Roomba recommendations...?

[songbird54]

We are trying to economise and I may have to lose my cleaner :( I can probably take on most of the household cleaning around parenting duties, but am wondering about getting a Roomba or other brand of robotic vacuum cleaner. My thought is that a one off purchase now would be an investment in future years, and may mean I can get away with just scaling back my cleaning hours rather than cancelling the arrangement altogether.

Can anyone recommend a brand/model as I have been looking on Amazon and the contradictory reviews are baffling me a bit. I had thought of a Roomba but have also seen reviews of the Neato?

Apologies in advance for such a first world/middle class dilemma!

m.youtube.com/watch?v=tLt5rBfNucc

That's exactly why I want one! ;)

I found the reviews very contradictory, but we settled on the roomba 660. I love it, it is almost life changing! It has got an amazing amount of dirt off our floors. It seems very reliable to far. It's handier for maintainance cleaning that a major clean, so I use it every day and move it around the house to different areas (it can only do so much in one charge so if you give it too large an area to cover it does a superficial job). Its easy to empty, but the rollers need de-hairing every few days too. There are some areas it can't fit into, and you need to spend a few mins picking up stray items before using it, but overall I'm very happy with it.

They're sweepers more than anything else and don't generate much suction, so they're not great at removing any embedded dirt, dust mites or dust mite allergens that are hiding in the bottom of your carpets. Fine for bare floors, though, but if you have carpet you'll still need to use your big vacuum periodically.