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We spent a week lazing around while the new iRobot Roomba 650 tirelessly cleaned our house. Most robot vacuums have the same basic design: a low-slung floor creeper with top-mounted controls, a spinning corner brush, rotating bar brushes, and a dirt bin. In the box Most of the spartan packaging is taken up by the robot vacuum itself: a thick disk with top-mounted controls and carry handle. Drive wheels, a pair of floor-cleaning brushes, and a corner-cleaning rotary brush hang from the bottom. We appreciated the sleek all-black styling with a thin yellow ring around the controls; a much more subtle look than some other models. Beyond the Roomba 650 itself, the box includes a replacement filter, a cleaning tool, and a charger that can be plugged directly into the vac or into the included drive-on charging dock. The virtual walls included with older Roomba models projected constantly when turned on, burning through batteries quickly. New models like the one included with the 650 turn on automatically when they detect infrared signals from a nearby Roomba and shut down when no longer needed, so the hard power switch is really only necessary for extended storage. Controlling Roomba The controls on 600-series Roombas are pretty basic. A large Clean button on top is used to kick off the fun; it lights up green, yellow or red to indicate charge and ready status. The Clean button is flanked by Dock and Spot-clean buttons. An optional remote control is also available, for the truly lazy. We first turned the Roomba loose in a bedroom. The cheery little vac ran for about 45 minutes in a sparsely furnished 16×20 bedroom before calling it done and returning home; its maximum run time between charges is around an hour. Some competitors employ true room-mapping technology to determine an optimal path and ensure complete room coverage, but Roomba uses a much cruder algorithm that relies on a lot of random twists and turns to cover the room. The more obstacles and weirder shape a room has, the longer it takes Roomba to clean it. The 600-series really needs to be confined to individual rooms to do its best work. The more expensive 700-series offers room-defining beacons that help guide its work. They can work a cleaning pattern around the beacon before moving on to the next room. The only trouble we had with flooring was when Roomba encountered tall rugs thick bath mats and padded area rugs : the suspension had no trouble climbing up, but the bump sensor would send it careening off in another direction most of the time. The Roomba 630 and 650 include a few high-tech cleaning features. The now-standard AeroVac bin that provides strong suction and excellent dirt containment was a pricey upgrade for previous Roombas. Roombas have gotten increasingly smart over the years when it comes to freeing themselves from the various robot traps around your home without assistance. The earliest models had basic cliff sensors and obstacle detection that discouraged them from taking a header down the stairs or acting like a battering ram to your furniture and lower appendages, but would easily get hung up and kill the battery by endlessly trying to escape. Those sensors have been refined and augmented over the years with smarter software, to a point where the new 600-series Roomba is the most self-sufficient yet. It can pretty reliably free itself from cords, strings and rug fringe by automatically reversing the brushes and backing up when they get stuck. Bump sensors help keep it out of trouble by rotating away from objects that can trap it. Carpet-edged cliffs like stair edges and sunken living rooms were our biggest problem; the cliff sensor was fooled into thinking the carpeted edge was solid, so it would ride too close, drop a drive wheel off the edge, and get stuck. We never had issues with the unit taking a tumble, but there were a couple of rooms with long carpeted cliff-edges that just had to be off-limits, because it would repeatedly get stuck on them. Even with all those smarts, we still found a few places that got our unit stuck to the point it needed help. Since our house was so spread out, we found it best to lock the vac in one area with a virtual wall, set the scheduler for midnight, then empty the bin and move it to a different room each day. We only encountered one problem on the overnight cleanings: a low clearance toe-kick under the kitchen cabinets. It was just tall enough for Roomba to get wedged underneath and gouge the crap out of its plastic top trying to escape. To its credit, it eventually gave up and shut down, instead of running down its battery by constantly trying to work free. Is Roomba a Good Roommate? Roomba gets the nod on all counts. We had no trouble carrying on a conversation or hearing the TV while the Roomba was doing its thing in a carpeted room. It is significantly louder, however, when cleaning hardwood, stone or tile; both the vacuum and drive system can border on the obnoxious while cleaning hard surfaces especially if you have downstairs neighbors. Roomba also likes to sleep in: the full recharge time for 30-45 minutes of cleaning can exceed six hours. Depending on its cleaning area and how much scuz lands on your floors, you may find yourself emptying the dirt bin anywhere from once a week to every day. Luckily, removing the brush bars is a very simple and tool-less operation; we found the need to clean the brushes a couple of times during our testing full disclosure: our test house has two very long-haired inhabitants. Our review unit looked like it had been through the war after just a few days, with dings, nicks and scrapes all over. These issues are purely cosmetic, though; the Roomba seems quite solidly built, and most parts are designed for easy replacement, should the need arise. But, it does do an excellent job of keeping high-traffic areas tidier between vacuuming, especially with small children or pets doing their best to keep it busy. We think the new Roomba 600-series makes a good addition to your floor cleaning arsenal, as long as your expectations are reasonable.
