 So this isn't exactly the cutting-edge latest technology. I mean the first Roomba was introduced in 2002 and it's now... 2015. Meaning I'm about 13 years late to the party, but I'm not convinced that everyone who is interested in a Roomba already has one, so this video is for people like me, who put off trying one for years because they saw the price of what on the surface, frankly, looks like a silly gadget compared to similarly priced central vac or portable vacuum cleaning systems from known brands like Hoover and Electrolux and just didn't have the stomach for it until now. Welcome to my thoughts on owning the iRobot Roomba 595 pet edition now that I've had it for a few months, and if cleaning supplies aren't interesting to you, don't worry I think we've got something that is. Who makes the best? PC stock cooler, Intel or AMD, we'll find out. But first, this. So you can save on Intel 730 series SSDs with instant rebates during President's Week, February 22nd to March 1st 2015. Click on my face to learn more. Now, most Roombas have pretty similar features, give or take some advanced doodads here or there, so while the actual model that I got was a fairly obscure Costco exclusive one here in Canada anyway, most of what I'm saying will apply to all modern fourth generation Roombas in general, except with like some extra bits here and there. So, in the box you get the Roomba itself, a base station with an AC power cord, two virtual wall doodads, this little red cleaning tool thing for the brushes, and another one, a couple extras, each of the side brushes, filters, bristle brushes, and beater brushes. The last one, just in case you can't find a broom in the big quidditch match, is coming up next Saturday. Anyway, bad jokes aside, the accessory package is actually overall outstanding, and even though Roomba is definitely going to bleed you dry on overpriced replacements through their store in the long run, at least they have the decency to keep you up and running for a reasonable period of time before that becomes necessary, and they offer some pretty tangible upgrade options as well if you're looking to get a bit more performance or battery life out of your device. And of course third-party options are out there if you want to save a few bucks. Alright, so let's do a quick tour of the device itself. These have come a long way since even the demos that I saw in my first year attending CES back in the late 2000s. On the top is all the controls that you'll need, buttons to set up scheduling, that's a cool feature of this particular pet-friendly model, a spot button for when you don't need to clean a whole room, but you just want to do a deep clean in a particular isolated spot, a dock button to tell it to go dock itself to its charging station, a clean button which should be pretty self-explanatory, it sprays water out the top of the unit bidet style, and you kind of squat over it to click, no, that's not what happens. It starts a cleaning cycle for the Roomba to go around the room. I mean, did you really believe that? Man, I should come up with some other nonsense to tell you. How about this one? The dirt detect light illuminates to tell you the Roomba detected dirt. Wait, that's actually what that does. It cleans a little heavier when it detects dirt or something hitting some kind of sensor. Cool. Also on the top is the big red button to access the replaceable filter and to dump out the dirt canister. There are speaker holes for the tones that the Roomba uses along with the error code display to tell you stuff like, Hey, I'm done. Hey, I'm getting started. Hey, charge the blooming battery, you fartwad. Much more politely than that, of course. At the front, we find the infrared sensor for the virtual wall units that sends out beams telling the Roomba not to cross them, though, frankly, my wife found it was less work to close doors or find some random boxes to put in its way than to use these, as well as a physical bumper that tells the Roomba when it's hit a wall or other solid object. Then if we flip it over, there are four infrared sensors for edge detection to keep your fancy gadget from flinging itself over a cliff like the rest of the lemmings. And while we're down here, there are the charging contacts, a caster wheel, the little brush that is needed to grab debris away from the edges around walls and corners, thanks to the Roomba's round shape, a couple super grippy drive wheels, and the beater and brush spinning pieces that are actually responsible for removing hair and dirt from the floor to be sucked up. But that's all fine and good in theory. How well does the darn thing work? Great question. In some respects, really well. In spite of all the drop-offs in my house, the Roomba has never fallen down for me, and it does anywhere from an 80 to 90% job of cleaning most of the hallways and rooms in my house. It's actually a very impressive little piece of technology. But there are some drawbacks to the experience as well. The preparation for Roomba-ing is a bit more involved than just kind of grabbing a hose and then