Quote from oldbean : these work ok for light stuff. But MS. BEAN says they dont suck like a regular vacuum. -Bean

Yeah, they really don't suck at all. They more or less have a small fan blade that will suck up a little dirt, but the little filter gets clogged up real quick and then it doesn't "suck" at all. The majority of the cleaning is done via a rotating brush and counter rotating rubber squeege type thing. It does work, but is definitely not going to pick up much that's not on the surface. Plus it's messy to empty out. And it's noisy. I prefer to get my Kirby out and use that, in 15 minutes I can have the house clean (and it's deep down clean) whereas it takes about an hour for the Roomba to get everything just on the first floor. Oh, and it hates area rugs, it will try to eat them, along with cords, cat toys, kids toys, etc.... And it has trouble finding the charging base, and if you have the virtual walls you have to be carefull where you place them, or else your Roomba will get really confused and keep going around in circles. In my honest opinion, these things aren't worth it unless you are truly too lazy to push around a real vacuum.