Roomba: The Future for Domestic Robots

The first thing my wife and I said when we saw the Roomba in the store was, "Naw, we don't need a robotic floor cleaner!" But then we read the side of the box some more and began to realize that we were looking at a marvelous convenience that any busy pair of parents with over-scheduled kids and a doggedly exuberant 95 lbs canine could actually use. Like meals with fiber and zero trans-fat, this was a good thing for us.

So, we bought it in act of pure impulse. Usually, we cautiously research and digest appliances before even setting one foot onto the sales floor. But this time, we ran wild and snapped up our little red robot. We have not been disappointed.

If you haven't seen one up close, it has all the sci-fi robotic gee whiz of a hockey puck. Actually, it's more like a puck the size of a dish plate mounted on a pair of tires that came from your 10 year old son's radio-controlled stunt car. But the innards are slick. A small but powerful vacuum is housed over the little dirt bin in the back panel. It's an elegant design: just a squirrel cage fan that creates enough suck to draw dirt into the bin as it flies up from the rotating brush. It does a fantastic job on oak flooring as well as on the tile in the upstairs bathroom and on our area rugs, too.

Now since we have a big dog that sheds, there's always tumble-lumps of fur in the corners. The Roomba handles these without a problem. However, after each cleaning when I empty the bin, I also have to clean the fur off the rotating brush and from the wheels.