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 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.

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.

The Roomba j7 is fantastic. The suction is only okay and its noisy. But I run it every day and keeps my floors very clean. Thats whats important to me. It deals well with obstacles (our house is very messy). It just goes around them. It tries to go back to spots it missed before it finishes. In a month of usage it only got stuck once. You do have to let it explore the first few times it runs. It gradually builds a map and continues to expand it on every run. It is very noisy when it empties itself into the base and is pretty noisy when cleaning hard floors. Its much quieter cleaning carpets and rugs. The vacuum isnt very powerful. So it doesnt always get everything on the first pass. However, you can run it often and it keeps the floors very clean. I run it in most rooms three times a week. I can also tell it to clean any room that gets messy whenever I want. Right now I only have one Roomba for a two story house. This means I have to carry the machine between floors. It works, but clearly having two machines would be better. I will buy another J7+ when I see it on sale.

This is my third robotic vacuum. The first two were epic fails (neither of them had the app for home mapping, which is a feature I feel is a *MUST HAVE* if you want your vacuum to run correctly.) I cant believe I actually paid $650 (with tax) for this one, but I have to say Im pretty happy I did. Overall, the Roomba j7+ is an awesome way to keep your house tidy—with a few exceptions. See below: The good: The first day was intense. It took a total of 8 hours (including two breaks for a recharge), but I finally got it to map out my house. Its an open concept design and on Roombas map, I unfortunately couldnt tell where some rooms begin and others end. The placeholders (rugs, doorways, etc) arent set to scale, and sometimes my estimations of the boundaries were way off based on Roombas diagram. Part of the problem was my fault because I was so picky about getting the boundaries accurate. Once it was all set up, Roomba and its software really showed its strength. I was very impressed with how efficient it was at cleaning. It even readjusted and learned better ways at cleaning tight corners after taking a few trips around the same space—proof that the vacuum truly does get smarter over time, as is promised. This was a welcome surprise because I usually have to vacuum daily due to our pets. The bad: The living room is the only room where the Roomba completely failed. I tried running 8 separate cleaning sessions on this room, and it only seemed to get more confused over time. Its your typical rectangular room with a couch, multiple chairs, end tables, a few planters, and a coffee table on a rug in the center. The rug is a high pile, so I never expected the Roomba to be able to tackle it (even traditional vacuums struggle with it). Surprisingly, the Roomba *was* able to make its way over the rug, but only after fighting and curling the rug every which way, which I fear will damage it in the long run. ... AND... It never correctly identified the rug on the map. If it had marked it as a rug, I could have drawn a shape over the area and marked it as a zone to avoid. But without the map, I have no idea where the rug is in the app. I tried making an estimated guess, but it ended up missing important parts of the living area off the rug. And each time I edited the rug, I had to run the vacuum again to re-map it. I finally gave up. This will just have to be a room I continue to vacuum manually. The fugly: After cutting my sons hair, I figured Id let Roomba clean up the mess instead of cleaning it myself. MASSIVE MISTAKE. The Roomba gathered all the hair into a tidy pile on the bathroom floor, then proceeded to mow right through it and drag huge clumps onto the rug over by the shower! Then it backed up and ran more clumps over the rug again. After it had sufficiently painted the rug with hundreds of tiny hairs (which I swear Ill never be able to get all out), it went outside its boundary and spread more hairs into the bedroom. I was convinced that Roomba would somehow fix this based on its dirt detect technology. But no, instead of going back and cleaning up the mess it made, it traveled merrily back to its home base, leaving a long trail of hair behind it. On the clean-up summary, there was no mention of dirt detection, and no indication of an irregular cleaning session. Lesson learned, and I was the idiot for sending a robot to do a humans job. I wont make the mistake again. All that to say, I wouldnt trust Roomba again if there was a mess to clean up, such as spilled chips. Id be afraid the vacuum would just crush them and spread the bits all over the house. Where it really seems to excel is cleaning small day-to-day things, such as dust and pet hair. It does a really solid job of this. My house was already clean when I started using it, and Ive watched each day as it cleans up new clumps of pet hair and little bits of dust and debris. Overall, Id say its a good vacuum for maintaining an already clean home. For that, Im still pretty happy. It saves me a lot of work. I run its cycle daily and its so much nicer to not have to do the work myself.

