Product Description

The latest innovation from iRobot, the Scooba Floor Washing Robot performs 4 different floor cleaning chores in just one pass. The Scooba is designed to prep, wash, scrub, and dry your hard floor surface all by itself! It is safe for most hard floor surfaces, including sealed hardwood, linoleum, tile and marble. The Scooba is designed to clean under furniture, tables, chairs and other hard to reach places all by itself. It is simple to operate: just fill the tank, press the clean button and make sure to empty the tank when Scooba is done cleaning your floors!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #140311 in Kitchen & Housewares
• Color: White and Blue
• Brand: iRobot
• Model: 5900
• Released on: 2006-03-24
• Dimensions: 15.20 pounds

Features

• Floor-washing robot that preps, washes, scrubs, and dries in one pass
• Cleans under furniture, tables, and hard-to-reach places
• Safe to use on most hard floors, including sealed hardwood, linoleum, tile, and marble
• Simple to operate--fill tank, press "Clean," and empty tank when finished
• Includes one 8-oz. bottle of cleaning solution; 1-year warranty

Amazon.com Product Description
It's time to stop mopping. From iRobot, the makers of the top-selling iRobot Roomba Vacuuming Robot, comes a revolutionary new way to clean your hard floors. Meet iRobot Scooba Floor Washing Robot, the world's first floor-washing robot for the home that preps, washes, scrubs, and dries your floor--all by itself. Scooba not only does the job for you, but does it better. Unlike mop and bucket methods that just spread dirty water around your floor, Scooba uses fresh Clorox Scooba cleaning solution from start to finish. With the press of a button, the robot will leave your floors clean, dry, and ready to walk on. Scooba is simple to use, and safe on all sealed hardwood, tile, and linoleum flooring.

Scooba's Four-Stage Cleaning System Scooba features a proprietary four-stage cleaning system that will simultaneously prep, wash, scrub, and dry your floor in a single pass. Prep: With Scooba, there's no need to sweep the floor before washing. Scooba preps your floor by picking up loose dirt and light debris, including hair, dust, and many cereals. Wash: Scooba then washes your floor by laying down a mixture of specially formulated Clorox Scooba cleaning solution and water. Clorox Scooba cleaning solution is safe on all sealed hard floor surfaces. And it's nontoxic, so it's safe to use around kids and pets. Scrub: Next, Scooba's specially designed brushes gently scrub floors, cleaning spills and removing grime. Scooba's brush spins at 1,500 revolutions per minute, scrubbing your floor more effectively than traditional mops or any other hard-floor cleaning system. Dry: Finally, Scooba actually dries your floor by picking up the dirty water left on the floor and depositing it into a second tank. The residue is held in the "Dirty" tank until it is emptied. So, instead of just redistributing the dirty water around your floor like standard mops do, Scooba leaves your floor cleaner, drier, and ready to walk on.

Scooba Covers the Entire Floor Scooba thoroughly cleans floors, covering every section of the floor an average of four times. During a cleaning cycle, Scooba monitors its environment 67 times per second and adjusts its cleaning behavior for maximum coverage. Scooba uses three behaviors in every cleaning cycle, ensuring thorough cleaning of the entire area. Wall Following: Scooba uses this technique to clean the entire perimeter of the room and for navigating around furniture and other obstacles. Room Crossing: Scooba crisscrosses the room as it looks for new areas to clean, ensuring total coverage of the room. Spiraling: In this mode, Scooba creates a large spiral pattern to effectively cover large open areas. For best coverage and faster cleaning, iRobot recommends removing chairs and other furniture from the room you want to clean. Scooba cleans an average kitchen in about 45 minutes, covering each area of the room multiple times to thoroughly clean your floor. Over the course of a cleaning cycle, Scooba will automatically react to obstacles and maneuver its way through a variety of situations. Scooba features integrated cliff sensors that tell the robot to turn away from stairs and other drops. Scooba's non-marring bumper is gentle to furniture and other obstacles. Scooba also has infrared wall sensors that allow the robot to clean around the perimeter of the room and around obstacles. Scooba also features special escape behaviors that allow it to quickly get out from under chairs and other furniture. Scooba also comes with a Virtual Wall to contain Scooba in the area you want to clean. Simply place the Virtual Wall in a doorway and turn it on. The Virtual Wall will stay activated for the duration of Scooba's cleaning cycle. Scooba automatically turns away when it detects the Virtual Wall's invisible infrared beam so you can keep Scooba in one room or away from obstacles.

