iRobot Roomba j7+ robot vacuum review: One of the best smart home investments I've made for my home

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After years of searching for the best robot vacuum, I've finally found the robot vacuum of my dreams: the Roomba j7+.

My first robot vac seemed like a great investment at the time. It was affordable, had features like mopping and UV sterilization, and was surprisingly quiet. At the time, I was impressed merely by the fact that it didn't topple down the stairs.

After a few months of use, it quickly became apparent that it wasn't the glorious device I'd been led to believe. The mopping function was virtually useless. UV sterilizing sucked up battery life like nobody's business. Eventually, the vacuum stopped working altogether.

Its successor, a unit with high suction, gobbled up pet hair, but that also meant having to empty the bin every single run. And it got stuck. A lot. I constantly had to rescue it. I decided enough was enough. Even my multi-week vacuuming sessions weren't enough to keep up with the pet dander, bird dust, and dirt being tracked around the house. I decided it was time to invest in a Roomba.

I settled on the Roomba j7+, with a self-emptying feature and mapping technology. At the time, part of me was skeptical. But it's been several years now of having ultra-clean floors and I can safely say I'm a Roomba fan. I no longer experience the gritty feel of pet hair and debris underfoot. And, to my delight, my robot vacuum babysitting days are over.

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Design

The sleek Roomba j7+ has a black chassis and takes up about a square foot of room. The robot itself is 13.3 wide by 3.4 inches high, short enough to fit under a coffee table. You'll need at least a foot of clearance around the base station to ensure the robot can begin its navigational duties unencumbered.

To help it navigate, the vacuum has a camera on the front and sensors on the side and bottom. Underneath, two brush rolls move in opposite directions, which is supposed to help dislodge dirt and debris. A single spinning brush on the side helps sweep dust from the corners and walls.

Clean lines allow the unit to fit in without adding much visual clutter. A small leather tab, meant to help you open the top of the bin, adds a touch of texture to an otherwise streamlined design. The dust canister is also equipped with a HEPA filter.

Setup process

Unpacking the j7+ is a breeze thanks to its user-friendly, Apple-style packaging. Everything has a purpose.

There's virtually no setup involved besides plugging in the unit and connecting it to WiFi. It took less than 20 minutes, plus some time to get to a full charge. A full charge takes about an hour and twenty minutes, which will typically allow it to run for almost two-and-a-half hours.

Before you can get started with a thorough clean, the robot needs some time to map out your house. It does this using a series of sensors and a camera. It took two run-throughs (two full charges) to map out my floorplan. The mapping tech on the Roomba is something to behold. It's incredibly accurate, and I barely had to make adjustments, aside from naming rooms, when the mapping was complete.

Roomba's app is intuitive and enjoyable to use. You can schedule cleanings, set cleaning or no-go zones, and view your vacuuming history.

Our review of the iRobot Roomba J7+

I won't be coy. I love this vacuum. Unlike the cleaning robots of my past, I barely notice the j7+ is doing its thing. And that's the beauty of it. It quietly rolls around the house, eats up crumbs and hair, returns to its base to empty or recharge, and picks up where it left off. When it encounters an obstacle, like a wayward wire or dog bone, it pauses, inspects, and 99% of the time makes its way around the temporary blockade.

Ease of Use

One of the most convenient features of the Roomba j7+ is its ability to self-empty. Automatic dirt disposal makes it possible to run the vacuum daily without worrying about whether the dust canister is full or not.

My house is relatively tidy and clutter-free, but random stuff sometimes ends up on the floor, and I don't bother frantically picking it up anymore before my vacuum does its thing. The Roomba just goes around.

The brand even claims that its smart tech is so good that it can identify and avoid dog poop. iRobot's poop guarantee (Pet Owner Official Promise, or P.O.O.P.) says that if your robot tracks around your dog's excrement, the company will replace the vacuum for free. Thankfully, I haven't run into any poopmergencies, though it's not outside the realm of possibility with an elderly dog.

iRobot App

When dealing with smart home tech, a poorly designed app can quickly turn a convenient tool into a headache. The iRobot app is anything but. It makes setting up the robot vac a breeze, it's intuitive to use, and it's rarely buggy.

You can choose from three cleaning preferences in the app: daily clean, which covers your entire floorplan once; room-size clean, which goes over large rooms once and smaller ones multiple times; and extra clean, which cleans your floorplan twice. You'll have to run the vacuum at least once in mapping mode for it to learn your floorplan. After that, you can label rooms and even create special cleaning or keep out zones. After a cleaning session, the app will also show you images of any potential obstacles it detects, like cords or toys, where you can designate it as a temporary obstacle, not an obstacle, or create a keep-out zone. You can also instruct it to go back and clean in that spot.

Another feature I find useful is the ability to control the robovac using my Google Home voice assistant. (It's also compatible with Alexa.) After cooking dinner and sending crumbs flying, I can ask Google to clean the kitchen. During the holidays, I set up temporary cleaning zones around the Christmas tree, which I can delete later.

You also have the option of scheduling cleanings for certain days and times through the app. Roomba also lets you set a quiet time to keep your vacuum from powering up and making noise while you need total silence.

Vacuuming Performance

Post-cleaning, it's clear my J7+ has been working hard. My floors are noticeably cleaner, and I feel less grit underfoot.

On wood floors, the vacuum clears almost everything in its path. It sometimes misses a few spots when there's a heavy load of pet hair or other large pieces of debris (like the remnants of nuts and seeds that my parrot throws on the ground), but it usually gobbles up everything with a second pass.

