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+

When it gets jammed up in a room you should get a notification on your phone before it runs out of battery. Doesn’t adequately remove all the debris from the unit into the bag plus it would be helpful if there was a mechanism that removed dust from the filter. But in all fairness, my house has never been this clean. Thank you.

Context: Two humans and two cats in a 1400 sq. foot space with half hardwood flooring and half medium pile carpet. Weve had the J7+ for just about a year now, and it runs three times/week. Ive previously owned two Neato D5 models. Pros: Relatively quiet, efficient guidance system that avoids troublesome obstacles and questionable floor messes, well-designed app, easy to clean and maintain. It almost never gets stuck. The self-empty base is nice (but, see below). Cons: While quiet, the suction is poor. It is miserable at picking up cat hair and long human hair, despite any marketing that touts pet hair features or the unique brush design. Much of this hair simply accumulates around the brush spindles, which means that you absolutely must clean it every 3 runs or it will soon jam up (Roomba does make this relatively easy). Occasionally the hair ends up in odd little wads strewn about your carpet. Why? Given that I have to clean the thing every Saturday, what do I even need the self-cleaning base for? Bottom line: great vacuum for low-pile carpet or hardwood floors in homes without pets or humans that shed. Thats not us, and I wish we had either sprung for the higher end Roomba or perhaps tried a Roborock.

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.

The fact that Roomba can empty his own dustbin and then go right on back to cleaning is a game changer in my opinion (we started referring to the self-emptying feature as ‘goin potty like a good boy!!’ so our 100lb Doberman knows Roomba is a friend, not a scary bad guy). And if you’re already upset I’ve gendered Roomba as he/him, it’s probably best for you to move on to a different review—No disrespect intended whatsoever— it’s just that in our house, for whatever reason, Roomba’s a boy robot (but for the record we’d love him no matter what). Moving on. We’re in a single story house w/ mostly tile & rugs in the areas Roomba ventures (I use a regular vacuum for the carpet in the bedrooms). In all truth I could probably let him explore the bedrooms cause he seems to be pretty powerful & effective, we just hadn’t needed the extra cleaning power in those rooms since the doors mostly stay closed. The main concern was the tiled areas since that’s where most of the day to day traffic is… especially from the aforementioned sweet monster puppy, Rambo, who often comes barreling inside w/ 4 dirty monster puppy paws. Thus, for our specific needs, Roomba has certainly *understood the assignment*…or whatever the Gen Z’s say? **side note: this is the first time I’m realizing the ‘Roomba’ / ‘Rambo’ name combo. It’s like they’re siblings. Cute….? Weird…? Okay, once again—moving on. Sure, there might be more ‘tech savvy’ options for robot vacuums but I tell ya what, this lil dude WORKS & he don’t call it quits til’ he’s FOR REAL finished w/ the job. Like, one day over the holidays I made a huge mess w/ some glitter & other crap while decorating & poor Roomba was working so hard he had to stop cleaning, go back home to his charging station, go potty, & take a lil nap. THEN!!! Yall! he woke back up on his own & went straight back to cleaning until he’d completed the entirety of his map!! I was so impressed!! like dang what a responsible, reliable hard worker! AND independent! He doesn’t require much support or guidance at all, he just figures out where he’s going & uses his robot brain to generate a map that you’re able to edit & label within the app (if you want). Speaking of which— the app is very user friendly & has lots of options to customize Roomba to function however you choose. The single time I had to contact customer service was a positive experience- they were great. This purchase was a good one!! No complaints from us— I love this robot vacuum and I feel like the price is reasonable for the high quality & reliability of the product. Except Rambo still doesn’t trust him b/c Roomba sucked up some of his kibbles (told y’all Roomba don’t care!). But Rambo is the one who slung his food everywhere & made a mess, so that’s on him not Roomba.

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.

