Roomba Combo j5+ Self-Emptying Robot Vacuum & Mop – Identifies and Avoids Obstacles Like Pet Waste & Cords, Empties Itself for 60 Days, Clean by Room with Smart Mapping, Works with Alexa​

I purchased the iRobot Roomba i5 during a discount deal, and I absolutely don’t regret it. After using it for about a year, I can confidently say it’s one of the best small home investments I’ve made. The vacuum quality is excellent it picks up dust, debris, and especially pet hair with no problem, even in corners and under furniture. I have two dogs, and thanks to this vacuum, there’s not a single hair left anywhere. It’s been a total game-changer for keeping the apartment clean. I don’t use the mopping function much; I mainly rely on it for vacuuming, and the results speak for themselves. You can clearly see and feel the difference between a cleaned floor and a dirty one. In terms of durability, it’s held up great after a year of use. No issues with the wheels, brushes, or sensors. It covers my one-bedroom apartment thoroughly, typically running for around 45 minutes, sometimes a bit longer if there are obstacles that confuse it during its mapping process. The functionality is solid. It maps the apartment effectively and adapts over time. The app is very simple and intuitive, giving you all the basic information and control you need without being overly complicated. Noise level is reasonable not silent, but quiet enough to run while your home without being annoying. The sensitivity of the sensors is generally good, though sometimes it struggles with new obstacles or small cords, but nothing major. Overall, if you're looking for a reliable, efficient, and easy-to-use vacuum especially if you have pets the Roomba i5 is highly recommended. Great performance, solid build, and very convenient for small apartments or homes.

