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+

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.

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.

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

While it does better than my dead 960 that ran over poop it has issues. 1) Seems to have less suction than 960 2) The self-emptying base is a must have but capacity on the base and the vacuum is way too small. It constantly empties itself in middle of job and first bag lasted all of 22 days vs. claimed months. At $5.5 a pop a bit ridiculous although probably 50+ knockoffs available but still around $2.5. The 960 would do the entire house and maybe require emptying. 3) It has not died w/o recharging like the 960 constantly did yet but it still seems to wander aimlessly like the 960 did a lot. Even though set to single pass it will sometimes be cleaning one room and decide it wants to go to the other side of the house and clean a room it already did. 4) While certainly better than the 960 its avoidance system is iffy. It will still sometimes get cords, towels, clothing and sometimes slams into things. At least it supposedly comes with a replacement guarantee if it munges poo. Of course, one of the first video reviews on here showed it doing just that. Fortunately, poo is a very rare occurrence in my home. 5) Of course, just like the 960 the rollers and steering wheel tangle up constantly with hair. 6) Better than the 960 in regard to getting stuck. It got stuck once under a bed vs. the 960 about every other day with the infamous stuck near a cliff lol. 7) House is mostly tile and hardwood and it does ok. The bedroom with medium pile carpet the 960 did a better job of cleaning. 8) Very mechanically noisy. Vacuum is not bad, but it clanks and clunks around the house on tile. 960 was much smoother on hard floors. Also makes a lot of noise docking and the dock vacuum sounds like my ancient 6.5hp Craftsman shop vac. 9) The 960 had a much better speaker. This one is pretty feeble. Just for the record my home is kept fairly clean, and the main pickup is dust, sand, cat hair, dog hair and girlfriend hair. Both animals are minimal shedders, and this is supposed to be ideal for pet owners. I suppose this is a keeper because its better than nothing, but it could stand improvement especially in capacity and intelligence. P.S. missed another surprise... it uses a tiny filter probably 1/4 the size of say the 960 and others. Got a message to replace my filter <1 month. I reset it and noticed they want you to do your filter every 7 hours! Full retail for iRobot brand is $9.33ea in a pack of 3 although $6.5 now. Of course, lots of knockoffs available as little as $1 right now.

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.

We absolutely love our J9! We own several Roombas but this one is by far our favorite. The suction is spot on and with 2 dogs, we dont see one iota of fur anywhere!

Firstly, Id like to say that before we bought this model, we had a Shark robot vacuum. The Shark actually vacuumed over some animal waste (my poor dog was angry pooping in response to me going back to work) and died. RIP. We bought this model as it claimed to be able to detect poop and not run over it. Thankfully, my dog got over his anxiety and went back to his normal potty habits so this feature never had to be tested. This vacuum definitely sucks up dust, dirt, animal hair etc. but I still use my traditional upright vacuum and mop and see a lot of dirt leftover, but this might be because I dont run it as I should. This thing is LOUD. The first time we ever heard it empty, we were in such disbelief it could be that loud that we checked to make sure all of its parts were in the right place lol. It is so loud that it activates my fight or flight response. I hate it. Sometimes it will empty 2-3 times in a row and I have to remind myself of how much it cost because my lizard brain wants to stomp it so bad. Theres also always something wrong with it. I have done my best to maintain it. I clean it, replace its filters, and empty out the bag yet I get a text about a malfunction about half the time. I dont know if we just got a bad one but we have had it for a year now and I dont run it as much as I probably should like I mentioned due to these issues. I think we will sell this and rebuy a Shark.

We have pets, so I got this, so it would avoid them love the self empty. It’s great at avoiding obstacles, but it’s quite a bit noisier than I thought when it empties it sounds like a airplane taking off I would recommend, but do not use at night when you’re sleeping it will wake you up.

I bought this after poopaggeden happened in my home. You know, every pet and roomba owners worst nightmare? When I tried to clean my old one out, I realized I couldnt get all of the poo without ruining the circuitry. I decided I needed the camera one just in case I miss a little present somewhere and also decide I dont want to sweep. So, the camera DOES work, but when it turns on, it misses so much of the dirt. I have that feature turned off and would only turn it back on if I werent home. There are a ton of great things about it. The app is phenomenal. I love being able to set up rooms. I love that I can enable it with Alexa. I love that I can clean the floors while I am away. It takes a little bit to charge, but unless you are cleaning a large space, it is unnoticeable. This generally makes my life so much easier. I purchased this item back in late Feb, and I still have not had to change out the bags. I am mostly happy with this, but again, I would recommend just buying the Roomba without the camera.

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.