Carpet vacuuming is a different story. The J7+ can identify carpet from hard flooring, and it does fairly well at vacuuming my flatwoven entryway carpets, but it's a disaster on thicker, shag carpeting. It can maneuver around thicker carpeting if it has to to get where it wants to go, but it will immediately get stuck on the carpet fibers if it starts suctioning. Because of this, I've had to create a no-go zone for my living room rug, but I love the Roomba so much, I'm eventually planning to swap out the shag for something lower profile.

The Roomba also works well on slightly uneven surfaces, like the terra cotta tile in my kitchen, but the bumpy ride does mean the vacuum sometimes leaves debris behind, especially fine debris like flour or sugar.

After a cleaning job, the vacuum will prompt you to review obstacles. It takes photos anytime it's thwarted by some object, and you can let it know whether it's a temporary obstacle, something you want it to avoid permanently, or not an obstacle at all. According to the app, this process helps your robot cleaning buddy do better in the future.

I can confirm that while it got confused by the caster wheels on my parrot's cage at first, it now happily cleans around the base without trouble. It's also shockingly great at ignoring wires of all kinds. Having a robot vacuum that can identify a cable and breeze by it without sucking it up into its brushes is a huge plus.

Maintenance

While it can steer clear of dog excrement, the robot isn't capable of spotting and avoiding bird poop, so the flexible, multi-surface brushes have smeared it around. Because they're rubber, they're easy to rinse off, though. The design also makes it easy to extricate tangled pet and human hair, something that's tough to do with regular bristle brushes. The dual brushes are also really good at picking up most debris.

Roomba claims that a bag can hold up to 60 days worth of debris; a pack of three replacement bags costs $16.99. With multiple pets in the household, I found myself replacing the bag a little more often, about every 30 days or so. The bags are another smartly designed component of this unit. Because they seal as you take them out, dust can't escape into the air, which helps if you have asthma or allergies.

Cons to consider

Cleaning-wise, the one thing I found less-than-stellar was the inclusion of just a single edge-sweeping brush. The vacuums I've owned previously had two sweeping brushes on either side, which help direct debris toward the main brushes. With only a single side sweeper, the robot sometimes tosses debris aside.

I also wish the app could adjust the robot's task mid-cleaning job. For example, if you have the vacuum running in the living room and decide you no longer want that spot cleaned, you can't edit the job. You have to restart the cleaning job from square one.

Similarly, there's no option to navigate the robot yourself from the app, which is too bad, considering the unit has a camera. When it misses a spot (which is rare), there's no way to tell it to turn back and redo an area unless you cancel the entire job or you wait for it to end.

While the j7+ is one of the quietest robot vacuums I've tried, expect to hear the sound of a jet taking off when the robovac empties itself. It lasts mere seconds, but it isn't something you want happening in the middle of the night, and there doesn't seem to be an option for turning off auto-emptying during certain hours.

Since purchasing the unit, I've also had to replace the battery once — after about 2 years of heavy use. But because it was still within warranty, iRobot sent me a new one free of charge. When the battery was starting to fail, I did notice some docking problems, but once I replaced it, the issues were resolved.

Should I be worried about the camera watching me?

I was sitting on the toilet one morning while the Roomba rolled around the bathroom, and I wondered, should I be worried about someone peeping on my private bathroom time through this thing's camera? I got in touch with privacy experts Frances Zelazny, CEO and founder of Anonybit, and Greg Young, VP of cybersecurity at Trend Micro, for a primer on security and privacy.

Young explains that there's certainly a possibility that the camera could be vulnerable to hacking, "but at the same time, we all carry around a camera and microphone that is in front of our faces and around us at all times: our phones." The bigger red flag, he said, is when companies provide no clear mention of security or privacy. iRobot, the company that makes Roomba vacuums, has a detailed privacy policy.

Zelazny points out that you probably don't have to worry about your Roomba spying on you. "It is more likely that the security implications of having so many devices online and either poorly protected or totally unprotected will cause more problems," she says.

While iRobot states that it deletes images the vacuum takes after 30 days, you also have the option to not share images to the brand's database.

To protect yourself, Zelazny recommends that you don't reuse passwords across devices and use a decentralized password manager that uses biometrics to protect passwords from hackers.

What are your alternatives?

iRobot no longer directly sells the vacuum-only j7+, For a similar vacuum-only option, the Roomba j9+ self-emptying robot vacuum is the closest you'll get to the original j7+.

iRobot has started to prioritize its 2-in-1 vacuum and mop robotos. For instance, the Combo J7+ builds on the original J7+, utilizing the existing clean base and incorporating a retractable mopping pad for simultaneous wet-dry cleaning. The top-of-the-line Combo j9+ with auto-fill base and retractable mop arm is the smartest of the bunch. It can empty your robot's dust bin and refill its liquid reservoir for mopping. There's also the cheaper Combo j5+, which uses an interchangeable bin between vacuum and mopping. iRobot recommends for spaces with a mix of rugs and hardwood thanks to the ability to set no mop zones.

Roomba also has a few more affordable options, including the Roomba Combo Essential, which mops and vacuums but doesn't come with an automatic disposal base.

We also have more options in our guide to the best robot vacuums.

The bottom line

There was once a time when I shouted expletives at the poor robot vacuum that spent more time tangling itself in wires than cleaning my floors. Now, I'm nothing but polite when I ask Google to clean my house, please.

The Roomba j7+ is one of the best smart home purchases I've made in years. So far, it's fulfilled every promise made. It cleans thoroughly and never requires babysitting. If you've been let down by robot vacuums before, trust me; this one is a gamechanger.