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+

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.

Like the ability after cleaning to clean out the bin.

Great little unit when its operating as expected. I used this roomba (I have 3 different models from over the years) on the main floor of my house which is 50/50 hardwood floors and tile. Unit was able to navigate very well and walked up onto throw rugs and transitions just fine. Virtual walls and keep out zones were easy to setup. This unit wasnt exactly quiet, but not as bad as my previous units around noise. Everything was going great until about 30 days ago. The unit all of a sudden started throwing ERROR 26 (very common I find out by googling for this model). Turns out, there are 5 different motors inside these things, 1 for the corner brush, 1 for the main brushes, 1 for each wheel, and 1 for the actual vacuum. The actual vacuum motor on my unit seized up. The roomba was maintenance every two weeks and was kept very clean so the vacuum was not stressed. Its been 30 days working with support and I finally got to the point that they are going to send the main head assembly as a replacement. This module contains most of the guts of the roomba and represents about half the cost of one. For a unit thats not yet 1 year old I feel like this shouldnt be. Of all of the motors on the unit, I would expect the vacuum motor to be the longest lasting, however, it was the first to go, and after disassembling the unit to do this replacement, I see that this motor in particular is poorly undersized for what it does. I still like my unit, but Im afraid that this one wont last too long either and I wont be buying a replacement.

Make sure you do mapping before starting the cleaning process. The mapping took a couple hours, but now that it is mapped out it works great! Love that it automatically empties and picks up where it left off.

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.

When it gets jammed up in a room you should get a notification on your phone before it runs out of battery. Doesn’t adequately remove all the debris from the unit into the bag plus it would be helpful if there was a mechanism that removed dust from the filter. But in all fairness, my house has never been this clean. Thank you.

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.

This is our second Roomba in about 8 years. The “cutting edge” vacuum back then couldn’t empty its own bin, set up room maps, schedule beyond start/stop and definitely didn’t have an app. In this way, the J7+ is superior. It’s smarter and more hands-off, to be sure. I love being able to start a routine via app and be able to check in on progress along the way. As for actual vacuuming, though, this one falls far short. It does a pretty good job on our short berber carpet but not a great job - at ALL - on the Saltillo tile that covers most of our house. It leaves small bits and pieces on the tile and almost always leaves balls of rolled up pet hair on rugs and carpeted areas (picture is attached, apologies in advance). I’ve gotten to the point of doing a single job twice in a row so she can pick up the dirt or hair she moved around but left behind in the first go. This isn’t the end of the world, but doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Like the older version, she will still get stuck when one wheel is up on a tile and the other is on a rug with a thick pile. We’ve come home a few times to find she was stopped with a dead battery because she couldn’t extract herself and return to the charging base. The convenience of having an automated robot vacuum is still high on my list, no doubt. Regardless of the issues outlined above, this machine does help keep the floors moderately clean in between deeper sessions with the traditional vac. I am just disappointed in the performance - especially given the price point and the fact that this is supposed to be such a grand upgrade over the earlier models. The company put a lot of energy into making a smarter vacuum that doesn’t handle the basics very well. A word of advice: the OEM bags that belong to this model (2 deliver in the box) do not hold much and, after they’re used, get thrown into the trash. Before buying more, check around for off-brand bags that are reusable and have a zipper along the back that allows the bag to be emptied.

Got on Amazon sale for $599 then they had another sale month later for $499 thank you very much Amazon for the Fin. Any way the jury is still out with this unit. Battery doesnt last Im having to find it in the house dead and take back to dock. It does avoid objects like advertised but it doesnt avoid liquids. It does clean carpet as well but Ive noticed it wearing out the rollers quicker. liquids make a mess with it turns the dirt into well you know mud then sticks to rollers filter and the waste bin Now you has the clean everything and new filter. I glad I got it for $599 really would have liked $499 at this point not sure its worth the money . Also I had the E5 Roomba prior to this one it performed as well as this one only upgrades Dock station vac, obstacle avoidance and the picture mapping. And I only paid $300 for it. so are the upgrades worth it? Yes for maybe $200 more not the $300 I paid

Ive had the j7 for about 3 months now and I am very pleased with the performance so far. tl;dr: If youre thinking about upgrading, do it, youll be happy with it. Previously I had an e6, which worked well, but after about 3 years of running twice a day (I have 2 dogs that shed quite a bit) the rotors stopped working. So instead of fixing/continuing with the e6, I decided it was time for an upgrade. Things Im impressed with so far - The floor mapping / cleaning AI cleans better than my e6 that just bounced around via an algorithm - Self emptying bin is awesome (I still check the roombas rollers, brush, and bin periodically to untangle hair, etc) - App has info on when you should replace filter/brush/rollers (didnt see this for my e6) - Base station: Having a flat base that the whole unit drives up on ensures that the charging contacts are aligned. My e6 would occasionally have issues with docking properly. - Obstacle Avoidance: This model will try to identify obstacles and will take pictures of them that you review in the App to help the roomba learn to clean better. So far it has been very intuitive. Things that could be improved / wish list - AI still seems to have a little wonkiness to it. Ironically, I think my e6 navigated around dining room chairs better, but the j7 still gets the job done. - I wish that there was an option in the App to save the pictures of obstacles to your cameral roll. It took a couple hilarious pictures of my dog that I would have loved to have kept. - Zones: When you name a Clean Zone, you can only pick from a list so you can only one zone named Pet Bed. There needs to be an option to name zones yourself. - Obstacles: When you review the history and see the pictures of obstacles, you only have the option of selecting No Obstacle, Temporary Obstacle, and I dont know. It would be nice to add options for things that are technically obstacles, but do not need to be avoided per se. Such as Table Leg, Chair Leg, Bed Frame, etc.