The future of the Roomba, and the best robot vacuums

In the robot vacuum world, there’s Roomba and there’s everybody else. iRobot’s autonomous cleaner may not have been the very first of its kind, but it was the first one most people knew about, and for many years it was clearly the best one you could buy. But now, more than three decades after iRobot started building its futuristic bots, both the product and the company appear to be in big trouble.

After that, we chat with Kobo CEO Michael Tamblyn about the state of e-readers. Michael has been working on E Ink devices, and competing with Kindles, for many years. He has thoughts on how the business has changed, the challenge of making great devices at the right price, the pros and cons of competing with Amazon, and what people really want when they’re looking for a device that isn’t their smartphone.

Finally, The Verge’s Chris Welch helps us answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11, or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about TVs. If you’re not looking to spend a mortgage payment on an OLED, but you also don’t want to be stuck with some crummy, ad-filled set made by a company you’ve never heard of, we have some advice for you.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started: