Our Roomba arrived. We quickly unboxed it and then unboxed it again and then unboxed it once again. I kid you not, the Roomba came wrapped in not one, but three nested cardboard boxes: the Amazon shipping carton, the iRobot shipping carton, and the actual Roomba box, the one that you might see in a store. We were not done though, not by half. Inside these boxes was a maze of smaller boxes. One held just the power cord. Quite a few held nothing at all. Unwrapping everything, there really was not that much. There was the Roomba, its docking station, power cord and an attachment. I have never seen so much packaging. God help us if the machine breaks down and we have to return it.

Setup was not too painful. Plugged it in, got the app, connected to Wi-Fi and looked good to go. We took it for a short test run, watched it move around following its own random pattern, and then docked it. Its maiden flight was a success. Then we set it loose again. Anne was fascinated with watching its perambulations. The Roomba seemed to take an almost unhealthy interest in the areas beneath the couches. After about thirty minutes, it decided to declare victory and head home. It was full. Back at base the Roomba emptied itself into the base station, but then threw up an error message. The base station was clogged. The app played a YouTube video that explained how to take the base apart, something, something about five screws, and then clean out the clog. Fortunately, the problem had already solved itself. I ran it briefly one more time to ensure that the problem had gone away and then decided that that was enough fun for the first day. Yea! We did not kill the robot on day one.