iRobot i7156 Roomba i7 Robot Vacuum Cleaner, Learns, maps, and adapts to Your Home, Ideal for Pets, with Rubber Brushes, Power-Lifting Suction-WiFi Connected and programmable via app, Plastic
iRobot Roomba i7156 Learns your home. Fits your life.
Smart. Accurate. Powerful. It learns your home and your routines so it can adapt to your life. Unleashing powerful cleaning when, where, and how you want with a single command to your Google or Alexa voice assistant.
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30 expertise and continuous innovation
With 30 years of robotic expertise and continuous innovation, iRobot has optimized our Roomba’s
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Won’t stop until the job is done
When its running low on battery it recharges and resumes right where it left off
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Small dust? Large debris? No problem.
Experience a comprehensive clean with Dual Multi-Surface Rubber Brushes.
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iRobot Roomba, Your partner for a cleaner home.
Dirt Detect sensors find the dirtiest areas of your home and alert the robot to clean those spots.
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Learns your life. Listens to your voice.
Learns your cleaning habits and suggest schedules to meet your needs.
Does it all without you doing a thing
Your life Your home Your clean
The new iRobot Home App is here. With enhanced maps, the ability to label new objects, custom routines, seasonal suggestions, and smart integration.
Cleans where you want
Cereal on the floor? Cat knock over a potted plant? Roomba can target specific areas within your rooms, like in front of the couch or under a table.
Quality that lasts.
Equipped with advanced hardware capable of providing the intelligent features you love today, and access to our latest advancements in the future.
Take cleaning off your list
With Imprint Link Technology, your Roomba robot vacuum and Braava jet m6 robot mop can team up to vacuum then mop in perfect sequence.
Your privacy is our priority.
We’re committed to providing you with the highest standards of privacy protection, helping to make sure your data stays private, secure —and is used to improve your experience and your robot’s performance.
iRobot Roomba comparison
| | Dirt Detect | |
| | Robot HOME app | |
10x suction | 3- stage Cleaning | 5x suction |
| | Recharge and resume | |
| | Imprint Link | |
| | Clean by Object |
| | Dirt Detect | |
| | Robot HOME app | |
10x suction | 3- stage Cleaning | 5x suction |
| | Recharge and resume | |
| | Imprint Link | |
| | Clean by Object |
| | Dirt Detect | |
| | Robot HOME app | |
10x suction | 3- stage Cleaning | 5x suction |
| | Recharge and resume | |
| | Imprint Link | |
| | Clean by Object |
- iRobot Roomba 981
- iRobot Roomba 960
- iRobot Roomba e5154
| Weight: | 3.37 kg |
| Dimensions: | 35 x 35 x 9.1 cm; 3.37 Kilograms |
| Brand: | IRobot |
| Model: | I7156 |
This may not be the cheapest vacuum but it’s certainly amongst the easiest to use. My wife suffers with rheumatoid arthritis so it’s a no brainier really to save her lugging a much larger unit around. Once your rooms are mapped and you’ve assigned names to them you can tell it (through Alexa) where to go and then forget about her until she needs emptying! It’s certainly made life much easie
Convenience:
Pretty good cleaning. It may take longer than if a person were to use a traditional vacuum, but you are buying a convenience. It saves you time and you get a cleaner house. You may find you want to do some cleaning yourself if you desire a periodic deep-clean, as iRobot has suggested somewhere, but so far I’m not sure I would need to do that. I am happy with the cleaning power of this device.
Cleaning capability:
It vacuums the floor pretty well. May miss the odd bit, however I have quickly vacuumed the kitchen with a traditional vacuum and shortly after sent the Roomba round that same room, and still found contents within the Roomba’s internal bin. So it’s clearly good.
Easy to Use:
It is easy to use for a techno-nerd like me, and I believe it is somewhat easy to use for non-technologically savvy people (e.g., ignoring all of the app features, there is a big “CLEAN” button on the device you can tap to start/pause). I personally like all the customisability from within the app.
