|
|
Review: The Scooba Floor Scrubbing Robot
Everyone dreams of a day when their home managed by robotic servants. Now, the iRobot Corporation of Burlington, Massachusetts is helping to make the dream a reality by offering an affordable line of cleaning robots. The latest product to their line is the Scooba, a $300 robot designed to replace the $7 kitchen mop. HOW IT WORKS Designed for cleaning marble, tile, linoleum, and finished wood floors, the Scooba performs a 4-step cleaning process of prep, wash, scrub and dry. The prep stage uses a vacuum to pick up loose dirt and debris. The wash cycle lays down a stream of Clorox-brand solution that's been specially designed for use with the Scooba. The scrub cycle uses a rotating bristled brush to scrub the floor and then the drying cycle sucks up the wet solution. The Scooba has four vacuum ports in all, which pick up dry debris and the dirty solution and deposit it into the "Dirty" tank. Using the same room-roving system as the iRobot Roomba, the Scooba appears to stumble it's way around the room like a drunken sailor, spinning around and bouncing off of walls and other obstacles. The first few times the Scooba goes to work, you'll be tempted to watch it's progress and you'll doubt it's effectiveness to truly clean the entire floor. But you'll soon learn that Scooba can be trusted to perform it's task faithfully, and you'll put the little guy to work in your kitchen, bathrooms and anywhere you have a floor that needs a thorough cleaning. Three built-in sensors underneath the unit prevent Scooba from heading down stairwells (see picture, below) and a bumper helps Scooba learn where it can and cannot go. The package also includes one "Virtual Wall" (more can be purchased separately) that can be placed anywhere, creating an invisible line the Scooba will not cross. The top of the Scooba has several lights with friendly English messages that indicate when the unit is stuck, the dirty tank is full, or the cleaning brush is jammed. Finally, "Service Code" LED displays single-digit warning signals for more serious problems that may happen to the Scooba.
REAL-WORLD TEST In our tests, the Scooba performed beyond our expectations (see before & after images below). The system has two buttons; "Power" and "Clean." Pressing each of them, in that order, energizes the device and starts it on its mission. The Scooba will clean a room for approximately 45 minutes, until the tank runs out of cleaning solution. According to iRobot, one tank of solution should be enough to clean a 20' x 10' space. The Scooba isn't small enough to fit behind the toilet in a bathroom, so it won't clean every nook and cranny in smaller rooms or when you have obstacles that create spaces smaller than the unit, but it will work its way around large open spaces, like a kitchen floor. When the unit is finished, it will enter a self-cleaning mode to dry out the internal parts of the system. After that, all you have to do is empty and rinse out the Scooba's dirty tank, and then rinse the vacuum port, filter and cleaning brush with water. This is less than two minutes worth of work and makes the Scooba immediately ready to start cleaning in another room. Although iRobot recommends you recharge the battery after a room is cleaned, we were able to run it through two full cleaning cycles and get 15 additional minutes, which was enough to thoroughly clean a small bathroom.
COST EFFECTIVENESS At $300, the unit should pay for itself after cleaning 15-20 rooms (Assuming it takes about 20 minutes to clean a room by hand, and a maid service would charge approximately $50 hour). Of course, your personal time may be even more valuable, which would increase the Scooba's cost effectiveness. Just clean your kitchen floor and two bathrooms each week and the unit will pay for itself in less than two months. Besides the initial cost of the unit, Scooba owners must replenish the cleaning solution. Locally, we were able to purchase a single bottle of the Clorox cleaning solution for $5.99 (plus tax). The iRobot online store offers bulk (5-bottle and 9-bottle) packages that can reduce the price to as little as $4.44/per bottle (plus shipping). If we average all of these prices together, the cost to refill the unit is about $.40 per room. (Each bottle of Clorox solution will fill the Scooba's cleaning tank 16 times.) Although iRobot states that you may use white vinegar instead of the cleaning solution, we sincerely hope our readers aren't that cheap, as the Clorox solution smells much better.
CONCLUSION The Scooba takes one of the least glamorous housecleaning tasks and turns it into an interesting and almost fun distraction.If you're tired of scrubbing your kitchen floors, the Scooba will make your life considerably easier. Rather than slaving over your mop, just check in on your robotic servant infrequently and compliment it for doing a great job. PURCHASE
© Copyright 2000-2005, SemperAptus . All rights reserved. Please refer all comments to webmaster@semperaptus.com |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
