The Roomba i7+ robotic vacuum
cleaner from iRobot is what robotic vacuum cleaning should: be a completely
automated experience. By having a dustbin integrated into the charging base for
the robotic vacuum, the i7+ is unlike most robotic vacuum cleaners on the
market today because it empties itself and delivers on the promise of an
automated vacuuming experience. We've been testing our Roomba i7+ robotic
vacuum cleaner for the past six months now so it's time to dive in to some of
the main features of this system, the maintenance and reliability, some of the
downsides, and then ultimately if we recommend getting this system. Now first
let's take a look at some of the main features of the device. The Roomba i7+ system has three main parts: the robotic vacuum cleaner itself, the clean
base, and then the main way you set up and control the system which is through
the iRobot app that you can download from the Google Play Store for Android
devices and the App Store for iOS devices. When I first opened up our
system I was quite impressed with the packaging. It's really easy to assemble
and honestly I thought it was gonna be a little bit more involved. Inside the box
you get the vacuum robot, the clean base, to dirt disposal bags, a cord for the
clean base, one extra high efficiency filter, an extra side brush, and a dual
mode virtual wall unit. The vacuum itself looks pretty sleek with its glossy and
matte black components. The robot has three main capacitive touch buttons on
top: one to send it home, one to start cleaning your home, and another for spot
cleaning. There is an LED ring around the clean button that will glow different
colors and in different patterns depending on the situation. It'll pulse
white when charging on the base, it'll glow blue to indicate that it's
returning to its base, and red to indicate that the battery is low and it
will need to go back to the base to charge. Looking around the robot you'll
see other sensors like the camera in the middle which helps your robot navigate
your home. By having a camera based system though, this does mean that your
Roomba is not going to operate well in the dark. Towards the front of the Roomba you'll see the light touch sensor that the robotuses for object detection and the RCON sensor up at the top which helps the
robot communicate with the clean base. The clean base also looks sleek with a
modern aesthetic and was a bit smaller than I expected. It's only 19 inches or
48 centimeters tall and one foot or thirty centimeters wide it also houses
an IR window which helps the robot line up correctly with the base and in my
experience I've had no issues with the robot coming back to its base correctly.
The clean base also has a single LED status light that will turn different
colors and blink different patterns for different situations. It'll turn red when
the bag is full or missing from the clean base or it'll blink red if there
is a clog and it'll pulse white when the clean base begins to charge the robot
from the charging contacts on the front of the system. At the top of the clean
base you'll find the canister lid which when you lift it up you'll see the bag
this system uses a more traditional vacuum bag system versus a canister
system like you'll find on a Dyson. In the six months of owning the system
we've had to replace the bag in the clean base only once and that was after
four months of use and keep in mind that we typically run the vacuum twice a week
in our 1200 square foot apartment so with all that in mind I actually thought
the bag changed frequency is actually really good. Moving on, next let's talk
setup and right off the bat it's pretty simple. You'll first need to decide where
to place your robot and clean base and when you do you'll need to make sure
that it's in an area of your floor plan that has at least 1.5 feet or
0.5 meters of clear space on both sides of the clean base and 4 feet or 1.2
meters of free space in front of the base and away from stairs. After that the
rest of the setup is done in the app which is pretty standard for tech
products nowadays but I have to say that this experience was really well polished.
Roomba even threw in some cute little robotic animations and I love that you
can give your robot a name. Telling the Google Assistant to send Botty to the
kitchen it's just way more fun and yes I did name my robot Botty, because why not?
Now the last thing you want to do before send
your robot out on its first vacuum run is completing what's called a training
run, this sends your Roomba out into your home to learn the layout of your home
and create a smart map but it doesn't actually vacuum while doing this, saving
its battery so it can more quickly map your floorplan. The smart map will be
displayed in the iRobot app where you'll be able to create room dividers between
rooms, name those rooms and also add keep out zones which are really useful
especially for temporary decorations like a Christmas tree.
The Roomba i7+ system also comes with a dual mode virtual wall barrier
that you can place in your home to keep the robot out of places you don't want
it to clean. There's a switch on the wall barrier where you can either place it in
a virtual wall mode where it will keep the Roomba out of a room or a halo mode
which will create a circular barrier that will extend approximately 24 inches
or 60 centimeters around the device that the Roomba will stay away from. Smart
maps are also really important if you want to take full advantage of the
Google Assistant and Amazon assistant (Alexa) integrations with your Roomba robotic
vacuum cleaner. For example you can tell your Roomba to clean a specific room
like I often tell Botty to go clean the kitchen after I finished up making
dinner. Now to start vacuuming you can either hit the clean button on the
Roomba which will start a cleaning cycle or you can hit clean on the Roomba app
and you'll be presented with two options: clean all rooms or choose rooms this is
another benefit of the smart mapping technology, if one of your rooms is just
a complete disaster right now you could just tell the robot to skip it. You also
have the option to create a schedule and you can customize it so your room but
can clean different rooms in your home on different days which is pretty neat.