I usually do not do reviews unless I am impressed or disappointed with an item and when I do so I try to be an asset to someone who is considering a purchase and thus my experience may help, I hope it does. Last October I purchased the Roomba J7+ to use in our home which has mostly wood floors, two fully carpeted rooms and one room with a large rug. I use the j7 if I notice something on the floor such as dust or perhaps a little fur from a fluffy cat so I would estimate the house gets a run about once a week room by room as is required but never all at once since it is not necessary in our home. As this semi-random schedule has become somewhat routine I have never seen the j7+ go into partial completion due to recharge needs, it accomplishes its job in a single charge before going back to base but of course the larger the house that would be different. The wood floors do make a difference as I only had to change out the bag in the base unit once. One thing that I customarily do is the recommended maintenance once a month as lint and such does accumulate at the ends of the rollers and I would recommend doing that routinely as it is easy to do in about 10 minutes. Has the unit failed on a mission? Yes it has on one occasion as it got into a room and closed the door on itself so that it could not get out so it shut down and sent me a notice on my mobile device, it was my fault as the door was left in a position that allowed the unit to get behind it and close the door on itself but not before it totally completed its job. If you connect the j7+ to your wifi system its quite an attention getter when you use a voice command to do a job and in fact, its almost scary how smart this thing is! I hope it doesnt photograph my checkbook one day and notify me its time to balance my account. Last suggestion ... do map your house as per the instructions and remember you have to re-map if you move the base unit but if you map well it does a magnificent job. I hope my review helps and that anyone reading this that purchases one has the same experience.

So, we have coretec flooring all throughout our house. We live on the water with a lot of sand and that’s the reason we didn’t want carpet. When my wife first asked me about this little machine I said, “let me do some research first.” I run the vac in our house because of our golden retriever. She’s a shedder for sure! Please don’t think that this vac will 100% replaced your upright vac. It’s good. Really good. Probably a 9.7 out of a possible 10. The reason I give it a smidge lower score is it is obviously a robot and is not perfect. I can’t type the whole name that I’ve labeled mine in the app but suffice to say it is “HouseVac*itch.” Yes ladies…my wife didn’t like that name, but it did stick. We run this thing 2 – 3 x’s a week in our home. You will be absolutely amazed at how quickly the small collection bag in the base fills up. Why? Because this robot is going underneath furniture that we all probably rarely move. I know I don’t move it every time. There were one or two times that HVB got stuck in the pantry, but it was not really the unit’s fault. We had put too many things in there on the floor. Would I purchase this again? In a heartbeat. I may go and purchase another one to keep in the master suite. That way, I can run them both and try to keep up with the dog hair! (This dog should be bald by now! LOL!) Good luck!

Ive had this roomba for 5 months now, and its doing a really great job. It cleans well. The app works great for me (android), it only froze on me once and it eventually came back. It navigates satisfyingly well (its mesmerizing). My house is not big enough for it to need to charge or empty itself during a run, but I have confidence itd get back home easily to do that (since Ive seen it B-line for home when its job is done). Setting it up was easy, and I love that I can set the rooms however I want. That way, I can tell it to clean most everything except where all the kids toys are, if thats the state the house is in today. It can hold multiple maps, so we have a second one saved for upstairs and it works so great; it just cant self-empty upstairs, of course. But it doesnt need to empty itself that often, so its a rare occurrence. But it does dutifully come right back to where its starting spot is (which I set as the top of the stairs). Self-Emptying, at our house, usually only happens at the end of the run, and its very very loud, but the kids got used to it real quickly and even sleep through it now. I didnt think self-emptying would be a feature I cared about at all, but I do appreciate it. In 5 months, I still havent had to change the bag yet. This roomba hasnt destroyed any cables that were accidentally left out. We dont have pets, but I do have super long hair and its doing great with that too. Theres a nice little feature where you can tell it, on a per-room basis, if it should do 1 vacuum pass or 2. So the eat-in kitchen area usually gets 2 passes. Because kids. I also really like that this roomba (among others) can pair with the mop bot (M6) so the M6 can go mopping right after the vacuuming is done. So convenient to just set it all up to just go.

Bought the J7+ to replace an 8 year old model that still works but I was ready for a quieter model. The J7 maps your house which I love and you can program it to pick which areas you want it to clean. Then you favorite the cleaning schedules. It’s very quiet and I like that this model doesn’t have the remote little antennae on top - it would get caught on our kitchen cabinets. I also like that it has a compartment that sucks up the dirt/fur so I don’t have to dump it everyday. We have 1 long-furred dog and white flooring so having the roomba clean my floors daily makes my life much easier. Have only have it for a couple days but so far so good. I’m curious how long the collection bags last, since we went from dumping the compartment to now bag-system in the tower.

A friend had one and raved about it so I bought one. I like it. It won’t replace all your cleaning but it is good for picking things up between cleanings. Quite loud on my tile floors though.