iRobot 562 Pet Series

"I love,love,love my new Roomba! I have hardwood floors, 3 cats, and my white Boxer Lily sheds like a snowstorm! I have the Roomba set to go off every other day while I am at work and I come home to Boxer-free floors!!



Cleaning the brushes and filters is super easy and it is a huge help for me with my busy life.



WELL worth the investment!!"

"I bought two Roomba 562 Pet Series robots, one for upstairs and one for downstairs. I hate lugging the vacuum cleaner around the house, and we have too much furniture and "things" on the floors, so vacuuming is a REAL chore. My Roomba's are a blessing.



I live in an old house where electrical outlets are a rarity and we have to use extension cords and power strips everywhere. I don't have optimal spaces for the docking stations, but so far it's working pretty well. Roomba 1 has a little trouble getting out of and into its space sometimes because it's tucked into a corner.



I have not yet programmed a schedule, because it's simple to decide when Roomba should work and punch its button, so that particular feature is not so important to me.



I'm also not overly concerned about Roomba's inability to vacuum in the small spaces because it's just so nice to have the main floor clean with not too much effort. You do need to clean the brushes, bearings and especially the spindles fairly frequently, but I feel it's a small price to pay. Besides, it's easier than cleaning a regular vacuum's brush and dealing with belts. No screwdriver needed!



I just allowed Roomba 2 out of my room today to clean the linoleum, and although it does have a sensitive bumper, it DID bump the animals' water dish enough to spill it. Luckily I was right there to wipe it up so as not to harm Roomba. They're not supposed to be subjected to liquids.



I love these things so much that I hope they last a long time. I worry about overworking them! I think iRobot should work next on some Baby Roomba's that can get into the small spaces.



Be warned that when your Roomba's are new, they will not be a time-saver because you spend your time just watching them work! It couldn't just be me, could it?



P.S. I was just about to submit this review when Roomba 2's right wheel became stuck. There is nothing in the manual that tells how to fix this, so a call into service is in the immediate future. I've been using the robot for about two weeks every other day or so."

"One of the first things I want to say, is if you have any hesitation about getting this Roomba - don't! This Roomba is super-durable, even in our house were I have it cleaning 24/7 non-stop. And one more thing that is really nice about this Roomba, is there's no, "Hey, good job little robot, now let me get the broom and get were you missed." Eddie does require his brushes cleaned...probably after every room I have him do.(Our room's are about medium sized each) Overall, Eddie does a stupendous job for only [$]. So get one!At least our animal's don't seem to mind him... =)"

"I bought Roomba after 2 years of chronic back pain. I don't know how I lived without him! The day he arrived I had just finished vacuuming the house. I plugged him in to charge (and I think one of the dogs hit the start button with their nose while investigating). I let him run and was horrified when I saw all the dog hair and dust he picked up after I had JUST vacuumed! Good thing I vacuumed or he would have had a heart attack! I was so embarrassed!



Spending the $360-something was hard to do but after getting him; he is worth every penny and I have NO regrets! I run him several times a day. I like to block off rooms that need it the most and let him do a thorough job in each.



***The complaints of frequent maintenance are ridiculous! By frequent maintenance they mean they have to empty out the bin when it gets full and maybe pull some hair or strings off the brush. It only takes a minute. Roomba just vacuumed your house! I don't think an easy dump of debris is too much to ask.



He does get stuck under two pieces of furniture so when he's not in his dock I usually know where to find him. It's not a big deal. The best part is; I have allergies and before Roomba I was dusting almost every day. I hardly ever dust now! He's a little loud but I just turn the TV up.



He doesn't get tangled in wires and I was worried about my curtains that drape on the floor in my bedroom but he just vacuums around them (if I don't pull them up). I don't have any furniture scuffs like the ones I'd get from the vacuum cleaner. He's very gentle. The dogs were cautious at first but now they just stand there as he runs into them. My 18 month old nephew spent more time watching/following Roomie than playing with all the toys I bought him.



I am 100% satisfied. I don't have one bad thing to say about him. He's not flawless but he sure beats the alternative.



