I’ve had a couple older Roombas, they were neat and could do light-duty cleaning, but they aren’t a substitute for a big vacuum.
Also the batteries eventually died and would have been expensive (~$40 IIRC) to replace, and I often had to clean hair out of the brushes.
We’ve had a couple of Roombas and currently have a Mint. None of them seem to have been particularly useful. Unless you’re the sort of person that has to vacuum more than once a week, there’s no point because you still have to vacuum once a week anyway.
I’ve had a 650 for about 6 months, and run it twice a week, scheduled for when I’m not home - I really don’t see the point of running it while I’m home - I mean, yeah it takes forever to go through the house, but the whole point is that I’m not there so it doesn’t matter! It works pretty well , from my perspective, though I do think I’ll need to do a deeper cleaning from time to time. I’ve had it choke on cords once or twice, but no big deal. Caveats: I’m a single guy with no pets in a house that doesn’t tons of furniture getting in the way, its used primarily on hardwood floors, though it does work well on the couple of carpeted areas, too. It does a decent job of getting into the corners, and only traps itself in the bathroom when I leave the door open wide enough that it bumps the door closed while on patrol (ie: user error).
That has long been something I wondered about. I’d like a Roomba to clean up cat hair and kitty litter while I’m at work, but if it’s going to cause a huge mess if there’s cat barf…
I have a Neato Botvac. I bought it to keep dog hair under control between cleanings with the normal vacuum. It doesn’t work at all on our high (1") pile carpet; it gets stuck. It works reasonably well on our medium and low pile carpets. The carpet coverage is decent, unlike my old Rooma that used to miss a lot of spots on the carpets. Of course, it’s not going to replace regular vacuuming. But it serves it purpose; I set a regular schedule, and it does the light vacuuming without my intervention.