Sorry to hear about your DOA, pallenthomas, hope it works out!
Got mine on Thursday, and tried it out over the weekend. We have a 3-level townhouse, and so far have tried on the top and ground floors.
My wife loves it. So far I'd say it has exceeded my expectations. Buzzed through the carpeted living room (fairly large room) thoroughly and efficiently. Kitchen is wood floors; I was thinking I'd have to manually place it in that room and run it because of the raised section in the threshold between the kitchen and living room. Nope! Made its own way.
So I was pleasantly surprised. Mostly just let it do its thing while I either went out or did something in other rooms. But it was fun to watch it navigate around obstacles, under kitchen chairs and tables, etc. Seems like a very efficient and fine-tuned navigation algorithm.
It methodically traveled from room-to-room-to-hallways and seemed to fully cover what it could. For a minute it looked like it was going to get stuck and would need to be rescued from trying to climb on top of a scratching post with a raised carpeted base that was too high for it to get over. It spent a little time tipped backwards trying to get on or off. Eventually it gave up and continued with the floor.
I saw a lot of comments about the volume. We didn't think it was that loud. Like the guy in the review vid on page 1 said, maybe you wouldn't want to watch TV in the same room with it, but you can barely hear it in the next room. Definitely quieter than our vacuum, and even quieter than the portable dirt devil.
Was able to get through the entire level on a single charge. I emptied it before doing the next floor the following day, and it was mostly full. But it packs crap in there pretty tight, so it may have been able to keep going for another room or two.
I did have one issue where the Neato kept stopping in the same spot by the top of the stairs and when I found it, it said the brush was clogged. The brush wasn't really clogged, I think perhaps it was getting tangled by some worn, loose carpet in that corner that was still well-attached to the ground but had some loose strands.
After the 2nd time I just put the baby gate up in that spot, problem solved. Alternatively the Neato comes with 15 feet of boundary marker, basically magnetic stripping you can cut and set down to act like a wall for it. But the gate worked fine there.
Overall, extremely satisfied so far.
