I find my Roomba does a much better job when confined to one room at a time. More passes in a smaller space means more chances to pick up stuff. So I confine it to my living room with the wall and once its done I switch it over to the kitchen and use the wall again.
Just my experience with them.
I don’t have a Roomba, have seen them many times on Woot, heard they rock, and have considered getting one. Maybe one of you more experienced can fill me in on just exactly how they work (programmable, manual), how many sq. ft. they cover, how well they vacuum each kind of floor, etc. Love to hear everyone’s pros & cons.
BTW, I see in the description and you guys mention virtual walls…what the heck are those?
I want to say that this is one of the older models. The newer models are supposed to be a lot more effecient with longer battery life. I’m not sure if this one does this or not, but some will stop cleaning to go back to the base and recharge, then continue cleaning again… Might check into it more
If that is the case, I don’t guess you would have to set up a virtual wall due to battery life anymore.
Got a Roomba here months ago. Love it, but now I want the Scooba. PLease woot, offer us a Scooba soon.
Does this model leave and return to its base automatically for charging?
Its the same logic as a dishwasher. You can easily wash all your dishes by hand, but I bet you’re lazy enough to use a dishwasher. Its really the same concept. Trust me!
The virtual walls enable you to keep the Roomba within a confined area–if, for example, you put it into a room where there aren’t doors that you can close to prevent it from wandering off into other rooms and you want it to just stay in one ares and clean one room really thoroughly, etc.
Can’t go wrong here, Roomba’s are great! Congratulations to the very funny writer for today’s contribution. That’s hilarious!
Never too early to start buying Christmas presents 
The iRobot 418 is a bundle consisting of the Roomba 415 Vacuum and the Roomba 4900 Self-Charging Drive-On Home Base made specifically for Woot
I see we can expect to see lots of Roombas in the future. Which is a good thing since we love ours but it works long, hard hours(3 dogs, 2 cats) and we’ll be needing another in the not–too-distant future.
Have one of this. The battery quitted charging after 1 year of use. My 4 year old conventional upright vacuum cleaner is still working great.
No current or past Roomba models have the ability to charge mid-mission and then continue cleaning… there’s another robot vaccuum manufacturer that has that feature, but they are far, far more expensive.
♪ All I wanna do is zoom-zoom-zoom-zoom and ride a roomba
Just scare yo cat! ♫
My living room/kitchen wood floor has a 1" drop to tile leading to the formal dining room. The Romba can make it down to the tile, but it can’t climb up (to go home). I use virtual walls to keep it in on the wood floor.
We love our Roomba! It kicks off every morning at 3am. Before the Roomba, my wife was always sweeping the wood floor… yea Roomba!
Robert
I’m gonna buy three today. One for my area rug, and two to use as hovercrafts for G.I. Joes.
Thank you, Mr.Coleman (or I guess that could be “Ms.” Coleman). WOOT is having some kind of technical problem that will not let me reply directly to your comment. Something probably got sucked up by a fleet of Roombas.
My grandparents have one and LOVE IT! In case you think you may not be lazy enough for this, it would make a decent christmas present for the elderly who have a harder time keeping their home squeaky clean.
yes it does, read the description.
Texas is lagging behind on the map. Send Generators!
The key to Roomba use is to keep your floors vacuum-ready and vacuum fairly often (e.g. at least once a week). I usually just set it to go when I’m leaving for the day and come back to a very clean room.
If you don’t use it often, dust and hair will build up so much that cleaning is a real hassle. The hair gets tightly wound around the two cleaning elements, making it difficult and time consuming to clean them. However, if you vacuum frequently enough, whatever is caught won’t be so tightly wound.