EAN: 5060155400037
Label: iRobot
Manufacturer: iRobot
Model: DVU00029
Publisher: iRobot
Studio: iRobot
MPN: DVU00029

Say goodbye to scheduling your life around your vacuuming.  With the iRobot Roomba 560 Vacuum-Cleaning Robot, you can schedule the cleaning when it's convenient for you. The on-board scheduling system allows you to schedule Roomba to clean once a day up to 7 times a week, so you can clean anytime you want, even when you aren't home. Roomba intelligently cleans under and around furniture, along walls and in corners. The included Virtual Wall Lighthouses keep Roomba cleaning in single room and guide it to the next when finished and can also be used to restrict it from off-limits areas. iRobot Roomba 560 Vacuum-Cleaning Robot Features: 500 series - offers the latest technology and up-to-date innovations in efficiency, coverage and cleaning performance On-board scheduling system - Roomba leaves its home base at the time you schedule, cleans and returns to recharge; easy to use with clearly marked buttons on the scheduling interface Works on wood, carpet, tile, vinyl and linoleum Determines when to use its 4 cleaning behaviors - spiraling, wall following, room crossing and dirt detection - helps decide appropriate cleaning method for conditions Spiraling - cleans a concentrated area Wall following - uses this technique to clean the full perimeter of the room and navigate around furniture and obstacles Room crossing - criss-crosses the room to ensure full cleaning coverage Dirt detection - senses dirt and lights up the Direct Detect light, cleaning more intensely in that area Side brushes sweep wall edges and work their way into corners - 2 counter-rotating brushes work like a broom and dustpan to scoop up dirt, hair and debris; the powerful vacuum picks up remaining fine particles while the filter traps dust and other small particles; deep-cleans rugs and carpets to remove dirt, dust and pet hair Multilple cleaning modes - choose between Clean mode for an entire room or Spot mode for a more intense clean in a localized ar

Customer Rating:
Summary: We liked it so much, we bought another - a 580
Comment: We had a 560 for about a year now and, because we have a relatively large house, recently, we decided to go for a second. It's a 580 (because a bigger model number should be 'better') but, now that we have them both, we found that 99% of the time we are NOT using the 580's Command Center so, unless you like playing with remote controls or you must have your Roomba 'in black', the 560 should be adequate.

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Operation:

The robot itself does a pretty good job at fully covering the area and removing the dust. It is VERY good in a fully carpeted room or a bare-floor room. However, many times, it finds it difficult to climb from the floor onto the carpet. The side brush goes under the carpet and, eventually, the robot backs off and tries again later. It is usually successful, following several attempts but this may result in it over-cleaning one area and not spending too much on elsewhere. Our 560 actually ended up breaking the rotating brush following numerous under-the-rug incidents and we had to get a new rotating brush kit from Roomba.

Another, somewhat weird behavior has to do with dark objects that it should be avoiding. The Roomba seems to detect bright walls and objects and slows down and only touches them gently at the end of the approach, it usually slams into a dark wall or whatever dark object might be in its way. It seems unable to detect darker objects.

On the 580 you can schedule future jobs either on the main unit so that your robot would wake up, let's say, every Wednesday at 2 a.m. and do some serious cleaning. We did not find this capability very useful because we have more rooms than Roombas and we decided that we did not want to run our lives around the Roomba's cleaning schedule and move it around as expected. Whenever we want to clean a room, we take the Roomba there, set the virtual walls/lighthouses and push the 'clean' button.

The virtual walls/lighthouses are VERY useful. Each Roomba comes with 2. You would sometimes need more. While we were a one-Roomba household we manage to keep the robot within its designated area in our 'open floor' first floor by blocking it with various objects. Now that we have 2 units, we have 4 of these so all is perfect and easy downstairs.

While it's noted in the product description, I should mention that the 'going back to base' feature works VERY WELL. The Roombas almost always manage to find their base and go into the recharger when their batteries go low.

We had no problem with the battery life. Our one-year-old 560 seems to have as much stamina today as it had on day-one.

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Maintenance:

After every other cleaning run, you will have to empty the dust bins, clean the filter and clean the brushes.

Taking out the dust is easy. And so is the cleaning of the filter. Cleaning the brushes is another story and problem is 'hair'. It's not terribly difficult but... you will be dealing with 'dirt'. I found that with the help of a pair of scissors or a small (sharp) knife you can clean the brushes in a couple of minutes.

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Customer support:

As I mentioned before, the little 'helicopter' brush unit had to be replaced. I did not find Roomba's off-shore based support team to be very helpful. It happened a long time ago so I don't recall of the details but I remember them first being unable to understand the nature of the problem. Then, some unfriendly foreigner told me that they are not obligated to send me a replacement immediately, given that there was some '5 business days' or '10 business days' in the warranty. Anyways, I eventually got my part but it happened after a relatively long wait and too many calls and too much time spent with these lovely people. The funny thing was that, as soon as I placed my first phone call, I received an email asking that I rate the quality of the 'service' provided. MANY such surveys followed.

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My rating: 4 stars

We are actually using these and they do a good job for us. The fact that we now have 2 of these, shows that we find them worth the expense. The Roombas do what we expect them to do - which is clean the room without us having to watch them doing it. They are well-built, durable and efficient. For all of the above, they get a 5-STAR PLUS rating. I am taking out 2 stars for the not so good customer support and for the little problems the Roomba seems to have climbing on carpets. Therefore, the fair rating is a 4-STAR.

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