Roomba Review

This is a what you've been waiting for, whether you knew it or not. This is what you wish to learn more about, even if you hadn't thought of it before. How many of you have been cleaning your home and thinking, "This is a job even a robot could do. So why isn't there a robot that does it?" In this sense, Roomba is the great dream come true. It's the robot that does your tedious work for you.

When I first saw Roomba, the vacuum-cleaning home robot, I was surprised it was so big. Then I realized it's the smallest vacuum-cleaner I've ever seen, except for the hand held mini-vacuums I've seen on TV. Then Erkki turned it on and I was surprised it was so loud. Again, I must have had some odd illusions about Roomba because it's much quieter than our normal vacuum cleaner. Roomba made cool R2D2 beeping sound (that's the beeping robot in Star Wars) and started to do it's little task of vacuuming all floors. It went on its way in our apartment, from one end of the room to another, making abrupt unexpected turns and moving in annoyingly random patterns.

We knew it would take a long time for it to finish but we didn't expect it to take a couple of hours. Doesn't seem that much now, but I was looking at my watch every 10 minutes, "Roomba STILL hasn't finished!". Finally there was R2D2 beeping again and we rushed to see what Roomba had accomplished. The floor looked cleaner than before but there were several uncleaned blotches covered with crumbs and hair. I was quite disappointed. Until we cleaned and emptied Roomba - it was so full it was hard to believe it had all come from only one room. It looked like the room had never been dusted before. There was so much fallen hair I instinctively started to look for bald spots on my head. Even though Roomba missed some spots it is obviously a much more thorough duster than I am.

I gave it some time until I wrote this review because I wanted to see how Roomba would work over a longer period of time. Now we've had it for 3 months and I'm very satisfied. I've learned that Roomba works best in smaller space. I close it in a room for 20-30 minutes and then turn it off and take it to another room. Roomba is supposed to use it's dock for orientation but I just want it to do it's random movements until the room is clean enough for me. It takes a while to finish the entire apartment but it doesn't require much active time from me. I can play with Siiri in another room while Roomba is working. Siiri called it "oomb-oomb" a couple of times.

Anyone who is worried about the Terminator scenario and robots taking over the world, should just observe Roomba working and they're guaranteed to sleep better at night. Roomba bumps into things, gets lost behind simple pieces of furniture and gets stuck in the most unexpected places. One time it had jammed itself under the dresser and persistently tried to move forward getting more and more jammed. Watching Roomba makes people say things like, "awwwww, don't go there. awww. It's lost again." People treat Roomba like a dumb pet.

All in all, if you give Roomba some borders and enough time, it will do an excellent job. I'm glad we have it.

And I'd like to leave you with this:
Youtube video: Roomba Terminator vs Cat