Minor pitfalls:
The device can move over room thresholds without issue, and has a cliff detector (not tried it yet), but I have had to rescue it after it got stuck stradling my Ikea Poang chair; it has thin strips of wood that sit horizontally along the floor which are some how low-enough for it move over and not hit the bumper detector, but high enough that if it goes over it at the wrong angle, it lifts a wheel off the floor and got stuck massaging the chair with its underbelly rollers. I am considering 3D printing an attachment to the chair to force the Roomba to bump into it in future (not ideal for almost all customers), or in the interim, now that the floorplan map has been generated after 2 runs, I can create a small zone on the map I don’t want it to go into in future. A bit more autonomy to detect and recover from these situations would have been nice, but certainly not a deal-breaker for me.
Conclusion:
Cleans house, saves me time.
Product easy to set up – just download app and connect Roomba to the wireless network. Within 3 hours had completed its downstairs mapping and first full clean. Control by app or Alexa very easy and scheduling gives you great control. We have mix of hard floor and carpet and some room threshold obstacles as well as a labradoodle who shares her hair with everyone. The unit handled all this no problem. Unit lets you know when bin needs emptied and it is very easy to do. Although a more expensive robot vacuum cleaner option it lives up to expectations. Would highly recommend.
For the money involved this Roomba performed very poorly. Constantly leaves large clumps of debris which then have to be cleared up with an upright vacuum defeating the object of a robiotic cleaner. Tried different methods including only small areas at a time then emptying bin , but still useless.
Firstly, like many I was very sceptical about spending so much money on a “gadget” do we really need one? well probably not, we haven’t had one for the last 20 years, so why now?
So sod it, why not, and I have to say it’s (as many would say, it’s awesome) – be prepared it’s not quiet, it’s not some thing you would want trundling around your house at night, that’s for sure.
Pros:
App controlled – once you set the Roomba on a mapping run, leave the doors open and take all discarded items off of your floor, especially if you have children. It will bump into everything, after a while it maps the floors it is working on, in the app you can divide and name the rooms individually you can also add dirty zones, like doorways with a high traffic flow, and no go zones.
Once mapped you can select a room to clean manually, or you can schedule a day or days and times for Roomba to go and suck some dust, oh you can also name your Roomba and control via Alexa and other devices.
If you move anything around or add some furniture, it will update the map, always worth setting it to complete a mapping run every few months.
This little vacuum does a really good job, it goes under most of our furniture and I am amazed at what it picks up, and we used to vacuum every other day with a Shark Ninja.
Once it’s task is completed, it will head back to the docking station to charge itself.
It’s scheduled to come on every day, in the morning and clean various rooms.
So far the battery has lasted over 1 hr 15 minutes, and that is more than enough.
I mapped the upstairs and I was concerned that it would fall down the stairs, but it didn’t, i has a drop detection system, to be safe you could add a no go zone at the top.
It also comes with a little black box that emits a beam to stop the Roomba from going near cat, dog food and water bowls so it doesn’t bump into them.
Con’s:
Expensive, but I have always thought buy cheap buy twice.
The bin is relatively small, but it’s big enough to do the whole downstairs lounge, kitchen, dining room, hallway, office, utility room and downstairs bathroom.
It doesn’t like big bits, like a dropped broken biscuit, then again our Shark Ninja never picked everything up.
If you schedule a clean at 9 am you have to wait 3 hours before a a new clean to commence, so it can clean, and recharge.
All in all I am very happy with the performance, very easy to use, and if only it could clean the stairs, so impressed I am thing of buying the mop equivalent.
This works seamlessly in comparison. They have a large house and, after a couple of scouting trips to map things out, Jeeves is now one of the family.
