iRobot Scooba 380 vacuums, soaks, scrubs and dries tile, linoleum and sealed hardwood floors and does it by cleaning faster and more efficiently than the previous model. It cleans up to four average size rooms on a single battery charge and washes an average size kitchen using one tank of cleaning solution.
Before turning Scooba 380 on, you need to clear the place (kitchen or bathroom) of obvious obstacles, removing garbage pails and rugs. Scooba navigates around thicker area rugs (thicker than a tenth of an inch) and steers clear of most carpets. However, thin area rugs can confuse it.
Scooba 380 navigates throughout each room and uses a 4-stage cleaning system to vacuum, wash, scrub and squeegee sealed hardwood, marble, tile and linoleum floors. It even washes beneath cabinets, tables, chairs and other hard-to-reach places.
When cleaning, scooba's software sets it off in a spiral, followed by straight and diagonal lines across a room to gauge its size. The initial passes use the vacuum to suck up dry debris. Then it puts down the Clorox mixture as the brush assaults the floor at 1,400 rotations per minute. All the while, the squeegee and vacuum inhale dirty water. A final cycle dries the floor and Scooba's innards.
The robot uses only clean solution to wash floors (conventional mopping just pushes dirty water around) holding the dirty stuff in a separate tank.
Scooba 380 covers every part of the floor multiple times every time it cleans. There's nothing to program: the floor washing robot uses sensors and its software to automatically navigate around your room.
The entire process is supposed to take about an hour in an average-sized kitchen.
Scooba's disk-shaped body is divided into two layers. The top one contains separate tanks for clean and dirty water. The bottom half houses the vacuum, brush, squeegee, wheels, and electronics. To get started, you fill the tank labeled "Clean" with a mixture of warm water and 2 oz. of a cleaning solution developed with Clorox that's designed to keep Scooba's wheels from sliding as it coats the floor. The Clorox cleaning solution is safe and effective on all sealed hard floor surfaces. A 32-oz. bottle comes in the box; a three-pack of replacement bottles costs $18. The company says you can also use a vinegar-and-water combo, but no other cleaning products.
Scooba 380 covers 850 square feet. In comparison: scooba 5800 is designed for rooms of up to 250 square feet and the Scooba 350 covers 500 square feet.
Scooba 380 comes with one or two "virtual walls" that shoot infrared beams the robot won't cross.
Unfortunately you will need to manually empty and refill these tanks, once they are empty. It will not recharge itself either.
