iRobot Roomba i7 Wi-Fi Robot Vacuum

I'm very impressed with the Roomba i7+. I purchased this refurbished and on sale for $399, which is an unbelievable value for everything that this vacuum does. I owned a cheaper robot vacuum some years ago and while it was enough to sell me on the general use case for robot vacuums, that one wasn't very impressive. It was louder than I cared for it to be, and it lacked any kind of intelligent navigation. And if it got stuck, it would just keep running until it ran out of power. The Roomba is superior in every way imaginable. I have two cats and my home consists of primarily carpet with some faux wood laminate flooring. The Roomba has no problem on either floor type or transitioning between the two. Great suction power while still maintaining a reasonable noise level. It's not silent by any means but it's not so loud that it's disruptive. Those two features alone would get the recommendation from me but add on top of that the smart navigation and 60 day bin collection, it goes from being an item of convenience to being one of necessity for me. The app is pretty straightforward and very useful, and it also has Alexa integration which is great. I can't imagine not having it now. Like I said above, mine was purchased as a refurbished unit for $399. Almost immediately after I purchased mine, the price went to $599. I think it's worth it at that price as well, but if you can catch it on sale again, it's a no-brainer. It did come with a standard 90 day warranty, but I went ahead and purchased an additional 3 year warranty through Asurion for around $50-$60 if I'm not mistaken (I don't have it in front of me at the moment). All in all, after tax and warranty I paid less than $500 total. And last thing, if you're trying to decide between the i7 and the i7+, do yourself a huge favor and go with the i7+. I believe the only difference between the two is the self emptying bin receptacle. That receptacle makes this vacuum truly hands free. Otherwise, you'll be hand emptying your Roomba after each use, which will get annoying. I've had my Roomba for almost a month now and it vacuums my entire home 3-5 times a week and I've yet to have to empty that receptacle yet, and I have 2 cats! Can't recommend the Roomba i7+ enough! Two thumbs way up!

I've been looking at a robot vacuum for a while now. I wasn't sure what one I needed, and wasn't sure about getting a refurbished one. I ordered the I7 refurbished and the actually delivered an I8, which I found out was Costco's version and the difference is it has a longer running battery. Bonus. Being refurbished, it didn't come with all theextra bags it was supposed to, but that's fine. It was clean and worked perfectly out of the box. We named her Rosie. :-)Start up and connection to my home WiFi and Alexa was pretty simple. The first thing I had Rosie do was map my house. It took almost 2.5 hours to map my first floor which is a 5 rooms. I was surprised how accurate the map was when it was done.I have a long shag area rug in the family room and didn't want it to vacuum that. The mapping function struggles a little on that carpet, but was able to map it out in the end, then I was able to draw out a no clean zone where the carpet is.It's scheduled to run a full clean once a week and touch up the kitchen dining room a second day. I'm very happy with the results. The little bits and crumbs that were around between deep cleanings are now gone and my hard wood floors feel clean all the time, which is exactly what I wanted since ims seone who likes to walk around in bare feet or socks a lot.Rosie cleans while we are at work. During the first cleaning, she got stuck in the foyer on out throw rug. Easy fix, created a second no clean area there and now she does the house without issue.So far loving to have this. Wanted a model that was able to provide a map, have no go zones and clean up the small messes. This is perfect so far.And having the self cleaning bin is nice to that I don't have to clean out the Roomba every time it runs.Go far glad I purchased and worth the refurbished price I paid.

I wanted to love this robot because it empties its own bin and was supposed to be a high end model. Unfortunately its has been problematic most of its life. I thought I could use it to clerking.an while I was sleeping but it is noisy and cannot navigate unless it has bright lights on. As it ages it gets more difficult to keep working. It often wanders around like it cannot find its dock so eventually I to tell it to end its job. It then finds its dock, empties the bin and then backs away and wanders around again. I often have to empty its bin for it, I often find it on the dock but not charged. I have followed all the maintenance procedures, tried a factory reset and remapping my house but it still is unreliable. I have had the vacuum for18 months and suspect its camera is not working correctly because its mapping function shows a map that does not look like my house. I paid a lot a lot of money for this robot and expected better, I now have another robot made by Deebot. It is quiet and sees in the dark. I have to empty its bin manually but it is very reliable. I won't buy a roomba again.

