Thu 25th, Sep, 2014 Hello, how are you Beach Cottage ladies of the web, meet my new best friend. Well, I never thought I would be enlightening the world wide web with a picture of a robotic vacuum in my bedroom, but never say never they say, don’t they?  I’ve seen stranger things on the web that’s for sure. I have been after a robotic vacuum cleaner since I first heard about them a few years or so ago via a friend – it was the days before they were readily available in the shops in Australia and (I think) there were only one maybe two companies making them …she had gone to the trouble of getting hers on ebay USA, it was a hefty investment and she had paid quite a bit to get it shipped here.  I loved the idea of it, I did not love the look of it (at all) and to be honest, as many things in my life, I thought I could not be stuffed around with all the shipping from here and there and ebaying and all that…I would wait until it came down in price and I could walk into a shop and buy it with an Aussie warranty.  

She loved it but apparently the collector box thingie was too small (too much emptying) and her husband believed that it was not sucky enough (think of that what you will). So I have been keeping an eye on these little thingies that scoot around your house doing domestic goddess duties while you make a cup of tea and read blogs, for a long time now.bagless vacuum cleaner compare I’ve read reviews, read terrible things (errrm poo-poos and these things are not, from what I have heard, what you want happening in your living room), learnt that they have changed peoples lives (really) and watched as they hit the Aussie mainstream market and more recently tumbled down in price.history of hoover vacuum cleaners When it came to D-Day for the purchase of this wondrous domestic goddess assistant (and at the same time the purchase of a steam mop) I finally plumped on the Navibot, for a few reasons.  panasonic upright vacuum cleaners reviews

Firstly, it’s had some good reviews for what I wanted (light daily vacuuming and light soiling to work alongside a deep once a week clean – oh god I am really talking about floor vacuuming on the internet, so help me), secondly I, even after all the looking and researching, wasn’t totally convinced one of these would be brilliant so didn’t want to invest in thousands and find it in the garage un-used after the honeymoon period and thirdly I just aesthetically quite like the look of this one. So I brought it home in my hot little hands, thinking, at last will be super organised clean floored woman, took it out of the box plugged it in to charge and waited. When it was ready I pressed play and off it went on its merry little way vacuuming my floors while I got on with other stuff…there was a small problem, I spent a lot of the afternoon trailing around after it just watching it and exclaiming ‘ooh’ and ‘aaah’ when it came to an obstacle, bumped into a wall and so on and so forth.

I also delighted in making little traps for my new friend – strewed talc on the floor to see how it went, that would be all sucked up – opened a feather cushion and bandied a few of those about the place, the whole lot was dealt with without a glitch and in the laundry room (which by the way has plateaued) it busily went about its business sucking up laundry powder that hadn’t made it to the machine. I was, to put it bluntly, quite gob-smacked by how good this thing is, it even gets under the sofa and lounge chairs and coffee table (though it has a few scratches to show for that). And since then it’s been on every single day at least twice, sometimes four times a day, I have already gotten into the habit of turning on when I am making the tea when I first get up, so off it goes starting work before I am even showered.  Gotta love that right? I will say though, that I have never seen soooooooooooo much dust, hair and basically yucky stuff which is not pretty.  

Am in fact slightly embarrassed, actually scrub that I am kinda mortified that there was (and still is like twice a day) so much crapola coming up off of my floors – I mean really?  Where is this stuff coming from?  Can I really have been that slovenly before???  I even googled ‘excessive dust in first few weeks of robotic vacuum cleaner’. So, the point of all this?  If you have been thinking of getting one of these for as long as I was, or if you are very busy and would love to lose one job out of your life, if you have money to chuck around on domestic goddess things, if you are human, if you are trying to find ways to keep up with the chores, n don’t walk to the store and treat yourself to one of these babies. That is of course if you can deal with the fact that before you welcomed one of these into your life, you were, unknowingly sludgering around in gobfuls of secret yucky stuff. Adios, if you see me out and about smiling you’ll know why – I will have a little Navvie at home, scuttling around, doing my work.

p.s. this is not a sponsored post & I bought the Navibot with my own hard earned cash and is not affiliated in any way to Samsung xxThe Gadget: The Roomba Professional 610—the most powerful Roomba EVER—is made for large areas like offices, businesses, and big homes. It comes with two interchangeable bins, extra brushes and filters, and two virtual walls. The Verdict: Although the Roomba Pro—which we lovingly dubbed "Calculon Jr."—is meant to be the tough, industrial one of the Roomba series, there are times it acted less like a machine, and more like a rebellious child with ADD. This would be a good cleaning device for industrial sized rooms despite its drawbacks, but it's too big and too loud for apartments. The Pro is supposed to run on four different cleaning paterns: spiralling, wall following, room crossing, and dirt detection—all seemingly random unless you're familiar with the paths and AI its creators programmed for it. After directing Calculon Jr. to find his "home," he only managed to dock himself—even when physically placed next to the docking station—twice out of five tries.

Moreover, the Roomba is extremely loud, so I wouldn't bother trying to watch TV when the Roomba Pro is running—(unless he's cleaning a different room, which can be sanctioned off using the two included virtual walls, which worked fine with two C batteries).One cool feature about the Roomba Pro is how simple it is to schedule a cleaning time—which can be set up to once a day, seven times a week—by using the built-in display that also tells the time and day. However, the display can only be seen if you keep the "clock" button held down. When trying to clean up cookie crumbs and sunflower seeds, Calculon Jr.'s side brush would scatter the mess in different directions instead of sweeping it up into his vacuum. However, if you let your Roomba Pro run around for quite some time—or if you place him directly on top of the mess—he does a quite thorough job of cleaning up the dirt and debris on the floor, as long as it is an open space. You can see the cleaning process in the gallery below.

Here's where the Roomba Pro differentiates itself from its smaller brothers. Because of the Pro's larger size, it is unable to get to the dirt under smaller areas—such as the spaces under counters and couches. Similarly, when Calculon Jr. was placed under a table, it took him a while to maneuver around/between the chairs, and try to find his way out from under. When it is unable to do so, the Roomba Pro will automatically shut itself off. Because it's a Pro model designed for offices and bed & breakfasts, it comes with various spare parts that owners can use to self-repair. It would've been nice if the Roomba Pro came with a remote, but in addition to what comes already attached, the box has two brushes, a high capacity sweeper bin (which, according to the instruction manual, you're still instructed to clean out after every use), two filters, a mini screwdriver, two brushes, two virtual walls and an extra side sweeper. But it's still a Roomba, so its AI is not going to be dramatically smarter than other models.