The iRobot Looj: Does It Work? by Dan Seitz

You may have heard of the Looj, the robot from the company that made the robot vaccum Roomba and the robot floor mop Scooba.  You place the robot in your gutters then control it with a handy remote. The auger up front, using a mixture of hard rubber fins and stiff brushes, rolls through like a drill through wood, blasting your gutters free of wet leaves, pine needles, and other crud with ease.

First of all; whoever you are, sir, your gutters are a travesty.  And in the Pacific Northwest, too.  We’d hate to see your foundation with gutters like those.

So, what’s the general opinion of the Looj?

CrunchGear says it’s “not too bad for $169”, and notes that it does a good job on moderately dirty gutters.  They also accidentally dropped it off a roof, and discovered it was sturdy and still worked even after such a drop.  JustTech’n had concerns about the battery, which takes fifteen hours to charge and only lasts about forty-five minutes, and disliked that the Looj couldn’t take corners.  But they found the assembly easy, and were happy with the cleaning job it did.  SpotCoolStuff “found that the Looj had a harder time completely cleaning out anything packed down, especially mud”, but they still found it to be well worth the money.  Businessweek found it “cleaner than doing the job yourself but the robot’s awful sense of balance means lots of supervision.”  They found the Looj often flipped on its side, and was unable to right itself easily, so the reviewer still needed to be on the roof to right it.  But they found  it did its job admirably, and enjoyed the simple assembly and deconstruction.

Overall, the reviews are positive, but with reservations.  One thing we notice the reviews didn’t bring up was the fact that the Looj made some truly awful noises in the videos we found.  It sounds like it’s cleaning hell’s gutters in a few videos, especially when it hits a clog. But it does an admirable job; video after video shows it flinging even sodden debris and dirt out fairly easily.  The only reservation most people will have is the price: $100 to $169 is pretty expensive, especially for a single-use tool.  But if you don’t want to scrub your gutters, and want to keep them clean on a fairly regular basis, the Looj will be perfect for you.

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