like going to town and going under things and all that kind of stuff. You gotta set up your barricades, position it, then come back to it when it's ready for the next task. That and the Roomba's approach to room cleaning, especially if your rooms contain a lot of furniture and other obstacles, feels a touch on the random side, and even though it actually eventually seems to get pretty good coverage, it takes a really long time, much longer than it would take you to do it yourself manually. But Linus, I think you're missing the point. You don't have to be actively vacuuming, so that's where the time savings comes in, and yeah, it is, but there are some other things that weigh into it for me. I mean, for one thing, the noise the Roomba makes is kind of annoying, not as bad as a standalone vacuum cleaner, but having it running for extended periods of time does bother especially my cats, and for another, the darn thing gets stuck on or fails to clean enough things in my house, like this black-bordered rug that it refuses to go onto, but won't stay inside if I start on top of it, that I have to check on the Roomba periodically, and so while I can do other things while it's cleaning, I can't go too far away, or it'll often end up sitting there doing nothing. It also requires some things that my central vacuum system doesn't, more upkeep as far as replacement parts is concerned, very frequent emptying of the dust chamber about once per room, charging, so it can be used only for about one or two rooms per charge before you either have to pick up your base station and put it in the room it's cleaning so that it can dock to it when it's done, something that's a bit of a pain since the cord for it is so bulky and actually kind of gets in the way of cleaning near the station, or pick the Roomba up and take it back to the base station, but I guess the bottom line is this, am I going to keep it? I paid for it. Am I going to keep it and continue to use it or not? And the answer is that while the price tag for what is effectively a cleaning accessory that does not replace a normal vacuum is pretty high, and I'm not actually the ideal customer for the Roomba, folks with smaller single-story dwellings with fewer obstacles, or this baby's wheelhouse since it can't clean things like a sunken living room or stairs, and it's just kind of set and forget, I still plan to continue to use it, and I do plan to keep it. I mean if the whole house needs to be cleaned, it is still more efficient to just grab a vacuum and do it properly. It'll be more thorough and you know that needs to be done periodically anyway just to get under things like tables that the Roomba can't access, but the thing about the Roomba is that if you make it part of your daily habit, it definitely does a great job of dramatically decreasing the required frequency of proper cleanings, as long as you're willing to accept a few plant casualties along the way. Speaking of plant casualties, Xsplit, that live streaming software that we use for our weekly video podcast, The WAN Show, has nothing to do with plant casualties. They recently released Xsplit V2, which has even more powerful production tools and actually, I mean honestly, Xsplit's just kind of awesome, whether you're a professional streamer, a first-time streamer, or even just someone who wants to broadcast gameplay and to show their friends a few tips and tricks. I mean honestly, we actually even use it just for screen recording. Like I set it up for my neighbor. I totally used my code, which you can find in the video description by the way. Totally used my code, downloaded Xsplit for my neighbor because he was watching these, he's taking this online course, and he had no way to go back and reference the material, and I was like, oh, well you can just use this thing and you can record your screen or record webcams, record whatever you want, all at the same time. The interface is extremely intuitive. He's like 60 and he can do it, so there's that, and it allows all kinds of great features. You can easily manage guests through Skype, you can hook it up directly to your games via game source if you're a game streamer, which ensures high fidelity capture with a minimum performance hit, and it even lets you easily stream and record your gaming moments with GameCaster, which has an easy to use in-game overlay to manage all of your streaming or recording settings. So head over to xsplit.com slash Linus to start streaming and recording in HD for free. Guys, like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave a comment if your feelings are a little bit more complicated than this. As always, we have links in the video description where you can give us a monthly contribution if you love our content, you want us to keep making it, you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one, you can change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a small kickback whenever you buy Roombas or whatever it is you buy on Amazon, and I think that's pretty much it. Thanks for watching, and as always, don't forget to subscribe.