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- HOTNESS UNHOT
Ends at 10PM PDT. Home.woot! has the Neato XV-12 All Floor Robotic Vacuum System for $300 + $5 shipping = $305 shipped. Features laser-based Room Positioning System, scheduled cleaning, large dirt bin, and includes replacement squeegee blade, 4 extra filters and 6 replacement brush blades.
$305
I'm pretty sure the XV-12 is just the European package of the XV-11, which is the one I own. Love it.
For a robot with a single-line LIDAR view of the world, this thing is pretty smart. It maps the room, vacuums the perimeter, then cris-crosses the middle in a regular pattern, making optimal use of its battery and leaving awesome tracks on the carpet. My house is small enough, and the algorithm is efficient enough, that it usually finishes the job on a single charge.
If I deliberately start it with a low battery, it'll get partway through the job, realize it's tired, drive beeline-straight back to base, charge for a while, drive straight back to where it left off, and start vacuuming again. It's mesmerizing to watch. Especially when it finishes the job, and it knows that zero square inches of the entire house remain un-vacuumed, so it shuts down the fan motor (and gets real quiet) and just marches straight back to base like it owns the place. Then it does this little doughnut-wiggle while docking, which cleans the contacts so it charges more reliably. For such an efficient little machine, the undignified dock ritual is incongruous and hilairous.
Complaints: Dust bin is small, filters clog quickly, filters are expensive, making a DIY filter bracket is a PITA. Cobwebs (from voyages under the cabinets) confuse the LIDAR sensor so occasionally you have to go all paper-towel-crazy around the turret to make sure things are shipshape.
Addendum: It doesn't do a great job on edges, as it lacks the side-brush that the newer Roombas have. There are mentions in the new firmware of such a brush, so it's believed that a new version is coming out. That might be why they're letting the older model go for cheaper, clearing out "inferior" stock to make way for the new hotness?