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+

I bought a used item in very good condition for $200 off. Came in a damaged box, but contents were still wrapped in original shipping material and undamaged. Terrific deal! I have a large home with a convoluted floorplan. The iRoomba j7+ mapped the entire area using 3 outings, including me manually placing it in the middle of an uncharted area-- it not only mapped it but figured out how it fit to the existing map. Love that I can say OK Google, vacuum around the fireplace and the mess made from emptying ashes and loading wood is gone. The spinning brush gently sweeps all dust and debris from the floor edges along the walls. Navigates over, next to, around area rugs with ease, doesnt damage rug fringe on my Persian rugs. Wish my bed wasnt so low or it could get all the dust bunnies under there. I love watching it move around and leaving clean floors when done. I got the companion mop robot that can be programmed to work with the vacuum by automatically mopping after vacuuming. Nothing negative to say about it.

The navagation and AI on this vacuum are insanly good. IT doesn’t vacuum or have adjustable power levels but it is very quiet and very smart. Would highly recommend to people who have multiple rooms and need a bot smart enough to navigate anywhere and be dependable. Has not got stuck yet.

his model, ROOMBA j7 with the self emptying robot look okay; unfortunately that is all I can say positive about this robot. It doesn’t work effectively. I had an older model which vacuumed diagonally and it was way more superior than this. The robot does not have the suction power or brush power to clean an area rug, especially if you have pets that sheds. The brush bristle are too short, thin and sparse. While it is attempting to “clean” (Ian using the term loosely) my hardwood floor, pet hair (Pyrenees) and dust are swirling around instead of being suction into the machine as it is presumably supposed to do. The hair also wrap around the rollers and legs snd brush and is extremely difficult to remove. Hair has to be removed after 2-3 cleaning, if not done, the robot perform poorer. This is time consuming and tedious. The robot constantly bump into walls, furniture and other obstacle. This is quite curious to me because I keep getting notifications to OPT into some kind of obstacle avoidance …so that the machine can avoid certain areas. I have watched videos advertising this robot and it shows that it avoids obstacles. The paperwork accompanying the machine also states that it avoids obstacles. It doesn’t 80% of the time. The machine does not clean the floor area alongside baseboards. When it finally stop bumping into walls and obstacles intermittently, it stops at least 8-10 inches from the wall or obstacle! Frustrating. 80% of the time during operation, the robot does not return home to empty the bin. It shuts itself down, will not start so that you can send it home ( must use phone because there isn’t a “Home” button) like previous models. After shutting itself down, it flashes a red light when you push the start button and keep repeating, “Empty the bin.” Where is the “Home” button? Who has time in the middle of a busy day to pick up a phone or tablet to send it home. Oh! It will not move, so you have to physically pick up the robot and set it back on its base manually which is not the easiest thing to do because the sensors are not easy to line up. Plus the sensors seems to need cleaning after each use. Mapping, does not work. What I have to say about this would take a 5-page, single spaced paper. When the robot is placed in a specific area to clean, and placed in the direction you want it to go, it does a 180 degree turn and goes where it wants to go. After trials and errors, one learn to place the machine in the opposite direction in which you want it to clean. It is programmed to clean in a certain directional pattern and will not deviate at all. This one seems to go from east to west and cannot operate in any other directions. Maybe that is why it cannot find the way home to its base placed in the middle of the room. Hmmm. This robot have run over flip flops and power cords. Avoiding obstacle is limited to items at the level of the light on the front of the robot only it seems. Plus it doesn’t sense dust and dirt around it. Then there is the Beta option. If you opt in and receive an update which you don’t need, you are unable to reverse/delete that update so you are stuck with a robot which is now operating more erratically than it did before the update. If you are thinking about buying this relatively expensive machine hoping you that it will help with the cleaning of your floors and rugs, read all the reviews carefully. Most people seems to have written their reviews when hey were frustrated with the robot, therefore, it seems as if they are perhaps ranting. NO, the ones who have given the ROOMBA 7 a negative revive are correct. This upgrade is not effective against dust, dirt and especially pet hair! It appears that research on this machine was not done in a real home but in a sterile lab. THERE ARE A LOT CHEAPER MACHINES FROM OTHER MANUFACTURERS WHICH WORKS MUCH BETTER. Save your money, no ROOMBA 7.

