Ok, back onto this subject - it's been missing for a while here.

I've looked at all the usual suspects and so far I'm liking a two-part solution.

Mint for wet sweeping and a new LG Hom Bot for vacuuming. The Mint seems like a serious product after looking into it. So much so that the Roomba folks, iRobot, have acquired them for a cool $75 Million. It has no self-docking or scheduling and is pretty much a manual process to set the thing down and tell it to start working.

LG by all accounts has the best mapping/guidance and cleaning performance. What it lacks is a home dock with its own much larger vacuum to empty out the robot. That used to be the exclusive domain of Karcher, but now Samsung and at least one other manufacturer are doing it too. It's too bad that Karcher's robot is insanely expensive, the base uses a bag and it doesn't have scheduling, and that Samsung's really sucks at cleaning.

Roomba is kind of out of the running for anything as their products command the premium name, but through research seem rather lack-lustre in performance and rather stupid. It's possible that once they combine the strengths of the Mint product with their two lines, Roomba and Scooba, they'll have some really great new products.

It's a shame Dyson have not entered this market with a solution similar in concept to the Karcher.

I bought a Neato Robotics XV-11 unit earlier this year (or was it last year?). I see they've got the XV-21 out now, I wonder if it solves the problems?


My problems with the XV-11 are:

- It doesn't get into the edges the way the Roomba Discovery did. (The Discovery had its little spinning edge brush, which was nice.)

- Its got a little "conning tower" top on it (i.e., its top is not flat like a Roomba, it's got a raised bit on the top, see the photos), and that conning tower is exactly the height to get stuck under certain pieces of furniture. So I still have to flip up certain chairs and do other preparatory work in the house before I run the thing.

- I still have to babysit it so that it doesn't get stuck trying to climb up the kick pedal on the Rock Band drum kit, or trying to climb the flat base of my speaker stands. When you buy it, it comes with a strip of stickyback material that's supposed to be "don't got here" strips, and the robot ignores them. So I can't just let the thing run by itself (which was my hope when I bought it).



What I *like* about the XV-11:

- Its brushes don't get clogged with hair and strings as easily as the Roomba Discovery's brushes got clogged. I don't think I've really had to clean it yet.

- It is more efficient than the Roomba at cleaning an area: It actually maps the area and runs a pattern, instead of driving around randomly like the roomba, so it gets the job done quicker.

- It's quieter than the Roomba Discovery.

- It finds its own base station and docks for power more reliably than the Roomba Discovery.

Has Neato ever explained why their machines look like Nintendo game consoles of the past?

Thanks for the Neato writeup, Tony. I was looking at those and ran across the same complaints and praises. I also read that it's far smarter about cleaning an entire floor than a Roomba. Something about how it learns the layout of the floor it's on, and if it can't finish all the rooms in one go, it'll return to the base and come back to the rooms it hasn't done until it finishes? Is that correct? That seems pretty smart to me.

I currently have a 5+ year-old pair of iRobot products, the Roomba and Scooba. The Roomba needs the occasional replacement battery every few years, but otherwise it's the best dust buster I've ever used. I do wish it were a little smarter about how it went about its business, but overall I'm still pleased with it after all this time.

The Scooba, on the other hand, has been a disaster. It initially had trouble with its battery, but iRobot sent out a little kit to update the robot's firmware to address the issue. Still, that didn't seem to help its reliability. First it needed to be run more than weekly or the battery life would drain very quickly on the job. Then I started getting error messages (well, error tones and numbers) at random times in the clean cycle. Then it would finish the job but it hadn't sucked the water back up at the end like it was supposed to do.

Long story long, it now turns on, then almost immediately gives a fatal error tone/number. iRobot says they'll replace the bulk of the unit for $200. The weird part is it's actually tempting me, because for the short times the Scooba actually worked, it did a pretty fantastic job. I just think I got a slightly bum model and I went too long a few times between uses and let the battery screw the device up.

See, perhaps newer Roombas are better, but my Discovery really is a world-class dust buster. IMO, it doesn't replace vacuuming, it merely extends the time between vacuumings and makes the surfaces a little nicer in the meantime. The Scooba, however, not only eliminated the need to mop our kitchen floors, it did a BETTER JOB at it. You could really notice the difference. iRobot's selling point for the job the Scooba does is that it's only ever mopping your floor with clean water. Manual mopping, however, means you start using dirty water after the first time you dip your mop back in the pail.

