iRobot Scooba 390 Floor Scrubbing Robot

I wanted to love this so badly...but unfortunately, it just isn't that great. I bought this in 2013 and have been sporadically using it for 18 months. It does a so-so job of washing floors at the very beginning. But the performance just goes downhill quickly. We kept meticulous care of it but the machine's insides just get grimy and clogged (despite best efforts to clean and maintain) and it just fails to work well. I have to pre-treat any visible spots of grim with some sort of cleaning solution (409 or whatever) before I run Scooba and even after its done I have to go back over the whole floor with my Swifter to make it look truly clean. The other noteworthy "con's" are that it is SO LOUD (sounds like a lawnmower running in your kitchen) and the vacuum feature is hilarious ineffective. You have to completely and thoroughly sweep the area first anyway because the vacuum isn't good for picking up more than maybe a couple small dust bunnies.

Other posters complain about the iRobot Scooba 390 being too noisy. I'd be the first to say, this would be great if it were less noisy, but it is still far quieter than a standard vacuum cleaner. You can run this in one room wall watching TV in the other room. Its pretty easy to maintain. The areas marked in yellow need to be serviced between cleans, which takes less than 2 minutes. The biggest downside is that the directions instruct you to charge between each room to maintain the battery. This is somewhat annoying because you need to plan your cleaning somewhat. In other words, you need to clean a room, drop the vacuum, then start cleaning the next room to have an efficient process. I'm a single guy, in an 800 sf apartment, and this saves me a huge amount of cleaning time. Definitely a luxury item, but well worth the spend if you are short on time. [ADDED After 6 months] This thing is not very easy to maintain and the warnings consist of fast beeps you have to count and tones you have to understand. LEDs explaining what maintenance needs to be done would be a HUGE improvement. The beeping minimalist thing is stupid for a device which is designed to save time. Once you know how to do the maintenance, it takes about 10 minutes per clean. A clean that would take 25 minutes. That means it saves you some time, but not nearly enough. If I were an engineer at iRobot, I would work on 2 things: 1) Minimize maintenance as much as possible 2) Change from sounds to an LED warning system. A lot of times you run it while you are not there, it keeps erroring but you don't know why because you have to hit play and watch it. T that is stupid. The battery doesn't last long even though I didn't use it very often and maintained it according to their standards.

I am unhappy I had to buy more fences for Scooba, instead of being able to use my Roomba vacuum fences from the same manufactuer. If they're both IR I don't see the need for that, other than to get more money out of me. Moreover, the Scooba fences are inscrutibly inaccurate. Even with experience, it is hard to place them to get Scooba to fully go where you want while keeping it where you don't want. I don't have this trouble with Roomba fences, which are great. Scooba also seems more prone to confusion and gets stuck in places where it is not actually physically stuck. With Scooba, I have to be around to supervise it, whereas with Roomba I can leave the house and know the task is likely to go smoothly. Plugging Scooba back in electrically to charge is more difficult than it should be since the keyed plug has no reference orientation as viewed from on top. Having white tile floors, I certainly will not give up my Scooba, and I would recommend it to others with these caveats, but overall it does not seem to me to be as well engineered for real world/human interface use as is Roomba. Scooba's manual left me with questions, and could be improved. I could not find out how much water consttutes a full tank. I find it easier to premeasure water than fill it from the tap while watching carefully all the time to prevent overflow. After speaking with the very good help line lady, I learned Scooba washes as long as it has water in it. This is very different than Roomba the vacuum which gauges the space and "intelligently" decides when it has finished the job. She suggested 1 cup of water for my small kitchen, and that seems to work. Scooba seems to run about 15 minutes per cup of water, and I think 3 cups is probably about a full tank. I mostly run 2 cup sized areas. I miss having a 'spot clean' function as Roomba provides, covering about a 3' area. It would be very helpful if Scooba could spend extra time on a high traffic soiled area. The cleaning fluid seems very good and is reasonably priced. But I find it difficult to manipulate the very small, clear cap for measuring the clear fluid as directed without spilling it. I understand from another call to the help line that you can use white vinegar though the manual doesn't say so and says you cannot use anything else. Despite these problems, I am glad I have my Scooba and it does make my life easier. We have much cleaner floors now because it takes less effort. While Scooba needs supervision, you can do things like go through the mail or make phone calls while keeping an eye on it.

The first one I had just stopped working after about eight months and when I called to get help they were no help. About a year later I decided to try again and get another one because when it worked it was pretty good . The second one worked for about a month and the wheel wouldn't turn . Called the company and had someone keep me on the phone for hours with no results . Now I have two broken Scobba and over $1000 less in my pocket . I have lots of other IROBOT and think they are great but the service seems to be going down hill fast . Now I have to find another two hours to talk to someone and at least try and get one of them replaced . I believe they have had a lot of trouble with this product and that is why they have a newer model .

Not good