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Location: Home > Dog Hair Vacuums > Categories > iRobot Roomba 580 Vacuuming Robot

iRobot Roomba 580 Vacuuming Robot

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Brand: iRobot
Category: Kitchen

List Price: ~~$499.99~~
Buy New: $339.00
You Save: $160.99 (32%)

New (9) from $339.00

Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

25 reviews
Sales Rank: 41

Color: Black
Shipping Weight (lbs): 13
Dimensions (in): 20.8 x 18.9 x 5.6

Model: 58001
UPC: 853816580019
EAN: 0853816580019
ASIN: B0011MITWM

Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Features:

•	Vacuuming robot with spinning brushes cleans floors at the touch of a button
•	Bagless dustbin; filtration system traps allergens; anti-tangle technology
•	Built-in cliff sensors; on-board scheduling; wireless command center
•	Self-charging home base; 2 Virtual Walls, brushes, and filters included
•	Measures 16-3/4 by 21 by 5 inches; 1-year limited warranty

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•	Wii
•	James Bond Ultimate Collector's Set

Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...

1 out of 5 stars

Worst customer service in USA! October 3, 2008
I have been dealing with iRobots customer service for 2 months now to fix a problem with my Roomba 580. It takes up to a week to get a simple answer from them and they don't seem to bother to even read my entire emails. I've never encountered customer service that's so incompetent. Here's an example of one of their replies:

"I am very sorry for inconvenienced caused.

what suggestion you try .and what error message the robot give.

please response to this information."

My guess is this was written by a five year old. They sent a replacement part to not to the address I gave them for shipping the part, not to my original shipping address, but to an old billing address, where I don't live anymore! I could go on and on.

Do yourself a favor and stay away from all of their products until they actually start taking care of their customers.

UPDATE: This is the latest response from iRobot:

"Thank you for contacting iRobot Customer Support.

Can you please tell me the problem you are having with your robot, so i can father assist you."

It seems like I've found my father. He works at iRobot! I didn't even know he was missing!

Note that this is the 3rd time they ask about the problem even though I very clearly stated my problem the first time I contacted them.

4 out of 5 stars

My second Roomba - quite happy so far, customer service not so good September 24, 2008
We had a 560 for about a year now and, because we have a relatively large house, we recently decided to go for a second. The 2 are quite similar. In fact, they are very much the same product, the 580 being the 560 plus the 'command center'.

__________
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 or from the control center. 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 Command Center duplicates the buttons you find on the back on the main unit and it adds the ability to drive the robot through 3 'arrow' controls. We found that we don't use this capability. The Roomba seems smart enough to drive itself and the kids have their own remote-control toys. After a couple of 'gee-whiz' runs, we ended up not using the Command Center at all so, basically, we have 2 560's now.

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.

_________________
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.

__________________
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.

3 out of 5 stars

Hairy problem August 22, 2008
Used our 580 for approx 2 weeks and very, very satisfied except for major hair buildup on sides of both beater and brush. (Two shorthair cats and a longhaired doxie allow us to live with them, in case you wonder.) Ran unit everyday most of time and it worked perfectly - much improved pickup over our old Discovery unit including better obstacle avoidance and, especially, its ability to maneuver over throw rugs, etc.

BUT even though there would be very little hair on the brush itself, it would stop at least once during each cleaning and ask to have ts "brushes cleaned." I soon realized this only meant hair had wound tightly around both sides of the beater/brush assemblies. This continued for the entire two weeks and was a problem for which iRobot customer service offered no advice nor the possibility of a fix in the near future.

Anyway, if you have NO pets (with hair) you'll probably love this thing. I would have gladly kept ours but returned it simply because of what I feel is a show stopping design problem. (FYI, our Discovery "Pet Edition" ran fine for well over two years without this problem.) I would gladly purchase again if they fix this "kink" maybe with another pet edition? For now the old Discovery comes back downstairs. Let me know iRobot...

4 out of 5 stars

Pricing wrong??? August 18, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful

I don't know why Amazon is charging so much more for a product that you can get WITH all the accessories actually SHIPPED WITH the unit, directly from the manufacturer. Amazon had better check their pricing.

1 out of 5 stars

Needs better hair guard for spokes July 27, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful

My roomba worked great for about three months; however, despite cleaning the brushes after every use, dog hair still manages to find it's way into the inner drive and jam the gears. I have to unscrew the panel to get at the gears with tweezers to clean out clogged/impacted hair that tangles into all spinning parts.

This unit is great for the average home but anyone with long haired pets should avoid this product until they invent better spoke guards (I own one small shaggy dog).

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