Small bin is the only downside. Half the size of the 980 oneI have. It’s a shame as the unit works very well, but it was clearly designed to work with the “emptying mothership base station”
1. Cleans fine for a regular run around the house, as long as I don’t leave it too long between runs
2. Works fine on my mid-grey coloured carpet. I was worried it wouldn’t after reading other reviews.
3. Being able to choose specific rooms to clean at different schedules is a real bonus.
4. Maintaining a decent standard of cleanliness is so much easier when I can turn on the robot remotely, and when I can setup schedules as per my needs.
5. The app to control the robot remotely is intuitive
Cons
1. The bin seems to get full really quickly, faster than it did on my old 600 series robot. I bought it without the automatic disposal – gotten around this by setting up schedules so different rooms are cleaned at different times, and I’m able to empty the bin myself
2. Noisy, about the same as running a regular vacuum cleaner
3. Not been able to link it to Apple HomeKit Or at least haven’t worked it out ye
I have a very awkward house. Its basically in four parts. Upstairs is one level. Downstairs is on three levels. So I needed a vacuum that would know this and not go throwing itself off steps and staircases. As far as I know, most of the cheaper brands wouldn’t know this and would either need ‘boundary strips’ or ‘virtual boundaries’ which all add to the basic cost if you need them and they don’t come with the basic machine.
After reading reviews, it also seemed preferable to have a robot that can map properly, not just run around aimlessly just waiting to run out of power, missing huge swathes of each room in the process. This seems a given, why would you not want this?
It also had to cater for rugs on hard floors, tiled floors, wood floors and carpets, all at the same time.
Plus it had to be powerful enough to pick up fine Savannah cat hair!
Finally it had to cope with odd pieces of furniture everywhere and the occasional cat toy left out, whilst at the same time not complaining if said furniture and cat toy was moved at some point.
So after sifting through a LOT of Chinese odd-sounding brands at many differing prices, I found myself back to what is arguably the brand leader. As with a lot of brands, iRobot have a big research and development budget, and with something like this, that can only be a benefi even if it does mean at a premium cost.
So after settling on iRobot, it was just down to which iRobot.
I ignored the top of the range model with the dust bag bit as it seemed it was just there to move dust from one bin to another, more cost, more bags, more faff, something else to go wrong. I also ignored the 800/900 or whatever as it appeared they could not cope with new areas.
This, the i7156 could learn new rooms, mapping and refining as it went, learning about changes to furniture positions and eventually forgetting about old ones if they didn’t change back after a set time.
I was a bit scared of the reports about dark floors and the robot reporting faults, as I have very dark oak wood floors, but it works fine on these. But that’s the beauty of buying from Amazon, if it doesn’t work for you, you can return it.
So here we go with a list of pros and cons:
Pros
It learns rooms VERY well. Just don’t make the mistake I did and close off the maps before you’ve let the robot learn ALL your rooms and all floors several times.
It gets into the corners VERY well.
It is very methodical and very thorough.
It copes with rugs well.
If you watch it, you can see it learning.
Cons
Its not keen on rugs with corners that are turned up a bit.
It can’t make coffee.
Its hard to find cons!
It turns out my kitchen units are just at the wrong height, and with shiny doors, it confuses all the sensors. That said, it does bump into the doors and sorts itself out.
As for awkward areas, so far its not got stuck, and that was a surprise as there were times watching it when I thought it would. I wonder if the same could be said for the cheaper brands?
So what foxes it?
Cables and the cowhide floor covering rug type thing, and that’s about it. And it does say in the manual/on the app about the cables. And frankly is that a surprise? I would say no.
So how does it perform?
Admirably!
Let’s not forget its supposed to vacuum. All the mapping and funky apps are no good unless it actually sucks! Which it does. The living room is wood floors with rugs and is where we spend most of the time, the cat and us two. I set the Roomba to clean this room for the first time and it filled the dust bin three times with copious cat hair and dust. Now I’m a bit on the house proud side and the floor looked clean to begin with, so where it found two tonnes of cat hair I have no idea, but it does give you an idea just how thorough it is. Helpful also for any member of a household that has asthma no doubt.
