Eh. My parents lent me their old Roomba and I ran it on tile to see how it did. It just shoved the crumbs from the kitty litter around and didn’t suck up the bits of crunched kibble.
I gave it back and just do with a broom.
the roomba and scooba both fit under my “el” shaped couch. the couch is from ikea and has lots of room for them to go under.
roomba can go over, it seems to me, things that are under .5" high. my roomba will cross the threashold to the kitchen the scooba will not.
roomba should handle your room and threashold gargoyle.
the front end of the roomba is higher than the back end so sometimes he will get stuck under something he backed into.
i just checked the owner’s manual on both. i don’t see any square footage info. both machines usually zip around for 45 minutes to 120 minutes. 120 for when i run them for the whole first floor. 45 for when i set them in the smaller rooms on the second floor.
they do have these nifty virtual walls thingys. they run on batteries and create boundaries for the 'bots. they would come in handy for those huge open floors in mcmansions.
lizardling: perhaps it was old and weak. Or maybe needed to be cleaned out.
gargoyle: a complex path is no problem. The way it navigates is by feel - it travels along until it bumps into something. Then it turns and tries a different direction. It will figure out things like chair legs and hallways; there is a video on the iRobot site which demonstrates that. Transitions: it may go over 1/4" - I’m not sure. If it won’t go over, it won’t necessarily whine, but it may hump it for a while before giving up and turning away.
WhatExit: the area which I vacuum with my Roomba is about 835 square feet. It will manage to go over the area 4 or 5 times before becoming discharged.
Thank you and Rocking Chair for the great answers.
Anyone know if the Rumba 530 is the latest and greatest version? It seems to be on sale in several stores.
Looks like the 580 is the newest.
Here’s a nice comparisonof some of the models.
As I mentioned earlier, there are some good videos on the site too.
I know some Roombas are programmable, I’m not sure about the Scooba. The Roomba can also come with a Home Base; the 'bot returns to the Base and parks itself there when it’s done.
[hijack] WhatExit - the other day my son mentioned someone was from New Jersey and I started to blurt out “Really? What exit?”. He would have had no idea what I meant, since that expression is not known down here. Heh. [/hijack]
Thanks for the link and cool on the joke.