iRobot Roomba i7+ (7550) Robot Vacuum with Automatic Dirt Disposal – Empties Itself for up to 60 days, Wi-Fi Connected, Smart Mapping, Works with Alexa, Ideal for Pet Hair, Carpets, Hard Floors

The iRobot I7+; the Good and Bad
Well, it’s been about 18 months since I bought the iRobot i7+ and so far things are going fine; no problems with it so far. I did do a good cleaning recently and, after looking at instructions on various YouTube site I found how easy it was to clean around wheels, clean single wheel in front of iRobot, to remove strings etc. I started off without researching and was struggling but after finding out how to really do the job it was a piece of cake. The iRobot designers really too all this cleaning into consideration when designing the product.So far, maintains 5 star rating.The following is a summary of my experience with my new iRobot I7+I bought this vacuum to replace my Neato Connected which was very good at cleaning but left a lot as far as reliability; in less than 5 years I had to have it repaired 3 times at a cost of almost $400. This for a relatively expensive robot. When the battery failed ($70.00) and the robot started not knowing where it was I decided enough is enough.When I got the iRobot I followed installation instructions which were pretty straight forward, updated the software (again very easy), and then waited for it to fully charge. I then sent it out to clean my whole house (about 2200 sq ft). It ran for about a hour and then went back to base to recharge. I started up after charging and ran for another 10 minutes when it stopped with error message saying problem with dust bin on robot (not dustbin in base). One of nice things is that error message is displayed in iPhone app which also has a “Learn more” button which brings you to a little tutorial on how to resolve the problem. Followed instructions and cleaned the dust bin in the robot. Kind of a nice feature. Turned it back on and 5 minutes later same message. Did this several times and was about to just send it back but decided to give YouTube a try. Entered message text and got to video showing same stuff as Learn More but also said to take out the two brushes and clear anything there. Sure enough, there was a paper clip there which was stopping the brushes. Cleared the paper clip and it’s been fine. Fault was with Learn More. With what appears to be a very user friendly function, I expected that anything there would tell me about ALL sources and resolutions regarding the problem so this was just an incomplete implementation of the facility.Sent the iRobot to to clean my whole house a 3-4 times and it was still not able to put together a full view of the house so that I could use the map to tell it t clean just one area. After looking around a while a found an option in the iPhone app that says “Just go out an map the house without doing any actual cleaning” which allows the whole house to be mapped on one charge. Once that was completed I was able to see my house map and label rooms, adjust walls, etc. Once I had my house mapped I was able to: 1) name rooms 2) adjust walls between open rooms 3) create “cleaning areas” consisting of one or more rooms. Really a nice feature worth the upgrade from I3 to I7.Just sent the robot out to clean just my bedroom and it started fine, went directly to bedroom, cleaned whole room, and then returned to base and emptied it’s dust bin — just as expected.Oher things to watch out for:1) Robot picked up small piece of paper (1.5″x2″) and sucked it into it’s bin. But when it went to base to be emptied the paper blocked the opening in robot which allows debris to be drawn into base. Robot threw another message and I was able to see the problem. Removed paper and all OK.2) Regarding self-emptying…works good but VERY VERY load for 15-30 seconds while debris from robot into base is being processed. Would not recommend running this during the night; the noise will surely wake you up.3) Dust bin in robot is very small compared to my previous Neato vacuum. If you do not get the I7+ with self-emptying base, depending on size of your house, you may have to empty bin multiple times. Of course, my Neato died a couple months ago so there was some accumulated dust and debris picked up in this first cleaning.That’s it for day one and two. Once past the “problems” the I7+ does a good job cleaning, is pretty quiet while running, and has some nice features in the iPhone app. Assuming I run into no further problems I’d recommend get the i7+ (no s much the I7 due to size of dust bin).Day 2-7; no problems and my house is staying a lot cleaner than depending on me to sweep and dust.Couple months later … Had some problems with robot that were addressed via conversations with support team over three days — who very very nice. After factory reset and full mapping run problems went away. One suggestion … I was having t he robot clean the while house (2200 sq ft) in one pass which required a few stops for recharging. The result was that it sometimes did not make it back to charger or forgot where it left off. My solution was to have it clean 1/4 of the house each day for 4 days. Since doing that I’ve had no problems.