Whenever I see a commercial for a Dyson; I think, "Why spend $500 for a vacuum when you could spend around $350 and it vacuums for you?" I can't afford a maid; but in my opinion Roomba paid for himself in the first week."

"This is a step by step experience analysis. We are a working couple with 1 - 80 lb Pure bred German Shepherd. Normally the house is vacuumed once a week. Purchased Roomba for use on the main floor - 250 SqFt short hair carpet, 150 SqFt Linoleum, small hall. Purpose of the unit was to keep the kitchen free of fur as we are getting a second LARGE dog soon.



- Purchases Feb 27/2010. Roomba 565 Pet series.

- Same day, after it indicated it was fully charged we set it loose to test its limits.

- Within 1 hour it was stopped and complaining for brush attention so we cleaned it and decided try giving it a pre-cleaned room to maintain. We put it back on charge.



Feb 28/2010

- The entire floor was vacuumed with our Dyson Pet-vac.

- Immediately the unit was set loose to clean and it began picking up material the Dyson didn't!!

- Immediately the unit began collecting fur on the OUTSIDE of the unit as a static charge built on the plastic body. This fur would be dumped in the kitchen when the unit bumped into metal objects causing it to loose static charge.

- As it traveled over the carpet, it would randomly dump clumps of the fur it collected in a trail behind it. The fur wasn't being fully deposited in the collection bin but rather collected in the space between the brushes & bin with the excess being shoved back into the bin and some falling to the floor.

- Let the unit run its full cycle and then began the clean up.

- The machine collected about a palm full of material which I could squeeze down much smaller.

- Roughly another 15% of the quantity that stayed in the machine, was spread out on the floor in clump trails.

- The kitchen, previously fur free, now had whisps of fur all off the floor that had fallen off the machine. They were too light to sweep and needed to be picked up by hand (I shoulda thought to vacuum them up)

- Another 5% of the collected material was wrapped around the axles of the brush and beater bar and spread out on the brush itself.



March 1st/ 2010

- 3AM - The unit was scheduled to run which it did to its end. I woke, cleaned roughly the same amount of material from the machine as before both in the collection bin and off the brushes. I also had to clean up sporadic debris trails.



March 1st/2010

- 1PM - The unit was set loose again through and complete cleaning cycle. Again the same quantity of fur was collected and a similar mess was made. It does occasionally go over areas where it dumped, again and clean some of it up.

- Once again, the unit entered the kitchen littered with fur clinging to its plastic shell which it began dumping after it bumped the fridge (A metal ground source that absorbed the static)



The unit is generally unremarkable. It has 4 bottom sensors that help it detect stairs and dirt, sensors in its front bumper to allow it to detect come objects and the bumper itself. Other than that its a basic turtle type robot that finds it way around by aimlessly wondering around until it bumps into things.

Being a programmer I was able to detect and admire some of the intelligent coding that was used to help it track baseboards and find its way out of tight spots but also disappointed that no effort was made to allow the unit to learn the terrain from all that bumping around.

The unit has static problems and with all the plastic and brushes running against the carpet, it quickly starts looking like a dog itself. The static problems seem to be what prevents the fur from being pushed well into the debris bin and thus results in collection and entanglement in and around the brush as well as the sporadic dumping. The process I had to go through with each cleaning made me feel like a university student caring for a prototype.



We will be restricting it to the 150 Sqft kitchen floor as it is still too far in the development stages for anything beyond that."

"As first attempt, I bought the "DirtDog" Bunny, as proof of concept to see how it would work for me. Two large dogs (one shedding like a woolly mammoth) combined with New Mexico desert, a cat, a couple of horses, and a full time job make for one messy house. DirtDog Bunny blew me away from the start, even limited to sweeper capabilities. So, three days after Bunny started the job, Roomba 562, Betty, was ordered with high anticipation after reading through dozens of reviews.



