iRobot Roomba j7+ (7550) Self-Emptying Robot Vacuum –Identifies and avoids obstacles like pet waste & cords, Empties itself for 60 days, Smart Mapping, Works with Alexa, Ideal for Pet Hair, Roomba J7+

Great little unit when its operating as expected. I used this roomba (I have 3 different models from over the years) on the main floor of my house which is 50/50 hardwood floors and tile. Unit was able to navigate very well and walked up onto throw rugs and transitions just fine. Virtual walls and keep out zones were easy to setup. This unit wasnt exactly quiet, but not as bad as my previous units around noise. Everything was going great until about 30 days ago. The unit all of a sudden started throwing ERROR 26 (very common I find out by googling for this model). Turns out, there are 5 different motors inside these things, 1 for the corner brush, 1 for the main brushes, 1 for each wheel, and 1 for the actual vacuum. The actual vacuum motor on my unit seized up. The roomba was maintenance every two weeks and was kept very clean so the vacuum was not stressed. Its been 30 days working with support and I finally got to the point that they are going to send the main head assembly as a replacement. This module contains most of the guts of the roomba and represents about half the cost of one. For a unit thats not yet 1 year old I feel like this shouldnt be. Of all of the motors on the unit, I would expect the vacuum motor to be the longest lasting, however, it was the first to go, and after disassembling the unit to do this replacement, I see that this motor in particular is poorly undersized for what it does. I still like my unit, but Im afraid that this one wont last too long either and I wont be buying a replacement.

I’ve owned 4 iRobot products and each, except for this one, was almost totally worthless. Prior products were variously stupidly loud, made of poor materials, apparently designed by Radio Shack, and doomed to failure within 1 year. I’ve had the Roombas that used those irritating ’fence’ beacons; and iRobot floor mopping products that had software failures within 3 months. But now, finally, iRobot produced a well-designed mini vacuum that does NOT require manual intervention at every turn, is paired with an exceptionally good app that maps and has very useful features, and which can be automated to run when you leave home (and stop when you get back). Did iRobot hire someone new? Remove the previously cloddish team from the enduser experience? Sure seems like it. I want robotic devices that are easy to set up and which are not a regular time-sink. I want to be able to mostly forget about them. And iRobot finally made one that I do not have to think about much at all. The floors are merely cleaned of small debris that accumulates in regular living. Now if they could only do the same with an effective floor mopping automated robot that is not just dragging a wet towelette across the floor. Alas: Not yet. The price is steep, but they’ve always been steep for their latest innovations. This time — for the very first time — it has been worth it. Finally. Sure took you long enough, iRobot. Congratulations to whoever it is you hired to make a mini, light-use vacuum that delivers on promises you’ve made before, but did not keep.

We named her Hazel and she operates out of the Guest Bedroom away from being under foot or in constant view. Having mapped out the entire house, shes ready to head into specific areas (especially after the Grandkids leave) and make the crumbs and tracked-in dirt disappear. My wife has had breathing concerns for the past few years, but with Hazel now having removed 6-years worth of dust-bunnies from underneath the Master Bed, we both noticed a marked improvement sleeping in fresher air after just the first 2 days. Hazel also gets the dust out from under our sofa, coffee table, and leather chairs - and into the back corners of the walk-in closets. Shes much more thorough than the hand-pushed upright (now donated to charity) and dutifully vacuums multiple times a week vs. once a week (if I remembered to vacuum at all...). No turning back now!

Compared to my iRobot roomba model 980, this J7 is not as loud. It has a strong light and looks like a drunk locomotive in my home. The vacuum chamber in the J7 is smaller than the model 980. When the j7 empties itself to vacuum bag in the top of the dock, it is loud ; very loud. So, I recommend you tell Alexa to activate Roomba while you are aware. Would not recommend running at bedtime unless you like horror films.

I had one of the original Roomba’s way back when. It was…..okay, but fell out of use with it. Decided to try this and so glad we did. We have three dogs, so always need a good cleaning (daily) and this does a great job 7 days a week. There’s some fine tuning at first but now after a few months of use, we are not really paying as much attention to every recommendation. We have dog beds that may or may not get picked up before it starts it’s daily job. No worries, it covers it the next day. Replacement filters and parts are going to be required, but the time this saves it’s so worth it. We also got the Braava mop which runs a couple of times a week, and is also great. I think the only time I’ve pulled out our Shark vacuum has been to do things like under the fridge and occassional other clean up where I could have used the app to send the Roomba over to take care it, but just grabbed the older one. Big improvement over the original models.

