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.

We have 3 kids and 2 cats and this Irobot has been amazing. It cleans up crumbs, dust, hair and dirt very well. I run it once a day instead of vacuuming myself everyday. I now vacuum about once every 5 days to get the tough spots and small areas the irobot just doesnt get well enough. Out of multiple rooms it struggles the most in the room with cat litter. It definitely does not get every little piece like I wish it would but I guess I cant expect complete perfection!

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.

This is a review at the one-year mark of owning this J7+ with the dust-bin charging station. This is my seco-nd vacuum robot, having been so disappointed with a Neato I owned about 7 years ago that it took me this long to decide another foray was worth it. Im again left disappointed. J7 does the following well: - Mapping - Cleaning dog hair from hardwood floors J7 does the following okay: - Auto-empty (I have to manually empty the small internal bin and clean the sensors about 2x/month or more or it refuses to auto-empty, which means it wont run either) - Wifi speed is pretty laggy, and I sometimes have to force close the app and reopen, but this has gotten better with updates. Still, not as fast as it should be for the price. - Navigating obstacles. Rarely gets stuck with the latest updates, but I still dont know why it constantly bumps into my couch or other fixed items in the house that it supposedly mapped out. J7 is terrible at: - Pet hair on some types of rugs. I have a very low pile rug in my foyer that it just cant seem to get pet hair out of. Im not sure why, it drives across it fine, but just leaves it behind. This is despite thoroughly cleaning the brushes, and setting it force complete a second pass. - Randomly will just stop working for various reasons, and Ill finally get around to troubleshooting it a day or two later (usually a sensor needs to be cleaned, or the bin wont auto-empty). For the price-point, and the amount of time this company has been around, I expect a vacuum that just works. Id be fine with cleaning its brushes once or maybe even twice a month, or even having to manually empty its been on occasion if there is too much pet hair and it gets clogged. But, the fact it leaves hair stranded, and Im having to troubleshoot it at least once a week for various things is just frustrating. Im not replacing it because it does an okay job at pulling the pet hair off the hardwood floors, and I just dont trust the tech yet to buy something different. Your experience might be better if you dont have pets.

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.

So, just know that robots don’t have any suction power like an upright. But, they keep the floors tidy and looking good and the surface dirt and dust and junk picked up. And they gotta map well otherwise, what’s the point. The J7+ does everything it says. Great mapping, great clean up, learning, it’s fast, and very quiet. Just know, you gotta have a good strong vac for the deep clean every month. (We got a Shark Navigator for this part and it rocks.) Best of both worlds. You have a Daily hands-off cleaner and a monthly deep cleaner. Super clean house and you only have to vac 1-2 times a month or less. And your hard floors - will always be swept without picking up a broom. Not cheap but definitely a great way to reduce work without sacrificing the clean. $599 + $198 … we bought some time and effort back.

This robot is great but it doesn’t support Apple HomeKit.