The problem with all of these devices, IMO, is that they're still ridiculously expensive for what they do. I can't justify spending $550 on the world's best dust buster. I also can't justify spending almost the same amount for what I think is the best mopping solution out there, because I don't trust the reliability of iRobot's products. Fortunately, I bought both my Roomba and Scooba on Woot, so I'm not disappointed about spending too much money on them.

That is exactly correct. When cleaning, it uses a relatively intelligent pattern, going in nice rows and columns, and remembering to go back and catch nooks and crannies that it missed when there are complex shapes to work around. It does this by using some kind of a scanning rangefinder (mounted in that "conning tower" I mentioned), and occasionally you'll see it stop and 360 when it reaches various vantage points, to keep itself up to date about where everything is.

It also seems to be fairly intelligent about modifying its pattern when the nature of its world changes. For instance, if, in its initial scan, it counts your legs as furniture, then you walk away, it will still go back and vacuum the empty spot where you once stood, since it will notice that you're not standing there any more. Same thing if you move chairs or furniture. It's constantly re-evaluating the shape of the world around it, and noticing that some things (like the walls) don't ever move, and then other things (like ferrets and people) move occasionally.

Because it keeps this in memory, it can, if needed, go back to its base station to top off its charge and then pick up where it left off. However, I've found that, in my normal-sized house, it never needs to do this, because its more-efficient vacuuming pattern means that it doesn't run the battery down nearly as badly as the Roomba did; it gets more actual cleaning done per-charge than a Roomba could.

How noisy is a Neato compared to a Roomba (which is pretty noisy)? Also, does it turn while it's moving forward/reverse or does it have to come to a full stop before it turns? I've noticed most products stop then turn. LG's current machines can all turn while navigating and are relatively quiet. They just don't have their latest products available in the US yet. And none at all in Canada (same goes for Samsung and some others unsurprisingly).

Based on the current usage patterns in this house, I'd like the device to go out cleaning during the night, let's say between the hours of 1am and 7am. I'd keep it restricted to the main floor which is currently all tile and hardwood.

Upstairs will be about 33% hardwood by the end of the month, but the rest of the wall-to-wall carpet will probably only go away sometime next year. I can see letting a robot loose upstairs once in a while, but it would probably be mostly regular vacuuming.

The neato I got is slightly quieter than my Roomba discovery. It's still a vacuum cleaner, so it's still not pleasant, but its pink noise spectrum is slightly less annoying than the Roomba, and the overall volume is slightly quieter.

The Neato can turn and drive forward at the same time. For instance, it does this when circling around table legs. This can be seen in their promo video.

My idea would have been to have it vacuum on a schedule, like you, but the problem is that I need to "prep" the house before it vacuums or else it will get stuck in spots. I have to remove clutter on the floor (backpack straps, shoelaces, etc., will jam it), then turn up certain chairs so that it will not get stuck under them. So a regular schedule for this thing is not in the cards.

Bruno, the Roomba also does not need to stop before turning (it also turns around chair legs and corners). Heck, if you put it in the middle of a room it'll travel in an expanding spiral pattern until it hits its first object.

Matt, you're right about the spiral, I had forgotten that one. Hmm.. Have to go find more videos. I thought most of these things were stopping and then turning. Of course it would be neat if they could glide from side to side as well.

Bruno, I started to get very interested in that LG robot when they said it could mop floors, but I see they just mean you can put a pad on the back of it to act as a dry swiffer. I certainly don't call that mopping, but it's better than nothing. I do think that's quite a cool product, though. Have they said how much it's going to cost? Because right now it's going for $599 on Amazon, and that's just crazy. I don't know how these things can cost that much.

One thing I keep seeing is the criticism of how the Roomba cleans randomly. I agree that it should be smarter about what it does and know where it's going, but the unexpected benefit of the random pattern is that it gets the same area several times. The competition seems to imply that their robots need merely one pass to get it right, which I'm skeptical about given the power these things have. I've certainly seen my Roomba fail to pick up debris on the first pass and get it on the second.

This is a great LG user test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaSN9agcKeE&feature=related

Here's a (modified) Neato (Vorwerk Kobold) that doesn't look like it's out of the 80's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqkcTaBWP38&feature=related

The Neato is so powerful it's eating the underpad through this guy's carpets, or he's got one hell of a dirty floor. (Wow nonetheless): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu5HtZ5eydk&feature=related

I checked out some other reviews/videos and they're pretty impressive.

Neato XV-21 at woot.com today for $299
http://www.woot.com/offers/neato-xv-21-pet-allergy-robotic-vac-2