iRobot Roomba 550 / 551 AeroVac Technology Vacuum Cleaning Robot

I have had Roomba's for years... They do require a little maintenance (Brush cleaning, cleaning the pet hair from the ends of the rollers) but overall they are pretty great. Cleaning the brushes is no big deal, I do it when I empty the bin. It takes a minute or two to empty the bin and clean the brushes, and it's ready to go.

We have two pugs, and they shed constantly. The 500 series Roomba's are a pretty huge improvement in design (I am a mechanical design engineer) They have redesigned the roomba to make everything modular, so if something does wear out, it is very easy to replace. My old Roomba was the first model with the scheduling ability, and I did have to replace a few things. I had to replace some transmission parts, and the batteries. Of course, I had to replace the brushes and filters many times over the years. I upgraded the batteries to give it more time to vaccuum, but the 550 seems to be pretty great right out of the box. It can run for almost two hours sometimes, depending on how big the space is I want it to vaccuum. It is also much easier to program than the old Roomba, it took just a couple of minutes and you program it right on the Roomba itself.

The Roomba 550 is also much quieter than the old Roomba was... MUCH QUIETER! It slows down before it bumps into things and the vaccuum itself is not bad. That was the biggest improvement I saw initially, with battery life and ease of replacing parts coming in right after that... (It's nice that the parts are easier to replace, time will tell how useful that is... Hopefully, it won't need much beyond brushes and filters. :-0 )

The virtual walls are also improved... They only take 2 C cell batteries, and the batteries seem to last longer. On my old Roomba, you had to schedule the virtual walls as well as the Roomba using the remote, and it was a little clunky. The new virtual walls don't require any programming. The only thing that has ever malfunctioned with the virtual walls is the dogs have apparently played with them and they occasionally are not pointing in the right direction... It is also not as obvious as they used to be regarding which side is the front... I have found the roomba cleaning the room I wanted it to stay out of because the Virtual wall was aimed at the doorjam instead of across the doorway; apparently it got kicked and whoever set it back got it backwards.

The Roomba 550 is $250 at Costco, and if the thing does ever break, you can return it to Costco for a replacement or your money back. (One of the little perks of membership, if you are not satisfied they will take it back fairly indefinitely...):-)

That is the primary focus of this review... Why would you pay over $315 with shipping plus tax at whatever your states rate is?

I think the Roomba is a pretty cool little device, and I recommend that people who want to keep their house vaccuumed all the time buy it... But I would recommend buying it at Costco.

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