My biggest issue with the Roomba is that it usually dies from the battery going dead before it makes it back to the charging station. You would think it would learn how far it could get and start for home, but I've had it since August, cleaning 3 times a week plus spot jobs, and it doesn't seem to have gotten any better. I know it knows it is running on fumes because I've caught it a few times in the App saying it was returning home to charge, and had it not make it there. Instead it heads back in the right general direction but wanders off before getting there. If it had gone straight back (or even indirectly back), it would have had plenty of power to reach the charger, but it just doesn't dock, most of the time! I've seen it drive right past the dock, turn around, go into the next room, vacuum for while, and then let out a plaintive bleep and die. All the while the App on my phone saying it's returning to the dock to recharge. Often, when it does make it back, it will resume vacuuming before it is fully charged, and then die. If it had just waited on the charger for another 10 minutes, it would have finished the job! I think this is purely a matter of bad programming. It seems to know how much charge is left in the battery; the little battery icon in the App seems to be fairly accurate. I think the battery is okay. It is new and gives about an hour and a half of run time on a full charge. My house is as lot cleaner after 4 months of running 3 times a week. It does seem to work fairly well, except for its insanely over-optimistic notion of how much more work it can do on the remaining charge in its battery. My biggest peeve is the number of times I have to rescue it and carry it back to its base station because it ran out of battery. (The App keeps track and since Nov 4, it has run 30 times and died with a low battery 10 times and gotten stuck 6 times, so it had preventable problems more than half the time.) Update: 12/23/21. It refuses to vacuum my living room. If I set up a special job, it almost always claims it s path was blocked. But it is perfectly happy to vacuum other rooms that require going through the living room to get there! I have it programmed to vacuum the front rooms in the house twice a week, which includes the living room. Looking at the maps afterward, it shows it vacuuming all the other rooms, but only around the edge of the living room. I think there is some "memory" in it where it thinks it shouldn't be there, or thinks the living room has magically transported itself to another universe or otherwise is totally F'ed up. There appears to be no way to diagnose or reset it. I could erase it's map (basically do a factory reset), but that is a huge pain, especially since I currently have it set to avoid the Christmas tree (which is NOT in the living room, and if the keep-out zone around the tree is causing this problem, then that in itself is a serious error in its programming.) I've tried rebooting it, but that didn't help at all. Roomba's support is useless. Basically, they just read the minimally informative web page at you. It would be quicker and more effective to use a manual vacuum cleaner. Update 1/9/22: it is still refusing to vacuum my living room for no apparent reason. When told to explicitly vacuum the living room, it just skirts the edge and declares itself done in a couple of minutes without actually doing anything. When it does its regularly scheduled set of rooms including the living room, it does the sun porch (adjacent to the living room, where the base station is), traverses the living room to the front entry, then skirts the living room to vacuum the dining room, then returns through the living room to park in the sun porch. I've tried remapping my apartment to no avail. Next step is a complete factory reset, but I don't want to do that until my Christmas tree is down, because the tree causes it problems. and I'll lose my "keep out" zones. --------- July 2, 2024 - I came back here to downgrade the rating, but it is already 1 star. For the last year, it has been getting worse and worse. It constantly requires attention, always get stuck on obstacles it use to negotiate with ease, like very low thresholds and the edges of carpets and the tile area in front of my fireplace, and often gets lost trying to dock to recharge or because (on rare occasions) it has actually completed a job. Often it gets lost within inches of the docking station. The software problems are worse than ever. For instance, it will announce that the charge is low and it is returning to the docking station, but then will wander off into another room, not on the path to the docking station, and the battery will run off because it forgot to recharge. I've actually seen it announce it was returning to the docking station, then hear it in another room, check the status and see it is vacuuming again with very low charge and not having gone anywhere near the docking station. This is clearly a software bug. Sometimes it get stuck on a perfectly level surface and says it is on an uneven surface, to move it and press clean. I DON'T move it, just press clean and it resumes. Clearly, it was NOT stuck. I've cleaned it many times, replaced the brushes and filters, replaced the pivot wheel, tested the main driving wheels as per the instructions, and today, discovered and performed the docking test. It worked perfectly and then got stuck 10 minutes later. On the advice of a friend, I replaced the battery last week. It seems to last longer on a charge but doesn't perform any better otherwise. I've done many reboots and checked for software updates. None available. Yesterday afternoon, I tried to delete and create a new map. After a couple of hours exploring one room, it ran out of battery and said to move it to the dock. I did so, but by then it was getting dark and it never resumed the mapping run as it said it would. This morning, it was fully charged, and the map it produced yesterday looked bogus so I told it to start a new mapping run. It never got out of the room with the docking station, and, over an hour into it, it is stuck again on the 1/16" high lip at the edge of the fireplace hearth. I think it is trying to vacuum up the tiles, which it thinks are dirt, and despite the fact that it is not supposed to do cleaning while on a mapping run. The fireplace (and the thresholds) never used to be a problem. Getting totally lost never used to be a problem. I've replaced all the replaceable parts. The problems all have the stench of undebugged software. I suspect they might have replaced a rule-based algorithm with some sort of generative AI, or some other bone-headed move. If I can't get the mapping run (in my small, single-floor apartment with few obstacles) to work and can't discover any way to reload the original software from 4 years ago (which basically worked), I am going to trash the useless piece of junk. Is it possible to rate something ZERO stars? ---------------- I was just about to boost the rating to maybe 3 or 4 stars, when it struck again! i tried everything to make it work properly, including buying a new battery. It didn't claim the battery was at EOL, but friends who have multiple Roombas told me the problems I was having could be due to a dying battery. So I replaced it. Since i didn't know if it would help, I bought a "compatible" battery https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KXYNBDQ?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details for about half the price of an iRobot-branded replacement. The battery fit perfectly, has identical specs, charged up fine but didn't solve any of the problems I was having. Tried deleting and creating a new "smart" (i.e. idiotic) map. It kept getting stuck and never finished a mapping run. It could clean okay without a map, but kept getting stuck and could only rarely find its charging station. It would often vacuum at random for an hour or two, announce it we returning to the station for recharging, but never get there. I think this was due to the lack of a map. The vacuuming and battery life with the new battery seemed fine. But without a map, I couldn't schedule it or tell it what rooms to clean. Finally, I tried the last remaining replacement - the tires! The tires are cheap but a little tricky to replace, but I did so. The new tires have a much thicker tread than the originals and some reviewers said this was a problem but they seemed to work fine. The first thing I tried was a new mapping run. It worked perfectly! I then realized I had left a couple of doors shut, so it couldn't map two of the rooms. So I told it to vacuum the rooms on the map. (It had to go back and recharge a couple of times, which worked fine.) Then I opened the two doors and told it to map again. It found and mapped the new rooms and then I told it to vacuum them. Last week, I manually told it to vacuum, half the house on Monday and again Thursday, and the other half on Tuesday and Friday. (There were lots of "return to the base and recharge the battery" events in the course of these two weeks.) Over the weekend, I set up the schedule again. It was supposed to do 1/2 the house on Monday and Thursday and the other half on Friday. Monday evening, I noticed it had not done the scheduled Monday job, but didn't have time to look at it. Yesterday, it also didn't do its scheduled job. The App said it wasn't charged, so I wriggled it on the charger base to make sure it lit up. (Maybe I need to clean the contacts, though I did that pretty recently.) Today I had some time to look at it. The App still said it needed charging, so I made sure it was on the charger base again. The App said it couldn't contact the Roomba, so I restarted the App. (Sometimes this helps. Crappy software.) When I did so, it still said it needed charging, so I went an reseated it again and pressed the "Clean" button. This time is says "Please install an iRobot brand battery and now refuses to charge or do anything else! Back to zero stars for this incredibly annoying, incredibly time-consuming "labor saving device".

I love this Roomba. I had an older model that you had to empty. I still have it and use it in my barn office. This one is awesome! I can have it clean all the floors in the morning while I'm having my coffee. I have 4 small dogs and 3 cats living inside and it does better than I can do with my Swiffer or my Shark. I don't think I would use it for carpeting. I use my Shark for the carpeted downstairs. Gone are the giant dust bunnies (I call them indoor tumbleweeds). I also love that it empties itself at it's docking station. The machine is pretty quiet compared to my older model. I will warn that when it empties it is very loud for 4 or 5 seconds. My main floor is almost 1800 ft. of cleaning area. It can clean most of it on one charge. I also like its internal mapping. You can specify rooms so you can clean only the rooms you want. The initial mapping takes a few hours but I only had to do that once. After that, it can find new areas when cleaning and let you know. You can also adjust the boundaries and change the room names. You set up quick links in the program. The only problem I am having is setting it up with my Alexa Echo. It is paired and you can see it in the Alexa app but I cannot get Alexa to respond to a clean command.