Does not vacuum rooms well. Constantly gets lost. Maps are terrible. iRobot Support useless. I had high hopes for my 1st robot vacuum, $600 j7+ . I found online & studied; Owner’s Guide & “Complete Guide for Imprint Smart Maps and FAQs” I ran many mapping runs & cleaning cycles. Wasted a huge amount of time trying to get this to work as advertised. I searched for online Roomba forums for help & tips. Finally, I called the telephone support & spent ½ hr. With a support rep, who was no help at all. The j7 is very inefficient with time & battery life which would be OK if it actually got the job done. Clean the entire room & do not get stuck. It maps & cleans rooms at strange angle, rather than following the sensible layout of the room, which again is OK if it ended up cleaning the entire room. It would start in one area & w/o finishing, cross over to the opposite side of the room & start there & sometimes, eventually go back to the 1st area to finish. Often leaving a corner or different area unexplored/uncleaned. “Keep Out Zones” Unable to rotate the Red rectangle to align with a sensible barrier. I could make the square as small as 8” x 8” but always at a 45˚ angle so my ‘do not cross’ line was always a series of pointy diamond shapes. This resulted in the keep out area being larger than desired. It worked to stop the j7 from getting hung up but left too much floor uncleaned. I could rotate the map itself but the rectangles rotated along with the map. Support rep unable to help with this. Extremely frustrating! Room Divider lines: Often initially wrong. I can move the line & rotate the line but cannot make the line shorter! In one case, to correctly set the line correctly, between my tiled Entryway & my carpeted Family Room, the divider extended ½ way into the FR at an odd angle. If I was able to adjust the length of that line, I could make it correct. I could not & neither could the support rep. Maps are not correct re depiction of carpet vs. tile floor. This was strange. Often at transitions between rooms the map would have a bizarre carpet area encroaching onto tile & vice versa. Also the transition between rooms was often geographically incorrect. Instead of two rectangular rooms connecting via a doorway in between… Some odd angle would be introduced, which was just… Strange. If you have one floor and the robot can get everywhere, this might be a decent Robo vacuum. I have a single story home with a raised tile entryway. This results in three separate areas that the robot must treat as three different maps. The home base station is only in one of those areas. No matter how many times I tried, following the suggestion from the support rep, j7 continually failed to make a separate map of the entryway! It kept adding the entryway as a new area abutting the living room. This was technically true except the tile is raised 5–6 inches… An absolutely insurmountable barrier for the robot! The instructions and the support rep both state you do not need to move the base home station to other floors or other areas. Simply place the robot in the new area and then either press the button on the robot or press begin mapping or begin cleaning on the app. The robot will map/clean the new area and then since it will be unable to get home to the base station, it will stop, make a musical tone and wait for you to physically move it back to the base station. This absolutely does not happen! What happens is it will clean/map the new area and then the App says: “heading home and j7 will wander around, bumping into everything, in a failed attempt to go home until it runs out of battery life. So, in summary, I wanted three Maps; 1) front house area, which has the home station, 2) raised tile entryway, no home station & 3) bedrooms and hallway (no home station) hallway is again blocked by the raised tile entryway. I would have no problem letting j7 clean the front house area and go back to the base station to empty the bin or recharge. But, then I needed to be able to physically move it to the raised entryway and tell it to clean and then when it was done to stop and let me move it back to the base station. Same thing with the back hallway/bedrooms. The j7 is incapable of doing this. It did map the back hallway & BRs ~ 75% accuracy but, after finishing cleaning would wander around, lost banging into everything, till battery ran down. I think it sensed when base station was only 20 or 30 feet away but could not get to it due to tile barrier so, kept retracing steps, wasting time & battery. I was relieved to return this overpriced toy.

We had the i6 and it lasted nearly 2 years with almost constant daily use in a 3,000 sq ft home with 2 dogs, one of which is a Great Pyrenees! It did a great job of daily clean ups, but would occasionally get stuck trying to run over a dog toy, or get stuck on the base of a lamp or fan, and would smack into things pretty hard at times. Twice, it ran over dog poop and made a huge mess on the second occasion. Finally, it wore out save needed replacing. This new j7+ is a huge improvement over the prior generation of Roomba. It almost never gets stuck. Really its only been stuck once under the treadmill, but learned from that and hasnt been stuck since. It recognizes cords and dog toys and avoids them! Even small black socks from my daughter are safe on the floor. It is quieter and seems to clean better too! Battery lasts a lot longer so it goes further between charges and gets the whole house done much quicker. It also doesnt run into things hard like the last one. Barely bumps into stuff, by comparison. I really like that it sends pictures of stuff to all of its a temporary obstacle or not too, which helps it determine customized keep out zones for permanent obstacles. Instead of running into your feet or your dogs, this one will recognize you or your pet is there and go around you. The j7+ is truly a smart vacuum and I would highly recommend it! Now they just need to figure out how to get in those smaller spaces the Roomba wont fit, like behind and next to the toilet, between the washer and dryer, etc.

My first robotic vacuum and Im a fan. Have used for about 7 months now without issue. If only it would do stairs.