iRobot - Roomba j7 Series

I have two dogs and two cats and the j7+ works just fine

I have the j7 and I have taken it apart more than once to clean it and I'm not super happy with it. I got it at Costco so it might go back before they go belly up. I'll try it again a few more days but I didn't even have it plugged in for 6 months... because we had renovations going on in the house. It's Black Friday week but I prefer to buy from Costco because they do have such a good return policy.

I have a roomba j7 and I have two dogs, it's great with dog hair

I have a J7 as well and it works pretty good but there have been some times when it disconnects from WiFi and I would have to reset the whole vacuum and go through the set up again for it to work again. I think I got my first one about 5 years ago though, so maybe it's been updated since

Me, too. This is why I'm here--time to replace Dumbot. This will be my 4th robot vac and definitely not looking at iRobot!

My J7+ has always sucked, in all the wrong ways. I named it Dumbot. All I hear is Alexa saying "your Dumbot is stuck". Never understood the great reviews for it.

Your experience must be with the cheaper Roombas. I bought a $500 Roomba and base and my experience was the same as yours. Hot trash. Sent it back and even that was a bad experience, they never refunded me and I had to do a credit card charge back. But then I bought a $250 roborock + base. Wayyyyyy better. Never have to tinker with it. Completes our kitchen, dining room, main bedroom, and living room in 35-40 minutes. Does multiple floors/mapping. Vac and mop. A lot quieter than the Roomba. Very clean floors, like I'm blown away at how well it vacs, the Roomba left little crumb piles  everywhere. I have not manually vacuumed anything since I've bought it other than to spot clean when my dogs destroy a toy or something. Overall there is a reason irobot is going out of business. Roombas are overpriced and perform poorly. But not all robot vacuums are created equal and other brands are both cheaper and higher in quality.

Irobot has a camera for object avoidance. I think it works pretty great.  It worked perfectly in the beginning, but God forbid when you are training the ai(?) by reviewing the photos you ever allow anything as "not an obstacle" then it will run over similar things forever. Like string, after I told it a cord off the ground was not an obstacle. :(

I have "only" owned 3. A ecovacs which always broke, a brava moping one and a i robot j7.  My favorite is the i robot j7. It has an auto empty version, but I have the regular. It has object detection (4/5 stars) and room mapping (2/5) over the 3 years I've had it it does stupid crap all the time with room boundaries and eating paper, but I can fix that if I go fight with the settings I hope. My fav part is the robustness, if it encounters a huge problem, the only parts that break are those (and then rarely) are those meant to swap out. 

We love ours. We have one for upstairs and downstairs. Don’t try to get a cheap one, we did that and went through a couple of them pretty quickly. Now we have two good ones (iRobot) with the bin that they self empty into when they get full. We have three kids, two dogs, and a cat that sheds more than both dogs combined, and having robot vacuums has been a game changer. Before we got the one with the bins, it would get full and need emptying before it finished a whole cycle. Now it goes and empties itself and then goes back to cleaning. It’s some trial and error at first. Just run it the first few times when you’re watching it to see where it has any problems. Then you can try to adjust any problem areas. Our upstairs vacuum doesn’t go into the bedrooms because the kids have lots of tiny Barbie shoes and stuff. We have them clean up good and just regular vacuum real quick every other week or so (and we keep bedroom doors closed so the pets don’t go in there to keep hair shedding out). But the robot keeps the main areas of the house from getting hairballs and dirty. We recently got a robot mop as well, and that has been awesome! I feel like it’s just like having any other vacuum. You have to get everything picked up off the floor before you start. You wouldn’t start regular vacuuming with things still on the floor. If there are areas that it gets stuck often, either block it off or try to adjust any problem areas. We usually pull all of the dining room chairs away from the table so that it can get a good clean under the table and around it. We run the vacuums & mop anytime we leave the house, and it’s so nice coming home to freshly vacuumed and mopped floors!

The later Roombas with a camera/vision system are pretty good at avoiding things that could cause snags/clogs. I used to be vigilant with clearing the floor and even putting dining chairs on the table, but now I just have my Roomba run every night with dog toys, kid toys, wife's shoes and purse, chairs, charger cords, laundry baskets, and everything else blocking its path. It probably only cleans about 60% of the area I want it to, but I can still feel a noticeable difference when I walk barefoot through the house.

We have the Roomba j7+ We did a fair amount of research before getting it and watched YT videos comparing all the different makes and models and this was highly rated for pet hair. It’s pretty good - but like others have said you do have to spend time cleaning the hair out of the wheels which is an annoying and dirty job and also I find that I don’t run it very often because the sound makes my dog bark so I have to only run it when the dog isn’t in the house, which isn’t that often (of course, I could try to get the dog used to it, but I haven’t taken the time to do that) As an alternative to a robot we also recently bought the Shark Auto Detect and we are loving it! It’s cordless and really lightweight. It’s so easy to maneuver picks up tons of hair and has really good rollers that don’t get stuck on hair. I actually was looking forward to vacuuming today, which is crazy. I never thought I would say that!