And then there is more:
Once its found is way around your house, you can define rooms. It does that via its own internal mapping abilities and transfers that to your smart device. You can see the rooms as time progresses. It needs three or four runs to get it perfect and then you can name those rooms yourself; “Kitchen”, “Living Room” etc. and it allows you to add custom names too. Remember to allow Roomba to explore every room several times before locking the names in as once you do that, you cannot add more without starting from scratch. Its a little blot on the landscape of the app and one I am reliably informed the iRobot team are working on to resolve, but its no big deal unless you are getting an extension soon…..
Watching Slave (that’s what we call him!) hunt for dust is satisfying, though I know not the point, but you can be watching him, then thinking “ahhhh you missed a bit there” yet several minutes later he’s back and picking over the missed bits. The one worry was the cat’s water and food bowls, but I need not have worried as the kit comes with one virtual barrier that can be set for either a ‘virtual wall’ to stop Slave going into a certain room, or a ‘halo barrier’ creating a bubble around the dishes, genius!
And in case you are wondering, unless you have a similar scenario, the virtual barriers are rather unnecessary as of course you can define barriers in the app once its finished mapping all the rooms.
So, shall we compare thee to a Henry vacuum cleaner?
I swore by Henry. Its a bucket with a motor and they are really very good. But I have to admit, Slave is better. How do I know this? Well, apart from the Living Room cat hair thing, we have a hall mat of the type that sucks moisture from the soles of your shoes as soon as you step on it. A great idea, except its too big to go in the washer. It was getting dirty to look at, even after a good vacuuming with Henry. Two runs by Slave and its like new! What is it that Slave has got that Henry hasn’t? Maybe those rubber sweepers?
As for cleaning it, okay, is a bit of a faff, but it doesn’t take as long to maintain Slave as it would to vacuum the floors by a long shot, so what’s the issue. You empty the bin, clean the ‘full bin’ sensors, knock the dust out of the filter and reassemble, I would say 60 seconds at the most. They reckon to change the filters every month and three are 24.99, but I rather think that’s a bit OTT and am fairly sure a few minutes with a paint brush would improve on this and help reduce landfill. There’s no doubt Slave will need spares throughout his life, but so does any other vacuum that uses filters and bags, and yes, Dysons do use filters and if you didn’t know that its probably why your Dyson sucks!
So is it worth the money?
I’d say so far yes. I think you can ignore the odd review that said it gets stuck, my house is awkward as anything and its not got stuck yet, not once. Poor suction? Er, rubbish. As I said, versus a Henry, this is better. Are you expecting it to pick up small children’s toys? Overpriced? Not for what it does. Compared to cheaper, less able robot vacs, maybe, but you get what you pay for.
I will report back if things progress downwards, but so far, I’m extremely pleased with Slave, he’s okay by me and earning his home by the sideboard in the Dining Room!
Buy one.
My first choice was roborock s4 which was impressive especially at around 60 percent of the roomba i7 price. But I had to return it for lack of multiple map support and failure on thick carpets.
This gave me a chance to compare the two vacuums and technologies.
Pros for Roomba i7:
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– Slightly easier setup with a single app, 5ghz wifi support and no need for simple wifi passwords
– Looks better IMHO and feels sturdier – as my video captures. It is relentless as a tank and surprisingly traversed some obstacles that roborock s4 gave up on in the first second.
– Multiple maps supported and the vacuum itself understands new layouts and the map it needs to operate. So there is no need to carry dock around
– Quite impressive on all types of carpets. It managed to operate on my shaggy carpet with only one minor incidence. Cleans very well on hardwood and tiled floors. Can also be set to perform multiple passes for deep cleaning
– Alexa integration is better than roborock as in I can ask Alexa to make it clean specific rooms. Roborock is all or nothing. However the reliability is temperamental and needs better integration
– Smart imprint technology lays a good foundation for future products and currently, braava jet m6 integration, but only if you are willing to shell out that kind of money for the mop robot.
