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- iAdapt 2.0 Navigation with Visual Localization enables Roomba to navigate and clean an entire level of your home
- Automatically recharges and resumes cleaning to complete the entire job
- iRobot HOME App lets you clean, schedule & set custom cleaning preferences from your smartphone
- AeroForce Cleaning System with Carpet Boost automatically provides up to 10x the air power on carpets and rugs
- Tangle-free extractors prevent hair and debris jams
Roomba 980 delivers the power to help you with the vacuuming, so you can tackle the rest of what life throws your way. Smart navigation allows Roomba 980 to clean an entire level of your home, recharging as needed until the job is done. Use with the iRobot HOME App to conveniently clean and schedule – anytime, from anywhere. The powerful AeroForce Cleaning System with Carpet Boost automatically provides up to 10x the air power on carpets and rugs, where dirt and dust hide. Roomba works on all floor types and at just 3.6″ tall, is specifically designed to fit under most furniture, beds and kickboards.
A solid improvement to the Roomba — by far my favorite robotic vacuum!,
I purchased the Roomba 980 as my 5th robotic vacuum (I’ve previously owned the Roomba 880, Neato BotVac 65, Roomba 655, Neato XV-11, and a few more). Long story short, this is by far the best robotic vacuum cleaner I’ve ever used, and I highly recommend it if you can stomach the price. You are getting a robot that’s second to none in terms of cleaning power, navigational finesse, and ease-of-maintenance. I’ve been composing a long running review of this robot, and here’s 2 weeks worth of detailed observations:
Appearance and Physical Design:
• The AeroForce bin latch is sturdier than the 880’s design. The latch has more travel length and it’s a lot easier to remove the bin and more importantly, replace it and feel it “click in”. 4 months into using the 880, that’s the #1 wear and tear on my Roomba. The bin after 100 daily emptyings feels flimsy and doesn’t seem to consistently click back in. This bin seems like it will last longer
• The new color looks a lot more attractive in person than before.
• The underbody design looks almost identical to the 880. Other than a new bin/impeller design, the rest of the CHM appears unchanged.
• The caster wheel is still white and black, but the optical sensor underneath it is gone. It looks like odometry is purely done using the new optical floor tracking sensor on the underside. It reminds me of the mechanism an optical mouse used to track a desk.
Cleaning Performance
• Wow, Carpet Boost mode is loud! It’s basically as loud as a Neato now, including a bit of a high pitched component to the fan sounds. I would say it’s about twice as loud as the 880 was, when cleaning carpet, and about the same loudness on hard floors.
• Standing behind the robot, you can feel a lot more wind coming out of the robot — at least twice as much. It’s apparent it’s generating much more suction power than the Roomba 880
• I am running the 980 3 hours after my Roomba 880’s scheduled cleaning today. So far, it’s picked up a light layer of dust clinging to the filter (which is usual), but it also picked up a lot of big sand-like particles at the bottom of the bin, which is more like the stuff my fullsize Dyson upright picks out of my carpet when I manually vacuum every 3 months. So, it does seem like suction power is deeper than before.
• So far, my observations are inconsistent with what CNET is claiming — the cleaning effectiveness does not seem worse compared to the 880. If anything, it seems better.
Navigation Observations
• The Roomba 980 does indeed draw straight lines in open areas, which is excellent.
• Unlike the Neato (which likes to circle off a region around the edges before then drawing straight lines), the Roomba 980 goes right down to drawing straight lines. When it bumps into an obstacle, it just seems to ignore it and continues drawing lines. This makes it seem more productive than a Neato — within 15 minutes it covered 50% of my apartment, including the entire living room and a bedroom. It hasn’t done the edges of these rooms yet, but it got most of the floor area covered.
• Speaking of bumping into obstacles, Roomba remembers now! Remember how before, if you had black chair legs or some other IR-invisible obstacle, Roomba would ram it at full speed over and over again? Now, it seems to remember where invisible obstacles are. It bumped into my bed’s black metal legs once each, and then drew a circle around them. Next time it went in that direction, it stopped 1 inch before the leg and turned around. This is huge if you have a lot of furniture that Roomba has trouble seeing.
• As shipped, the partial battery charge seems good for 25 minutes of Carpet Boost runtime. After 25 minutes, it’s cleaned 2 rooms fully — one room is edged, the other room has not been edged yet. It navigated back to the base with ease — reminds me of a Neato!
• The overall travel speed is very similar to a Roomba 880, not as slow as I had feared. Note that every few times it bumps into unexpected obstacles, it pauses for about 1 second, presumably updating its map. Other than that, I actually think it cleans faster than the Neato BotVac 65 that I have — it’s much quicker to make its turns when drawing lines, and it spend much less time paused and thinking.
