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+

It definitely works better than the last robot vacuum we had 7 years ago, but after about 10 days it started having sensor issues, emptying issues, couldnt find home, dog hair wrapped around the front wheel, etc. Familiar problems from the past, but at a higher price tag. Cleaning the vacuums sensors and resetting it seems to resolve the problems for another week or so. I guess I was just expecting less trouble for the price. Going to demo another make/model and keep the winner. Update: we tried a few different brands, and this device was by far the best performer due to the built in camera. It still needs attention every 5 days or so, but it beats vacuuming the old way, no question. If youre not in a hurry, considering waiting to see what other brands come up with once they start integrating cameras as well.

I had a previous robot vacuum but I never ran it because I always had stuff on my floor and it was easier to just vacuum than it was to go around and secure every cord, shoelace, dog toy, etc. I decided to upgrade and after a lot of research decided on this model. I definitely made the right decision. This little guy has effectively cleaned my floors without sucking up a single unwanted things. I can (unfortunately?) confirm the POOP guarantee works. My dog has a bit of a behavioral issue of pooping inside when he’s stressed. He seemed totally fine with the roomba. But after the first run, I found a big ol’ poop on the floor. I definitely was happy the roomba hadn’t run it over, but I wasn’t sure if he had pooped after it had vacuumed. UNTIL… After that first run, I noticed the cool feature where you can review pictures of the obstacles it faced. Low and behold, there is my dog, caught pooping red pawed right in roomba’s face, looking over his shoulder at it like “come at me bro.” The roomba was not deterred by his big poop energy and just apparently turned and went the other way. Thank you roomba, for not turning my house into a literal s***storm!!!

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 had a very good, 5 year experience with my IRobot 900. I fully expected the J7+ to out perform the 900. I thought I was upgrading because I splurged and also bought the self emptying bin. I was completely wrong. I have been holding off on writing this review in order to give it a chance to do all of the mapping and acclamation that it needed to do. Its NOT getting better. CONS: 1. Upon first inspection, I noticed that it was lighter (not bad), but had a more plasticky feel than the older models and felt cheaply made. 2. Its noisier than the other models. 3. It is NOT good at all in the corners 4. Seems to be confused while mapping 5. Battery life could be MUCH better. The 900 did my entire downstairs w/o having to stop and had a bit of battery life to spare. 6. It gets clogged easily and frequently stops to tell me to empty bin. 7. Its NOT easy to empty the bin manually when asked to do so. 8. Many times, there really isnt anything in the bin that should have clogged it to begin with. 9. While it self empties after each job, you still need to manually wipe and clean all of the other parts. 10. I feel the need to be home babysitting the J7+ to get it through a complete job 11. Does not clean as well as the 900 12. It needs bags. Why couldnt it just empty into the big bin and empty that when needed. PROS: 1. Very easy to set up 2. Easy to set up the dividers and room assignments, and clean zones 3. Nice to be able to do a quick small job using the room assignments. 4. The self emptying feature is nice While the pros are good, I post them with a grain of salt because they dont always work as they should. I am still mourning the loss of my 900 and wish I could have stuck with it. A LOT of money for something that doesnt live up to all of the hype that IRobot claims.

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.