Cons for roomba
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– Uses VSLAM and does not work in darkness. So early morning cleaning schedules in winter will be tricky. Don’t understand why they could not build in a led to provide the minimal illumination it needs. Roborock on LIDAR can operate in complete darkness
– Smart Imprint using VSLAM for maps seems sensible but takes a really long time as opposed to LIDAR. I don’t have time to let it roam all the time in a clutter less house, and it kept asking for more training runs. Roborock just needed 1 run.
– I cannot track it as it builds maps, and on cleaning runs. Nor can I add no go zones on the go. Roborock allowed all of it and gave a better sense of control
– No spot or zone cleaning via app. You need to physically bring it to a location and press button for spot clean. On roborock you can drop a pin or draw a zone anywhere on the map and the vacuum obediently gets there and performs the clean
– Lower battery life but it doesn’t matter as it returns to dock to recharge and resume. However this may matter if you leave it to clean on a floor without the dock.
– Seems to treat no go zones as bigger areas than what is set up
Conclusion
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Roomba i7 seems to have a method in its madness when it cleans as opposed to a very prescribed and predictive path that roborock followed, and I felt that with dirt detect technology Roomba somehow performed marginally better.
So I think it cleans hard floor slightly better in general and is hands down the better robot on carpets of all thickness.
Roborock has more expensive robots with multiple maps support, but still not as good on carpets.
In the end, I would judge a vacuum on its ability to clean and not its app, and to be honest, none of the cons were a show stopper for me.
On that basis, i7 to me, was worth the additional quids and, so far, I think I am going to keep this one.
A great idea, executed pretty well. This robot cleaner is fairly easy to set up and seems to get on with the job well enough. We had some teething issues when it just didn’t want to clean and said it needed charging when it had previously said it was fully charged, but this has only happened rarely. The rubbish capacity is fairly small on this and it’s not that great if you have small rooms with chairs and stuff that gets moved around much – all that learning for nothing. Sometimes it goes over and over the same area again and again and you just feel like picking the thing it’s struggling with up rather than watch it try again, but it does work, it does clean the room, it takes its time and the path it follows can seem to take a long time, but left to its own devices in a room, some time later, it will be mostly clean. Still largely a novelty and the effort of charging, moving around, leaving for long periods of time to figure out new configurations etc seems a lot of faff compared to 5 minutes with a regular hoover, but in the right rooms when you have other things to do, it’s great.
This iRobot i7156 robotic vacuum cleaner is amazing! I was rather sceptical about it when I first received it and really thought it would just be a “gadget” that would prove pretty useless – but I was completely wrong!!! It has excellent cleaning power and is very thorough. I never thought it would cope with my household with 3 very hairy, constantly shedding labradors but the cleaner is just brilliant at vacuuming up all the hair and it has never jammed or ended up with hair stuck all round the brush heads as the main heads are rubber. Considering the bin compartment is only small, it doesn’t need emptying every 5 minutes either. Was quite amusing first few times I used this iRobot – 2 of my dogs were very suspicious of it and the 3rd dog wanted to chase it! Thankfully all 3 dogs have got used to it now and don’t bat an eyelid at it now except if it gently bumps into them whilst it’s cleaning and they are laying down!
The iRobot is easy to set up out of the box and also comes with a spare filter and rotating side brush. There is also a device you can place to stop the cleaner going where you don’t want it to go. The cleaner needs to be fully charged before use by placing it on it’s charging dock. There is also an easy to use app you can download to your phone but I have not bothered using this.
The Roomba automatically maps out rooms as it cleans and remembers the areas.
Different rooms can be given names using the app for remote control use. The cleaning power of the Roomba is excellent, it picks up hair, dirt, crumbs etc. with ease and if it needs recharging, it will take itself back to the charging dock and then continue cleaning once recharged. It will also tell you when the bin needs emptying or if there is a problem. It is very clever the way it manoeuvres itself around and if it does come across an obstacle, it will find a way around it. It will also clean under any furniture it can fit under so will clean under tables, beds etc. It also has “cliff” sensors on it to prevent it falling over a step or down the stairs.