Roomba does seem to get lost at time.

First some background - we have a yellow lab, two girls with long hair and our house is mostly (dark) hardwood floors. Our dog sheds a fair amount and within a day or so the floors are covered in fur. I was using a big dry mop to clean up the fur and hair, and it worked well, but I wanted something quicker, easier and more effective. After doing some research on robot vacuums, I decided to give the j7 a try. Weve been using the j7 for over six months now and it does a pretty good job of cleaning up the dog fur. As others have stated, it is ok on carpets. If I really want our carpets clean, I use our Dyson stick vacuum and for two reasons: 1) It does a better job of cleaning. 2) Thats less fur and dirt that goes into the iRobot bag. I have the j7 on a Mon, Wed, Friday schedule. I had no problems with mapping. Anything we can get off the floor, like chairs and stools, we move to make it quicker and more effective for the j7. For us, the base vacuum bags last 1 to 2 months. Sometimes, if there is an excessive amount of dog fur on the floor, Ill dry mop the floor and vacuum the carpet with the Dyson, just so Im not sending all that dog fur to the j7 base bag. Also, if there is too much dog fur on the floor, the j7 will fill up and not be able to hold anymore fur, then start leaving clumps of fur in random spots. The j7 requires maintenance about every two weeks. The unit should be turned upside down and then checked for a build-up of hair and fur. Hair gets wrapped around the edge brush, in the roller/brush ends, around the free-wheel and if you let it go too long, it can impede the operation of the j7. The filter should be cleaned, as well. One thing to note, the unit is rather slow. It takes a couple hours until my first floor is completely vacuumed. It runs for a while, goes back to the base to empty the dirt contents and recharge, then then runs for a little while longer to finish vacuuming. If you are not home, its not a big deal. If you are home, you just have to listen to the vacuum running for however long it takes. Overall, Im happy with the vacuum. If you have a lot of hardwood, its probably a good option. If you have a lot of carpet, I personally wouldnt attempt to use it for that.

The iRobot just finished mapping the house. I have scheduled it to clean the floors every Wednesday morning starting at 9:00 a.m. and I do not expect that it will have any problems. It did an excellent job cleaning the floors when mapping the house and had no problem going over thresholds or carpets. Since someone who has an iRobot set it up for me, I cannot comment about how easy or challenging it is to set up.

