iRobot - Roomba j7+ Series

I’ve had robot shark and roomba. I believe running them daily has prevented us from being buried in dog hair and 100% recommend a robot vacuum. My dogs are very housebroken and I’ve never had the poo every where situation.  Overall, I think the shark works a little better, but I think the roomba’s features and app are better. I just upgraded to the dual vacuum/mop roomba and it’s not perfect but I’m happy. I still have to real vacuum once a week as it doesn’t get all the hair all the time, but the literal basketball was of hair I pull out of the canister every few weeks tells me it’s working pretty damn good. 

We started with one iRobot, it worked great! Later decided on a brava (iRobot mop) and it worked amazingly! I was in my doctorate program and didn’t have time to clean the floors. We have two small dogs and five children. The floors are one thing I don’t have to worry about anymore. We recently moved and purchased two combo vacuum and mop, one is iRobot and the other is ecovacs. I like the ecovac more, it seems smarter, however they both do a great job. We have three stories so there are robot vacuum on each floor, they run every day, this keeps the stairs pretty clean and I vacuum the stairs once a week. Our original robot is eight years old and runs fine with daily use.

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.

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!

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!

I have a Roomba that I picked up from Costco. It can be controlled via app and it has a self emptying base.

Thanks, I hadn’t heard about fur compression yet. I have a very furry dog and this feature sounds useful. My Roomba J7+ always thought the dustbin was full if some hairs were sticking out in front of the sensor.

I agree. I had a J7+.

I know I came from the J7 worked well and then the contract ended, not interested in paying for something beyond its price and it was starting to have issues, so we retired it and went with d and 7 months later it's not what they said it would be and IRo better get their game together fast or the once leader in floor robots will be gone and all that will be left is.......