Finally, a robot vacuum that rarely gets stuck. However it does on rare occasions get stuck when trying to go under my bedroom furniture which is slightly too low for it to fit under. It gets wedged and I have to free it. Im not sure why its obstacle avoidance feature doesnt prevent that, but it doesnt. Otherwise, its great! I can essentially set the schedule and forget it, until its time to change the bag in the base unit, which has been about once every ten days or so. - I have it set to vacuum the whole house daily at 3:00PM. Very happy with it!

Had the 9 and watched it literally chew up the edges of some small carpets. 20 years of wear in a minute. Sent it back and got the 9j. It does not destroy carpets, does not get tangled in fringe and overall does a satisfactory job. It has a shorter run time than the 9 but like the 9 it comes in for a charge and then goes out to finish the job. It mapped the floor faster than the 9, but has a bit more hesitancy about darker areas. The vacuum bin sounds like a jet winding up but it only lasts a moment. The 7 is quieter than our older model. It might be just a bit less effective with cat hair, the jury is still out. Freaky feature-- it takes images of foreign objects on the floor and asks you if this is a temporary or permanent thing. You have the option to let it send the images to iRobot. I saw a shoe, a cat toy, a small ball, an extension cord dressed down a table leg, a wrapper dropped next to a waste can and the same wrapper pushed two feet away. After a brief discussion we decided not to send images to the iRobot database. Let them get their own cat toys and shoes. Alexa integration is never so easy as it should be but it works--mostly. You can name your robot during the setup and I named it Drudge. If I say Alexa tell Drudge to go home. Alex says Drudge go home. but nothing happens. If I say tell Roomba to go home, Alex says she will tell Drudge to go home and it does. The cat tolerates it, the other party at interest just wants the floor kept clean, and I much prefer that Drudge does the job. We are keeping Drudge. So all in all an improvemen

The main issues are with the robot not alerting us when it frequently tangles itself up in a carpet edge or stray kid clothing or throw rug, etc. -- we come indoors to find it is not running and not on charger. It has not sent an Android notification (although we certainly get less relevant notifications from them), and it is not beeping or otherwise letting us know where/what the problem is. So we begin the Easter Egg hunt. You can push LOCATE but sometimes it has run the battery all the way down, as when it hooked itself on a spiral stairway pedestal bolt/nut. The software mapping is impressive BUT it has no provision to show you where the robot last stranded itself. And when we wish to exclude specific areas to avoid further problems in the future, the mapping doesnt allow us to see where prior problems were or to extrapolate where they might be precisely on the map the device created, which would seem to be a programming shortfall. The device seems to spend too much time traveling over same areas while passing by dirty areas. It also has a bad habit, when picked up from a trouble spot, of dumping dirt on the floor , or right in front of charger when you place it on charger manually because battery was dead. Then it doesnt know to vac up that dump. No apparent way to tell it to go to a specific spot, without designating an entire room. It does work well with Alexa from what weve seen and it is impressively persistent (bullheaded) at trying to enter a room you have closed off for safety reasons, that it previously found to be open. It actually knocked a spring-latched door open, entered the room, traveled to another room, bumped that door closed, and then found itself trapped in the last room because, of course, it doesnt know how to OPEN the door that it bumped. So it has made a lot of progress, and to its credit, we have a lot of obstacles like book stacks, etc., but some basic programming needs are lacking and we have tried to indicate those in the frequent surveys it requests, but no personal feedback from the company.

Like the ability after cleaning to clean out the bin.

This is a replacement for our 7 year old Roomba that just finally died. It is doing a great job keeping up with our 5 dogs. It takes several returns to the base to empty itself during a cleaning session due to all the hair, but that is not a problem for me. I do have to empty the bag every few days which is not fun to do (it involves needle nose pliers to pull out the dog hair clumps) but I feel wasteful throwing it out that often. It is noticeably loud when it returns to the base and the dirt/hair gets sucked up, but you get used to it. Would recommend.