After several weeks of use, here's the verdict:



1. Roomba 562, Betty, is doing a fantastic job, especially teamed up with Bunny, the DirtDog for the areas without any area rugs (like kitchen or laundry room). The longer run time, the improved software and the vacuum ability makes her perfect for the areas of the house that have a combination of hard flooring and rugs.



2. It is definitely required to restrict her to one room/area at a time to get thorough results. Otherwise, in an open floor plan she just wonders off and around not getting to the coverage that's needed. It would be nice to have 3 virtual walls but 2 and some imaginative barriers are OK.



2. Since the house is not small and the dog hair generated every day is plentiful, it is definitely best in my case to run her daily to keep the accumulation of debris low. If I skip a day or even two, I do have to empty the vacuum bin a couple of times during the cleaning run, which is not a problem since I work from home and keep "an ear" on her anyway, directing her from room to room as needed.



3. I expected some initial drama from the dogs and especially the cat but the "girls" only sparked mild interest for the first couple of days and are now completely ignored while they wander around. If they don't feel like it, the dogs don't even move out of the way anymore and take the minor "bump".



Conclusion: I am completely happy with the work the two are doing which saves me several hours of vacuuming each weekend.



Now to the one and only "bad" thing: the design of the small brush in the 562.



For some reason the little rubber brush was designed with integrated rings at the end. This is a real bad design for a machine specializing on pet hair. The DirtDog's small brush has solid endings--it never collect hair at the end while the 562 just wraps pet hair around the exposed ends of the brushes and that's fairly hard to get out.



After a number of experiments I found that the by far best cleaning tool is a pair of cuticle scissors. Anything else requires you to fumble around for several minutes to get the brush ends clean and the wrapped around hair off the metal stem that carries the bearing.



It would be a vast improvement to the 562 to make the ends of the brushes reflect the design of the brushes in the DirtDog.



Several people have griped about the fact that it needs "a lot" of maintenance. I'd like to put that into perspective:



To get get optimal performance for about 2000 sf of cleaned floors I spend 2 minutes (timed it) to stack up some chairs and move some minor items (like trash can, dog bowls, etc). out of the way to clear the floor space and put it back afterwards. Then the girls run for about 2.5 hours every day through the rooms.



Between moving them from room to room I empty the bins which probably takes 30 seconds in all.



After they are done, I clean the bins and brushes which takes 5 minutes for both robots combined, now that I have the correct tools and practice.



This adds up to far less than 10 minutes a day compared to several hours of vacuuming every weekend and a dirty house. I personally don't mind cleaning them at the end of the run each day--after all I also brush and groom my horses after riding them!



So, two big thumbs up for the Girls!"

"If you're one of those people like me who think Roombas are a luxury you can't afford, think again!!! I had looked at them and thought about getting one for years but just didn't think I could justify the expense. I finally broke down when a friend who has more animals than me told me about the Pet Series that she had and what a great job it did keeping the pet hair under control. When I got RoboVac, I had to clean the brushes 3 times on it's first run. It ran for 1 1/2 hours and collected so much dirt, dust and pet hair, it was EMBARRASING! Good thing I was the only one here. I ran it everyday for the next week and it still got clogged and needed to be cleaned to be able to finish it's cleaning cycle. It got so ridiculous that I was accusing him of manufacturing dirt, dust and pet hair. Where did it all come from??? Everyday??? It made me realize that my house had been MUCH dirtier than I had ever imagined. One more wonderful consequence of this purchase is that our home air filters stay cleaner much longer than they used to. My husband went to change them the other day, on schedule, and they didn't need changing!!! All I have to say is, if you're thinking about buying one, stop thinking about it. Just Do It!!! You'll be glad you did."

"For years I lusted for a Roomba but felt I couldn't justify it. With two adults in the house, obviously we should be able to do all the vacuuming. But we didn't like to vacuum and didn't. Instead we joked we had enough hair on our floors to build another dog.



My spouse died and several months later I swallowed my pride and bought Helen. Now I wonder why it took me so long.



Helen has his ideosyncracies. He will sometimes clean a corner excessively and even physically moving him to another room seems not to deter him. He will return that area as soon as he gets reoriented until HE decides it's clean.



