bObi Classic Robotic Vacuum Cleaner

About 15 monhts ago we installed wood flooring upstairs, about 1400 sq. ft. spread over 5 rooms, 2 bathrooms, and a hallway. There are no transitions anywhere in the flooring. I thought it would be a good time to experiment with a robot vacuum cleaner. So after researching several different makes and models, we settled on bObi. She was supposed to be quiet, thorough, easy to maintain, and easy to schedule. The customer support had great ratings. And bObi was much less expensive than the competition. So "Blondie" (as we call her) has been with us for 15 months. Now, I can't speak about how she performs on carpet or how well she handles transitions. But I can say without a doubt that she has fulfilled all her duties fantastically. For anyone with flooring similar to ours, I can recommend bObi without hesitation. Blondie was easy to set up: we took her out of the box, put on the external sweeper brush, set the charging station with a good amount of space around it, charged overnight, and pressed Go. She undocked and busily set about going everywhere! Here are some of her best features: She is quiet (easy to hold a normal conversation right next to her); she has a Hepa filter; she has a UV light that kills germs along her path; she is very easy to clean (it's best if you have some compressed air to clean off the filter and clean out the dust bin). It takes about 10 minutes for me to empty and clean the dust bin, clear the brushes, and wipe the dust off all her sensors. You don't need any tools to do this except for a small screw driver to remove her external brush; but you don't even need to buy a screwdriver because she comes with her very own. She also has a mopping feature, but we don't use it. I think it wouldn't mop more than a small patch of flooring. But how well does it clean, you ask? Answer: Very well! We programmed Blondie to run 3 times each week. We don't worry about her; she just undocks and cleans wherever she wants to go. She gets under beds, into tight corners, even gets behind a recliner chair we have in the corner of one room. And, of course, under beds and any furniture that has enough space for her. I have seen her clean right into the corners of rooms. And she will also run right along the baseboards. One warning, though: If it's even remotely possible for her to find a chord on the floor, she will find it and try to eat it. So you'll want to arrange all your chords, tucking them out of her reach. But if she gets stuck trying to eat a chord, she'll let you know. There's no damage to her or the chords, and untangling is pretty easy -- unless she's under something where it's hard to reach her! You might not think she cleans that well. But when I empty her bin every week, she has captured dust and hair that I had no idea was on the floor. When I compare the floors to the few small places where she cannot reach, I am surprised at the contrast between the clean floors and those dusty inaccessible locations. On a fresh, brand-new battery, on hardwood floors, she will run about 2 hours before needing to recharge. The company only promises a running time between one hour and 1.5 hours, but we were pleasantly surprised with the extra time. Eventually Blondie settled into about 1.5 hours each time. So will she get to every place in each of the rooms? Yes! When I got Blondie, I tore up pieces of paper into little scraps and scattered them around several of the rooms. And she has always found them all. But, because of our floor size, she may require 2 or 3 cleaning cycles to get everything. What about docking? When Blondie's battery is low enough she starts to seek her station. In our experience she always finds her station, though not always by the most efficient path. There does not need to be a line of sight between her and the station; she will find the station regardless of where she is. The only time she has failed is when she got tangled up in something and I wasn't there to untangle her before her battery ran too low. What about stairs? She avoids them like the plague. Her bottom sensors have never failed to detect that she's on the precipice, and she backs away from it. How do you control it? She has a remote control. You use it to set her program, or tell her to Go, or to go back to her station, or use the arrow keys to drive her where you want her to start cleaning. Now, to me, one of the advantages is that she does not connect to a wifi network, if you have one. And you can't control her from an app on your phone. Some people may think this is a shortcoming, but I see it as a security feature: No one is going to hack into her, nor is she "phoning home" any information about us or our floor layouts. So, what's the downside? Well, I'm an engineer, which means I'm analytical and methodical. And Blondie is anything but methodical! For months she'd drive me crazy because her cleaning patterns appear utterly erratic. She'll start in a room, wander about, and perhaps leave and go to another room, then come back later -- or not! She'll start a methodical cleaning pattern ("Waffle" mode) and then abandon it and go somewhere else. She might clean along a baseboard for a few feet, then abandon that and head under the furniture. It's like she had a brain, but didn't use it very well, just like those blonds in the silly "blond" jokes you read sometimes. That's how we came to name her "Blondie", in fact. We thought she'd never clean anything thoroughly. But we were wrong. She eventually picked up all those little pieces of paper I mentioned earlier. And, over the course of a week, she always "miraculously" manages to clean everywhere she can reach. So I've learned to just roll my eyes or chuckle and just assume she's going to continue doing a great job. Another downside: Blondie has no idea what "done" means. She just keeps cleaning until she needs to recharge or you command her to return to her docking station. I really thought these little robots kept track of where they've been in a room, but that is not the case for this critter. I'm not sure if this is really a downside, or just that it didn't meet my initial expectations. Here's another downside: replacement parts are pricey. The external circular brush and the HEPA filter are the two things that need replacing the most, usually once or twice per year. And I wish the battery (which is very expensive!) would last longer than about a year. I mean, after all, it's rechargeable, so what's with that? In April this year I bought a replacement battery but within 4 months it had declined to where Blondie would only run for about 50 minutes. But that brings me to customer service: It's top-notch. When I contacted customer service about the battery (via email) I got a response by the next day. The service rep suggested a thing or two to try (which I did). When I reported the results, I got a quick reply, saying that the battery seemed sub-par, and they would send me a new battery free of charge. I got the new battery within a week. The rep was courteous, engaged, and quick to resolve my issue. (Maybe they can give lessons to the U.S. postal service...) Bottom line: If you're in the market for a robotic vacuum cleaner, you should seriously consider this one. I think the competitive systems are 2 or 3 times more expensive, and I doubt they clean much better than bObi.