Easy to Use Scooba is easy to use. Simply fill the "Clean" tank with Clorox Scooba cleaning solution and water. Place Scooba on the floor, press "Power" and then the "Clean" button. Scooba will clean the entire room in approximately 45 minutes. When Scooba is finished cleaning, empty the "Dirty" tank into the sink or toilet, rinse and replace the tank, and connect Scooba to the power supply to recharge its battery. Scooba is powered by a rechargeable nickel-metal hydride battery. Scooba's battery fully charges in about 3 hours and will last for almost two complete cleaning cycles. For best performance, iRobot recommends recharging the battery after every cleaning cycle. Scooba's battery is environmentally safe and will provide hundreds of cleaning cycles.

Clorox Scooba Cleaning Solution iRobot has teamed with Clorox to develop a cleaning solution that is specially formulated to ensure best performance. Clorox Scooba cleaning solution is designed to be safe and effective on all sealed hard floors. The cleaning solution is safe around children and pets. iRobot recommends using only Clorox Scooba cleaning solution in Scooba. Only Clorox Scooba cleaning solution is specially formulated to enable high traction, so Scooba can move freely on most floors. The cleaning solution is also designed to produce less foam, preventing foam from building inside the robot or on your floor. Clorox Scooba cleaning solution is also non-corrosive to Scooba and its electronics.

What's in the Box iRobot Scooba floor-washing robot, battery, power supply, 1 virtual wall (requires 2 D batteries, not included), 8-oz. bottle Clorox Scooba cleaning solution, measuring cup.

Customer Reviews

Fun product, has limitations.
It does a nice job mopping flat sealed surfaces, as long as you "scooba-proof" the room first. I did find that you can't let it roam around rooms as large as those you can let the Roomba go in, as Scooba does need to go over the same spot a few times to really get it clean, and also as the cycle is only 45 minutes. I also found that it can be much more temperamental than I expected, stopping mid-clean because it got stuck in a transition area (like between tile and wood), stuck on a flat rug it didn't detect, didn't like the amount of cleaner you put in, or needs the dirty water and filter's checked. I've also found it doesn't always obey the virtual walls. Unlike the Roomba, there is no mechanism for it to clean corners, so those you have to manually mop. It sucks up most of the water, leaving the floor in a damp-dry state - I read people saying the floor is dry, but that has never been the case with mine. Because you're stuck with only using the Clorox cleaner (which is pretty general-purpose), you have to manual go over those floor types you want to shine or polish (like hard wood) with something else. It is a lot quieter than I expected, and on those times when I had an issue not covered in the manual and had to contact their phone support, they were very responsive. All in all, if you understand that it is an in-between the full manual-cleaning maintenance product, and you like the Roomba quirks, Scooba is a good product.

Best thing since sliced bread
I've had my Scooba for about a month now and have been running it almost every day. I LOVE it. It gets my floors cleaner that I have ever been able to get them with a broom and mop. It was able to get up fine construction dust after our remodel that I could not clean up any other way. It cleans both my hardwood floors and my tile floors with grout. It scrubs the grout! No more scrubbing on my hands and knees! And it vaccuums up dust bunnies, pet hair, etc.--you don't have to sweep the floors before using it. In fact, I DON'T SWEEP MY FLOORS AT ALL ANYMORE! I don't have to--I just run my Scooba every day!

You have to use the Clorox solution that comes with it to run it; IT WILL NOT RUN WITHOUT IT. But you can use half the recommended amount and it will work, and the solution smells great. Buy lots of extra bottles of the solution, as you will need it. The reason Scooba can get your floors so clean is because it squirts out the cleaning solution mixed with water that you add, then scrubs the floor, then squeegees the floor and sucks the dirty water up into a separate storage tank for the dirty water. So you are not washing your floor with increasingly dirty water as you do using a broom an mop.

Just like the Roomba, the Scooba is round and it cannot clean all the way into corners, so you do have to do a little bit of clean up after it is done, but it washes 95% of your floor, and it is sparkling clean when it is done. I set it to clean before I go to work in the morning, and I come home to a clean floor every day. Heaven! Well worth the steep price. It is different from Roomba in that it does not sense that your floor is clean and stop. Instead, it goes until it runs out of washing solution, about 45 minutes. But running it regularly has given me floors so clean I could literally eat off of, something I have never had in 20 years of keeping house. And it does it while I'm gone! Is there such a thing as the perfect product?

Wow, I'm in love!
Please click "See all customer images" at the top of the page to see all of the detailed pictures I submitted of my Scooba.

