iRobot Roomba j7+ Review: Pet Messes Avoided? Yes!

★★★★★ Great daily maintenance vacuum. We have had our I.robot vacuum aka Wall-E now for about 2 months, and we love it.But that being said you need to be realistic about its capabilities. This is a daily maintenance vacuum, not a deep cleaning vacuum.This vacuum is great for managing your day to day floor "seasonings". We have 3 short haired indoor cats, a medium sized medium hair mostly indoor dog, a rabbit and an 8 yr old. In short our house hold produces a fair amount of floor seasoning aka dirt daily. We have mainly laminate with a couple area rugs.This vacuum does not handle the rabbits hay at all, it will clog that needs to be swept up before the vacuum runs like cleaning for the house cleaner. It does require some maintenance like long hair can get wrapped around the wheels and brushes so that needs to be removed every now and then. But that is to be expected. For the size and power of this vacuum it is great for daily maintenance but not meant for deep cleaning.I especially love the "mopping" feature for pet hair pickup. It doesn't really function as a mop more like a wet rag that is drug behind the vacuum. BUUUUUT that wet rag picks up all the loose hairs and bits of dust the vacuum leaves behind which is what I love the most.Bits of stuff on my floor is sensory hell for me and the ability to run this vacuum as many times as needed with minimal effort from me is a godsend.

★☆☆☆☆ SAVE YOUR MONEY. DO NOT BUY. GET A DYSON. I got this Robot because I thought it’d make my life easier. I’ve never been more frustrated with a product in my life:- Very very very stupid robot. You tell it to clean a room that’s 5 ft. away, it will take 15 mins to get there on its own. Won’t even vacuum on the way there, but it’ll spin that thingy and make a mess on the way there.- Does not spot clean. You got to wait maybe 30 mins for it to get to that spot on its own, and that spiny thing just makes a mess and throws dirt and dust everywhere.- Mop isn’t good. It just wipes an area maybe twice.- Sometimes it’ll just stop working and there’s nothing you can do about it. Literally look on Reddit and this is a common issue.- Even if the robot makes a map of the area and the user saves it, it’ll still update on it own and make up new rooms and areas even though nothing has changed.- Doesn’t work in the dark, even though it has a light…- Since I got it, it still hasn’t learned how to make its way home. I have to manually put it at the home base- Home base is perpetually dirty. For some reason, this stupid robot won’t clean the home base area.- You can replace the dust bin as many times as you want, wasting money, and the Roomba will insist that it needs to be changed.I cannot express enough how stupid and expensive this excuse of technology is. I’m hoping I’m having you hundreds or thousands of dollars through this review. Their customer service is the kind where they don’t really help you, they just read from a script and instead of “Okay, this is what we can do” it’s “Oh okay sir I understand how frustrating this can be for you and we here will do everything we can to help you in order to continue using—“ JUST SHUT IT AND HELP ME.Unfortunately, I’m 1 month past my warranty so he just laughed and said there’s nothing he can do. I get it but that’s the scam; this piece of garbage will only work poorly for about a year then your warranty is up. It’s phone app has a horrible interface and is super frustrating to use.Horrible product. Never ever ever ever buy.

★★★★★ Awesome upgrade. Upgraded from my old 870 (great little robot but needed to be retired)Overall the j7+ combo has exceeded my expectations cleanings have gone quicker with every scan. It’s obstacle avoidance is incredible. the mopping works well (not perfect) but better than I expected. it glides well on the floor but won’t scrub up any dried or deep dirt,I used to wash my floors 1 a week now I do a deep clean every month and half so a huge win. The suction power is about double my old unit leaving good tracks in my carpet and spotless floors. Incredible at cleaning sand or small debris.Cons would be the app is still a bit finicky and is hit or miss on receiving orders through my HomePods but overall very satisfied with my purchaseOverall 9.5/10

★★★★☆ Not bad at all for a first experience with Robot Vacuum technology. It is a great product. Still in the first three weeks the machine learning was a little bit painful. The Roomba was stoping after detecting inexistent cliffs in the middle of a living room previously vacuumed.After some trial, this behaviour stoped.Moreover, consider some aspects before buying like the clearance under beds and furniture and the fact that this product cannot close a door and vacuum behind it.

★★★★★ It’s even better than I expected. Fascinating to watch it working and seeing it deal with and remember obstacles, and improve its mapping with every pass. Embarrassingly I had no idea how dusty our house was! We love it.

