Steve's Costco Roomba 550 review
From RobotFAQ
1/5/08 sriggins
I picked up a Roomba 550 from Costco for $279. It came with 2 lighthouses, 3 extra filters, 4 C batteries, the home charging base and the robot.
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[edit] Pros
- Quieter
- Goes around objects smoother
- Lightouch slows it down before bumping into most things
- Demo is cute (and I'd imagine helpful to some)
- Much better with stairs, right up to the edge, went slow, didn't do the "oh no!" tip and jerk the Discovery SE does (which then leads to a trip down the stairs for the disco)
- Virtual Lighthouses are much smaller, due to use of "C" batteries and the vertical orientation of the battery. Takes up much less space in the doorway.
- Virtual Lighthouses are passive - always on and woken up by the roomba.
- Side brush seems to kick up a lot of junk to be vacuumed
- Handles throw rugs much better (due to higher off ground orientation)
- The cat likes that roomba moves from room to room. This allows the cat to keep an eye on the thing without continually changing it's vantage point.
- Does not clank into the cat dishes as much, but it does shove them around.
- Shoved the bag of cat food around. A pro I guess because it cleaned behind the bag :) A con if it knocks over the bag and vacuums up all of the spilled food.
- The new dust bin is much easier to remove/insert
- The new filter is much easier to remove/insert. Some people don't like the fact that it is hinged, but you can just pop the filter out over the can and it all drops in nicely. I then wash the filter and replace with a second, dry filter. Lather, rinse, repeat each cleaning.
[edit] Cons
- Really likes to eat cords. It will eventually give up, but not after unplugging 2 macs and pulling a Mouse around with it. The roomba seems to spin and then entangle the side spinner and main brush before it undoes things. I will update my gutter cable fix once I have it installed. Having a magsafe connector on my MacBook Pro really saved the day - the power cable came out, vs the laptop falling to the floor.
- Runs over my speaker base - My speakers have low, black veneer bases which the Discovery SE would bounce off of. The 550 seems to want to go over them, and I am concerned about scratching, etc. I think this is due to the shell being higher off the ground.
- I can see how the side brushes break off. The motor is constantly stopping itself thinking it is overheating. Getting wrapped up in cords, on the edge of throw rugs, etc.
- There are some rattling sounds, sounds like the brush or something.
- Due to the taller, rug avoiding height, the roomba sensor on top no longer goes under the kitchen cabinets.
- Due to the taller, rug avoiding height, the roomba sensor on top catches and opens all kitchen cabinet doors. This messes up the cleaning pattern as roomba hits opened doors, vs, the edge of the kitchen.
- I am not impressed with the 550s coverage. We've watched it several times now and it overcleans under our table and rarely gets under the couch or the rest of the room.
[edit] Tidbits
The roomba seems to have finished with the living room and is now working on the small kitchen (which is sequestered by two virtual lighthouses). This is very nice.
The roomba 550 has some stupid programming. It got under a table and could never get out because the home base was near by, and even tho it let it go UNDER it would never get out. On top of that, it would hit a throw rug and took about 10 attempts to get past that, because the side spinner got under the rug, etc, and then it gave up and went home leaving 95% of the room not vacuumed.
[edit] Modifications
I am working on a roombafication to our home office couch to deal with cables. See gutter cable fix.
[edit] Updates
1/13/2008
Works pretty well, I'd say. Honestly, the best thing about running a roomba every T-Th-Sun is that it forces us to keep the floor clean, which not only allows the roomba to run, but makes it easier to vac with the Electrolux.
So, after a week of cleaning, the roomba was picking up very little top level stuff like hair, but the filter (which is small of course) was still getting clogged with dirt.
So, break out the Electrolux (which I love). Results from a quick pass over the open areas of the living room:
Image of dirt picked up by Electrolux after week of Roomba
So, now we'll see how the roomba does this next week. The two in tandem will work very well I think.
