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 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.

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.

I got the Roomba j7+ - this little gem is amazing! Weve been drowning in pet hair for years (my beautiful chocolate lab sheds like crazy). No matter how much I swept up, it was everywhere. Not any more - I set the Roomba up with minimal effort and let it loose! It roamed the house, sweeping up everything it could find. I watched it suck in that pet hair with glee - nothing escaped the Roomba and nothing was tossed up into the air. Intrigued, I explored the app further. After it explores your house completely, I found that I could map the house (you add dividers to the edges of each room), name each room, and even mark some areas (like the pets food bowl area) as an exclusion zone. , I set up 2 schedules - morning for one side of the house and afternoon for the other side. I also set up a Do Not Disturb time. Some great features: *The Roomba will avoid spills and pet waste (like barf). It also detects steps/stairs to prevent a tumble. I watch with great intent the first time and sure enough! It stopped at the top step of the basement stairs. *You can pause a job, even if its in the middle cleaning, and restart it within a certain timeframe. If it goes beyond the timeframe, it will cancel that particular job and you can restart it at any time. *The device empties its own bin when needed. The big bin is on the home base and that can be emptied when full (comes with bags and you can get refills). *If the battery gets low during a cleaning job, it goes back to its base, recharges, and then continues the cleaning job. *You can control the Roomba from the app, even if youre not home. Im really loving this device and cant imagine not having it. My floors are super clean every day. All I do is swifter the floors, or just do a good mopping, whenever its needed. But, dust, dirt, and pet hair are completely gone! Woot, woot!

Initial impressions after using for a few days (overall, we like it): - The mapping feature needs work. The first time I mapped the house it missed several areas, including a bedroom and huge closet. When I tried to add those areas to the existing map, I kept receiving an error. Customer service advised me to do a factor reset and start from scratch. When I mapped the house the second time, it was able to find all the rooms. Because of the errors, the mapping process took 5-6 hours when all said and done. For a ~2,000 SF 1st story, it took about 75 minutes to map once. - When the vacuum returns to the dock to empty itself, the emptying process is incredibly loud. Its 3-4x as loud as the Shark robot we have upstairs. In most cases, there is no way you could run this vacuum while someone was sleeping, as they would be woken up when it empties itself. It really is that loud. If your house is 6,000+ SF, then maybe, but in our 3,400 SF two-story home, there is no bedroom far enough from the vacuum station to avoid this noise. - The app is nice and seems slightly better than the Shark app. I like how you can crate favorites/hot buttons. - The vacuum does a good job of quickly navigating to rooms on the map and doesnt get lost. I needed I will revise this review after a few months of use.

All floors are pretty clean after use except for carpet. It struggles and doesnt clean it well at all.

Not sure about it

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.

Roomba does seem to get lost at time.

If you have a dog, it is a must! great vacuum! Better than I expected.

I have had this for a few weeks. It does a good job although to do the entire first floor, it takes most of the day. I have a long, ranch home about 2350 sq ft on the ground floor. It needs to go back and recharge when I set it to clean the entire floor. It does a good job about learning where the cat food and litter box are stored. It avoids cords and takes pictures of areas it is unsure about so I can tell it if the item in its path is there permanently or temporarily. The only problem I am having is getting it to clean specific rooms only. If I want just the bedroom cleaned, it cant seem to find the bedroom. It is marked on the map but maybe the distance from the base unit and my bedroom is too great. I am running a new map to see if I cant improve the map it has recorded. I am very happy with it but need to learn how to work out its quirks. It is likely human error. UPDATE: After using several weeks I need to update my review. This vacuum requires a great deal of patience. I direct it to clean the primary bedroom and it goes into the dining room and dances around there for a little while before finally going to the bedroom where it vacuums a few rows and returns to home base completed. It tells me repeatedly to empty the bin when the bin is empty. I did not realize until I removed the green rubber bars that the majority of the cat hair was clogging up the vacuum and never making it to the bin. I think it will require cleaning after each use, or at least every other use if you have a pet. I have 1 small, short haired cat, and the vacuum struggles with that cat hair. Some of the issues may be user ignorance and the more I learn the performance may improve, but I am not sure I would make this purchase if I had it to do over again.