Updated review on 02-19-23: It's now been 13 months that we've had our renewed / refurbished Roomba i7, and after some heated debates and emotion-filled arguments with this little robot, I've come to accept and love it. Yes, I still hold to my former review that, at the end of the day, it's pretty stupid. BUT it's done a ton of work for us over the past 13 months, and slow and stupid as it can be (running into the same chairs that it literally could have avoided by a single, unchanging route since *day one*) it does fill a niche in a house with five people (no pets). I would say (as I formerly wrote) that you just have to calculate and properly plan when to use it. Normally, I still prefer my manual battery-powered Hoover which I can whip out of the closet and knock out the floors in no time (and with much better quality cleaning). HOWEVER, if this Roomba were to suddenly disappear overnight, I *think* I would reinvest in one *IF* I could get it for $250 or less (and obviously it has to be capable of mapping and "smart" vacuuming, as this I7 does). However, if this Roomba disappeared tonight, and $500 was the price tag for another one, it would be "Goodbye Roomba, nice to know you."Edit on 03-06-22: I've now been using the Roomba i7 for a few extra weeks since writing this review, and I just want to add that it *still* aggravates me with how stupid it can be, getting itself stuck and failing many of the simple jobs I give it. ALSO, one thing I didn't say before is that the app has a terrible lag / delay to it that wastes so much time. No other app I have does this.Every single time I open the screen of my Samsung Galaxy S7 phone, the app has to "Connect" the robot, which takes up to 30 seconds. That's a very long time! Not only so, if the screen merely times out, and turns off, then when I turn the screen back on (with the app still open), it has to reconnect all over again. Why!? That's another 10-30 seconds wasted.I also don't like that you can't stack jobs up, one after the other. Say that you tell it to start cleaning one room, and then you suddenly forget that you want it to also do another room. You can't go into the app and tell it to add the other room. You have to wait for it to (hopefully!) complete the job you first gave it, and then manually add another job. Yes, you can "schedule" the other room, but you have to guess at what time the first room will be complete. Very clunky and frankly, obsolete if you ask me.Oh, and again, you're gonna spend a significant amount of time cleaning this Roomba i7. I don't even have pets (just a long-haired wife) and long hair is constantly (every single day) getting wrapped up in the extractor brushes and the rotating brush on the front right of the robot. This thing would do an even worse job than it already does if I didn't baby it by cleaning it almost every single day. Kid you not. Now, I return you to my original review below from a couple or few weeks ago.****Reviewing Roomba i7 refurbished***: (I'm not paid or incentivized to do this review). A novelty, but certainly not worth the full $500-600, and only worth the refurbished cost of $250 in specific circumstances, or perhaps a well-planned long run.BOTTOM LINE: This robot is extremely slow, disappointingly stupid, and not as thorough as I would expect.THE CONS: I can vacuum a 1400 sq. ft. condo in 11 minutes flat with a traditional Hoover battery-powered upright for $120. It takes this robot 90-115 minutes to cover the same space (10-15 times as long), and it does only about 75% of the job that I do. It also can't move furniture around while it vacuums, like I do when I manually vacuum.Ultimately, if you don't pay much for this vacuum, it's biggest value will be in *automated vacuuming while you're not around, over a very long term period.* Initially, this thing is a time suck. It takes time to set it up, for it to learn you house, and to work out the kinks. Plus, I spent hours testing it scrupulously to see just how good it really worked. (I also tested the 980 model before this one, but sent it back to get this i7.)In terms of Roomba i7's mapping ability, this is nothing remarkable, and while in theory it works well, it suffers from problems. The chief problem is that this thing still gets stuck occasionally (maybe 10% of the time) in the most stupid and inexcusable of ways.GIVING UP / GETTING STUCK, AND RETURNING HOME UNFINISHEDExample: our Roomba i7 is docked in the dining room where there is a table and six chairs. Even though we move the chairs around (sometimes putting them up on the table for cleaning, and sometimes leaving them down), there is *always* a clean, unobstructed path along the wall for Roomba to get out of the kitchen. However, the stupid robot occasionally (1 in 5 times) "forgets" this fact, and gets itself stuck under the kitchen table, and then returns back to the base and gives up!Thankfully, it then lets you know that it failed its job (or rather, QUIT!) So, if you were away from home, controlling Roomba by the app on your phone, you could tell it to try again. But WHY? It shouldn't be so stupid in the first place. And you had to waste time doing what a traditional vacuum could have done BETTER, and in 1/10th the time. (And note: I'm not talking about it getting hung up or stuck on obstacles that shouldn't be there. I'm talking about it being downright s-t-u-p-i-d.)I should perhaps suggest that a little firmware or software upgrade could fix this navigation issue, and that would honestly make me feel quite a bit better about the prospects of using the Roomba. But this simply hasn't been done yet (not that I know anyway), and as such, this thing should be much, much smarter.REGARDING HAIR: I don't have pets, but a wife with long hair that sheds like a pet. The Roomba tends to gather up her hair and spit it out into a big fur ball, like a tractor in a field that cuts grass and leaves bails of hay behind. This has now happened at least 5-10 times in the last month. Super annoying.My traditional Hoover upright (battery-powered) for $120 is 10-20X faster than the Roomba (no exaggeration), much stronger in its suction, and just downright kicks the Roomba's but in every way. If I'm vacuuming manually with the Hoover, and it doesn't pick something up one the first or second pass, I just run over it 48 times in 2 seconds, and problem solved. The Roomba has no such intelligence, and ultimately only picks up 75% of what I can do.REGARDING TIME TO CLEAN: It takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r. If you have a bunch of people, pets, or obstacles moving around in the house, this isn't for you. As I said, it takes 90-115 minutes to clean my 1400 condo. I literally can do this manually in 11 minutes flat with a Hoover battery-powered.NOISE LEVEL: First, for all the negatives I've said above (and that's a LOT of negatives above), this thing is remarkably quiet. I started with the Roomba 980, which was way too loud. At first, this Roomba i7 was scarily quiet, and didn't sound like it was even doing anything (and yes, it was cleaning, not just mapping). This is quiet enough to run while you are on the phone, or sleeping in the bedroom. That's nice.CONCLUSION: Where this could be worth the $250 and time to set it up is as (for me) as follows: once you get the hang of it, and it learns your house, set it to run *automatically* when you aren't home, or when you are asleep. The least amount of thought going into this, the better. It won't do as good of a job as you can do manually (as I said above), but it will do a decent job. (How do you define decent?) Over a couple months, if you get it into a good rhythm, it can pay off both the money and time it took you to set it up.After about one month, I've let it replace about 30-45 minutes of vacuuming I do every week. Therefore, conservatively speaking, I'd say it will take 2-3 months to really make me happy I bought it. Again, I'm reviewing Amazon refurbished Roomba i7. (And please people: always state what you are reviewing here on Amazon, because Amazon mixes reviews up, and you can't always trust that what you are reading is for the item you are looking at. Get it fixed, Amazon!)