This robotic cleaner has been a godsend to me. I have a bad back and having to use my normal upright hoover previously was a nightmare. Now I can clean pretty thoroughly every day with the iRobot and just use my upright cleaner once a week for my stairs and those areas the iRobot can’t reach. I would say the iRobot Roomba now does 95% of my hoovering, saving me an awful lot of time and effort. It is quite therapeutic watching it go around and magically cleaning my house!
Highly recommended!
I don’t know about you, but I hate having to cut free the hairs that get trapped in the bristles of traditional vacuum cleaners. There is no such issue with the iRobot i7156 – instead it has two rubber brushes – which work together to get the job done.
The iRobot i7156 finds its way into corners and navigates edges with ease. I didn’t bother downloading the app. If I want the iRobot i7156 to clean a particular room I just put it in the right place and let it go. I was particularly impressed the first time I did this as it found its way back to the docking station without any encouragement from me. It also has no problem negotiating the change from carpet to hard floors.
The only drawbacks are that the dust tray isn’t as capacious as it might be – though I have found it perfectly suitable for the small size of home I have – and it can’t cope with stairs! So while it won’t completely replace your previous vacuum cleaner, it’ll be the the one that will do the majority of the work and bring the most joy into your life!
Our Roomba, or “Rooby” as the kids have called it, is a fantastic addition to the household. As the owner of a Labrador who sheds hair by the handful, our floors get very hairy and dusty quite quickly and, I have to be honest, nobody in our house has the time nor energy to vacuum every single day, so to have an automated little machine that is not only happy to do the task daily, but does it so meticulously and to such a high standard that – frankly – it does a better job than the teenage kids when it’s their turn! It’s definitely better at them at getting into the corners and edges too.
When you set the Roomba up (it’s very easy to do so, as it is to connect to your smartphone), the first couple of times it vacuums your floor, it automatically finds its way around every inch of your accessible floor space and makes an electronic map of your home, before returning to its recharging port. You can then access this map on the app and choose individual rooms for your Roomba to clean, rather than doing the whole of the floor. Quite handy if you’ve had a flour or rice spill in the kitchen, or you’ve just brushed the dog in the living room, that sort of thing. It isn’t the quietist of appliances, but it is still probably quieter than your average conventional vacuum cleaner. One limitation is the size of the dust tray; it will probably differ from house to house, but in ours, with our hairy mutt, it will often ask to be emptied half way through its task, so it’s not perhaps as “hands off” as you may want it to be. Something, perhaps, to consider if you are intending to use the timed feature, where the Roomba will perform its duties at a certain time each day. It also requires light for its cameras and sensors to work at their best, so programming Roomba to do the vacuuming in the middle of the night while you sleep will only really be achievable if you make sure the dust tray is empty before you go to bed and you leave the lights on for it (or have the lights timed to come on at that time, if you are posh enough to have smart lighting too!). You may also have to move furniture to allow it to get to smaller spaces and the very small spaces indeed will have to still be done manually, so it doesn’t completely relieve you of all of your conventional dust busting chores, but it does do the lion’s share of the work.
One really good touch is that the manufacturers have included a multitude of spare parts for your Roomba, so if your need to replace brushes, filters, or another small part, you have a small number of spares already, so you’re not having to order expensive replacements or spend time trying to contact the manufacturer. It’s like they really have tried to think of everything and are going out of their way to impress their customers with a quality, thoughtful product. Well, they have most certainly succeeded with me as I’m extremely impressed and very happy with our new Roomba. Thank you.
First off, there’s quite a lot of wow factor for a machine like this, which actually does something truly practical in the household. It’s surprisingly compact–not much wider than the head of a traditional vacuum cleaner. The interface with the app was fairly easy and the idea that it could be controlled from my office or on a trip–welcoming me to a freshly cleaned carpet–was pretty cool.
