I have a Neato. It works really well on carpets, rugs, hard tiles and wooden floorboards.
I chose the Neato over the better-known Roomba because,
1. It is more rational: it uses a laser direction finding device to navigate, and first surveys the space it is in, then hoovers all around the edge, and then goes back and forth in straight lines. The Roomba navigates by bouncing off things, and taking a random walk, which would drive me crazy with its lack of logic.
2. Because it goes in straight lines and covers the floor efficiently, the Neato is much faster than the Roomba, eg ten minutes rather than forty for a given size of room. This means the job is done much more quickly, which means less noise.
3. Because the Neato is intelligent in its navigation and rarely bumps into things, it is much less noisy and does less potential damage than a Roomba, which bumps into things deliberately as a means of getting around/changing direction.
4. The Neato needs less human intervention: while the Roomba brushes need regular cleaning, the Neato uses a different system and I have never needed to clean it. I have had to disentangle ribbon from the beater brush occasionally (cat toy
) but that would happen with any hoover.
5. The Neato is actually a hoover rather than a room sweeper, so it has decent suction. I wasn't expecting too much compared to say a regular dyson, but it is actually surprisingly good.
It can handle obstacles really well, and generally runs without needing any human intervention at all, except for dustbin emptying, the frequency of which depends on the size of your floors, how often you run it, and how dirty they are. The bin is really easy to empty.
It handles cat hair, cat litter crystals, ordinary dust and dirt, leaves, feathers (don't ask!
), little bits of paper, and in general pretty much everything one might find on the floor and regard as dirt.
It can be set (pretty straightforward) to run autonomously, which is how I have it: at the appointed time it sets off and hoovers the entire floor of the house, then moseys back to its charger to recharge for the next run. If it runs out of battery part way round, it will go back and charge up and then carry on until its finished.
It can also be told to do a spot clean (small area, eg if something just got spilled), and can be made to run at any time by pressing the big orange button (foot friendly, so no need to bend down).
Drawbacks:
1. It can't do stairs.
2. It can't climb stairs, so to do a floor on another level it must be carried there first - plonk it down anywhere and it does the hoovering and comes back to where it first started, so you can find it easily. It does have a carry handle that makes it fairly easy to move if one has the strength and mobility.
3. It's very good at extricating itself from tricky situations (it can back off of cables or objects that it's got stuck on, and can wriggle its backside up and down and all about
in order to get itself free. It generally doesn't get stuck on things like bath mats, clothing etc on the floor because of its escape capabilities. Every now and then though it will get itself totally stuck and need rescuing. It beeps from time to time in this situation, to let you know, and displays a message.
The best thing is to do a supervised run when you first get it, and see where it gets stuck, and then modify things a little (eg, if you have a spaghetti pile of cables, best not to let it run over them - mostly it will manage, but sooner or later it will require assistance, so might as well just adjust things to avoid it).
4. It can't handle drops of more than about two inches - so it will manage a thick rug on a wooden floor fine, but not a step between levels of a floor. It has a cliff sensor which stops it falling down stairs, and also stops it falling over edges in general.
5. It can't get right to the very edge of a floor, so there may be some dust left around the extremeties. On hard floors it may well get this on the next run - the suction means there is a lot of airflow which can push the dust back into its path - but on carpet it tends to remain. It's not much though, and is quick to get with something like a dyson handheld, for those with the energy to go round once every month or two.
It comes with some strips that you can use to mark off areas you don't want it to go in, but I've never bothered - I want it to hoover everywhere!
It gets in and under and around anything it can, and is really good at even tight spaces and quirky houses. If something gets moved whilst it's in action, it avoids bumping into it, and simply recalculates its route and carries on.
It's very polite (really!).
I am really, really pleased with my Neato, it has make all the difference to the state of the house, and runs like clockwork (well, laser-guided, computer-controlled clockwork
).
OK, very long post, but I hope some of that info might be helpful.