When I first heard about the Roomba I thought it sounded like those Tamagotchi toys that were super popular in 1997 or so, like an electronic gizmo that you could anthropomorphize to your heart’s content. I figured its actual cleaning abilities had to be sub-par at best, and that the real point of the thing was to entertain you as you watched it bumble around comically – and, of course, to eventually charm you into thinking it was a pet. If you owned one, it would only be a matter of time until you knitted little Roomba jackets and joined Rooma chat rooms where you used a humorous photo of your Roomba (perhaps posing in its jacket) as an avatar.

Then we got hardwood floors and all the dog fur that used to get matted into the carpet was free to roam around in great disgusting tufts and I realized that I was going to have to sweep a hell of a lot more often. I own a Dustbuster, an upright vacuum, a Swiffer, and a special little broom-and-dustpan combo, and yet none of those objects did what I wanted, which was for them to clean the floor by themselves.

Enter Roomba, on its beetle-y little wheels. I received a used model from a fabulous person named Stacy, who didn’t much care for it and was generous enough to send it my way, and I’ve now been using it off and on for several weeks.

Do I like the Roomba? I love the Roomba. I love the Roomba so much I’d bypass the jacket-knitting stage and progress straight to tongue-kissing, except I’d probably get tangled in its counter-rotating brushes.

The way I typically use it is to clear the front room, hallway and kitchen, and set the Roomba on “L” (large room) before turning it on. I use the “virtual wall” (an electronic doodad you place across from a wall or piece of furniture that tells the Roomba not to cross its invisible boundary) to block off the living room so it won’t get stuck under the more crowded furniture in there. That lets it clean a pretty large section of my house, the one that collects the most dog hair.

Here are some images I took yesterday: a Before shot of my embarrassingly filthy floor, the happy post-Roomba results, and the grody dirt chamber thingie all filled up with Labrador detritus.

There are a few cons to this model. It’s loud, so we tend to turn it on before leaving the house (I occasionally let it run in the bedroom with the door shut). The battery needs to be recharged after pretty much every cleaning session, and it takes a long time to charge. It can navigate surprisingly well, but you need to make sure there aren’t areas where it can get stuck – which in my case means moving all the dining room chairs, which can be kind of a pain.

I suppose in the time it takes me to de-clutter the surface area and move the chairs, I could have dragged out the upright vacuum and made a dent in the cleanup job, but there’s just something rewarding about walking back in the house and seeing a fur-free, shining clean floor.

Caveats: I do not know how the Roomba would work on carpeting, or a very large area. You wouldn’t want to use it in cluttered rooms with furniture it could get tripped up on (small tables, chair legs, etc).

The newer models claim to address the noise issue and offer a number of other improvements (it automatically returns to a docking station when it needs recharging! How cute!). They also come with a remote scheduler, so you can program it to clean when you want. This model seems to be on sale on Amazon right now, marked from $329 to $200, and it includes the unit itself, the remote scheduler, 2 of the virtual wall units (which is cool, more than one would be handy), a home charger, a “fast charger”, and some other crap. Not a bad deal, really. I would definitely buy it today if mine broke.

(I see on the Roomba website there is also a “Dirt Dog” made for workshops [this one seems targeted for the wrong demographic, based on my extensive market research of asking JB what he thought and listening to him splutter about ‘wussy toy vacuums’ and ‘a guy needs a goddamn SHOP VAC for his shop’ and so on], a “Scooba” made for mopping, and a “Roomba for pets” which seems like…a regular Roomba, with customized marketing copy. Also, holy shit, you can skin your Roomba, so forget about those knitted jackets.)

All in all, I think the Roomba is really useful and fun, and while I have yet to give it a name or haul it along with the rest of us when we visit the off-leash dog park (although…god, that would be funny), I have to admit it is sort of cute, in a horseshoe-crab/beetle kind of way. Maybe I’ll call it Sucky. Sucky McFurChow.

Link: iRobot Roomba 4230 Remote Scheduler; if you buy directly from iRobot they offer a 30-day free trial, which seems like a very cool way to figure out of the Roomba is going to work for you in your home.
Ballpark price: $200 from Amazon, $279-$329 from iRobot. My used model works fine, so if you found one from a trusted seller on eBay that would be a good way to go too.