★★★★★ Short version - If you have actual carpet instead of low pile rugs, this really is your only option. The only true "competitor" to this style of combo, the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra, is not rated to be able to handle a living space with 80% or more of real carpet, and refilling the reservoir after one or two cleanings is not the world ending hassle people make it out to be.Long Version - I recently moved from a location with primarily hardwood floors to a apartment with carpet everywhere except the entryway, kitchen, and bathroom. Beforehand I owned the Ecovacs Deebot N8 Pro+ which I purchased after doing extensive research and cost analysis. the N8 Pro+ did it's job, it got up any crumbs and kept the floor maintained longer in between deep cleanings. It couldn't handle a cleaning solution in it's reservoir so I just used distilled water as recommended by the manufacturer. As anyone who has done research on robot vacuums knows, it had it's shortcomings. Besides the water only tank, it also could not go onto carpet with the tank attached - A standard problem among the previous generation of robot vacuums. As such my bedroom, the only carpeted room in my previous apartment, was left untouched by the Deebot as it was easier to vacuum it quickly with a standing vacuum.Despite their flaws, my appreciation for vacuum robots pushed me into buying one better suited for my new home. So I dove once again into countless robot reviews, lists, competitions, etc. My criteria quickly pushed me to analyze the top models in each robot vacuum manufacturers catalog, specifically two robots in particular - The J7 combo and the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra. Because the three hardwood sections are separated by spans of carpet, I wanted a combo robot that could complete the whole apartment in a single run without my interaction *DURING* it's cleaning job. This is where I believe many people get the purpose of a robot vacuum, and particularly this model wrong.This is a MAINTENENCE machine - simply put, this is not full service machine which removes the necessity to clean your floors entirely. All robot vacuums are a luxury device which extends the time between deeper cleanings. I have one long haired cat, and without this device, I would normally vacuum once or twice a week to keep my allergies from flaring. With a robot vacuum, I can extend that to once or twice a month should the robot do it's job properly. Same with the hard floors; because it does the equivalent of a quick swifter job, I don't have to scrub my floors as often. Vacuum robots are also not miracle workers who never break. For the hours it saves you cleaning your floors, it only needs a few minutes of TLC once a month to keep doing it's job. If you expect any robot to never have to be touched, even the RoboRock S7 MaxV Ultra which many will say is the Combo J7's superior, you'll be wasting your money.With that, the reason I chose this machine is because it can clean my entire house without me doing anything during it's cleaning. I don't have to remove a reservoir, or in the case of the Braava, pick it up and move it to the next hardwood spot in my house. From my research, no other robot can currently go from hardwood to medium pile carpet with it's mop pad attached. I could be wrong, or at the very least this review will soon be dated once iRobot's competitors integrate their solution for this issue into their product line. As of right now however, no other robot can do this without getting the carpet wet from it's mop pad (again, the roborock S7 MaxV Ultra cannot raise or cover it's mop pad far enough to prevent your carpet from getting wet).That is why I chose this robot, especially in light of it's flaws - that of which I am not blind nor a fan of the common issues reported on this machine. It's price point even on Black Friday is roughly 100-200 dollars more than it should be (in my opinion the sale price of 900 should be the machine's normal cost), it bumps into things quite forcefully, it's mop does not vibrate or spin nor does it automatically refill the reservoir or clean the mop pad on it's own, it's quite loud verses the other robot vacuums I've interacted with, and if you don' t program the roomba to vacuum your carpet first, the moisture from mopping can cause build up in the brush housing.My only note on the flaws listed above is perhaps because I developed good habits around the reservoir with the Ecovacs Deebot, I'm fine with the lack of a mop filling and cleaning system. To me, it's really not that hard to take a mop pad off after a cleaning or to fill the reservoir after two jobs.This review is based on my personal opinion, experience with robots, and willingness to pay for this kind of luxury equipment. My reasoning for buying this unit it niche, however it fills that role successfully, and because I hadn't seen any buzz around this specific issue I figured I post this review. Thank you for reading and I hope this helped you make a decision.

★☆☆☆☆ I used this product for over 4 months and ended up returning it. Unfortunately, this product fails to deliver. It is clunky, with low-quality parts, and it always gets stuck. Several times it broke parts.

