iRobot Roomba j7+ (7550) Self-Emptying Robot Vacuum – Uses PrecisionVision Navigation to Identify & Avoid Objects Like Socks, Shoes, & Pet Waste, Smart Mapping, Self-Empty for Up to 60 Days

UPDATE #2: It has now been several more months. I love it I love it I love it. One major issue for me was that it was a pain in the butt to carry the base around in a multilevel home. After rereading the instruction manual I discovered that I’m not supposed to do that, that you can just carry the machine around and place it. As long as it does not have to empty the bin or recharge, it does not necessarily have to begin and end on the charging base. Ok so this has made my life so much easier. I did have to update my maps several times to teach it not to expect the base when it was done, and it has since behaved perfectly well. (The first few times it wandered around for a long time and the program said “searching for base” and I felt sorry for it 🤣. I didn’t want to delete my map that had the base on it and start over because I had to teach it to stay off of a shaggy rug and that took a lot of tweaking). I also have stopped being stingy with use and have given in and am carrying it around and running it more often and sometimes going over areas twice to get all the cat litter, and my house stays so clean. That means I will have to change the filters and rollers more often but oh well!UPDATE: It has now been another month or so. I like the machine more and more and am changing the review to 5 stars. I have continued to tweak the programs I have set up on the app, and its performance improves. Since we have a cat, a major issue is the cat litter which she manages to drag all over. The machine sometimes will miss some litter in certain areas, and since we have dark floors it shows up brightly and drives me nuts. I can tell the robot to go over certain areas twice and that solves that problem. (Honestly the cleaners we hired would sometimes miss just as much if not more because the tiny specks get ground into the carpet). Another thing is that on our smooth wooden floors, the edge sweeping brush sometimes seems to scatter small particles around rather than pushing them into the rollers, and I have to have it go twice in places for that reason too. But with these tweaks it has been doing a really good job!! The suction is very good and the machine is surprisingly quiet. Also I am getting used to it and learning to leave it alone and not follow it around, so I’m much more relaxed about it. Another good thing—in the app the machine will tell you when it needs maintenance. There is a countdown to when I will need to change the filter and rollers, and I see that I will not need to change them nearly as often as I thought! The manual says filter every 2 month and rollers every 6 months, but according to my runtime it is going to be about double that, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice 😉.ORIGINAL REVIEW:I do like this little machine. I hate and I mean HATE vacuuming and my husband has a bad neck and can’t vacuum. We had hired a cleaning service but it made the cat go crazy and just became much more stressful than it was worth. So we decided to get this realizing it would pay for itself (in the absence of the cleaning service) after a few months.You need to pick up all your things and allow it to make mapping runs when you first get started. The interface is an app on the iPad and it is very straightforward to operate, and you can make detailed programs and constantly tweak them based on the machine’s performance. The suction power and ability to pick stuff up—including cat hair and cat litter—is excellent. It is not very loud. The cat is not bothered by it, and EVERYTHING bothers her, so I am kind of amazed by that. I love that it goes back to its base and empties itself when its little bin is full.I am giving it 4 stars instead of 5 for a couple reasons. It is godawful expensive. I have learned that the replacement rollers and filters are kind of expensive and have to be changed very regularly. Also—and I admit a lot of this is my issue due to OCD—so far I feel like I have to babysit it and be aware of where it is and what it’s doing, which defeats some of the purpose of getting the machine to do the work in the first place. I am hoping this will improve in time since I have tweaked some of the programs and the machine is learning, and I just need to get used to it. Some of this is due to the fact that I have a multilevel home and have to carry the base around and then tell it to go, rather than just setting programs and ignoring it, which can’t be helped. It would be much better in a single level.All in all it’s really good, and has the potential to be great, but time will tell. We will see if the rollers and filters have to be changed as often as it says. Probably the filters do, because of my cat, but maybe the rollers can last a little longer.

