Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought my first Roomba vacuum more than 10 years back. I loved the technology, but it had its limitations, so I was eager to try the current generation. The first image shows my old (10-12 years) Roomba 500 (?) series vacuum (it’s the one with the fun demo mode, if that helps nail it down) sitting alongside the contemporary Roomba i6+ (6550) vacuum. The bottom line is that with the old Roomba my wife thought it was less work to do the vacuuming entirely herself than to have to touch-up after the Roomba cleaned. With the new Roomba, she is happy to only have to occasionally break out the Swifter out to clean corners and other problem spots. You can read more about the images below, but here’s my summary of the current generation Roomba vs. my older model: 1) Quieter, more vacuuming power. 2) No more having to manually empty the Roomba dust bin! 3) No more having to de-fiber and de-fur the (bristle-style) brush! 4) The rectangular grid cleaning and far more precise wall-following are a vast improvement over the bounce-along-the-wall and random-walk of the older Roomba. (The new Roomba still can’t quite get into the tightest corners, but between the edge brush and the increased suction, it did a credible job. I think iRobit has an upgraded model that addresses this). 5) We were totally blown away when the new Roomba emptied it’s dust bin and went right back to cleaning! ***Update*** 6) Over the holidays, I finally found the time to use the mapping feature. It was easy to figure out and powerful, which left me kicking myself for not setting it up right away. You can even send the Roomba out in reconnaissance mode to improve the map when no vacuuming is required, so it doesn't take much time to create a map. The way it works is that Roomba builds a map of your house based on all the locations it has visited. Then you edit the map to place room dividers, name the rooms, and then you can choose which rooms to vacuum by name. Of course, you can 'select all.' There are also exclusions zones that you can set up (say, near a mess of cords) as well as high traffic zones. The last photo shows the status when I just wanted to vacuum the kitchen. It's an absolute hoot to watch Roomba travel to a specific area of the house to vacuum. ***End Update*** The first image also shows what for me is a game-changer: The tower on the i6+ dock extracts and stores the dirt from the Roomba. No more emptying the gross dust compartment and dealing with the associated filter! Just a typical vacuum bag that needs to be thrown out and replaced approximately every 60 days. The second image shows the underside of both Roombas. Physically, not much change, though some of the sensors look a bit different. That said, the two big things to notice are: 1) The 500 series lower brush (the brush is approximately 2/3rds from the top of the image, just above the bottom of the red frame) is, as always, clogged with carpet fibers and dog hair. The lower “brush” (the bright green paddle with v-shaped contours) on the i6+ is now a silicon (or something like that) paddle. So no more picking fiber and fur out of the brush! 2) You can see the dust compartment at the bottom of both Roombas. The dust compartment of the old Roomba swung out and you had to (awkwardly) dump it. There was also a filter that you had to maintain. The dust compartment of the new Roomba empties into the tower. iRobot says that approximately every 60 days you’ll have to throw out the full dust bag from the tower and replace it with a new one.