Santa left us one of these for Christmas. While Lisa was not terribly thrilled, I for one welcomed our new robotic underling. 🙂 And, within a few days Lisa decided maybe “Rosie” wasn’t so bad after all.
The thing does a pretty nice job of keeping the floors swept. Unlike the Roomba, the Neato robots take an orderly approach to vacuuming a room – they take a lap around the perimeter to map out the room, then use a linear pattern in most places to make sure everything gets covered, but only once or twice. I like the approach. I was originally a little concerned about tire tracks, but it just looks freshly vacuumed.
I’ve been amazed at the sheer amount of crud it will suck up from even a recently vacuumed carpet. It does a decent job on wood and tile as well, but carpeted rooms is where it really shines. You’ll still need to vacuum occasionally, since it doesn’t get all the way up to the edge – unlike Roomba it doesn’t have an edge brush, but the only time you will notice is if you let it clean up a very dusty wood floor.
It’s smart enough to recharge itself when needed, navigates well, and you can schedule cleanings for whenever you want – there’s also a spot clean mode and manual start, all with just a button push or two. It’s only gotten stuck a few times. Shoelaces are a problem, of course, but rugs don’t seem to be. We do have a couple of pieces of furniture that are at just the “wrong” height. For instance, one coffee table in the living room — the laser scanner can’t see it, but the robot can’t fit under it. On the other hand, it gets under another coffee table with no problem and vacuums where the regular vacuum can’t go without moving the furniture around.
It won’t completely replace your regular vacuum, but it does a very nice job of keeping things cleaned up in between regular cleanings. Costco has the best price I was able to find on them.