iRobot 330 Scooba Floor-Washing Robot
by iRobot
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List Price: Our Price: $229.00 You Save: $170.99 (43%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Home See more product details |
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of iRobot 330 Scooba Floor-Washing Robot
Customer Review: No good for irregular tile floors
Summary: 3 Stars
We are big fans of Roomba--we use it all the time.
Waited for Scooba 1.1 to come out--the 5800, that is. Got one a couple of days ago.
We have Mexican clay tile floors as well as hardwood floors. Lots of floors to clean--where we live in Carnegie, PA (outside Pittsburgh) is in a house built as her home and architect's studio by one of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin students, Lorene Lamar Shannon. We got it in an estate sale and are slowly renovating.
The Mexican clay tiles are about 9" square, and there is about 1/2" of grout between them. They vary in thickness, and some are a bit higher than others.
Scooba gets stuck on any vertical offset between tiles of more than about 1/8-3/16"--most of the time it will stay stuck for about 20 seconds and then get itself off. There are a few places where the vertical offset across the grout is almost 1/4" and Scooba simply can't get past such an obstacle. Where there are bigger bumps, Scooba will get stuck and not be able to get off; usually it give up and says "I'm stuck" but I timed it sitting in the same place for 4 minutes; I guess it thought it was still moving forward. I tried putting some weight on the back of Scooba to give it better traction, but that made things worse, it's more of a clearance problem than a traction problem.
In other words, it won't clean my tile floors. I called iRobot to see if they had any suggestions, but they really didn't; they said to try working with it some more (did), but I will be returning it.
Scooba is expensive but worth it if it actually worked; but I don't think we'll be paying $20,000 to redo all our clay tile floors just so Scooba can scrub them.
Maybe version 1.2 will scrub my floors; when it isn't stuck, it does a great job.
Customer Review: Scooba works great!
Summary: 5 Stars
ok, I can't even wait a week to sing the praises of the Scooba!!! I LOVE her! Here is what I can report so far: The scooba does a great job cleaning floors in about 45 minutes. She does better on the hard wood than tile, but let's be honest - the tile is impossible to get super clean unless you get down on your hands and knees and scrub it out with a magic eraser. (which is super hard work!!) But she works better than a light mop (like a swiffer mop) on both the hardwoods and tile, and you don't have to do the work! For me - this will replace me EVER hand mopping the hardwoods, and probably cut down my tile floor work to maybe once a month.
This Scooba is a DREAM in the kitchen! it runs right up against all your cabinets so it mops that little underhang area - which is awesome! It comes with a little bottle of Clorox cleaning solution, or you can just use water or water and white vinegar. I have used all 3. I think the Vinegar works best on tile, but just plain water does a great job on the hard woods. It is easy to clean out afterwards and you'd be impressed by how much it picks up!
It vacuums great! We even left some "big" items on the floor to see if it would pick it up and sure enough, sucked it right up! The water is always like chocolate milk when you dump it - so you can really see how much it is cleaning!! Then you just plug it in to recharge. Easy peesy!
Only additional tip i have is you do have to limit it to the room size it can clean (my model says up to 250 ft). when i first tried it I just set it in the dining room assuming it would stay in there - not so much, that sucker ran the whole house leaving streaks of clean floor everywhere :). So lesson learned, you need to cage it! :) I highly recommend the Scooba, and am now thinking I clearly need a Roomba as well!! :)
Customer Review: great so far
Summary: 4 Stars
Well the Scooba just came from Amazon. Even tho I had super saver shipping it got here in about 2 days - was in an IRobot box and not an Amazon box.
After reading the various reviews I am curious what other people are talking about when they say it leaves puddles and misses spots. I got it out of the box and put it on the charger. Yes I was supposed to charge it for atleast 4 hours but I decided to try it out after about 2. I followed the directions and put a packet of cleaner in the tank and then filled with water. It took around 3 cups of water, maybe a little less. My Scooba only came with a few little single packets of cleaner - I am planning on using white vinegar after they are used up.
Set it in the kitchen and caged it with some boards I use for my Roomba - my kitchen has two entrances. My Scooba only has one virtual wall and when using it the Scooba stayed several feet away from that part of the kitchen - I finally shut it off and used the board and then Scooba came up and cleaned that whole part of the floor.
Scooba is noisier then Roomba and at first there did not seem to be much rhyme or reason to what it was doing but I just let it do its thing and it eventually cleaned the entire kitchen floor quite well. Finally it stopped and its check tank light was lit - I emptied the tank and scooba picked up quite a bit of dirty water. The floor was wet but not excessively so and no puddles. Also no missed spots that I could see. The floor really looks quite nice.
Just like Roomba to me these are not set it and forget it machines. But while its cleaning I can be playing on the computer of watching tv - I don't mind having to occasionally empty the tank or move it to another room.
So far so good.
Customer Review: Not as good as the Roomba, but still worth getting
Summary: 4 Stars
Pros:
My white kitchen floor is much cleaner than it would otherwise be.
Cons:
Dumber, louder and slower than a Roomba. If you're only going to get one, get the Roomba.
Gets stuck where a Roomba doesn't, especially under kitchen cabinets and curved floor/wall transitions. Since getting stuck might be a show-stopper for you, buy it with the knowledge that you might have to return it.
If it isn't putting water down, use the bulb of a turkey baster to blow air through the valve.
The battery only lasts just over a year and is expensive. The good news is that third party companies make cheaper replacements.
Tips:
Send a Roomba around the floor first to vacuum up loose stuff. The Scooba isn't great doing both vacuuming and mopping.
To open the Scooba, turn it upside down and then press on the latch. Since the latch releases by pushing in the direction that will tend to keep the door closed, you need gravity to help you drop it open. This is a terrible design flaw - can you imagine a car door that you would have to hold closed to open? I sent the first one back because I thought the latch was broken.
Put it on when you're leaving the house for several hours. You will escape the noise and the floor will have time to dry when it is done. Even though it sucks up the water, the floor is still pretty wet when it is done.
The cleaning solution is more effective than white vinegar and doesn't stink up the house like the vinegar does.
Keep it plugged in at all times when not in use. This should help with the battery's longevity.
Overall I have been happy with this product and would buy it again, but it's overdue for an improved/updated version.
Customer Review: Horrible Customer Service at irobot
Summary: 2 Stars
My irobot scooba was a handy little thing, when it worked. When it stopped working, however, I learned that this robot is only as good as the customer service behind it and the customer service at irobot is very very bad.
The irobot worked about as good as I expected.
1 - It cleaned the vast majority of of my vinyl flooring very well with minimal pretreatment for dried on 'stuff'.
2 - It pushed a lot of dirt up against the baseboards and cabinets. I guess this is to be expected but I hadn't expected to have to go behind the robot wiping along the perimeter of the rooms. I'd clean the perimeter and the baseboards at the same time so not as big a drawback as it would have been if I didn't also have to clean the white baseboards.
3 - Floors took longer than expected to dry. The robot has been broken for a while but my recollection is that took well over an hour for the floor to dry after the scooba was done.
4 - It worked as well with vinegar as it did with scooba cleaner.
Customer service was much, much worse than I expected.
Earlier this year I forgot to turn the scooba off before I picked it up to carry it up the stairs to do the upstairs bath. The wheels came down and there they stayed. When I went to clean all the error lights/tones went off and the service light stayed on. After round after round after round of increasingly irritating automated email communication with irobot their solution to the issue was to tell me that I needed to buy a new robot. I think not. This was my first foray into buying a house-cleaning robot. I know the products are new. I was willing to deal with issues. I am not willing to deal with a company whose approach to issues is to tell me to 'buy a new one'.