We purchased this machine December 7, 2021. Our use: - We got it to help us keep up with dog fur, as even once a week is not enough for our 85 lb. yellow lab. - About 1,100 sq. foot main level, mostly hardwood, 2 rooms with carpet. One rooms carpet is high pile. - We like to run it 2-3 times a week. - We keep it clean and maintained as recommended. The good: - Time between needing to replace base bag is good. - It does seem to get most of the fur off the hardwood floor, judging by all the clumps are gone, but you can still find fur speckled around on the hardwood floor. - It seems to do pretty well on the carpet also, based on me testing by going back over the carpet with our good quality full upright to see how much fur I get. There is a little, but not much. - The dog is not bothered by it. :) The whatever: - Its pretty darn loud, but I was not expecting to not to be, so thats fine. The bad: - Often leaves thick strings of fur on the hardwood floor where it borders with carpet. Those need to be manually removed. - The wheels leave markings on the hardwood floor a lot, but not everywhere. I dont think its just skidding when turning, as the marks can be straight too. Rubbing with my socked foot seems to get them up. I suspect this may be common for robot vacuums. - The logic/app is not capable of predicting run times accurately, and does not include charging time. - The logic/app is not capable of predicting an intelligent point to charge, or how long to charge, in order to complete the job without needing to recharge again. - Unable to mark identified possible obstructions as not an obstruction, remember this next time so you constantly have to mark the same items on reviews after every job. The worse: - Mapping takes several clean everywhere cycles, where each take 9-11 hours (including charging time.) At least (4) of these cycles to get a map where you are allowed to place dividers, name rooms, etc. - The map gets distorted easily over time. Wall openings do not align, which messes up room and divider setup, and then you lose your cleaning jobs that have messed up rooms in them. - The robot will sometimes identify new areas, which are really part of the original map, but for some reason it thinks the room got 3 wider or it found another room, or something. These can sometimes break the map, causing the app to crash, and you cannot start a job without STARTING THE MAPPING ALL OVER AGAIN. - The robot gets lost easily. If it runs over a floor vent or anything else that may spin it a little, its orientation is messed up. I think it needs both wheels in constant contact with the floor to track its location. - It bumps into things constantly. I dont just mean chairs and other furniture; I mean even walls as its traveling. The plastic bumper sensor is very scratched up. - Trying to accurately place a no-go area on the map is very difficult, and takes several adjustments to get it right (which over time becomes not right) - It has trouble finding the docking station about 40% of the time. It will spend 5 minutes trying to align itself then give up and finish the job stuck, which means you have to start it over. We keep the base and sensors clean, so that is not a factor. --- It has also been (2) rooms away trying to find the docking station. UPDATE NEW ROBOT: (With the help of a $200 save coupon) I ordered a roborock Q5+ to replace this on the main floor. My hope was that the LiDAR navigation, along with stronger suction, help improve a lot of my pain points. You can see that review here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3HRIDQBQ4W529?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

I bought my wife an i3+ for Christmas. It was cute and we named it WALL-E but that’s where the charm ended: - Had trouble staying connected to Wi-Fi (and didn’t support 5 GHz - only 2.4 GHz) - Setup was clumsier - Would abort about every 3rd cleaning run on average by getting stuck and throwing an error code - Took 5+ hours to clean 1000 sq feet We upgraded to the j7+ and it’s like night and day. J7+ just works. Period. - Supports 5 GHz and stays connected to my Wi-Fi - Connected without fuss; very easy setup - Has a camera and navigates much more confidently - Mapping works better - Identifies carpet automatically and adds to map - Identifies obstacles like cords and loose objects; supports “keep away” zones - Vacuums in half the time of i3+ - Finds home base far more reliably and quicker - Quieter Very happy with this j7 purchase after an initially disappointing experience with the i3. Researched the j7 purchase heavily before buying and it was consistently the top performer. I can concur now having owned for a week. Will come back for an update after 6-12 months to give feedback on performance over time rather than just week #1 impressions.

We bought this item last October for almost $1k and it has only been a headache since we have purchased it. We upgraded to this item from a different brand that was 1/3 the price. The cheaper/different brand item worked a hundreds time better than this item. We bought this item because it says it specifically identifies and avoids pet waste and cords and is ideal for pet hair. YEAH RIGHT! This irobot cant even go onto one of our plush rugs we have in the house because there is a cord it would have to roll over to get to the rug. Then we will pick the irobot up and put it on the rug and it shuts down and starts having errors because of the pet hair on the rug. Here is our irobot story from hell: VERY shortly after receiving our irobot it started to act up. Our app kept telling us there was errors of various reasons. My husband called customer support and they couldnt help. The company then asked us to send the whole irobot back to them. We sent it back and FINALLY received the irobot back after 3 months. During the 3 months, we never initially heard from them, we had to reach out to them. When we did reach out to them, this was their response they outsourced the company that they send the irobots to fix them and the company was so far behind on fixing all of the irobots that we would just have to wait however long it takes. Then after numerous calls and emails back and forth with the company trying to still get ours fixed, they said that it couldnt be fixed and they needed to just give us a new irobot. It takes 3 months to figure that out? REALLY? Then once we finally got the irobot back, it did not have a collector bin so we STILL could not use it. We called them and told them they sent us the wrong thing, so then they sent us the right collector bin and it was still the wrong item for our irobot. So we STILL could not use it. They finally sent us the correct collector bin and now after a total of 4 1/2 months (might I add from October of buying it to now, July, we have only had the irobot in our possession for about 4 months and it has never FULLY and PROPERLY worked those 4 months), we can FINALLY use it.... or we thought we could. Now when we attempt to use it our app tells us that the dust bin is always full and needs to be cleaned and emptied. We attempt to use it daily, so daily errors again from this irobot. Other than daily errors the irobot is VERY loud, (might I add the item that cost 1/3 the price and that worked better than this irobot was MUCH more quiet than this irobot) and we also have sensor issues daily. This irobot is supposed to be able to sense so wonderfully and smart maps the house, NO WAY DOES IT DO ANY OF THAT! It runs over things all of the time and gets caught on everything. We dont even like to have it running while we are gone or asleep because we are scared of the mess it could make or things it could pull down and break or things it could run over. However, we dont like to run it while we are here either because it is SO loud. If we could return this irobot, we would in a heartbeat. However, we tried to give it the benefit of the doubt because there is no way that a thousand dollar machine could not be the best of the best... or at least we thought. By giving it the benefit of the doubt we went over our time of return and are now out a thousand dollars with a machine that is supposed to save us a headache by helping clean the house, but that does the exact opposite. WE WERE SADLY MISTAKEN, INSTEAD IT CAUSES US MORE OF A HEADACHE WITH ALL THESE ISSUES WE HAVE HAD, AND CONTINUE TO HAVE!