★☆☆☆☆ UPDATE 12/16/2023:It has been almost a full year since I wrote the Original Review below, and there is some additional information that I learned after I had posted it. In the end, I was working directly with one of iRobot's CSRs who also looked into other brands to make their products better. He was able to get almost immediate responses from Tech Support, and we were able to identify many of the issues that I had been having. One of the biggest is that you can't have multiple iRobot devices on your network when using this device. If you do, none of the devices will work properly, which is what I had reported.However, there is a core issue with all of iRobot's mopping devices which still exists today, and that is "conservation of matter". If you remember high school physics, or chemistry, you know that this means that matter cannot be created, nor destroyed. It can only be changed or moved. You might be thinking how does that have anything to do with this device? Well, dirt, grime, liquids, etc., are all matter. If you don't do something to physically remove them from the floor, they just constantly get spread across your entire house. The same goes for the cleaning fluid, which is never removed from your floors, it just piles up, layer by layer. BTW, the bottoms of my feet were solid black after using this for a couple weeks.I think you can see where this is going, as you will need to manually remove all of this guck that keeps getting thicker as you use it. I had concerns about this from the beginning, and they were confirmed when I bought a Shark Steaming Mop to clean the floors after I returned the Roombas. The steamer uses nothing but steam to clean, and when I first tried to use it I noticed that the floor was foaming up with soap and I had to stop using it, as the soap would have damaged the steamer.I did purchase a different system from a different manufacturer to replace my iRobot devices, and this device has been working perfectly for almost a year. At the time that I bought it, it was the top device on the market, and I had to pay full price ($400 more than the Black Friday Deals) because iRobot took so long to respond. But, I am more than happy with this new device. It is a full cleaning system, vacuum with mop and wash and dryer.The mop and wash cleans the mop every so many minutes (10+ in increments of 5 minutes) where I have it set to 20 minutes. So, every 20 minutes it goes back to the dock, washes the mop, and then resumes where it left off. When it's done, it empties the vacuum bin, washes the mop, and then dries the mop for 3 hours (configurable), something that Roombas cannot do. For the first 2 weeks that I had it, I filled the tank with nothing but water, and it took 2 weeks for it to completely remove everything that the Roombas had left behind. The water in the waste bin was almost completely solid black for the first week, and then became more transparent over the following week.I live in Las Vegas, so there is a ton of dirt that gets into the house, even with the house sealed shut. Now, my floors are very smooth, not at all sticky. Both my socks and feet are no longer covered in crud. If you solely need a vacuum, the iRobot vacuums are not bad. However, I can't recommend any of their mopping devices, as they do not clean anything. They simply spread the mess over the entire floor space and add a very thick cleaning solution to it, making it even worse and sticky. My current solution removes everything from the floor and uses a very light cleaner. After 3 refills where I add cleaning solution, I do 1 refill with water only, just to make sure that nothing ever builds up.I hope this update helps, as it brings up fundamental issues with iRobot's mopping products.Original ReviewAfter trying to get this to work correctly over the course of almost 4 weeks, I have decided to return this product, the M6 that I also purchased, and all of the accessories. The major reason being that the App just does not work correctly, and you can't use any of the devices w/o the App. Additionally, the mapping is absolutely terrible. My entire house has hard floors, which should produce almost perfect mapping, but each room has walls that 4-5 feet displaced. It thinks that walls are 4-5 feet thick as well, which has led to other issues.I have followed all of the directions provided online, and from working with their technical support, which stopped communicating with me once I provided them with a list of about 20 things that I found wrong. The App constantly loses communication with the devices, and when it does, you lose all control of the device. This isn't a WiFi signal issue, as I have full maximum signal coverage throughout the entire house, and all other devices work perfectly at all times.I performed a factory reset at least 6 times w/o any change. I have rebooted each of the devices at least 30 times w/o any change. You would think that after a reboot that you should be able to connect, but nope, none of the iRobot devices connects. I ran 3 mapping runs yesterday, all of which completed successfully, but not one of them updated the map. In the app it states that the map is not available, when I try to see the result of a Mapping Run.It will also ask you about changes to the map after a vacuum or cleaning, which is where I noticed that it was trying to tell me that it encountered carpeting in approximately 60% of my house. There isn't any carpeting anywhere, not even a rug. I could go on in regard to other issues, but I don't see a point. iRobot makes a lot of claims in their advertising, but I haven't found any of it to be true. When I did a deep dive into the issues that I have encountered, I learned that I am not alone, and that they've been reported at least 8+ months prior.I am going to try another product with the hope that it will work better. I expected better from a company that has been in business for over 32 years, but I guess that it is expecting too much. BTW, tech support has access to everything that you do with the app, and the devices. They described absolutely everything that I tried, they could see my map, and could see that I was constantly losing connection. All of the issues that I found are also listed on Reddit.

★☆☆☆☆ Horrible product. Never connects to the app. Takes 4 hours to vacuum a small one level 2 bedroom house. Very disappointed.