Within 3 weeks of purchase, started to have problems. Robot would suddenly decide to stop during a cleaning run, state it was blocked (nothing there) and die on the spot. Lots of reboots and resets for weeks. Robot refused to work.Along the way, the robot would not clean stating the bin was full. It was empty. Discovered via Google search (since iRobot doesn’t provide real answers) that the problem had to do with the bin sides not being clean which did not allow the full bin sensors (long black bars on the robot along the bin’s location) to transmit a beam. If the beam did not make it through from one side to the other, regardless of the bin’s actual empty/full status, the robot would assume (incorrectly) the bin was full.The bin needed to be cleaned often if it had accumulated lite amounts of dust on the side. If not, the errors took place. Didn’t matter if the continue to clean if bin is full option was selected. Robot would ignore the selection and just not move. This is a very poor engineering and software design. Other manufactures, according to others and manufacturers don’t use the same design as iRobot due to such false errors taking place.Getting service folks to provide service and solutions is a goat rope indeed. Have to jump through hoops in order to get attention and then, have to start all over again because service folks just follow a script and don’t listen/pay attention to the problems taking place in the real world.After 5 months of trying to get the robot to work properly, having 3 replacement robots and 3 replacement clean bases, it appeared the 2 finally were communicating with each other and worked. Nah, just an iRobot mean joke. Within a week of the 3rd round of replacements, the clean bin issue came up. No matter how many times the bin was cleaned, no matter how many reboots, and changing bins, the robot refused to work.Too late to return to Amazon and iRobot will not refund money due to having purchased the robot system via Amazon and not directly from iRobot. The iRobot punishment for purchasing via Amazon? No refund and just provide (maybe) another (4th) dumb robot and clean base.Had enough of the robot and iRobot. Got so frustrated I provided the robot and the clean base a new home where the two can live together in peace and not mess up ever again. The home – the landfill.No more iRobot robots. As time has gone by, have gone through several models. Progressively they have gotten more technologically “advanced” but not smarter. They run into things more often, forget where they are, forget where the base is and are not consistently reliable. The engineers don’t have regular people test the robots before they are sold. Theory and reality don’t mix at the robot factory.They sure have gotten more expensive. Have noticed they go on sale often; guess iRobot can’t sell them due to problems along with competition getting more sales.Awaiting my new Roborock. Has lidar (iRobot doesn’t believe in it thus need to have lights on for the robots to find their way) which allows the robot to work without lights. I had to buy lamps and timers so the Roomba could work. An added expense. iRobot never disclosed prior to the sale light is a requirement for the robots to work. The light near the camera does not provide enough light for the Roomba to work properly. Even with lights, the Roombas get lost or don’t work properly.I hope the Roborock works. While all the robot brands have problems (ratings are about 4.3-4.5), crossing fingers this one excels over the Roomba.Thus, after over a decade of using only Roombas, we have parted ways permanently and do not recommend to anyone that wants value for their hard-earned money when purchasing a floor robot. I’m sure the Roomba and its base now have plenty of dirt covering them from the hot sun in the landfill – where they belong.UPDATE: 8/25/2023The second J7+ began failing more often a few days after the first J7+. Gets lost, stops all of a sudden and dies. Sometimes it said it is stuck, it's not, sometimes is said out of power, yet about 2-3 feet from clean base and sometimes just stops, ends job without a reason.Have had to replace the battery (robot about 2 months old). It sometimes forgets to clean per the clean map guidance.Speaking of clean maps, it has lost the maps several times which forces me to remap the entire floor. It, like its twin, no longer provide a means to add favorites to the routine. iRobot technical support have no idea how to get the feature back even with all of their "research". What I have been able to determine is that this same issue has occurred and is occurring to others.iRobot is busy lowering machine prices but not as busy fixing existing problems.The Roborock we purchased to replace the J7+ has been great. Not only does it vacuum very well, it mops too. All in one machine. The machine is quieter, doesn't have problems and gets the job done in about 40% less time (the robot uses more intelligent algorithms to move to clean). I no longer have to go around turning on lights to help the (Roomba) robot find its way. The Roborock uses lidar which does not require lights and is much more efficient and effective in its journey.We should have tried out the Roborock instead of the falling apart and unreliable Roomba. Would highly recommend to those who want to spend their money wisely to try the Roborock with the features they need and not look at the Roomba. The Roomba was a pioneer back in the day of robot cleaning but those years (ag0) have long past. All of the competition proves the Roomba is no longer as good as it used to be. Now, just lots of marketing/advertising to make the it sound and look good but from the real world of a purchaser, that's not the case. Save your money and frustrations, look elsewhere other than iRobot.