iRobot 5th Generation Roomba 540 Vacuum

Excellent Product, September 10, 2008

I am delighted with my Roomba 540 for what I expected it to do-- it's actually a bit better than expected so far, though I have not yet owned it long enough to rate longevity/reliability. I have two small boys (7 and 5) and two cats (one long-haired) and I decided to use the Roomba upstairs rather than downstairs-- it is easier to control the...read full review I am delighted with my Roomba 540 for what I expected it to do-- it's actually a bit better than expected so far, though I have not yet owned it long enough to rate longevity/reliability. I have two small boys (7 and 5) and two cats (one long-haired) and I decided to use the Roomba upstairs rather than downstairs-- it is easier to control the clutter upstairs in our house, and therefore more practical for our use to use it up there on a routine basis.

Roomba vacuumed under a challenging queen bed, navigating over some cords, between two underbed boxes and six box-spring support pillars, and still getting out to the edge of the baseboard under the head of the bed-- great since I don't exactly move an oak bed around very often. Roomba covered the floorplan of a fairly complicated floor layout completely in the MBR, found the MBath, and cleaned up the tile floor very well, navigated back out (not using the included lighthouse yet) and discovered the hallway and one of the kids rooms as well as the kids' tile bathroom; it did a nice job on all. I did shut off the closet doors before starting Roomba. It navigated itself into and out of some pretty tight corners.

Roomba bumped into a balled up shirt on my son's floor and navigated around it rather than trying to eat it, though I don't recommend that approach routinely.

Roomba did have a couple of difficulties, which I found to be minor, compared to actually vacuuming:
*Now, I have not yet used the included lighthouse to mark off the rooms and help Roomba navigate-- but Roomba has not yet managed to navigate itself back to its base for recharging-- I have to go find it after it's done and take it home.
*On the first pass under that bed (which was in dire need of a good vacuuming) Roomba's brushes had a little more cat hair than it could handle and it spit out little hair balls here and there which I was able to pick up easily and discard-- maybe half a dozen tops. However on the second and third runs, when that floor was much cleaner, this did not happen.
*The directions suggest emptying Roomba's dustbin and cleaning its filter every three cleanings. OK, I've already indicted my dirty carptes here, but I've found it worth emptying/cleaning each use at least at first, but fortunately this is really simple to do-- push a button, pop out the easy to handle bin, dump in the trash, clean the filter (same as a dryer lint filter in your clothes dryer) pop bin back into Roomba with a click. No big deal, no mess, at least IMO.

On the up-side, when cleaning for the first time and encountering a lot of cat hair, Roomba's was stopped, and when I picked it up, a human sounding voice informed me that I needed to clean Roomba's brushes. This was easy to do and Roomba was back on its way. My unit came with spare brushes and a spare filter, suggesting these parts will need periodic replacement.

But if vacuuming takes only pushing a button to start and putting it back with a stop past the trash can when it's done later (or at your convenience) then I'm sold. And it seems to be doing a nice job with good coverage of the floor areas. I would give one to my mother. minimize