Opening the Scooba box, I could see that this robot was much more complex than the vacuuming robots (I own the Dirt Dog and Red Roomba).

Scooba is the same width and height as its brothers, Dirt Dog and Roomba, but it weighs a tiny bit more.

The Scooba is easy to open, the handle doubles as a latch to flip up the tanks and makes you feel like you're popping the hood of a car. The tanks separate from the Scooba so you can fill and empty them. One tank is labeled "clean", the other "dirty". You fill the "clean" tank with the Clorox solution and cold or warm water and when the Scooba is done cleaning, you will find all the gross dirty stuff that it mopped up in the "dirty" tank.

Scooba warns you to only use the Clorox solution it came with as other solutions might corrode the moving parts of Scooba. At first, I thought I would just use my own solution, but I'm going to stick with the Clorox solution from iRobot since it smells so nice (my fiancé always complains of the smell of Pine Sol or tile cleaner) and seems to really get the job done.

Each replaceable part has a yellow label with the part number ... these guys think of everything! The filter, brushes, and hose are easy to put in and take out.

When you turn on Scooba, it begins as all other iRobots do, it does circles and then goes off in a straight line, changing direction when it taps walls or cabinets. I specifically say "tap" because my other robots, Dirt Dog and Roomba, more so bump into walls ... I can usually hear them bumping into the closet doors and walls from another room if the house is silent.

I intentionally did not mop the tile for two weeks. We had two parties within this timeframe. The floor looked pretty disgusting, to say the least. There were black marks everywhere from people dragging who-knows-what in from outside. It looked like someone stepped on spilt soda and danced all over the tile. I let Scooba loose, crossing my fingers in hopes that it would remove these marks from the floor (I know from experience that I would have to scrub it if I were using a regular mop). Scooba got the small marks out in one pass; the more nasty ones took two passes, max. I was pretty impressed.

Scooba cleaned for about 45 minutes until its battery died. I limited it to only a small space, about 10x10, but it could have done probably about 15x15 in that amount of time. The floor looked awesome! It even cleaned the tile around the trash can, which has some really gross gunk stuck to it that I can't normally get out with a mop. I charged Scooba again, which didn't take long ... maybe an hour? And off it went again, to clean the rest of the tile. It crawls a little bit slower than the vacuuming robots, which is good though, since it's cleaning the floor not vacuuming.

I couldn't find any documentation on this, but I think that the Scooba spot cleans. I know that the Roomba Discovery spot cleans since my friend has one. It will detect extra-dirty spots and do circles around that area to really get the job done. Well, Scooba did this quite a bit ... I thought maybe it just did it randomly, but it did spot cleaned in the same spots a couple of times, especially where there was lots of gunk stuck to the tile - so, I don't think it's a coincidence.

Time to empty the dirty water ... ewww, the water came out completely black. It looked like I was changing the oil on my car. Just disgusting. I took the time to clean the filter too, all I had to do was run some water through it and all the dirt, hair and gunk washed right off. The vacuum hose and brush was just as easy too, just run some water through it and viola!

Scooba lets you know what it needs, just look at the little digital display near the power and clean button. It will tell you when you need to clean the tank or filter, if the battery is not snapped into place right, if the left/right wheel is malfunctioning, if the battery is too hot, all sorts of cool things.

If you have a big house like me (2000 square feet) with all tile, it might take you about 2 or 3 charges to clean the whole house (my entire house is tile, except the bedrooms, which there are 4 of). The battery doesn't last as long as the vacuuming robots, but you have to take into consideration how much more work the Scooba does. Scooba vacuums any dirt or dust, lays down the cleaning solution, brushes the floor and vacuums up the dirty water in a single pass.

Scooba left a little snail trail, it didn't completely dry the tile, but it was pretty close. The snail trail dried anyways within 2 minutes.

This is so much better than mopping because when I mop, it just makes the bucket of water filthy and then I'm just swashing dirty water around the floor. But the Scooba picks up the dirty water and really leaves the tile nice and clean. No more dirty feet or socks!!

The price may seem a little scary, but wow, am I glad I spent the money on the Scooba. My floors have never been this clean, ever! All of my friends were completely skeptical, but their jaws were on the floor when they saw what these little robots could do.

** UPDATE **
So, the Scooba just cleaned my entire house yesterday without needing to recharge! I charged the Scooba up for about a day and it cleaned every bit of tile in about an hour and a half or so. I only had to stop to clean the tank once. I am so pleased with this, I can't wait for my floors to get filthy again!

Please click "See all customer images" at the top of the page to see all of the detailed pictures I submitted of my Scooba.