There are a lot of choices in robot vacuums available but if you have a lot of hard floors, you are missing one important part of your cleaning regime. The vacuums do a great job of keeping the dust and debris off your floor but hard floors have to be mopped occasionally to really be clean. So is there a way we can automate this task, too? That is the question that led me to the iRobot Scooba 230 Floor Washing Robot I want to share with you now. The Scooba 230 is a floor mopping robot that scrubs up the dirt and grime and sucks it away like a shop vac. It is six and a half inches in diameter, half the size of the Roomba. This allows it to get into tighter spaces.
iRobot Scooba 230 Floor Washing Robot
Its scrubbing brushes scrub the floor to loosen grime while the squeegee pushes the dirty water to an intake where the vacuum suctions it up with the dirt and grime leaving a clean floor behind. The cleaning solution can be plain water, a water-vinegar mix, or Scooba Hard Floor Cleaner which is a natural enzyme formula. The Scooba 230 has two cleaning cycle settings – a 20-minute cycle for small rooms such as bathrooms and a 45-minute cycle for larger rooms such as kitchens. It uses the same iAdapt navigation system as the Roomba to thoroughly cover the whole floor with multiple passes, guaranteeing great results.
Features and Benefits
- The Scooba 230 is a small robot at only six ad a half inches wide.
- It has two reservoirs, one with the clean water and one for the dirty water.
- Scrubbing brushes loosen the dirt ad grime.
- A squeegee vacuum combination then picks up the dirty water, leaving a clean floor behind.
- It can be used with either plain water or iRobot’s environmentally conscious Scooba Hard Floor Cleaner.
- It is capable of cleaning 150 square feet per session.
Customer Reviews
The reviewers were less than thrilled with the Scooba 230. Only 24% gave it five stars and 51% rated it with four stars or better. The consensus among reviewers is that it is a great concept that needs a little more work. The biggest issue was the battery took eight hours to charge (after the initial 15 hour charge) and then only gave about one hour of run time. If your hard floors can’t be finished in that hour your cleaning becomes a multiple day project. There is a definite need for a faster charger if iRobot wants to make this a viable product.
Other than the battery issue, most reviewers were very impressed with the actual cleaning performance of the 230. It did an outstanding job cleaning the floor and left very little water behind. The squeegee and suction system worked well to keep water from puddling on the floor and the floor was dry after just a few minutes.
Conclusion
As long as you aren’t expecting miracles, the iRobot Scooba 230 Floor Washing Robot may become your favorite robot of all. After all, the point of robotics is to do the nasty, repetitive jobs we don’t want to do and can there be a job in the home more fitting of that description than scrubbing the floor around the toilet? I rest my case.