In practical terms, our home is not the kind of home that really benefits from the iRobot. The furniture leaves too many areas unreachable by the robot, which means that we need to move things and hoover as per normal. Stairs, of course, are not an option. And I have to say that we’ve not been brave enough to risk having a machine tumbling down our stairways on the higher floors.
If you have a home with lots of wide-open space and perhaps are living in a huge flat, I think this would give you great pleasure. But in a multi-level home with its natural clutter, I don’t think it’s worth the value, impressive as the technology is.
Set-up is much quicker and easier than I expected. Simply pick a spot for the homebase to live, pop the Roomba on to initially charge and download the iRobot app. Once it’s ready to go you’re able to set it off learning the map of the room(s). That really is all there is to it as far as set-up goes.
It’s genuinely intelligent and once it properly learns a room it cleans it very methodically. I’d heard people saying Roombas just blindly bang around and get confused with the most basic things, but this couldn’t be further from the truth in the case of the i7. I’ve found it takes between two and three runs in each room to properly build a map, and from that point you can name the rooms for ease of scheduling and automation. For my lounge, the first run was around two hours (which included one brief recharge — automatically done by returning to the homebase). The next run was 45 minutes, and subsequent runs from that point have been between 20 and 25 minutes. My kitchen was mapped in three runs of around 25 minutes each. The maps are incredibly accurate and detailed. Each time it delivers a full, comprehensive clean of the available floor space.
Smart maps are saved onto the app, meaning that it knows the location, dimensions, layout and even cleaning requirements of every space. There’s even a ‘history’ tab on the app to show full details of cleaning jobs to date — time, date, time spent, ‘dirt’ events(!) and floor space covered.
There’s a clever little accessory included that can prevent the Roomba from cleaning specific areas, either by creating a line, or a radius around it that the Roomba can’t pass. It’s a good addition for pets food/water bowls etc. Once you’ve got smart maps set up you can also create dividing lines within rooms, if you’d just like to clean one particular area.
Scheduling via the app enables automatic remote cleaning, perfect if you want a regular vacuum without manually setting it away each time.
From a basic vacuum perspective it’s very impressive. Easily as powerful and effective as my main Dyson vacuum, yet comparatively very quiet. There’s no doubting the fact a floor has been thoroughly cleaned once the Roomba has done its thing, and the bin contents are an obvious sign as to what’s been collected along the way.
I’d also heard about problems with previous models that struggled to travel over varying floor surfaces (ie; edges of rugs), but again this isn’t something I’ve experienced with the i7. There’s one room in my house where the floor surface goes from a carpet to hardwood, with probably 1.5cm height difference, and the Roomba happily rolls over the transition without a problem.
CONS.
Such is the overall positive performance and benefit of the Roomba I’d be hard pressed to find any deal-breaking cons, but there are a couple of things that I’ve noticed.
The bin tends to fill up after two 13m2 rooms, which under my current settings makes the Roomba return to homebase and await a manual bin removal. In my usage, when I’ve been in the house and available to quickly do this, it’s not been a particular problem. But anyone looking to remotely vacuum a whole floor or their home, or more than two significant sized rooms, may be disappointed. I’ve noticed that the i7+ version is designed to accommodate precisely this issue, with a more developed homebase unit that automatically empties the bin a number of times. As I’ve stated, I don’t particularly need this addition, but someone looking for the ‘full automation’ Roomba experience may well do.
There’s an obvious limitation with the physical dimensions of the device that it can’t possible reach into certain nooks and crannies. The spinning brush that comes out of the side comfortably does corners, but physically can’t get behind furniture like bookcases etc, or do individual stairs. However, this is of course no different to cases where a standard vacuum that would need the hose and tools employed. I guess what I’m saying is that it won’t realistically replace a traditional vacuum for every single job. To be fair the squat height of the Roomba means it comfortably fits underneath the sofas in my lounge, which my Dyson certainly doesn’t without a tool, so the form factor is actually an advantage in some cases.
