We use it several times a week, one room at a time.
Small house, cat, partially muddy yard, allergies: the Roomba has been a good solution for us.
It gets up quite a bit of hair and dust every time we use it. We run it “on demand,” although it can be programmed to run on a schedule if you want to go that route.
We have to move a lot of things out of each room to give it full access to the floor, although it will navigate around and under things very well if you don’t want to take the time and trouble to do temporary rearranging of furniture and other items.
We didn’t get the top of the line model — I can’t remember which one it is (on edit: the 860), but it’s adequate for our needs. Does not have any cell phone interoperability, which would be overkill for us. And it doesn’t retain “maps” of the rooms — has to re-learn the room each time, which is kind of wacky to watch because it zig-zags all over the place until it figures out where the walls and other objects are.
We did spring for the gizmo that sends out a thin beam of light to keep it from going through open doorways, bumping into the cat’s water bowl, etc.
The new models have a lot more features — some empty themselves into a supposedly secure bag that holds a couple of months worth of debris, for example. Some have a rinsable dust bin. And I think all the new ones can be controlled and monitored with a cell phone app.
We use it mostly on hardwood floors, although it does fine on carpet (mainly tight-weave “Berber” style). We keep it away from movable area rugs and anything with a fringed edge (Christmas tree skirt, for example).
It spends 45 minutes to an hour on a smallish room (say, 12 x 12 feet), and then after cleaning and recharging for an hour or two, it’s ready to go again. We’ve had ours for 3 or 4 years, and it’s holding up well. I would definitely get another one when this one conks out.
The same company makes robot mops, but from what I’ve read those really don’t really do the job unless your floor is already almost clean. They just don’t have enough oomph to apply force they way you do when mopping with an “analog” mop.
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