Combo i8+

You're asking this in a dreame sub, obviously people will tell you to go with dreame. I had a roomba I8 combo, have ditched it and bought a dreame l40 ultra ae last week and was not disappointed. Downside is that it's reliable on cloud, but all robot vacuums have that, unless you go with valetudo.

I've had a roomba i8+ for 5 years and it still works fine. Bought the Roborock Qrevo when we moved for the mopping function because the house is entirely laminate flooring + rugs. The mapping from Roborock is so much better it almost doesn't make sense. It doesn't require any ambient light, is significantly quieter, and does a better, more consistent job at vacuuming in much less time. Oh and it frigging mops too. It can even match the direction of your flooring when it cleans. Given the price difference you outlined below, I would save for months if necessary to purchase the Roborock vs buying the Roomba today. Completely different class of product.

I like my irobot roomba i8+

I will match and raise you a husky. Although my i8 did great with our st Bernard too.

I still use my roomba i8+ cuts down on wear and tear on rest of the fleet and i like the narwal flow quiet

I have an I8 Plus Roomba that just vacuums and I think it does a decent job even on my Persian rug and literally I don't have problems with it

Okay so this turned into a massive rant that paints a lovely picture of my experience with my $700 or so irobot vaccuum with the self emptying base. Sorry for the length, here it goes: Good luck. I've only tried one so far. Some irobot expensive model from Costco with the self emptying base. I live in 570 sf with three large dogs (don't ask, they're not abused lol) with medium to short length fur, and one medium length fur cat. That irobot was one of the biggest and most frustrating pieces of garbage technology I've ever used. I think it was an i8 something if I remember correctly. Around $700. Not a very old model, and several iterations old by irobots standards. Both the hardware and software issues that thing had were INCREDIBLE. It's absolutely unbelievable that something this company has developed for so many years and costs so much was so ridiculously horrible to use. I'll try not to turn this into a massive rant (hah that didn't work out), but just off the top of my head lemme see here: it couldn't handle hair that was 1-2inches long, can't imagine what happens in homes where people with long hair live. The brushes would get tangled constantly, and the hole that lead to the tank would clog in about 15 seconds, far before the tank filled, so the robot would just roll around spreading filth because it had zero suction. This would happen every single time without fail, and I would need to stop and clean the brush and clogged hole every single run. To access the brushes, you need to flip the thing over and open a tiny little plastic latch. This latch had a 2mm plastic ring that was the sole thing holding it in place when open, and the entire device depends on that latch to function. Insane planned obsolescence on their part, something I cannot support and because of that specific thing, I would never buy an irobot product again. The filters are ridiculously tiny, expensive, and get clogged in no time. In fact every consumable part is ridiculously expensive. The brushes (all three types), the filters, the bags for the base. Oh, now onto the base. That should have been nice right? Nope. The stupid machine couldn't even figure out how to dock itself more than half of the time. It would get stuck constantly, sitting with one wheel halfway up the dock. Other times it would just circle around in front of the dock and give up. When it actually did dock, the only reason was to charge, because I always had to empty it manually because it always got clogged. Guess when it would decide it needed to charge? When it was at 70% battery. Again, 570 square feet of space. It doesn't even need a full charge to do two full passes. It would stop halfway through its first pass (often sooner), start the long and painfully slow process of making its way back to the dock where it would often get stuck, and on the rare occasion it actually made it back and docked properly, it would sit and charge FOR OVER SEVEN HOURS STRAIGHT, error out because it took so long, and cancel the remaining task it never finished. Don't even get me started with the navigation software. "Leaves much to be desired" is the understatement of the century. All in all, this was perhaps the greatest technological disappointment I've ever experienced in my millennial lifetime. I can't believe I fought with the damn thing for over 2 years before taking it back to Costco for a full refund. This is the reason I have hesitated to try another one. Edit: I have horrible skin allergies and the best thing I've done is make a huge corsi-rosenthal filter box that runs constantly. It does much better than the TWO large Winix HEPA filter machines I had that were each rated for like 1400 sf. Jokes they were. Yes I had almost 3000 sf ft rated of HEPA filteration in my 570 sq ft space, and no they were not enough. Not even changing the expensive filters monthly. My big dumb ugly box on the other hand has been going for months now and has many more months of life left.