We just moved to a house with 90% hardwood floors. After researching robot vacuums that work well with dog hair, I went with this one. With 3 large dogs, 4 kids and a family who goes to the barn twice a day, the hair and dirt can get out of control quickly. This gadget is a life saver and super intuitive! It took a few runs to memorize the layout of the house. The app is wonderful and very easy to navigate. One the vacuum has a good layout of the house, you can break the house into zones and program it to only do certain areas. I have it set for the whole house 2 times a week and the main living areas (high traffic areas) twice a week. I have also zoned off areas I do not want it to vacuum, such as the kids’ rooms and bathrooms because they never have their floors picked up. If I had to be nit picky, I would say these two things have surprised me: 1) it doesn’t clean very well along the border of area rugs. Maybe once a week I will go around the rugs and sweep out around the edges so the vacuum can clean up for me. 2) the self emptying is awesome, but I was surprised at how loud it is. So much for running the machine at night! (Unless you have the base far enough from any bedrooms).Overall, I’d say this is a great vacuum and I’d buy it again in a heart beat!

I upgraded from an e5 to this. I have a corgi mix that sheds a lot. The e5 won’t vacuum over dark rugs so it was a headache - and it constantly got stuck. The i7+ vacuums over dark rugs thanks to enhanced cliff detection sensors that helps it differentiate between stairs and a dark floor/rug.The keep out zone feature is fantastic! It helps keep Roomba from vacuuming near pet feeding bowls and sucking up water, getting stuck in weird spaces like bathrooms, etc. the mapping feature is really nice and pretty accurate.Today it vacuumed, returned to base, emptied into the +base, resumed vacuuming, then returned to base to charge for maybe 30 minutes and then finished the last room and went to base. The e5 would get stuck under so many pieces of furniture but the i7 navigates them and doesn’t get stuck (so far).It doesn’t always return to base to empty the bin mid cleaning, there was just that much fur today!This is the time saver I needed. For reference I use it downstairs only on tile/vinyl floor with an 8 x 10 rug in my living room.The one thing that is loud is when it empties the bin into the base; it sounds like a shop vac. But it’s about 5 or so seconds long, so very tolerable. I just wouldn’t run it when you’re asleep, it might startle you.

