The iRobot Roomba has been around for about 10 years, but I finally got one for our home. It works great!
I purchased it from Costco and it's the Roomba 805 model (I believe this model was made just for Costco members.) It's really just like any other 800 series robot, but they include two Dual Mode Virtual Wall Barriers so you can keep the robot away from vacuuming certain areas.
I found that the Roomba vacuums in a very random pattern and it takes about 1 - 1.5 hours to finish before it heads back to its charging base. I watched a number of YouTube videos and found that perhaps the $499 Neato robots actually do a better job at vacuuming in a more orderly pattern and also do it quicker. But what worried me was the numerous reviews of the Neato products indicating that they tended to break down. Not good. So, while the Roomba does not move in an orderly pattern and takes longer to vacuum, I decided it still might be the better choice. The two 900 series iRobot Roombas move in the same orderly pattern as a Neato, but they cost $699 and $899. They also have WiFi ability, but I don't really need that.
The
Roomba 805 is normally $399 at Costco, but they had it on sale for $50
off, so it's not a bad deal at $349. But if you are not a Costco
member, look for the 800 series of machines at Bed Bath and Beyond and
get theirs at 20% off with one of their coupons. The Roomba 860 machine
sells for $499.99 but has a $50 discount at $449.99 this holiday
season. If you take off 20% with the coupon, that brings it to $359.99! The main
difference in the Costco version and the one at Bed Bath and Beyond is
that the Costco version comes with TWO Virtual Wall Barriers whereas the
one sold at Bed Bath and Beyond comes with only one. The Costco version
is the better deal.
The Roomba goes from room to room and covered most if not all of our floors on both levels of our home. The sad part is that you need to pick up the machine and bring it upstairs and downstairs if you want both levels cleaned. Some people buy two Roombas so they don't need to do that, but that's just too costly for us!
I highly recommend the iRobot Roomba, but this is not a device for any home that has a lot of things like power cords on the floor or for people with kids who have lots of toys like Legos on the floor. You need to keep the floors spotless of these types of things so the robot won't try running over it and damaging the item or itself.
Done on a daily basis, your floors will be very clean! It's programmable so you can have it clean while you are away at work. I have programmed our Roomba to vacuum on the lower level of our home on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We will vacuum the upper level on Thursday and Sunday. This is a lot more often than we would ever vacuum the home manually ourselves!
Many people name their Roombas, so we named ours "Rosie" after the robot from the cartoon, "The Jetsons". It seemed appropriate to name it after the futuristic "maid" who cleans for the Jetsons!
Update: The thing I've heard most from people who have considered a traditional vacuum over the Roomba is that the traditional vacuum is a lot more powerful than a Roomba. That's true. But consider that the Roomba can vacuum daily without you doing anything whereas you'd probably not want to do that yourself with a traditional vacuum. The fact that you do it daily could mean that you would have a home that is more consistently dust free whereas you might wait a week before doing a manual vacuuming. On the long run, your home would be cleaner on a daily basis.
I have also heard from others that they don't consider the iRobot Roomba a vacuum, but rather a really good sweeper. I would have to say I agree with that observation. The Roomba doesn't really suck up, but rather sweeps the dirt into the machine. Still, it does a very good job of that! Call it what you may, but it is still a very good machine.
Also, I know many are searching for information on the Roomba by looking at this blog post, but let me also highly recommend a product for your home that would greatly enhance the security of your deadbolts. It's called the Flip Guard and you can read about it here:
www.russlowe.blogspot.com/search?q=Flip+Guard
Here is a link for it as well on Amazon:
