Product Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Oh Roomba oh Roomba, how do I love thee? Let me share the ways…
For those of you who haven’t read my review of the Dyson/Shark vacuum cleaners, let me tell you a little about my house.
- We live in a ranch. It has a basement, so we have some stairs. There’s a baby/child gate at the top of the stairs to keep the dogs from going down there.
- We have a vacuum solely for the basement. It’s an old Dyson in case you’re curious.
- We have 2 shedding dogs, 1 non-shedding dog, 2 people with long hair, and 2 people with short hair in our house. In other words, this is a HAIRY HOUSEHOLD!
- Our house is carpet in all the living areas, wood floor in the kitchen and entryways, and tile in the bathrooms. Lots of transitions between rooms.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, lets get to the good stuff.
FAVORITE FEATURE
My favorite feature of this Roomba is the corresponding iOS App. The App allows me to name the Roomba (LOVE THIS!). In case you’re curious, our Roomba’s name is George.
George maps my house and displays the map on the App. Then I can go in and name rooms (not quite as cool as naming George, but still fun), add zones to clean or keep out of, schedule cleaning jobs, see cleaning history, and so much more!
While the App is fun, I’m sure you’re asking…but Jamie, how well does he clean? We’ve had George for a little over a year. So I’m been able to judge his performance pretty well.
PERFORMANCE
George cleans everything really well, but he does the absolute best on our wood floors. We still need to use our regular vacuum about once a week in the high traffic carpeted areas, but otherwise we don’t really need to vacuum anywhere else. He even gets the impossible to get places, like under beds! LOVE THIS!
I have some mats that George easily cleans, but I have others that I need to pickup prior to letting George clean. He tries really hard to clean everywhere, he even tries to go under my couches! A for effort George!
MAINTENANCE/ONGOING COST
I mentioned earlier that we’re a hairy household. Because of this we need to clean and replace George’s rollers more often than other people I know. I replace the rollers about once a month – less if I use him less. I clean the rollers after every room. The dog/human hair gets wrapped around the rollers and edges of the rollers. It’s become a habit now and less time consuming than pulling out the Shark, so I’m good with it. If I get lazy, George will stop cleaning and tell me his rollers need to be cleaned. Sometimes I swear it’s like I have another child…at least he doesn’t whine!
Bottom of George 
Note the hair on the right roller end
Anyhow, the roller replacement doesn’t come cheap. If I order directly from the Roomba website (https://store.irobot.com/default/parts-and-accessories/roomba-accessories/i-series/) I pay $35 per roller set. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to pay $35/month to keep George healthy. So, I turned to Amazon. I buy a pack that includes 2 roller sets, some filters, and roller wheels for $22. This pack is okay, but the rollers are louder than the OEM ones. I’ve linked the set I use at the bottom of this review.
QUIRKY BEHAVIOR
Lately George has had a few…episodes. Maybe he’s getting senile in his old age? He sometimes seems to get confused about what to do when he’s done with a job. I’ll tell him to clean the living room and when he’s done, sometimes I’ll find him in my bedroom.
This seems to happen after he was stuck in a room and I needed to rescue him. He tends to lock himself in my master closet if I tell him to clean in there. So, I think it’s some sort of programming error after being rescued. It doesn’t cause any issues for us, so I just send him home, shake my head and move on with life. If I wasn’t home, I wouldn’t even know about George’s little escapades, because he eventually returns home on his own.
PETS
We were originally worried about getting George, because we had 2 senior dogs at the time. As it turned out, those two dogs didn’t care about George at all. They watched him the first time he ran, then just ignored him. Our fears were completely unfounded.
A few months after George came into our lives, we decided to get 2 puppies. The puppies were slightly more interested in George, but they wound up mostly ignoring him too. They’re almost a year old and completely ignore him now. They even let George run right into them.
WOULD I BUY ANOTHER?
Overall, George is definitely worth owning. He keeps the house clean so I’m not worried if someone unexpectedly shows up. Prior to having him, we had a lot of issues with dog hair everywhere. We just couldn’t keep up with the vacuuming necessary for all the people/pets.
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