He can get trapped under the TV cabinet which has barely sufficient clearance to get under and once the carpet nap is raised he cannot get out. He also gets trapped between the feet of my desk chair which seems to be the perfect spacing to contain his body.



He sometimes gets hung up on the thresholds between rooms and seems to get disoriented in my 100+ year old house with multiple entrances to each room.



But my house is so much cleaner. Not just the floors, but the overall dust level is reduced. He's not thorough on any one day. I think the floor plan is just too baffling. But with consistent use he's cleaned everywhere. When he first started, I had to empty the bin and clean the brushes at least twice every cleaning. He's brought the average dirt and hair level down significantly.



He never complains that he just vacuumed yesterday or that I'm not doing my part. He works diligently for almost 1.5 hours. In exchange, I clean the brushes and empty the bin with every use, which takes about 5 minutes. The brush cleaning tools make this an easy process, though I also supplement with a toothpick to get the hair out of the grooves on the ends of the brushes.



If I were to hire someone to vacuum for 1 hour per day, I would easily pay for several Roombas in a year.



As for teasing Helen, it's tempting to rearrange the furniture or put obstacles in his path while he's working, just to see how he copes."

"My wife suffers from the aftermath of extremely severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Housework always took up Saturday and left her in pain and agony on Sunday. Vacuum cleaning by the nature of handling the hose and back movements was a large source of te pain.



So when reading a sale flyer from a ubiquitous massive Canadian retailer (Canadian Tire) and seeing a roomba for less tan some regular vacuum cleaners I was intrigued.



Being a Nuclear physicist by education and having founded a software company and computer hardware distributor I have a fascination for simple elegant innovative solutions to real daily problems (although I have also done women's fashion consulting in New York.. Go figure!).



Being the technical genius that I am I knew this thing was too small to hold the accumulated dirt, couldn't possibly have enough suction, and didn't have a snowballs chance in hades of covering an entire room and navigate all the chairs etc,



However it wasn't that expensive and my wife's suffering too much (and she insists on doing things herself so as to not feel a cripple or give in to her health issues). So I decided to buy this obviously over hyped toy.



Now I could desperately try and find fault with it to prove myself right or I could admit the truth.



This thing is simply incredible. Something so small, so attractive and so elegant simply shouldn't be phenomenally effective and efficient. But it is!!



My wife is extremely meticulous about housekeeping. This crazy thing goes under and behind furniture and beds, goes f rom carpet to hardwood and back again, covers every square centimeter (square inch for my American friends) the entire space and even goes around table & chair legs, runs along walls with its little side rushes flicking all dirt into te man event and magically tedocks itself when done. The beam produces create invisible walls to limit its travel work like a charm.



As an engineer I can imagine that if I was tasked to deign this thing it would end up huge and a few thousand dollars. Au contraire.. This thing is simple, attractive elegant and simply phenomenal in its cleaning ability.



Friends and visitors alike us to turn it o just so they can watch it and bet if it really is going to get to that nook or cranny. (I should take bets.. I'd always win)



s we live in Canada and only the Roomba is distributed here I went on line to register my Roomba and learned of the Scooba and the Verro.



Again it was obvious to me that they couldn't possibly work as advertised but my principle of intelligent laziness is to not do work you can avoid and having been humbled once thought I'd buy them just to reinstate myself as the expert. One fluke maybe but 2 more impossible dreams? Forget it!

iRobot won't ship to Canada so had to find someone with aa US address to ship them to and drive down to the States to pick up my Scooba and verro. Again being very skeptical but irobot had proved me wrong once so took a big $$$ chance. Hoping but not expecting I was making the right decision.



Wrong again. In spades! (Hearts, diamonds and clubs)

Both the pool cleaner and the floor scrubber are equally phenomenal.

I hate iRobot with a passion.. Its owners its managers, its staff, its sales people and especially its designers . Can't they ever do the decent thing and be wrong like the rest of us mortals?)



