Ours, an early Mother's Day present, is making its trial run on the kitchen's tile floors. Next up are the dining room and the hallways.
It's $299 at Costco.com but your street price may be less. I've never seen so much packaging for such a small appliance but it arrived undamaged.
Ours came with a mostly-charged battery so it only needed an hour to get ready. It has its own special cleaning solution but the company actually says in several different parts of its literature that white vinegar works too. It spritzes on its cleaning mix, brushes it around, and sucks it up. (That's a nice change from a mop or a Swiffer that works with successively dirtier solution & cleaning surfaces.) Scooba does fine on dust, red dirt, small hairballs, & dried peas but it needs help with crusty puddles of dried spaghetti sauce. However it also seems to cover a lot of the floorspace more than once, so if it doesn't get the mess on its first pass it might come back for a second try. It won't clean the last quarter inch to the wall.
It revs up with a series of beeps reminiscent of the "Charge!" jingle. It spins around a couple times to start mapping the boundaries with its IR sensors and then randomly takes off. Its vacuum motor makes a blower noise about the volume of a Dustbuster. It's noisy enough to discourage you from sitting nearby, browsing a magazine & snacking on bonbons, looking up occasionally to nod approvingly. If you're that kind of person then you might want to leave the floors for your housecleaner (or your teenagers).
OTOH it's fun to watch, especially if you're a geeky engineer. I had to spend several months of my graduate degree programming best-path & least-path algorithms so I appreciate the pitfalls. iRobot claims that Scooba uses a combination of those and a couple others. It's clear that the designers had to keep starting over-- the machine doesn't obediently trundle back & forth but instead wanders around exploring & bumping into stuff. Scooba's worst nightmare is driving into a corner (under a cabinet's toekick) at a 45-degree angle and hooking the door on its top. However it eventually managed to extricate itself without its "I'm stuck!" beep. It doesn't pay any attention if you laugh at it.
It's best on flat sheet vinyl but it does OK on textured vinyl & ceramic tile. It tends to leave a quick-drying trail (probably to prove to its owner that it's been there) but it'll drip on tile's grout lines. It's not recommended for hardwood floors.
Whoops, it's done. 100 square feet in about 20 minutes. It plays a few excited tones and then whines at you to empty its tank. It picked up an impressive amount of dirt considering that the floor was mopped just a couple days ago. However it tends to choke on big hairballs and, like a vacuum's rotating brush, they get wrapped around its bristles. Everything can be taken apart for cleaning, though, and those with fearless electronics skills can hack to their heart's content.
I'd have no problem turning it loose, leaving the house to run errands, and checking back in an hour or two. The "virtual walls" do a fine job. Of course some owners are nervous about it escaping its room and drowning the carpets next door. If that was an issue then I'd block the exits with closed doors, pet gates, or furniture.
Pets may have to leave the area. Our bunny is not amused. He wants nothing to do with Scooba and doesn't like having his naptime interrupted.
I'll bet this critter rocks on garage floors... I think we'll add a late-model Roomba when we get bored with Scooba!
It's $299 at Costco.com but your street price may be less. I've never seen so much packaging for such a small appliance but it arrived undamaged.
Ours came with a mostly-charged battery so it only needed an hour to get ready. It has its own special cleaning solution but the company actually says in several different parts of its literature that white vinegar works too. It spritzes on its cleaning mix, brushes it around, and sucks it up. (That's a nice change from a mop or a Swiffer that works with successively dirtier solution & cleaning surfaces.) Scooba does fine on dust, red dirt, small hairballs, & dried peas but it needs help with crusty puddles of dried spaghetti sauce. However it also seems to cover a lot of the floorspace more than once, so if it doesn't get the mess on its first pass it might come back for a second try. It won't clean the last quarter inch to the wall.
It revs up with a series of beeps reminiscent of the "Charge!" jingle. It spins around a couple times to start mapping the boundaries with its IR sensors and then randomly takes off. Its vacuum motor makes a blower noise about the volume of a Dustbuster. It's noisy enough to discourage you from sitting nearby, browsing a magazine & snacking on bonbons, looking up occasionally to nod approvingly. If you're that kind of person then you might want to leave the floors for your housecleaner (or your teenagers).
OTOH it's fun to watch, especially if you're a geeky engineer. I had to spend several months of my graduate degree programming best-path & least-path algorithms so I appreciate the pitfalls. iRobot claims that Scooba uses a combination of those and a couple others. It's clear that the designers had to keep starting over-- the machine doesn't obediently trundle back & forth but instead wanders around exploring & bumping into stuff. Scooba's worst nightmare is driving into a corner (under a cabinet's toekick) at a 45-degree angle and hooking the door on its top. However it eventually managed to extricate itself without its "I'm stuck!" beep. It doesn't pay any attention if you laugh at it.
It's best on flat sheet vinyl but it does OK on textured vinyl & ceramic tile. It tends to leave a quick-drying trail (probably to prove to its owner that it's been there) but it'll drip on tile's grout lines. It's not recommended for hardwood floors.
Whoops, it's done. 100 square feet in about 20 minutes. It plays a few excited tones and then whines at you to empty its tank. It picked up an impressive amount of dirt considering that the floor was mopped just a couple days ago. However it tends to choke on big hairballs and, like a vacuum's rotating brush, they get wrapped around its bristles. Everything can be taken apart for cleaning, though, and those with fearless electronics skills can hack to their heart's content.
I'd have no problem turning it loose, leaving the house to run errands, and checking back in an hour or two. The "virtual walls" do a fine job. Of course some owners are nervous about it escaping its room and drowning the carpets next door. If that was an issue then I'd block the exits with closed doors, pet gates, or furniture.
Pets may have to leave the area. Our bunny is not amused. He wants nothing to do with Scooba and doesn't like having his naptime interrupted.
I'll bet this critter rocks on garage floors... I think we'll add a late-model Roomba when we get bored with Scooba!