I must admit, I was very skeptical when I purchased this refurbished iRobot i7. Not only about it being a "refurbished" item, but the whole idea of an automated vacuum. We found ourselves having to constantly sweep or vacuum inside our back sliding door because of the dog dragging dirt, mulch, leaves into the family room. We have a short haired dog that moderately sheds, the i7 has had no problem picking up the dog hair without clogging. We have wall-to-wall carpet in one room and hardwood/hard surface floors with area rugs in a couple other rooms, the i7 has had no problem transistioning from the hard surface to rug (and back again) and cleaning all of them. It has the ability to "learn" your floor plan and makes a map of it. You can then direct it to vacuum by room(s) or the entire house. You can even identify "problem areas" for it to vacuum more frequently. You can set up a schedule or use the app to run it. It also connects to Google Assistant or Alexa. Through those devices, you can direct it to clean one or more rooms. You can even set up "no go" zones so it doesn't bump over plants, dog dishes, etc. I included a photo of the floor plan "map" the device made of our first floor. It takes the i7 two entire house vaccuming sessions for it to "learn" and make the map. You then edit the map by delineating and naming the rooms. I set up a couple "no go" zones to protect small potted plants and the dog dishes from being bumped and possible knocked over. After my initial skepticism, I am VERY impressed with this i7 iRobot two weeks into my ownship of it.

This is my second experience with Roomba, the first being a borrowed I3. While it was fairly efficient at pick-up, it's cleaning paths were horribly programmed. It was so confusing. It would only clean a portion of a room or area before exiting and traveling to the other end of the house to do the partial area it had covered earlier, then exit to another area for a partial circuit, then on and on. Such a waste of battery, and constantly upsetting the dogs. I returned the I3 to my friend, then purchased a Lydsto R1, because of it's mapping capability and it's bagging station. At $250 on an eBay deal, it seemed like a good choice. I was impressed with it's mapping and programming, but it failed miserably at efficient pick-up of not only my dogs' long hairs, but even small sandy-sized debris. Had to return it and had a horrible ordeal getting refunded from the eBay seller. Lesson learned! Ended up with this refurbished I7 with bagging station, in hopes that it would finally do the job. While it is far better at picking up what it comes across, I'm very disappointed with the mapping function. The programming seems to be the work of some high school robotics class. After numerous, labor intensive attempts, it still has yet to log a complete map of my house. The third bedroom, bathroom, and an entryway on the east end of the home have not been recognized. Cleaning is always accomplished there during a run, and Roomba always covers those areas when I do yet another mapping trip, but still is won't add to the map. Also, the machine often doesn't recognize the keep-out zones I established, wasting time trying to navigate through the dining chairs that are always tucked under the table for a run, and it gets stuck under the recliner when it ignores that zone. Oh, and also, it sometimes can't find home base, but that's rare. So... I'm going to stick with this, regardless of it's shortcomings. It doesn't seem strong on the suction, but picks up better than the Lydsto that boasts a more powerful vacuum. The double rollers without brushes seems to be the right method for our dog hair, (though I always do a quick sweep before a run). The bagging station is great, even with the loud noise, which lasts just a few seconds. And I've had no issues with it being a refurbished machine. Seems brand new in every respect.

We've had this for about a year, and it works very well. For a while, it had trouble completing jobs, but it turned out that's because it didn't have enough light to see where it was. We've since changed the schedule so that it runs during the daytime, and since then it has rarely had any problems. Yes, it would be nice to have it run while we're sleeping, but it's not too inconvenient to have it run while we're in the room.The tech support is good.

I was a Roomba early-adopter because I love German Shepherds and I’ve always disliked the chore of vacuuming. I had the very first model released. I’ve worn out two Roombas and a Shark robot vacuum.The good: 1. It’s a robot vacuum. It even empties itself. How cool is that? 2. This is the first robot vacuum I’ve used that really can thoroughly vacuum my whole 1600 square foot house in one go. It took about 4 hours but it did it. It really can empty itself out or recharge and keep going. 3. The app lets me set a schedule and has locator feature for when the robot gets stuck (which it will, see below).The bad: 1. This is my fourth robot vacuum and they all feel like something that should be in the beta testing phase, not a polished ready-to-go design. They find new and interesting ways to get themselves stuck very often. Things like cords and shoelaces are a particular problem. I get that they’re solving a pretty hard problem, but a little more testing would be appreciated. 2. The mapping feature is cool, but it’s also creepy. The iRobot company now has a map and photographs of the inside of my house and knows when I’m not home. It would be possible to do rather bad things with that information. 3. In the past, mine haven’t seemed to last very long. If I spent the same money on an ordinary vacuum, I would expect it to last 20 years. These seem to last about 3. Granted, I work mine harder than most people would, but I think one medium size house with one large dog who sheds a lot is well within what the robot should be designed to handle. 4. It only came with one bag for the base. It’s a minor thing, but given what these things cost, that felt a little stingy.Overall, I’m willing to tolerate the flaws in order not to have to vacuum. When this one breaks down I’ll buy another one like it.