In my view iRobot is right up there with washing machines, dishwashers and microwaves, essential to enjoying life and yet elegantly simple,



The bargain of a lifetime given what it does and what it costs and what it saves in energy costs, time and moving furniture around to try to vacuum around or beneath.



Now my wife runs it through part or all of the house two or three times a week and vacuuming has turned from a nightmare into entertainment.



Thank You to all the iRobot genii!!!"

"Well I couldn't be happier with our new Roomba! I got the 562 as it was a pet series...we have two tiny dogs that shed like crazy but from what I can tell the difference is that it has a bigger debris bin (which we haven't used yet)



I HATE HATE HATE vacuuming, the dogs bark, one of them attacks the uprights (to the point that he broke it - he's 6 lbs) as soon as it's plugged in and the baby cries. It's overall just a hassle. Not anymore...this machine is brilliant. The baby doesn't cry, our Chihuahua doesn't attack it and I can have a cup of tea while I watch it go :)



I spent a long time reading reviews and really wondering whether a machine could really be all that and finally I jumped in with both feet. I couldn't have spent my money better. Many people seemed to have high expectations that this machine is going to do something more than vacuum. That's all it does but because you want it to do the best job possible you have to tidy away and make sure there are no electrical cables on the floor so it already looks neater and tidier. I did not vacuum daily but now that I can schedule the roomba to do it daily our house is going to look like Mary Poppins is staying over! I have so far used it twice (without vacuumming with an upright first as lots of people do) and it has done an outstanding job. It hasn't got stuck, isn't loud like a regular vacuum but more like a bathroom extractor fan (I can have the roomba going as I lay my 11 month old down for a nap and she'll go right off without a fuss), it's thorough and it couldn't be more cool that it self docks (yes, I think we would have kept it just for that feature alone).



My husband was seriously sceptical about getting this but within 2 mins of seeing it go he said he was looking forward to having visitors over so that he could show them how well it worked! It took me 5 months of persuading him that this machine was all that (even though I didn't know for sure myself) and 2 mins to confirm that he loves it.



It is a simple set up...plug in the charger, pull out the battery tab and place the roomba on the ground. Press the dock button, it makes some R2D2 noises and gets going to find the dock so it can charge. Once charged off you go! You get extra's in the box, 2 more filters, a set of brushes and two of the 3-arm brushes and a brush cleaner.



You can use it to spot clean an area and it will then get that area and a 3ft radius so as to make sure it has caught everything. If it's just doing a regular clean and you feel it missed somewhere and aren't sure it will come back that way again you can lift it up (it will stop vacuumming) and put it down where it missed a spot and let it clean and carry on.



We have an open plan home we have it vacuum the kitchen, dining room, living room and hallways and it must go over it all several times. It takes about 45 mins. I should also add that we have ceramic tiles, hardwood floors and carpets and we have no stairs in our home. If you really want to see it do a good job try to sit down and stay out of it's way or alternatively move out of it's way when it comes your way.



The virtual walls that come with it work well as we leave baby's door open and use the virtual wall. You just need some C batteries for it.



The cleaning of this machine was what I was dreading but really it's not all that much of a problem. You take out the bin and shake it into the trash can, you take out the brushes and clean them as you would a hairbrush although it does come with a brush cleaning tool if you prefer. All in all (if you're being ridiculously thorough) it takes no more than 5 mins. Wash your hands and you're done vacuumming.



We watched in fascination yesterday as it did it's first clean and really other than a couple of corners that it won't get (because it's round) we were sold. If you're on the fence and can't decide I hope that this review is enough to make the difference.



Now I know there should be some complaint or another but really this is an improvement by such a long way from our upright that I haven't got any probs to report. The upright (other than being attacked one too many times by Mojo that it broke) just didn't vacuum our hardwood floors. You would vacuum up leaves and then look behind you and see them all mulched up where they had shot out from the thing and it wasn't just that one I used my mothers too. The roomba doesn't have this problem...bottom line we love it!



I know what they say...if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Not the case with the Roomba. Give it a go...



Now, I want to try the scooba!"