iRobot Roomba 530

We have just bought an irobot roomba automated vacuum cleaner. The model is the 530.

One of my motivations for this is the fact that, whilst my wife has household responsibility for the washing and ironing, I cover the cleaning and gardening. Naturally a robotic vacuum cleaner removes one of my less pleasant chores, or at least a portion of one.

The roomba is actually doing its stuff as I write and I can periodically hear it buzzing around and bumping into things downstairs.

How it works

Actually I really do not know how the robot works. Clearly there is a controlling algorithm that firstly detects obstacles and secondly maps out a room, or series of rooms, to be cleaned.

The robot seems to follow a random path without the logic that a human would use in performing this task, however, at the end of the job it seems to have covered all areas of the room being cleaned.

Appearance wise the robotic cleaner takes the form of a disc that must be 14 to 16 inches in diameter and 3 or 4 inches high. It has buttons on the top for start and dock and also in the package are a mains charger, docking station and “virtual wall”. This is a laser projector that can set a boundary for the robot. There are some spare parts too.

In fact it has just made a series of noises, so I will go down to check on its status.

The noise was the sound of it “docking” after about 1 hour and 20 minutes of cleaning. That covered our living room, kitchen and (very small) entrance hall.

The robot has a side brush that lets it get up to wall edges, skirtings, kickboards etc and it is low enough to sneak under radiators and some cabinets. As it approaches an obstacle it detects it, slows down, and then gently bumps into it. However, I must say that it was unable to detect the black narrow legs of my desk yesterday and bashed into those on almost every approach.

So what do I think of it so far?

Well actually it is pretty good. The dust collecting zone is small and needs emptying after each clean and it does not have the power of a regular vacuum. That said, two flat based tables that I removed during the cleaning had their impressions on the carpet completely removed by roomba, so the suction and brush combination must be fairly effective.

I will no doubt come back on this product as I get more of a feel for what it does and does not do, but my first impressions are very favourable.

Prices in the UK vary considerably with John Lewis selling the irobot roomba 530 at £299. However we bought it on special offer at Makro and paid a mere £172.49 which makes it cheaper than the least expensive Dyson. I would also ad that, having had a mid range Dyson vacuum for 4 years, that that device positively does not impress me and “yes James Dyson, IT DOES LOOSE SUCTION”, so stop lying in your adverts.

Here is the iRobot page for the Roomba 530 - http://www.irobot.com/uk/home_robots_roomba530.cfm.