Thread
Ever since about 10 years ago when I heard about iRobot making robot vacuum cleaners I've wanted to own one.

I've resisted up to now, assuming /1

that they'd be very basic and probably suffering from problems, so not worth the trouble.

Without checking their features, my assumption is that they're getting /2

pretty good by now, but probably have similar problems to the "stick" cordless vacuums of the past few years, which are getting powerful now, but were too weak 5 years ago. /3

Concerns:
1. Are they too weak to clean properly?
2. Do they get stuck under furniture?
3. Do they tear curtains or tangle cables?
4. Do they have battery life too short to get the job done? /4

5. Is the dust catcher big enough?
6. Do they have HEPA filters?
7. Do they damage walls, etc?
8. Do they cover the whole area evenly?
9. Can they clean under beds well?
10. Can they cope with carpet and wooden floors? /5

11. Can they go over carpet edges?
12. Can they cope if the ground is wet?

But I also wonder:
13. Can they avoid obstacles completely, to not even hit them? /6

14. Can they remember room and furniture outlines so that they can intelligently cover the areas evenly?
15. Can I *easily* teach it to avoid certain areas, like with voice control? "Not this corner, go back half a metre!" and it figures out what I mean. /7

Anyway, my assumption is that some of these features are still a few years away (in the $750 price range I have in mind), so I have bought an $80 Kogan robot vacuum cleaner! It's their most basic model.

I've used it for a week /8

and so far it's not too bad at all! It bashes against the wall but doesn't seem to damage it. The random pattern seems to be able to clean quite well under the bed, which is the main reason I bought it /9

but I am only planning to use it on the wooden floors, not the carpet. It doesn't have a mop or anything fancy, so I'm not going to use it in the bathroom.

It's behaviour is pretty good. It didn't tangle cables, but it did get stuck under the front edge of a /10

bookshelf that was the same height as the vacuum. It kept spinning and groaned a bit, and would have worm out the floor polish if I hadn't intervened. I put a piece of wood /11

there to prevent it from happening again.

The battery goes flat in a couple of days if you leave the power switch on, even if it's not doing anything with it, so it doesn't have a sleep mode, such a basic concept in most gadgets for the past 30 years. /12

But overall I'm very happy with the value for money for a device that does the (very) basic job of cleaning under the bed!

Maybe in 3 or 4 years when this Kogan thing is worn out, I'll /13

get an all singing and dancing robot that does everything I want, and can empty its own dust catcher into the bin! End thread. Hopefully this didn't bore you too much!