toy. Part vacuum.

I guess I've been lucky. My Roomba is one year old, and hasn't failed yet. I've had no problems with the battery or motor. I do know people that have had their's fail. I guess it's hit or miss. My wife loves the Roomba. She lets it do its thing, and sits and reads the paper. It seems to do a decent job, but nowhere near as good as real vacuum cleaner. I'm constantly having to clean out cat hair and string from inside the brush area, and eventually vacuuming with the upright vacuum. I'm not sure just vacuuming with a regular vacuum might be just as easy. But, it's fun to watch, and it does a decent job doing a quick cleanup. Don't expect it to replace your old vacuum though.

Staw away

I have now tried several different models and I can honestly say you are better giving your money to charity. For one, The Customer Service is truly lousy..doesnt matter what the issue is, they just dont care and appear to want to make things very difficult. Most of the models I tried, I loved the first week. Cool device that does a great job of cleaning the floors....The 2 major problems....The amount of time it takes to properly clean and service the unit is far too long..You cant run this for a week, every other day and then clean it...it must be cleaned and "serviced" after every single use and frankly, it takes me less time to vaccum then it does to clean this unit properly after EVERY use.....Of course this isnt really a problem since most every model I tried, had "issues" after 1 - 3 weeks. Brushes breaking...Unit making crazy noises....units stop working and have to be re-set.....stops cleaning well after 1 or 2 weeks and that is even with you cleaning the unit after each use.....One or two simply died.......To be honest, I would not buy ANY model for $20, let alone the riduclous prices they charge.....To me, that is akin to paying for problems. Why would I pay $1 for anything that is only going to have one issue after another until you end up with an expensive, dead unit. Heck, if I received one of these as a gift I would not even open the box...I would probably take it to goodwill and take the tax write off rather then using the unit which will only cause my blood pressure to rise....If the units only had minor problems and continued to work, that would be OK...But it is one issue after another until it simply dies and customer service blows you off for the umpteenth time....STAY AWAY...You are flushing your money down the drain if you buy any of these models. Maybe by the year 2020 they will have gotten the MANY KINKS/IDSSUES worked out...

Worth it!!!

The roomba is worth the price. I even bought several extra attachemnts because of other revies saying thier brushes broke off. I havent had this problem yet, or any problem for that matter for the 6 months I have owned it.
It does take a while to vaccum everything but I dont really care cause Im not doing any work! It also forces me clean up since the floor really needs to be clear of toys and other small objects before you start vaccumming.
If you use the robot everyday and keep your floors relativly clean then you ususally dont need to empty the dirt out except at the end of its work...if you have a floor like mine, usually it needs to be emptied every 20 minutes or so.
My 2 year old son loves this thing, although i wish he didnt, he is rough with it but if he cant break it, then its gotta be durable!

It broke TWICE within 11 months of use

Worked okay until it broke. We own ONE dog. We cleaned it after every run. We ran it in one room every 3 days (where we and the dog played the most). It ran in the whole house every 10 days or so. Not high usage, just average. The dog hair would get INSIDE the motor housing unit. I kept getting "please remove and clean roomba's brushes". It wouldn't run. It had been 5 months of usage. I called, got a new motor no problem. They told me I could take apart the old one since I had a new one on the way. I did, found all this dog hair inside the gears and inside the motor. Got out what I could and it ran for another month. Same thing happened, "please remove and clean...." Replaced it with the new motor. Same thing happened, "please remove and clean...." My husband bought it in November for a Christmas present, so now it is November, warranty is expired. Paid $500 for it and more for all kinds of parts for it (brushes, filters, etc.). Now it is useless. I certainly don't want to buy another, spend $500 for a one year life. It was great while it worked but to not be able to handle ONE dog?

it's ok (yet)

A lot of reviews indicate that this is a rather flimsy product but the customer support is said to be good. I'm writing this 3 days after usage, so I did not experience those problems (such as battery dying early, death dances, cliff sensors that need to be circumvented, and most often, the side brushes breaking down - they are very important) yet. If you do, this website/forum may be helpful: http://www.roombareview.com/chat/

It does what it says it does - I have both carpet and tile floors, and it cleans both. It requires little attention from me except taking out small carpets (it moves them around), cables (gets stuck in them), and other small stuff (that you would remove bf cleaning anyway). The two lighthouse virtual walls work nicely, though the C batteries do not come in the package. If you have money a more than two rooms, buy one or two of those lighthouse virtual walls.

The reason I gave a 3-star to this robot is because of the need to maintain it - after each use, you have to empty bin (that's acceptable), clean brushes (extremely messy - see below), and remove and clean below the side brush (that's easy).

Cleaning brushes under this toy is a must (or, according to many reviews around, it dies sooner), but it also i a big mess. You have to cut all the hair and crap that gets tangled in with the brushes (the brush-cleaner-thingy does not work, but its "brush-like" side is very usable). Then you have to get all the crap /out/ of the brushes. Then you have to remove the little yellow thingies at the end of the brush to take the hair out of there as well.

This stuff is easy to do, but gets boring quite easily (especially if you use it often), and as I said, is too messy... If you don't want to touch your own crap :) , I wouldn't buy this. And it takes me about 20 minutes to do. At least I don't have to vacuum the house :) For me, cleaning brushes is better than vacuuming the house myself ;)