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

I have been using this roomba J7+ for almost two weeks and its been pretty good, but could be so much better. First Ill start with the issues that Ive had so far. Note: this is going to be a long review. Cons: -Mapping takes a while and is not terribly accurate. I tried to update my maps after first generating them by sending the bot on more mapping runs, but it does not want to update the map to make it any more accurate after the first few runs -My unit came with a faulty side brush motor. It literally quit working on the second or third day that I used it. It would spin very slowly if I gave it a bump, but it would immediately quit spinning if the bot went over a transition or went into a corner where the brush would hit the wall. I contacted support and they issued a replacement side brush motor, but still, it was not confidence inducing to have the motor fail that early on. -The navigation is pretty lack luster. Before I had this robot, I had an ecovacs deebot n8 pro+ which had a LIDAR sensor for navigation and that robot could map your house down to the inch on the first try, but I returned it because the app experience with that bot was horrendous. The J7 uses VSLAM navigation which means it takes pictures of landmarks in your house and uses them as references to know where it is and then it bumps into things to find out exactly where they are. My problem is not with the navigation system itself, because it could work very well, but my issue is that there is no intelligible pattern that this bot seems to follow when cleaning rooms. It constantly jumps around from place to place and if it would just run around the outside of the room first and then fill it in with rows, it would be so efficient. If I could somehow remote control the robot, I bet I could clean the space in half the time just because on its own, itll hit a table leg or something and then jump to the other side of the room and then come back to do the table later and then back to the other side of the room again. -The app is supposed to show you pictures of the things the robot sees while cleaning and ask if they are obstacles. Mine does this now, but it didnt at first and I had to factory reset the bot to get it to work, not a huge deal, but not something I should have to do either. -Hard floor pickup leaves something to be desired. A side brush that spins too fast and below average suction power means that this bot misses debris on hard floors often. -My robot once had gave me a message via the app that it had something caught in the main roller and that it was going to quit cleaning until it was removed. I checked the main roller and there was nothing. I hit resume and it went on its way. This has only happened to me once, but I thought it was worth mentioning. -The auto empty bin is LOUD. This isnt too much of a con because it only lasts about 5 seconds and it always clears all the debris out, but you do not want this thing activating while someone is trying to sleep. Pros: -The overall cleaning seems pretty good. After letting the robot clean our bedroom a few times, I took our dyson vacuum through the room and it picked up almost nothing. -The bot is pretty quiet. I was able to talk on the phone while it was running with no issues. -The auto empty bin is very powerful and leaves almost nothing behind in the onboard dust bin. -iRobot has been around for a long time and they make a good, reliable product with easy access to replacement parts. -The app works really well and offers some nice features such as automations to clean when it detects that you are gone, cleans zones, keep out zones, room division that actually works (Im talking to you ecovacs), and just an overall clean user experience. -The obstacle avoidance is unmatched. To my knowledge this is the only robot vacuum with a guarantee not to hit pet poop, and it does an amazing job avoiding our cats toys, as well as streched out cords (a real struggle for most robot vacuums) and window blind pulls. With that said, the obstacle avoidance can be a con as well. Ive noticed that the robot does not get very close to obstacles at all, which is great if its pet poop, but its not going to hurt anything if it brushes up against a shoe. Conclusion: The Roomba J7+ seems like a solid option if you have a lot of carpet and have lots of obtacles that you want it to avoid. I would not pay full price for it though. I got mine for around 600 bucks and Im still not entirely sure that I am happy with it at that price. The retail price of 850 seems way more expensive than I would ever feel comfotable paying for something that has so many cons. iRobot, if you are reading this, the J7 was so close to being the best of the best. Adding a LIDAR sensor, paired with your excellent obstacle avoidance, parts availabilty, customer support and proven product longevity would leave people with no other sensible option than to go with your robots. I would gladly pay $800+ for a J7 with LIDAR navigation.

The iRobot vacuum is amazing. We love it. My son had fun programming it and it is now the cat’s highlight of the day. It cleans well and navigates all the pitfalls in our home which is no easy task. That being said I am stupendously disappointed in the reply I received for the seller when asked about an owner’s manual. There was no kind of instructions on how to use the robot or to set it up. Thank goodness my son is pretty adept at these kind of things. When I sent a message to the seller about not getting a manual the reply was “Did you look on line?” !!!???/::!?- really! For almost nine hundred dollars I think it should include instructions. It was fun trying to figure out how to take the rotating bars apart when an object got stuck in it and it started to whistle. Now it’s telling me to replace some filter that I don’t know where it is what it is or how to do that because I didn’t receive any instructions Maybe I should have given this the title of what customer service. Bottom line the product is 5 star the seller is one star maybe

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.

The navagation and AI on this vacuum are insanly good. IT doesn’t vacuum or have adjustable power levels but it is very quiet and very smart. Would highly recommend to people who have multiple rooms and need a bot smart enough to navigate anywhere and be dependable. Has not got stuck yet.