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

I researched robot vacuum cleaners a lot before settling on this one. It might be unfair of me to belittle other brands in favour of iRobot, so I am going to go on what my research told me after looking at specifications, and other reviews and base this review mainly on that. 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.

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.

Bought as a replacement for another robot vacuum and this is brilliant. The suction is amazing and it picks up dust and hair (2 x short haired dogs) fantastically. Navigates well around furniture and chairs etc and doesn’t get stuck on rugs like our old roomba and also doesn’t fall down stairs. No it’s not perfect and can’t get perfectly into corners but to keep a basic level of cleanliness in a busy family house I am in love with my roomba. She is called Eileen. And I love that I get a text from Eileen when she’s finished a job. Definitely worth the ££.

After "Robbie" started making a squeaking noise from the wheels I spoke to so called "customer service" whom I can only assume was a call centre. They asked for a video of the machine making the squeak which I sent. No squeaking on that video according to them? and was asked to take the machine apart, unscrew the wheel drive assemblies and check that it was clean under the wheels. As an engineer of 50 + years I was always meticulous about cleaning it every day but they suggested it might not be clean! Initially I refused to do another video but realising I was getting nowhere I sent them another. After 5 days of no response I telephoned the number shown on the help page to wait for 15 minutes with the other end blank. Redialled and eventually got through after a wait to find out that they required the exact same information once again. 4 times I was asked the same thing. They "eventually' agreed that they had got the video (in 1080p) and I also sent one of me cleaning the machine so the detail was very good. I was promised a call back which was later refused by email. Next was a request was for photos of the wheels which of course was on the video but they wanted photos. The implication was that both videos had been watched but a couple of the answers were contradictory so I do not believe they had actually watched them at all as they requested the same information which had been attached to the email ?? Now they might ? send me 2 drive wheel units which I have to change myself. Easy enough for me but my wife would have baulked at the thought. So the story continues as I have requested contact details for the head of customer relations but I'm sure that email will also be in their ignore pile. Finally as a machine it does a good job of cleaning but you have to remove a couple of rollers to do so and it needs cleaning DAILY and that was only cleaning 1 / 2 small rooms per day. Bin capacity is extremely limited as I'm sure they know already. Please be warned.

This review is more of a comparison of Roomba i7 to roborock and perhaps will help decide which one to go far. Otherwise there are scores of roomba i7 in depth reviews online. 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: —————————— - 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 ———————— - 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 —————— 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.

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.

We've had an older Roomba for about 6 years and the time came to either refurbish it again or replace it. The old one had run the same day that the new one arrived and we were fairly shocked by how much extra the newer model could pick up. It's also far less prone to getting hair tangled in the brushes than the old one. The room mapping seems to have worked well, and as usual spares are plentiful for Roomba products so should be refurbishable for a long time.

Initially purchased the Roborock S6 MaxV and loved that, but it died after a couple of weeks. Poor customer support meant I returned it and didn't want another one. I repeated the research with more focus on reliability and customer service feedback, and chose the Roomba i7. This is my assessment after a couple of weeks. The Roomba i7 looks more of a beast than the Roborock and behaves like one too - that is a mixture of good and bad. Pros: Set up was easy The app is better than some of the reviews indicated (but the memory is not) Have a big house so liked training run option to conserve battery while it maps out the floors. Battery lasted surprisingly well - much longer than the Roborock. It doesn't try to fall down steps. Epic cleaning of carpets in particular - either our Dyson hasn't been doing a good job or I will have bare sub-floors soon. Slimmer profile means it gets under more furniture than the Roborock/most other models Construction seems robust. Easy to clean (but would prefer washable filters). Cool idea that it can work in tandem with the Roomba dedicated mop (but haven't tried to do it). Takes less time than doing it myself! Cons: Bumps into things A LOT - even after it has done several training runs and should have a clear map of a space. Not good for delicate furniture/paintwork and becomes quite annoying. Laser robots locate themselves by spinning to measure their position but Roomba does it by bumping into walls and objects until it matches a stored map. If it doesn't match a stored map it carries on bumping into everything to make one. Then it bumps less. The livestream laser camera technology of the Roborock seems inherently smarter than taking lots of photos and then uploading them to the cloud when back at base in order to build a map. It also means you can't track the Roomba when it is on a job, but have to wait until it reports at the end when back at base. Nor does it allow you to see which areas have been missed. Deposits lumps of collected fluff on rugs when transitioning from hard floor (and doesn't go back for them). It doesn't talk much, compared to the Roborock, and messages via the app are often delayed. You may prefer the silence but going to locate my phone and look at the app to work out why the i7 just flashed blue and left the room The spot clean is ineffective. Roborock marks out a logical square and cleans it. Roomba spins in a spiral and flicks around a lot of the dirt. If the space is fairly close to a wall it won't do a spiral but runs off along the wall and then stops. Most odd to watch. It's meant to identify dirty spots and keep vacuuming them, but it didn't seem to do that in the kitchen corner that is a graveyard for flies. It didn't get them all on spot clean either and misses any that are right in the corners. The side brush is too fast so spins away some of the dirt instead of pulling it in. Also doesn't clean corners terribly well - the Roborock was programmed to pull dirt from the corners although it is also a round shape. As a minimum it needs to do the edges on an anti-clockwise circuit as the edge brush is on one side only - it does that sometimes but not always. A problem for me was the memory limit on the map function which means it can't map an area of more than 185sq metres (yes, it's a big house so won't affect everyone). It also cannot make more than one map from one base station position. That means I need to babysit it a lot more than expected and can't go to work and leave it to clean a whole floor as I had imagined. I ended up with 8 separate maps (it does up to 10) but had to move the base station to 8 different locations or had to carry it to the home base each time it needed a recharge or bin empty. Customer services weren't particularly quick (5 days initially) or helpful in responding to my search for solutions to the mapping limitations, which is a shame as the CS reviews were key to my initial purchasing decision. On balance I imagined better given that iRobot have been developing robotic vacuums for over 20 years. It's a lot to spend on something that is quite good rather than great, so I am negotiating with myself whether to keep it or not. Update (December 2020): I have taken advantage of the extended return period to see how we get along as I was not sure how I felt about Roomba after a couple of weeks. It's been about 6 weeks now and he (definitely a he) is proving to be quite high maintenance and a bit sloppy. It constantly reports a full bin even at less than half full (and returns all the way home unless you catch it quick, which wastes the battery) and even though I brush the sensors each time and wipe its bum (stuff seems to get stuck on its way to the bin). It seems to miss more dirt with each week that goes by and now has missed its charging contacts so had no juice when I went to use it yesterday. Also still bumping into walls that it really should have learned about by now. And just now it has resumed a job after another bin empty and has moved into another room that is not on the job schedule, and has stopped. The red light is flashing and the app is telling me it has completed another job (it has not), so I assume it is totally confused. Time to send it back and think again about this robotic vaccuuming business - not sure the tech is where I need it to be yet.