Manufacturer: iRobot
Price: $350
The skinny:
iRobot's incredibly handy little house cleaner got a make over with a new look and a bunch of cool features that will bring your dream of never getting off the couch that much closer to reality.
On the salary of a gadget writer, this is about as close to a maid as we're doing to get. The new Roomba shows lots of improvements over its old counterpart, the Discovery, which was pretty awesome to begin with. The suction (aren't you proud of us for not making a "this thing sucks" joke?) is greatly improved and had no problem gobbling up the pounds of pit bull hair lining the floor. It even snatched up all the coins we carelessly left out. Though, that can't be very good for it. Even though it's round, the brush sticking out of the front did a surprisingly good job of getting into corners and under the couch, which is apparently like a night club for big, gross balls of dirt. We were also fond of the scheduling feature, which lets you pick a time each day for the Roomba to do its thing. Right now, as we're writing this at the office, the Roomba is hard at work at home catching Frito dust and scaring the pets. The new lighthouse feature is really handy if you have more than one room you need robotically groomed. The battery had more than enough juice to do our three rooms, kitchen and hallway before going back to its base and playing a cute little song. It's also really easy to clean out once the grime from your floor has mucked it all up.
The bad:
If you don't make sure all of the big stuff is up off of your floor, you might come home to find it stranded somewhere in your house with a sock all jammed up in its business. Also, it takes a while to do it's thing so give the scheduling feature some serious thought before running it when you're home, even if it is surprisingly quiet.
Upgrade:
We tested the high-end 560 and it was awesome, but for 50 bucks less you can get the 530 which doesn't come with the lighthouses. You can also buy different faceplates for the top of it if you can't hide it under the couch like we can. We went for the snazzy red one.
Verdict:
If you have a tiny apartment or really like vacuuming (sicko) then it might not be worth the cash, but anyone living in a place bigger than a shoebox will definitely be more than happy with this little guy running around. Just think of the time it can save you. You can use it to read this site!