I got this J7 plus on sale for $599 so for what I paid its a really decent vacuum. Ive owned a lot of iRobot Roombas for the past 20 years so I consider myself sort of an expert. Also keep in mind I do not hand out 5 star reviews lightly. This one gets 3 stars because I had some issues with the app, and getting it set up. I also can not use the function where you look at the photos with my iphone 11 pro max. I was finally able to do the set up using my OLD ipad air 2. I find it unacceptable that the app will not work for one of the main features or to set it up, using my newish Iphone on the latest iOS software. In talking to other users this problem is common. Had I not had the old iPad I would have had to return it because without connecting it to wifi via the app, its worthless. Once I got it set up, I can do the schedule etc from my iphone but it wont show me the photos for the obstacles it finds. I get the error message on my phone but if I open the app on my iPad I can see the photos and deal with them. I do not like that I have to go get out an old device to do it and do not understand why iRobot does not deal with it. I also tried to contact them about it and got no response. I might end up just turning off the feature because its not that big a deal to me. I did try turning it off and was hoping it would shut that light off but the light still is shining even with the feature turned off. It seems like it would waste power having that light on all the time and if I dont use the feature why is the light still on? Ok so on to the actual vacuuming. This model does an great job on hard surfaces but does not really do the greatest job on carpet compared to my older 980 which had a carpet boost setting that most of the other 900 robots lacked. I also liked that I could set my 980 to focus on cleaning and could turn off edge clean. Its probably silly on my part but I like to see the neat lines on my carpet after it cleans and it seems to do the back and forth cleaning with the j7 and then go around the edges so I see these deep marks on the edges and going around any furniture. I liked that I could turn that off with my 980 so I just saw neat rows. I could always go turn it on once in awhile but honestly that edge feature is more important with hard floors, than it is with carpet. One other thing I find odd is that the app shows me carpet the robot has detected, yet there are no settings for changing vac power level and it does not act differently on carpet, so why is the thing worried about detecting my carpet? I ended up having to set it to clean twice once one way and once across what it vacuumed to get it as clean as it got it with my 980 alone. I probably would have been better off going with the s9 for carpet but I did not want to pay that much and upstairs there is not as much dirt so it does and acceptable job. I just think they could have given it a little more power and more settings. on vac power. I love that I can set it to do certain rooms, and no longer need those dumb walls. In that respect its so much better than my 980. One other thing it seemed my 980 did better with was area rugs in the bathroom. My 980 used to knock them around a bit but did not get stuck on them. The j7 gets hung up on the little cotton rugs on the floor. Im not sure how Im going to deal with that. I want it to clean our bathrooms but its a pain to have to pick up the rugs each day so for now I turned off the bathroom cleaning. The self emptying feature is great. I do not have to empty the bin and once I do have to empty the bag it seals and goes in the trash without me having to get a puff of dust all over. I also love that they lowered the height with this self emptying bin so its not a huge tower. Ive been running it 3 times a week upstairs for over a month and have not had to empty it yet. Im thinking I might just change it at 2 months if it does not give me a notice that its full. I can feel stuff in there but I guess there is room for more. Im not sure what has to be in there to trigger it needing to be changed. The bags to me seem reasonable. Even the irobot bags are only around $5 a bag which seems reasonable considering Im not having to change it often, and its worth it for me to not have to deal with the dirty dust puff all over my cleaned area. It makes me want to upgrade my s9 to the self empying base and I might do it at some point if they lower the height of that self emptying base too. Over all this is a decent robotic vac. Its great if you have hard floors but with carpet its just so so. Id prefer a deeper vac power for carpet, but its passable. Thanks for reading my review

I’m a normal guy…. Using the term loosely. We have three dogs in the house. Two puggles and a beagle, so there’s a lot of hair. So much pet hair. We have LVP flooring throughout the house, no carpet at all. This little guy is awesome! We just moved into the house about a month ago, the J7 will work without internet, it’s just not as nifty. But it does its job. With Wi-Fi, this sum bitch is my new best friend. He runs every other day, and the floors stay clean. We just moved into a newly built house, so we don’t have a yard….. we have a dirt bowl and the pups bring in a lot of dirt when they go out. Even with that my little suck machine keeps everything picked up. When he’s doing his thing he’s not loud, but you know he’s there working. It’s much quieter than a conventional vacuum. He cleans about 1600 square feet for us in about an hour and a half. The AI is great because it will recognize the dogs toys and just work around them. So theoretically it won’t smear doggy dooty all over my house. The dogs hate regular vacuum cleaners, but they don’t even notice this thing. If they are laying in the floor it actually just works around their lazy butts. I have to change the bag about every two weeks, but amazon has an off brand version of the bag that is about $1.50 each, so no big deal. It’ll tell you when the bag is full, and it takes 3 seconds to swap bags. The only thing that is loud is when the vacuum transfers the load of dirt to the base station. It is more like a shop vac on the volume scale, but it only takes about 10 seconds for it to be done. As far as purchases that I stressed about and researched, I put days into reading about various brands. This is the best purchase I have probably ever made for keeping the house tidy. If the little bastard could bring me a beer, it would be perfect!

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.