Once the Roomba is done cleaning you'll get a notification that it's completed
its job and it will show you a map of the areas that it cleaned in your home
and where it detected more dirt than usual. Now when cleaning you'll see your
Roomba do some pretty impressive stuff, it'll navigate your rooms creating
visual landmarks to keep track of where it's been and where it has yet to clean
you'll have to make sure that your home is picked up before it starts it's
vacuuming run. iRobot recommends removing things like socks toys and
cords from your floors before sending your Roomba out. If you have pets, the
Roomba has a filter that should keep that pet hair in check. The special
material that the filter is made out of can capture 99% of mold pollen dust
mites and dog and cat allergens. The robot also utilizes its dual brushes
that help it keep constant contact with your floor as it traverses your home and
seamlessly transitions between a hard floor, to carpet, to a rug. In the six
months we've had our Roomba I've been quite impressed how well it transitions
from cleaning things like my bathroom floor, to the rugs in my bathroom. Now I
haven't run into many issues with the Roomba while it's on its vacuuming runs.
There's only maybe a handful of times where it's truly gotten stuck on
something or stuck somewhere that it just can't get out of and typically
those are my fault because I left some big object in the room that I forgot
about that the Roomba just ran over or I accidentally shut the Roomba in a room
not realizing it was in there still vacuuming, sorry Botty. In general though,
the Roomba, even when it runs over things like cords and stuff, typically it
actually realizes that is ran over something and it'll try to kind of
wiggle out of it and typically it is able to do that. If your Roomba gets
stuck you'll get an alert on your phone letting you know that your Roomba
is stuck and you'll be able to see where in your home the room but got stuck
which is a nice touch. In terms of the quality of its cleaning job overall I've
been quite impressed. The first month that I had the Roomba I decided to use
it exclusively as the device I was going to use to vacuum my home after a month I
went over all of the areas that the Roomba had been cleaning with my Dyson,
expecting that the Dyson would not only pick up the normal amount of dust it
usually does week after week when I use that device as my main vacuuming device,
I was actually expecting it to pick up more dust but to my surprise the Dyson
barely picked up any dust at all in my home, like barely enough to even justify
emptying the canister out into the trash bin. So overall I've been quite impressed
with the Roomba's cleaning capabilities, it actually seems to pick up much more
dust than I even thought it would. Now I have noticed that it doesn't clean
hard floors quite as well as it cleans carpet. In my kitchen it's spinning side
brush will occasionally scatter debris to another area of the floor that the
Roomba just can't quite reach - like under the kitchen cabinets. So I'll still
need to use my Dyson's hose attachments for those types of situations. Now one
other thing that you may notice while vacuuming with this robot is the noise
that it makes. If you've never had a robotic vacuum cleaner or Roomba before
they make quite a bit less noise than your typical vacuum cleaner. The i7 seems
to be right around 65 to 66 decibels when it's right next to you. The loudest
part of the experience is when the robot returns to its clean base and dust is
sucked out of it that noise level is about the same as my
Dyson and around 75 to 80 decibels up close.
Now while the Roomba provides a pretty automated vacuuming experience that
doesn't mean that there isn't any maintenance that you're going to have to
do with this system. You'll periodically have to clean the robot and the clean
bases exterior, remove the robot's dust bin and rinse it out replace the filter
every two months, and clean the multi-surface brushes as well as the
front caster wheel and edge sweeping brush which are meant to be replaced
every year. It's important to do these things to make sure that your vacuum
will operate properly, otherwise you may run into situations like we did where
our vacuum started squeaking. Once we cleaned the robot we didn't experience
it again. Now let's talk about some of the
downsides that we've experienced with our Roomba i7 plus robotic vacuum
cleaner. First up the design of the Roomba allows the front to get pretty
scratched up. If you have white base boards or other painted elements near
your floor that the robot will run into over time.
I wish there was an easier way to clean the marks off of the robot maybe like a
plastic protection barrier or something that you can replace every once in a
while I don't know but just something there so that these marks don't go
directly on to the plastic piece of the robot. Another downside is while the
clean base does have a nice cord organization feature in the back of it
there's not a great way to make it flush against the wall with the way the cord
sticks out of an outlet. Another downside as I mentioned before is the hard floor
performance it just isn't as good in my experience as the carpet cleaning
performance is. The last downside is that you have to remember when to perform
certain maintenance tasks with this system to me this is something that the
iRobot app should actually proactively remind you to do. Like especially during
Covid 19, weeks are turning into months here, I don't know what day it is today,
like I'm just not going to remember when to perform certain maintenance tasks
with this system to me that should be something that the app can proactively
remind you to do. Anyways in wrapping up my thoughts with the system after using
the Roomba i7+ for over six months now,
do I recommend getting this device? Yes. Mainly because of the significant impact
this device will have on your life and your cleaning habits. It's like having a
housekeeper vacuum your home whenever you want. I find that I clean my floors
more with the Roomba than I normally would with my Dyson, I just love seeing
the lines it makes in the carpet and rugs and because the system is so
automated it gives me a good chunk of my free time back every month that I now
don't have to spend on vacuuming. Now with the price of $799 here in the US, it
certainly is not inexpensive, but for what it does, the time back that it gives
you, an improvement to the cleanliness in your home, to me the experience has been
well worth that price. If you're interested in learning more about the
Roomba i7 plus or want to purchase the device for yourself, check out the link
in the video description below. Well that'll do it for our review of the
Roomba i7+ robotic vacuum cleaner. If you liked this video and found it
helpful make sure you hit that thumbs up button below and subscribe to the
channel to see more long-term product review videos like this one. For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.
