You may recall earlier adventures by these two engineers here and here.

Halp! Is after my foods!!!

That would be me. So I hunted and HUNTED until I found a deal on one of these little machines. As I am wont to do, I researched it, comparing it against the iRobot Scooba 350 Floor-Washing Robot (Are they kidding on that price? It would be cheaper to hire a maid for a year!) and the Neato XV-11 All Floor Robotic Vacuum System (see previous maid comment.)

We charged it up, put it on the floor and let it do its thing. We used one of the rags from the set in the box and boy, did it pick up a lot of stuff, even though it has no vacuum. It just collects a lot of dust and particles on the rag. It’s not a speed horse, but it goes along, leaving some larger particles, but getting the vast majority of the small ones.

I deliberately did not sweep before using the machine and was pleasantly surprised at how much it cleaned.

The first charge lasted about an hour and did the kitchen. We did the bathroom next (boy was it dusty.)

If you have pets, you’ll want to check the wheels after each cleaning to make sure the wheels/gears are free and clear. I only had a dustball clog it once. Most of the time, it doesn’t seem to be problem.

The first couple of conclusions: You can’t use a damp rag in sweep mode. The wheels slip and the machine gets confused. It’s possible with a *barely* damp rag it would pick up a bit more and work in sweep mode. The rag, however, seems to ‘catch’ more and the machine thinks it hit something so it backs up a lot more frequently and sweeps much slower.

You have to play with the machine to figure out how it works best. This is not a set and go. We had to make special foam blocks for under low doorways where the machine got stuck a few times.

It works better if you move chairs out of the dining room. It will work with the chair in there, but it spend a ridiculous amount of time going around them and trying to figure out how to navigate.

First Bottom Line:
By using this machine, we spent two hours sweeping 4 areas. We carefully monitored progress, noted how the wheels worked and didn’t work, noted what size particles were picked up and tested various functions. We tried wet rags, dry rags, all-cotton rags, and rags with different textures. We moved the navigation cube to many different locations. We added new batteries. We tried it high and low, in brightly lit rooms and in dim rooms.

The cleaner did work eventually in all 4 areas. The floors were cleaner than when we started despite some false starts and complete confusion by the machine. It should be noted: I could have actually vacuumed those same areas in about 15 minutes.