I’ve written a couple of times about my Roomba which I adore. When I did my many hours of research before buying one I found there were millions of initial impressions out there to read but very few follow ups. The follow ups you did find were always angry customers complaining about their batteries. The battery is the Achille’s Heel of any gadget so I didn’t let that stand in the way of my purchase.

I did make sure to read the manual about proper battery maintenance so I could keep it at its best. So today when I fired up the Roomba I decided to set the timer on my iPhone and see just how well my battery was doing as I knew it had been about 6 months since I bought the Roomba. When I first wrote about my Roomba I estimated the battery lasted over an hour and a half, today it lasted 1h 16m before coming to a halt. I didn’t have the charging station plugged in so it ran until it was on it’s last breath, even after plugging the base station in and hitting Dock it did not budge. Assuming my initial estimate of the battery lasting more than an hour and a half, I have lost at least 15 min in battery life capacity. At this rate I would estimate that after the one year marker I should have an hour’s battery life left or hopefully only slightly less than that.

Overall I’m very happy with my Roomba and use it 2 or 3 times a week and let it run until it’s dead. It adequately handles 3 large rooms and a small bathroom in that time and I can get away with only emptying the dust bin every use. I clean the brushes and rollers every third or fourth run but it rarely seems to need it. Every time I am impressed at how the brush cage was designed so that it could be easily opened, cleaned and then put back together again. My only gripe is that it’s tricky to remove the dust bin without spilling debris all over, so I open it above the garbage to catch most of what falls out. For that reason I recommend not emptying it until just before your next run, as it will then clean up it’s own mess.

Brad Fettes

A seasoned Senior Solutions Architect with 18 years of experience in technology design and implementation. Renowned for innovative solutions and strategic insights, he excels in driving complex projects to success. Outside work, he is a passionate fisherman and fish keeper, specializing in planted tanks.