Do they do as good a job of vacuuming as they say? I don't believe it. How can they get it the corners if they're round??? And they can't move things to vacuum underneath, so they're not that great. Although I wouldn't mind having one...

I have the cheapest one, a Roomba Red. I hate to sound like a comercial but it works pretty darn good. It has a spinning brush on the rt. front to get corners. The brush throws debris into the front so the main brush will get it.
Pros: Costs $100. It works really well on short carpet or hard floors. It picks up most anything, even dog hair. It runs over an hour continuously on a 3 hr charge. It can do the 6 room house on a single charge with me moving it room to room.
Cons:You still have to move things, including the Roomba, from room to room, but you're still going to have to move all the dining room chairs to run a regular vacuum. You just have to have routine. 1)Move what needs moved, 2)turn it on, 3)split. It works better if you don't leave odd stuff on the floor like shoes that it has to navigate around and can't clean under. It is low enough to get under my couch but my regular vac isn't so under the couch get vacuumed more often with the Roomba. You have to clean the brush and roller by hand almost after every use if you have dog hair. It only take about a minute though.
My rechargable battery lasted only 5 mths with heavy use. A replacement cost $50. I was disappointed about that but have to admit it was new and I used it every time I saw anything for it to clean. It only came with one invisible wall (to block doorways). You have to purchase a 2nd or 3rd if you need it or block the doorway with something. Most anything will do. It seldom gets hung on anything but it does happen. It's prett good a figuring out how to right itself.

The best thing about it is I can turn it on and go do something else.

If you want to lay out the cash, they have a "scheduler" model that you can program to go to a room(s) at set times during the week then return to it's base.

So pretty much it's worth its money. I thought it wouldn't work the greatest. Guess I was wrong. Thanx alot!

I bought a Roomba discovery that I found on Amazon. It was factory remanufactured and sold to me for $135 (shipping included). I have had only a short time (3 days), but I was so impressed I bought $10K of iRobot stock (after some research of course). It's pretty cool.

We have a medium sized house with low pile carpet in the living room and hardwood in the kitchen, dining room and hallways. The Roomba seems to do just fine. Judging from the dirt and fuzz dump I do after it's done, it's doing a decent job. We have a cat, but it's winter and not a lot of shedding, but I always have a houseful of kids. I suppose since this is a review I should do pros and cons. Okay

Pros
I think the price/value has to be the biggest pro. I have read some of the other reviews and can see that there are probably better vacuums out there. But the reason I like this company is it is effective, fun, and priced so that a whole lot of people can afford it. I would never dream of paying 1500 smackers for a vacuum, but $200, yeah that's reasonable. I didn't need another vacuum, I just wanted it. I would have a hard time justifying to myself that I need a vacuum that costs anything near $1000. The Roomba is small enough not to be an eyesore having the chargin station and unit in the dining room. I have 4 kids at home (14-19), and they are nuts about it. Quite a conversation piece. Seems to cover about four rooms (Kit, hall, dine, living rooms) in one charge. Running time for that about 1.5 hrs. Does a nice job of cleaning and should keep the overall dust down. Seems to cover the floor areas nice making multiple passes to most if not all.

Cons,
It doesn't always find it's way back to the base when finished. It's gotten stuck once when going over a rug by the dishwasher, lodged itself under the dishwasher and went through a "get me out of this" algorithm, and basically wedged itself. Then it beeped "uh oh". My understanding is that the President/founder was a big Star Wars fan and loved R2D2, so a lot of the sounds are some what similar. Like when it's completed it's mission it does sort of a dunt dunt da dunt dunt daaa (think big finish) and when it backs out of it's charger it makes the garbage truck backup beeps.

I like to see what it can figure out, sort of let it run and see if it can navigate the terrain even if that terrain is not perfect (things in the way, and crap to traverse. Then I can see if the the programming is working and learn a little about how it works. It has numerous sensors for different things like, if it is traveling against a wall with the spinning brush side next to the wall, it sets a predetermined distance from the wall and travels straight down that wall so the brush just reaches it. It is a ton of fun to watch. We have throw rugs (without tassles, thankfully). It sometimes pushes the rug and gets a little stuck. Once it knows it's stuck, it raises it's body and backs up, turns and trys to free itself. If it doesn't get free it will keep trying - I haven't seen it not get free after twice. Durring this escape procedure the vacuum and rotors turn off. Then it gets out about 2 feet from where it was stuck and starts up the bushes and vacuum again.

The unit came with a remote, 2 virtual walls, charging station, wall mount holder for the unit, an extra filter, and of course the Roomba itself.

I may be easily entertained, but this was way worth the price of admission. Not to mention I am a hero with my wife. Now I would have been hard pressed to pay $250 for it before I saw it, $200...yeah, likely, but for $135, no question. And it came with all the warranties. I am sold.

I would guess that iRobot will come out with other inventive domestic robots, as well. They are primarily a military robot design/manufacturing house. If they can build robots for the military, I figure they know MIL-STD-883 and quite a bit about quality.

Recommendation: Buy One, but look at your specific needs first. Lot's o long shag carpet, not a good idea. Low pile, and wood floors it's great and the novelty/fun is worth every penny!


I\/IOTHER

This message has been edited. Last edited by: I\/IOTHER,

that's one long reply

oh yeah

glad homer is on the site more now

In popular Science I dont remember which issue but they had a how to guide to make some changes to them. One was a pool skimmer which I found pretty hard to make water resistant. I dont remember the other two off hand but will post it if i can find it.

So other than the scheduling thing, its not much different than the red one?

There is a difference between them. The RED is smaller and does not have as many functions.
Check out the discriptions on www.TheRobotStore.com
It will compare all of them