Over the years I have had about a half dozen robot vacs, from four different manufacturers. The early ones were lacking in power and battery, but they worked well enough until they croaked after two years each. I bought an iRobot (a lower-priced vac than this one) a couple of years ago, and since then it’s been busily cleaning my bedrooms and offices effectively. It’s worked almost flawlessly, as long as I clean it properly, replace the replaceable bits at intervals, and my only complaint is it’s a bit noisy. I’ve been looking at this i7+ for a while now, and finally clicked Buy. The goal was to install it at my second house, where I visit every couple of weeks, and let it keep the dust and pet hair under control while I’m not in the house, replacing the vac bag when I do visit. To be honest, I wasn’t optimistic things would go well, but I have been pleasantly surprised.A few things stand out right away compared to the older iRobot I use in my office. To start, the noise of the vac is a lot less…it’s more than a buzz, but it’s not sounding like industrial cleaning devices on my floors! Second, the battery seems to last longer; I can get almost an hour out of the i7+ while my older iRobot complains after about 20 minutes. Third, this one is a lot smarter: it remembers where it’s cleaned and continues where it leaves off while running back to the base station to empty and recharge. Fourth, my older one keeps getting stuck hanging off a stair or wedged in a corner between furniture; this i7+ has not hung up on a step yet, and has managed to extricate itself from several tight spots. Lots of improvements!As for the auto dirt disposal system, so far it’s worked fantastically. Either under control of the app or the robot, the vac snuggles in to the charging station and a vacuum starts up (quite noisy compared to the robot…about the same as a regular vac) and sucks all the dirt from the robot dirt container into the bag in the upright unit. It takes about 15 seconds, and a quick inspection shows it does a really nice job of emptying the robot. every now and again you still need to go in and give the rollers a clean (especially if you have pets, like I do) and wash out the dirt bin, but I am doing that once every two to four weeks, which is fine. As for the dust bin in the receptacle, it tends to last about four weeks (the first house cleaning it filled in two days, but four dogs and a cat were the reason). I suspect without pets I would only replace the bag every month of two. The bag itself is a clever design with a sliding door to ensure you don’t spray dirt all over when you remove the bag.I’ve been really impressed with this i7+. Its’ not caused one issue so far, and while that’s too good to last, I’m delighted with the system. So much so that I’m considering a second for the other floor of the house. This isn’t inexpensive, but when I think I pay office cleaning staff to do the same job vacuuming the floor, this pays for itself in a month! I’ve read lots of negative comments in posts here and elsewhere, but so far, I have zero to complain about.Update: After two years, these i7s are still working perfectly. I have several s9+ too, and they are a pain to work with; they always jam, stop working, and report dirty sensors every day. The i7s just work, perfectly. I will be replacing my s9s with i7s. I can’t recommend the i7+ enough!

I ordered an i7 with automatic disposal last week. Received Tuesday which was awesome.First the good: the mapping process on it is really quite amazing. Using the training feature kept battery life down and allowed it to map my house reasonably quickly. Within the last 5 days we’ve mapped the downstairs and upstairs. It cleans my hardwood floors really well and the carpet looks great too. All in all it does what I wanted it to do.The bad: it started squeaking loudly a couple of days ago. At first we thought it was something caught around one of the wheels so we tried all of the cleaning stuff recommended online. But the squeaking seems deeper in the machine. The machine still works but the squeaking is ridiculously annoying.I called customer service today. The guy tried to help, he really did, but it was no help at all. First he wanted me to let him hear the noise but the noise was so high pitched it didn’t translate over the phone. So we tried a video chat. No help either; he couldn’t hear it. So then I was to upload a video. Going to upload the video on the page he provided gave me an error because .mov files were not allowed. Fine. He called me back and told me to try again. So I sent a picture of the error since it didn’t suddenly allow that file type. To work around that I threw my video on dropbox. He calls me back again, but didn’t see the dropbox link. Finally he sees the link but at first doesn’t hear the squeal. Then hears the squeal so suggests I return to Amazon. This is annoying for a few reasons: it is just the robot malfunctioning, not the base, so now I have to package the item up, return to amazon, repurchase, and redo the whole thing? That’s crazy. I say so, so he goes to his training team to see if they can help. Apparently they all decide that it is something caught in the suction. Only problem? The video was a training run, not a vacuuming run, so the machine is actually not suctioning at all.Back to square one: I am supposed to return it to amazon. It makes me a little leery of buying an almost $1000 vacuum from a company that does not adequately service its warranties. I, as the customer, should not have to repackage the whole thing, return it, and repurchase it. What should have happened? They should have sent me a new robot and I should have sent this robot back. End of story.

I ordered this product (i7+) with the intention of trying it out once or twice and, considering the price tag, likely returning it unless it exceeded expectations. I had a roomba years ago and I was interested in seeing how far things had come.I was not disappointed.I have now owned the product for a couple of weeks and will not be returning it. I have nothing but positive things to say. The battery life is impressive – it has done up to 90 minutes before returning to base to charge. The initial few times of vacuuming our main floor took quite a while as it was still learning the area. Now, if I send it to the Kitchen it can be done in 10-15 minutes. One does not need to look further than inside the brilliantly designed vacuum bag after a few rounds of cleaning to see this product is worth its weight in gold. It pulls up SO much dirt!This brings me to the app, which I use on iOS. I am the kind of person who is highly critical and believes the vast majority of apps available today, especially those relating to “smart XXXXXX”, are utter crap. I was so pleased to see that the iRobot app is not only not utter crap, it is an absolute joy to use. From setting up a schedule, to working with the map – adding dividers, rooms, and ‘no go’ areas, it’s all worked flawlessly and intuitively. We have become so accustomed to needing to try things repeatedly or wait for spinning circles due to connectivity issues etc., well, not with this device. It’s amazing that if you press pause on the app, the vacuum almost instantaneously emits a sound and stops dead in its tracks.I want to provide a fair review, so the only thing I will be critical of is the noise level. Yes, it’s kinda loud, which means we can’t run it in the middle of the night due to having tenants downstairs. The loudest part of the ordeal is when it docks with its home base and empties itself. But honestly, it’s a damn vacuum people, what did you expect? And to be honest, the insanely powerful sounding transfer is kind of exciting because you can hear in the cacophony of it all the crazy amount of dirt it’s just saved you from vacuuming yourself.