Thanks for the Neato writeup, Tony. I was looking at those and ran across the same complaints and praises. I also read that it's far smarter about cleaning an entire floor than a Roomba. Something about how it learns the layout of the floor it's on, and if it can't finish all the rooms in one go, it'll return to the base and come back to the rooms it hasn't done until it finishes? Is that correct? That seems pretty smart to me.

I currently have a 5+ year-old pair of iRobot products, the Roomba and Scooba. The Roomba needs the occasional replacement battery every few years, but otherwise it's the best dust buster I've ever used. I do wish it were a little smarter about how it went about its business, but overall I'm still pleased with it after all this time.

The Scooba, on the other hand, has been a disaster. It initially had trouble with its battery, but iRobot sent out a little kit to update the robot's firmware to address the issue. Still, that didn't seem to help its reliability. First it needed to be run more than weekly or the battery life would drain very quickly on the job. Then I started getting error messages (well, error tones and numbers) at random times in the clean cycle. Then it would finish the job but it hadn't sucked the water back up at the end like it was supposed to do.

Long story long, it now turns on, then almost immediately gives a fatal error tone/number. iRobot says they'll replace the bulk of the unit for $200. The weird part is it's actually tempting me, because for the short times the Scooba actually worked, it did a pretty fantastic job. I just think I got a slightly bum model and I went too long a few times between uses and let the battery screw the device up.

See, perhaps newer Roombas are better, but my Discovery really is a world-class dust buster. IMO, it doesn't replace vacuuming, it merely extends the time between vacuumings and makes the surfaces a little nicer in the meantime. The Scooba, however, not only eliminated the need to mop our kitchen floors, it did a BETTER JOB at it. You could really notice the difference. iRobot's selling point for the job the Scooba does is that it's only ever mopping your floor with clean water. Manual mopping, however, means you start using dirty water after the first time you dip your mop back in the pail.

The problem with all of these devices, IMO, is that they're still ridiculously expensive for what they do. I can't justify spending $550 on the world's best dust buster. I also can't justify spending almost the same amount for what I think is the best mopping solution out there, because I don't trust the reliability of iRobot's products. Fortunately, I bought both my Roomba and Scooba on Woot, so I'm not disappointed about spending too much money on them.