Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have Roomba 780 and Mint 5200. I have used both for more than half year. Here are my experiences: Roomba 780 is very easy to use. Push start button, it goes. It can vacuum a room without using virtual wall or lighthouse. But if you want to run it in a specific area, virtual wall works like a closed door or wall. Roomba will not pass virtual wall. If you want to vacuum multiple rooms at once, placing lighthouse at different area will virtually divide the area into subareas. Roomba will first finish the 1st area, then move onto the next one. Pro's: - It is great that you can program the date/time you want it to run. - It starts by itself at the programed date/time and goes back to the charging dock automatically after cleaning. - It vacuums the room effectively. Hair, bread crumbs all get sucked into the vacuum. Recently, I had my windows installed. After the installers vacuumed the room w/ their professional vacuum and I using my Miele, I ran Roomba for another round of vacuuming. I was very pleased to see that Roomba got a lot of debris out of the shag carpet. - Good battery power to vacuum a large area. Con's: - Noisy. I find it painful to run it while I am home. - Navigation is not as sophisticated and effective as Mint 5200. It repeatedly gets stuck at some tight corners or passages, and needs to be removed. This is a problem if you are not home. Worse, when you come home, you have no idea how much it has cleaned before it got stuck. - The bin is small and is full after each daily run in my townhouse (I've no pets, but have a few rugs). It is a bit of work (about 5 minutes) to empty the bin, remove hair from the brush and beater brush, wheel, and remove dust from hepa filters. (Hepa filters are very small and need to be replaced frequently, minimum every 2-3 months) - Roomba takes very long time to vacuum an area by repeatedly going over it: 25 min for my kitchen 15ft x 8ft, about 1 hr for my living rm 22x22. The upside is that the area is well vacuumed, the downside is the number of hours of noise I have to endure and the wear and tear to the surface. - Light house is a good concept to vacuum multiple areas automatically. However, the light house allocates 25 min. to each area regardless of the area size. So both my kitchen and living room get 25 min. This does not sound smart. I no longer use light house anymore. So, if you don't intend to use lighthouse function, Roomba 760 is a better value ($150 cheaper). It comes with 2 virtual walls (no lighthouse option). Everything else is pretty much the same. - The biggest downside for me is that it is pretty rough to the surface although its brush is very soft. Here is how it shows: 1) a short pile wool rug in the living rm: a lot of fine wool fiber in the bin after the vacuum; 2) shag carpeted bedroom: each time, a few threads were pulled out; 3) a woven wool rug in the office: wool threads were pulled out from the fringe, now the rug needs repair: 4) a GelPro mat in the kitchen: the edge has shown some wear and tear. Because of its noise and roughness on rug/carpet, I don't use Roomba frequently. Mint 5200 is my preference for weekly floor cleaning. However, I am happy to have Roomba when I need to do some heavy duty vacuuming. Some tips: - More on light house: as said, the light house will allocate 20-25 min. to one area, then Roomba will move onto the next area and take whatever time needed to finish the 2nd area. As I wanted to limit the time Roomba spend on a relatively small room, I decided to use light house AND close the door (as I don't want Roomba to vacuum the next area), thinking that Roomba would spend 20 min. to finish the room. Wrong! Because if Roomba has nowhere to go after finishing 1st area due to the closed door, Roomba will continue vacuum the 1st area until its battery is drained. I couldn't understand it until I talked to the customer service. - Hepa filter: I confirmed with the customer service that it is ok to rinse the Hepa to keep it clean. One just need to make sure that it is dried out before putting it back into the bin.