Again another non-issue really but something worth mentioning, you really need to clear any clutter away to get the best out of the Roomba. It absolutely can and does work around small items, but you’re risking it factoring the obstruction into the smart map of the room, and also preventing it from cleaning that particular section of floor. If anything this clutter clearing has been a good thing in my house, as it’s resulted in a more pleasant and tidier space.
I was slightly perturbed by the fact the base-station needs to be permanently plugged in to keep the Roomba ready for action. I found the battery dies overnight (even when not running a job) if this isn’t done. However I haven’t noticed any particular jump in electricity usage so this isn’t really an issue. There is a feature to shut-off the device drawing power if you know you’ll not be using it for a decent period, such as when you go on holiday, so clearly this is something the developers have considered.
OVERALL.
It’s just a fantastic, time-saving and effective device that’s clearly benefitted from iterative developments over the years to deliver on its promises. While it won’t realistically replace your standard vacuum for 100% of cleaning jobs, it will probably handle 90% of them, and in the process absolutely cut down on the time you spend cleaning. The unobtrusive way it goes about its work also means that you’re likely to clean more regularly, as it’s literally no effort. In the little over two weeks that I’ve had the Roomba it’s quickly grown from an amusing novelty on the first day to an essential tool that’s in near daily use. My house has rarely been as clean.
There’s something very, very pleasing about setting it to work when you’re out of a room for a little while, and coming back later to find the tell-tale signs of a well-vacuumed carpet and the Roomba sat back in its homebase.
I’d honestly miss it badly if I didn’t have the Roomba now, it’s so good.
It is less noisy than a regular hoover, but noisy enough that you most likely want to activate it when not at home. That’s why the app makes such a difference. It managed to clean 3 big rooms in 47 minutes and by clean, even a clean freak like myself will admit that the floors are CLEAN. The bin was full after that and needed emptying. An added bonus is that the Roomba is able to memorise multiple rooms on different floors, so intending to alternate between moving it downstairs and upstairs and set it up to clean when we are out of the house. I would not go as far as say that it totally replaces my standard hoover, but budget allowing, it saves at least 95% of the hoovering time and effort. Lastly, it is a sleek device for sure and looks great in the corner of the room.
I have used this half a dozen times now, it does take some getting used to
MY first tip is to download the app before use, I didn’t and kept thinking it was fully charged when it wasn’t.
The app is very handy, the vacuum can be used without, but for instance it tells you useful things like, the Roomba has got its left wheel stuck, and then when you free it you can resume from the app.
In my house where I have hard floorings downstairs and just one large deep pile rug I find that fully charged the Roomba lasts for alomst 45 minutes which is amazing, however I suppose if the terrain is harder to move on it will run down faster.
On its first outings it explores the space available, bumping into objects and recording them.
When it has explored all of the available space it generates a map via the app and then you use the app to divide the map into rooms (a bit of a fiddle) and then label the rooms. After that point when you start it you have the option of sending it to specific rooms or doing them all.
It works far better than I expected, trundling up onto rugs, and over tassles just fine and its perfect for vacuuming under my couches
Naturally, there are catches, as you can imagine when it encounters trailing wires they get caught up in it and it drags the wires and can pull the devices onto the floor.
So you do have to think ahead and move obstacles out of it way, for example as I type it has got one of the cats toys tangled up in its moving parts and is dragging it about, but you get used to this.
The biggest problem I have found with it is my cat.
Cats hate vacuums anyway, but one that moves by itself is just too much, it horrifies my cat. I dont own a dog but I imagine it would freak out dogs as well, I can them attacking it
So, in summary: this is an amazing piece of technology as long as you move wires, trailing curtains and other objects out of its way, its really fun at first and great at doing hard to reach areas like under couches and beds BUT its just no good for pets.
I love how it returns to its base and automatically recharges there. Using the app you can schedule it, you dont have to be there with it at all.
Frankly, its designed with men in mind.