• The navigation algorithm does seem to get confused from time to time. I have an IKEA Poang chair in a dimly lit room, and I observed the robot go under and out of the chair maybe 3 times in total, seemingly confused every time it hit one of the chair legs. It would turn around and head back into open space, realize where it is, then turn around and continue cleaning under the chair. Of course, it eventually figured it out.
• Roomba cannot cope with pitch black rooms — If Roomba goes into a room that’s completely dark, it…
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|Still Doesn’t Do Black Carpet,
My home has been cleaned by robots for a while (this is my third Roomba), so I am familiar with their needs. They cut down on cleaning considerably. I’ll go into that a little more later. I want to point out a few things about this particular Roomba for people considering an upgrade first.
Black Carpet Still a No Go:
This Roomba still WILL NOT vacuum black carpet. The cliff sensors are exactly the same as the older Roombas. You can modify them easily, but how hard can it be to fix that? My carpet (pictured) is geometric and I have had to modify ever single Roomba. The covers usually pop off or get pushed after a month and you have to fiddle with it. As smart as this Roomba is, there should be an option to completely disable the cliff sensors. I have a one story house. I don’t need them. I do need my black carpet vacuumed.
I haven’t seen this mentioned in any review thus far. I was hoping it wasn’t a problem anymore, because it’s been a major complaint with Roombas since there were Roombas. It’s still a complaint. I posted a photo of the modification and the rug he refuses to clean without it.
The Navigation System and General Cleaning:
I put Zeke, the 980, against Alice, my 650 and he really does do a better job with navigation. Unlike previous Roombas, Zeke is smart. The 980 uses simultaneous location and mapping. It builds a map as it goes along and refers back to it. Some other smart vacs use this tech too. Previous Roombas were more or less dumb “bump bots.” The first few passes, the 980 actually seemed to bump harder than the 650 ever did. I am not sure if he was finding his bearings or what, because now he still bumps, but he seems to have figured out what he can bump and what he can’t. He pretty much travels around and gets the job done. Previous Roombas circled and spin a lot more. The 980 is more efficient for sure, but I’m not sure he actually cleans that much better than the 650. The 650 does an excellent job when it doesn’t skip spots. He does seem to skip around less and fills his bin faster, so I guess maybe he’s getting out more debris, but it’s not noticeable to the eye.
He’s also been running for a week and never once been caught or not made it back to his dock. Alice, my 650, gets caught or doesn’t make it back for some reason at least every other day (most of the time every day). You hear her crying, “Move Roomba to a new location and press clean to restart!” I haven’t heard Zeke cry once, but I’m sure he does. Poor Alice.
The Battery/Carpet Boost:
My house is mostly floor, so I don’t hear carpet boost that much. When the 980 gets on carpet, you can noticeably hear the motor working harder, which is nice but I assume it affects battery life too. I would argue with iRobot saying the battery last long enough to clean a whole level in most houses. I have a single level, 2500 square foot house, and even with most of the doors closed, he tried to clean all day when I didn’t confine him to the main living area. I’ve found that he cleans about 500 square feet an hour, give or take. For the whole house, he would clean, come back to charge for an hour or so and clean some more, charge, come back and clean some more, etc.
He can go about 2 hours without a charge, and that’s with minimal use of carpet boost. Only a few of the bedrooms have rugs and the living room has one, but that’s it. I can’t imagine he’d clean a whole level house with more carpet on a single charge if he can’t even clean mine. I have set him to clean the living room, kitchen and dining room, which is more than my previous Roomba (she just did the living room) but that is because he is so much better at navigating obstacles than she was more than battery life. He gets those three areas done before he has to go back for a nap.
The App:
I think the App is kind of gimmicky. You get to name your bot and he has a birthday in the app. I admit, that is cute. The meat of the app is the setting changes and the scheduling. The scheduling is the best part of the app. Previous Roombas had to be scheduled on the bot with multiple button presses. It was a pain to schedule Alice, but it was not that horrible. I only did it once in a blue moon. The app also lets you press the clean button remotely and change a few settings. I guess cleaning from the app is fun if you want to scare your cat from far away. It doesn’t seem to have much practical application, though you may find some. I wouldn’t let the app be your deciding factor.
I do like that the app tells you at a glance if your robot has done his job that day (they sometimes like to take off without permission) and if the bin is full or not. I wish the app would send you a notification when the bin is full. Zeke took a day off because his bin was full. I didn’t even notice until the next day, when he tried to take that day off…
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