iRobot Braava 320 Floor Mopping Robot

I love this little guy! I charged it for the first time overnight, and this morning, I set it to work on my kitchen floor. I didn't bother with the cleaning pads included but went right to using the Swiffer pads. First I put on the dry Swiffer and let the IRB go. I thought it did spend too much time in one corner, so I picked it up and set it down across the room. That worked pretty well. I also had my hand vac with me and picked up the dust bunnies and chunks that were too big for the IRB. It used up two Swiffer pads. Then I put on a wet Swiffer pad and let the IRB mop the floor. It does a good job, but if there are some stuck-on spots, you will still have to get a rag and work on them by hand. I think the the IRB into my bedroom where I have a hickory floor. It went under the bed and under my husband's chest of drawers which stands up on four feet. It can't get under my dresser because there is not room for it to go under.. It really shined up the floor, and I used only the dry Swiffer pads.It came out from under the bed festooned with dust bunnies! It's great that it can get under the bed because the bed is king-sized, and there is a lot floor space under there. I used the hand vac to vac the dust critters away from the edges of the IRB while it was running since it does not go very fast. It can tap its way along even curved things. It glides along right against the wall for pretty decent edge clean. It is very gentle when it touches furniture and baseboards. It is a really nice product. I am glad I got it!The directions aren't very good, but you can figure out how to plug it in and charge it. You have to remove the magnetic Swiffer holder to find the place to plug it in to charge it.It does hold onto the Swiffer pads really well, too. I have switched to nearly all hard flooring so that the Roomba-type products were not going to be as useful to me. I am glad that there is now a product to clean hard surface floors automatically.

We just installed hardwood floors and I was seriously (probably overly) excited about the prospect of this little robot keeping the floors dust free every day when I left for work.Out of the box it worked really well. It connected to the GPS cube right away and was off and running. It picked up an amazing amount of dust and the floors looked and felt great.The first negative is that it takes a LONG time to charge (like overnight) and the battery did not have enough longevity with a single charge to handle out 1,200sf of floor.Then on the third use the robot kind of got stuck under the kitchen table and could not figure out how to free itself.... I removed it from under the table and set it in the center of the room, totally free from any obstructions. From that point forward all the robot has been able to do is go back and forth in a 2ft diameter circle. It acts as if its stuck in an imaginary box. Tried all the troubleshooting tips to no avail. Powered down, recharged without results.So now its back to the UPS store for a return. Thinking about giving iRobot another shot, and thinking this was just a defective unit, but breaking down after just 3 uses is a terrible start...

-Pros#1 great for small open rooms.#2 excellent for sweeping function.#3 cheap.#4 quietCons-#1 battery life/charging time is horrible.#2 doesn't come with the reservoir.#3 not good for bigger areas.#4 no option to schedule cleaning times.Buy the upgraded model. The fast charging time is well worth the extra $100 since a reservoir is $40 alone.It works for small areas. It takes way to long to charge though 8-10 hours vs 2-3 hours.

So glad I ordered this! Updating my review after almost a year of daily use.I am a graduate student and I just moved to a nice condo. No more ghetto apartments! My new place has all hardwood floors. I had never experienced this before and I was finding that no matter how often I vacuumed I got all kinds of particulates on my floors. They would stick to my feet and make the place feel dirty. Stuff like this really bugs me because I'm a big clean freak.Anyway, I must admit that this thing has it easy. I'm a single guy, no pets, the floors are not junked up with things (wide open), and I keep things meticulously clean/organized in general.I wanted to fix having to vacuum all the time. I went into this thinking I could run the Braava every 2-3 days and it would take care of the job. But turns out, I can run it every day and it will bring back a pad full of dust and dirt. I mean I seriously have no clue where it's coming from at this point. I don't even want to know how dirty my floors were before. I was worried about it being able to pick up larger crumbs, but it manages to well.My apartment is 3 rooms and since the Braava can't cross thresholds that means moving it from room to room. I originally changed the pad every time but that got annoying so now I just run it in all 3 rooms with the same pad. Probably makes it a little bit less effective but I'm gonna guess it's marginal, especially if you're using it daily. You do have to move the tracking cube along with it as well. The operation is really pretty simple. Push power. Push either wet or dry. It will play a song and then set off. It will clean the entire room, sing a song to let you know it's finishing...Drive back to where you set it down...and play a couple more tones to let you know it's no returned and shut off. If it get's stuck it will play a distress signal every minute or so until you fix it.As far as how good it actually navigates, it's very good and it doesn't miss many places. Nothing else to say.Concerning the pads/different mopping styles....The pads that come with it aren't feasible to use. It will pick up so much dirt in one cycle...errr, one room... that you'll be washing those two rags every day. Ain't nobody got time for that. The Swiffer dry pads work great. I ordered some big boxes of them off Amazon as well....I got about a year supply of pads -I typically use 1 or 2 of them a day. The dry mopping goes in parallel lines back and forth as a pattern. The wet mopping pads are also not feasible for the same reason, that they are non disposable. But again Swiffer wet pads work great. The wet mopping goes in a strange pattern, kind of reaching out side to side then backing up. The wet mopping is nice every now and then but because of the pads being more expensive, harder to store, more annoying to use, and rendering less performance out of the Braava...It simply isn't sustainable. I've done it very few times.Other things:It's not essentially silent like the video would have you believe...But it is certainly not loud at all, I can't hear it when it's running in a room adjacent to me, except for it running into things occasionally. It makes a Roomba sound like a category 5 hurricane fighting an F5 tornado.On which one to buy, the more expensive one has an extra tracking cube, yes...But due to thresholds in my place it wouldn't be able to really utilize them in different rooms anyway. The more expensive one has the bigger reservoir, which I also wouldn't use because I don't like the wet mopping feature and I like using Swiffer pads more than the ones it comes with...And putting water in there to dispense over a Swiffer pad doesn't make much sense to me...The more expensive one has a much faster recharge...But again this is rarely an issue unless you have a huge place for it to clean and need to recharge it during the day. I run it once during the day then let the 10 hour cycle charge over night. Only time it sucks is when I forget to plug it in at night. The last thing is that the more expensive one has a bigger coverage area...Which does seem to me like the only reason to buy it...For those of you with huge houses.I haven't run my vacuum in a long time. Just a dust buster to pick up the chunks/crumbs that are too big for it to pick up. My place is much cleaner now. The robot is just such a cool thing too. Interesting to watch it clean sometimes...and it sounds funny but it actually adds some 'life' to my typically 'dead' condo. For $200 bucks the thing has truly been awesome. I would recommend it to everyone.UPDATE: It's been just over one year and the battery has been obliterated. I started noticing a few weeks ago that it would just be stopped randomly when I got home in a room. Decided to pay more attention. It's the battery. I guess I hadn't noticed it if it was a slow decline, because I only ask of the robot to do my entire place once daily. But at this point it can't clean my whole place anymore without dying. 1 year warranty...I am always skeptical of people with tin foil hats talking about stuff programmed to break after X months/years...But it's an awfully crippling thing happening EXACTLY at 1 year out...I mean I am writing this Dec 15th and I purchased it Dec 8th last year...But again like I said it could have been a slow decline.But it doesn't matter...New battery is $30 and it's a price I'm very willing to pay to keep the thing going. Still one of the favorite things I have ever purchased.