Fits under most furniture Bump steering rather clunky Missed small area of test room Dimensions: 92 x 340 x 340mm AeroForce Performance Cleaning System What is the iRobot Roomba 880?The Roomba 880 is one of the more advanced robot cleaners from the pioneers at iRobot. I first tested a Roomba almost a decade ago and while things haven't changed much cosmetically, lots has changed on the inside. The Roomba 880 offers learning and adaptive navigation with multiple sensors, a high efficiency vacuum and a dual contra-rotating brush system to literally grab dirt from your floors.Its round shape and low-slung design make it adept at navigating obstacles, corners and furniture with rotating side brushes to get cleaning close to the edge. In use, what looks like a completely random cleaning path is designed to give complete coverage and, with its criss-cross pattern and dirt senor technology ensuring effective cleaning.iRobot Roomba 880 – SetupYou can tell iRobot has been in the robot vacuum cleaner business a long time because the second line in the manual tells you that it’s not a toy and that small children and pets should be supervised when it is in use.

Given the amount of YouTube videos involving Roombas and pets, we assume it means supervised from your smart phone camera. In fact, the 880’s the power switch is now a huge button in the middle, which means a strategically placed cat will actually turn the machine off. There goes our £250 You’ve Been Framed cash.Related: Best Vacuum CleanersIn addition to the large power/clean button the top, elsewhere the Roomba 880 is superbly designed with four large control buttons, several indicator lights and a large LED segment display showing time and day of the week. The docking station is a compact unit that allows the Roomba to dock close to the wall and this model comes with two of iRobot’s Virtual Wall accessories.These small battery powered columns can be placed around the home and set-up to act as a doorway barrier, a marker point between rooms to ensure effective cleaning of one before it moves to another, or to give a halo area that the Roomba won’t enter – such as around dogs water bowls.

You also get a spare filter, which will need replacing every couple of months, and a handy remote control. swarovski vacuum cleanerFor those who really like a gadget to go with their robot, iRobot’s Wireless Command Centre is an optional accessory (around £70) that replicates the controls and display of the Roomba 880 on a handheld device.dyson vacuum cleaner compactThe Roomba itself is very easy to set-up and is pushed onto the dock to charge. dyson vacuum cleaner motorsThe dust bin removes easily from the back but is an odd shape and contains the HEPA-class filter assembly, which reduces the capacity to approximately half a litre.In front of this are the two counter-rotating rollers. Rather than a mix of rubber and brushes like other robot vacs we have tested, these are all-rubber with little blades that squeeze together to pick up debris.

As on its first outing we found a yogurt pot lid in the dust bin, we can certainly vouch for its pick up abilities as other robots vacs would have skimmed over this.At the leading edge of the machine is a small turret sensor for room mapping navigation. This is complemented by a semi-circular spring-loaded bumper at the front of the robot. The principle being that the Roomba will only bump into obstacle the once and the sensor marks the positions so it can adapt and miss it next pass.iRobot Roomba 880 – Cleaning Modes iRobot keeps things simple as there are just three modes. Clean does an automated clean of the entire room until it has covered every area. Spot mode effects a spiralling manoeuvre out to about 1-metre in diameter around the point where the Roomba was placed for quick clean ups, and Home cancels either mode and sends it back to the dock.When cleaning, the Roomba is constantly looking to the floor for dirtier patches using a combination of optical and acoustic sensors. When the machine finds a particularly debris filled area, its Persistent Pass feature ensures it will go back and forth over the area until it is clean.

This worked very well and in all our test areas of carpet powder on the hard floor, the Roomba went back over these areas at least one more time. The Spot mode is also extremely effective as its tight spiral pattern moves out with a good cleaning overlap and then spirals back in to where it first started cleaning all the way.In use the Roomba 880 is not the quietest robot vac we have used, but it’s far from the noisiest either. Measuring 69dB on hard floors and just 67dB on carpet, the noise output is considerably lower than a traditional vacuum cleaner.Potentially more disturbing noise wise is the initial scopes of the room where the unit bumps into many room obstacles before mapping and noting where they are for the next pass. The bumping is not as soft touch as iRobot’s marketing materials would have you believe and you can hear the bumps from other rooms, particularly at night. iRobot Roomba 880 - Black - Robotic Cleaner iRobot Roomba 880 Vacuum Floor Cleaning Robot - R880020 New

BRAND NEW iRobot Roomba 880 Vacuum Cleaning Robot, WORLDWIDE VOLTAGE 110-240V Best Deals From PriceGrabber 1 X MZY LLC Side Brushes and Filters Replacement For iRobot Roomba 800 Series 870 880 Robotic Vacuum Parts-Include: 10 filters, 5 side brushes 3 armed SHP-ZONE 4 x HEPA Filter & 6 x 3-armed side brush & Cleaning Tool for iRobot Roomba 800 series 870 880 Vacuum Cleaning Robots Roomba 880 Robotic Vacuum Cleaner MZY LLC 3 Armed Side Brush replace for irobot Roomba 800 Series 880 870 Robotic Vacuum Parts-10 Pack Iautomatic 3-Pack Replacement for iRobot Roomba 800 Series 880 3-Armed Side BrushesIn our best robots of CES roundup last week, it appears that we left out an interesting offering: the Windoro window-cleaning robot from South Korea.This robot wants to do for your windows what Roomba and Scooba do for your floors. It's quite a sight to see this gizmo magically crawling on glass. But there's no magic, of course. The robot consists of two modules that go on opposite sides of the window and hold each other using permanent magnets.

The mighty iRobot, with its best-selling Roomba vacuums and innovative Scooba floor-washing bots, dominates the cleaning-robot market. But now Ilshim Global, a small firm from Gyeongsan, South Korean, wants to claim a new part of that market -- the vertical segment, so to speak. Unveiled late last year, the Windoro robot was a joint development between Ilshim and the Pohang Institute of Intelligent Robotics, or PIRO. The machine measures about 20 centimeters (7.9 inches) on a side and weighs in at 2.7 kilograms (6 pounds). The Windoro robot can clean windows 6 to 25 millimeters thick (0.2 to 1 inch). And no, you won't see it hanging on skyscrapers -- its creators say it's designed for cleaning windows at homes and stores. One of the robot's two modules works as the navigation unit. It uses accelerometers to navigate and bump sensors to detect obstacles and window frames. The other module is the cleaning unit, which has four spinning microfiber pads and a reservoir that dispenses detergent.

The robot first moves up and down and left and right to determine the dimensions of the window. It then follows a zigzag pattern to cover the entire surface, moving at an average speed of 8 centimeters per second and returning to the starting point when it's finished. One battery charge lasts about 2 hours, and the robot can clean a surface of up to 12 square meters (130 square feet). The Windoro robot will first go on sale in South Korea, followed by Europe, over the next couple of months. It should be available in the United States in April and will retail for about US $400. UPDATE 1/19: Corrected maximum surface area robot can clean. Photo and video: Josh Romero & Joe Calamia/IEEE Spectrum Blog Post: iRobot shrunk the Scooba. How did they do it? Blog Post: A man turns into a cyborg at the Consumer Electronics Show Blog Post: Robots made a big appearance at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Blog Post: Quadrotors performing acrobatics, humanoids dancing, dexterous robots folding towels, and more