Roomba does not have LIDAR navigation. I do have another robot that is LIDAR so I can give a rough pros and cons of the two type of navigation system. Roomba relies more on bumping into things and its map to navigate. Theres good and bad. The bad is that it will often go around the house as if its a drunk bumping into furniture and objects. The robot needs to learn your floorplan and that can take a long time since its bumping into everything. It took me about 5 runs of my whole house. Each run took about 3 -4 hours since my house is 2500 sq ft. Prior to it learning my house, its navigation looked like it was non existent. I thought I had just bought the dumbest robot especially compared to my inexpensive $300 LIDAR robot. However, once the robot declared that it had learned my floorplan everything changed and I began to see the benefits of the iRobot navigation system. Even after learning my floorplan, the iRobot still takes forever navigating around table and chair legs. Bumping and taking multiple attempts to escape the forest of chair legs, but surprisingly, it has never gotten stuck in my house. I have set it to vacuum my entire house several times and in total it has vacuumed about 20,000 sq ft in its lifetime so far and it has never gotten stuck. We have kids so theres a lot of toys and miscellaneous items everywhere so thats amazing to me. My LIDAR robot on the other hand navigates beautifully around furniture but it cant see cords or other lower to the ground objects and it constantly gets stuck on these objects. Also because LIDAR isnt bumping into things to navigate it gets stuck under my couch because the fabric under my couch sags and the LIDAR robot will travel underneath the couch but then think its blocked in by the fabric when it tries to leave the couch area. The iRobot doesnt have this problems because whenever its in doubt it just goes barreling through and utilizes the bump sensor to feel around. The other problem with my $300 LIDAR unit was that it would sometimes do a cleaning run but mistakenly think that there is a new floorplan and erase the old one. Its more sensitive to changes because its LIDAR hardware can detect small changes. This is probably more a software issue. The iRobot on the other hand, is very hesitant to change its map. That is good in that it has never erased my current floorplan or made incorrect modifications, however, the initial learning of the floorplan is a bit harder if it doesnt discover all your rooms. Getting it to discover new rooms is more difficult since the floor plan is locked in. Ive found the best way to get it to discover new rooms after it has learned the floorplan is to do an area clean and just draw a box where to new room should be. Once I did that, it would explore that area and declare it found a new space and then it was added to the floorplan. A few other more minor issues is that the Roomba software is polished but also very limited on options as compared to my inexpensive LIDAR unit. For example, I cant set how often the Roomba should self empty or the quiet times (they removed the beta feature for quiet times). These are important features since the self empty dock is very loud. Much louder then my LIDAR robots self empty dock. Im not that sensitive to noise. The noise level is just a design flaw. I cant imagine going forward they will keep this design. If you live in a small apartment then you should definitely be aware that you will be disturbing your neighbors or yourself when it self empties. Its louder than my large shop vac.

I love this Roomba. I was hesitant to purchase another Roomba after the first one left so many scuff marks on my furniture (maybe 6 to 7 years ago), but this one is different. I honestly dont know how I lived without it. Is it perfect? No, but neither am I when I vacuum. Do I answer my own questions? Not usually, but Im a little drunk. Whats my biggest fear? Someone at work noticing this and bringing it up during our morning meeting. Shhhh. Anyway, have some discretion in morning meeting and buy this Roomba.

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.

It definitely works better than the last robot vacuum we had 7 years ago, but after about 10 days it started having sensor issues, emptying issues, couldnt find home, dog hair wrapped around the front wheel, etc. Familiar problems from the past, but at a higher price tag. Cleaning the vacuums sensors and resetting it seems to resolve the problems for another week or so. I guess I was just expecting less trouble for the price. Going to demo another make/model and keep the winner. Update: we tried a few different brands, and this device was by far the best performer due to the built in camera. It still needs attention every 5 days or so, but it beats vacuuming the old way, no question. If youre not in a hurry, considering waiting to see what other brands come up with once they start integrating cameras as well.