It cannot handle more than one map. This seems to be a deliberate deficiency. The claim is that the vacuum cannot load more than one map, but since it is WiFi and there is an app involved, then it could easily have many maps that get loaded based on what level of your home you want to clean. Other than that, it works VERY well and does a great job. It still does a lot of stupid AI movements, but it is much better than 5-10 years ago. iRobot makes very slow advancements in robot technology, but this j series is getting close to being where they should have been a decade ago. Complaints are minor: 1. They advertise it is good for pet hair. it is much better than the older 800 series but still rolls the hair sometimes and leaves it behind for a human to pick up. 2. The mapping is much better but it is still not quite there. It does a lot of things right and is really amazing, but then it will not get under a table because it sees a cord hanging that is not touching the ground, but still in the way. I like it that it prefers to stay away rather than suck up a cord, but it should get better at determining that a cord is high enough to not get pulled. 3. You can send it out for a small job and it picks up the few crumbs that were there but when it returns, it dumps the crumbs into the docking station vacuum. This is so loud and not necessary. It really should only dump the bin if it is full or partially full. Not ignorantly on any return to base. It really is a great product, but with so many years behind them, they really shoudl be doing much better. Competitors are leaping ahead and I would consider a competitor if I already wasn't deep into Roombas.

I read all of the information online about the various Roomba vacuums and decided on their i7 model even though it is pricey. The instruction booklet that came with the i7 was adequate for understanding the care of the vacuum along with the online information from iRobot. I had some difficulty connecting my Roomba i7 to my wireless network but was able to get it connected after 2 or 3 tries. The best information I found for setting up my Roomba i7 was in the customer comments about the product on Amazon. I was able to map the main floor of my home in 5 1/2 hours while in training mode, not cleaning mode. I prepared each room by picking up items on the floor and moving some chairs and animal toys ahead of the training run. It took 3 different training runs to make a map of my home. It is fascinating to watch the Roomba work and figure out how to clean each room. The Roomba i7 now cleans on schedule which is easy to set up on the iRobot app. The vacuum is quiet and cleans all of my main floor in just under 2 hours. I have pets with lots of pet hair and the Roomba does an excellent job of vacuuming the dirt and hair off of my tile, hardwood, and carpeted floors. I am still trying to figure out the appropriate cleaning of the Roomba itself due to the amount of pet hair. The cleaning of the Roomba itself is simple and quick, taking less than five minutes to perform. I am extremely satisfied with the Room i7 even though it is expensive. It is worth the money. My home is much cleaner on a regular basis with minimal hassle.

I really really want to like my robot vacuum cleaner. I was an early adopter when iRobot started and have bought 4 of these in my lifetime. But honestly it isn’t doing a good job. It chokes on carpet fuzz, see pictures of it just dragging fuzz balls to the edge of the rug where it leaves them, or they roll out the back. Thinks it’s full even when it’s just pushing stuff around because the narrow throat is full of fuzz. Has a 0/100 record on collecting live oak leaves. Frequently curls the corner of flat rugs up then high centers itself. Then bangs and clatters around trying to get unstuck. It frequently gets lost. The little dirt collectors are a pita to empty. This one is supposed to mop. More like dragging a dirty damp rag behind it. It does a mostly decent job in the spare bedroom which has no rugs, just tile. Just all in all not worth the $$. Well now it randomly senses the mop bin versus the actual installed vacuum bin. Which then solves the fuzz issue. Because it won’t vacuum the rugs. Is increasingly having more difficulty mounting its base unit. After 15-20 minutes of listening to it bumble around the laundry room I just picked it up. So now about 9 months into ownership and it’s just an expensive piece of technotrash. It can’t find its way out of the room it is stored in 9/10 times. It can’t decide if it’s got its mop hopper on or dirt hopper and defaults to mop. The mop function is a complete failure, and frankly its inability to vacuum properly is ridiculous. It’s a tile house with the occasional floor rug. It tosses junk around rather than pick it up due to its spinning edge cleaning mechanism. It can’t pick anything up thicker than dust. The edge of any carpet is where it dumps the junk it’s just pushing around. It isn’t worth the effort of owning. I paid extra for the automatic emptying bin, it almost never automatically empties its bin. I paid extra for a mop system. The system is to dribble fluid into a rag it drags around under it. It’s not even a decent damp mopping. And it senses the mop thing all the time. We have a rug with tassels, it said it has an anti get stuck in the tassels feature. I’m finding the arms for the edge brush tangled in the tassels and torn off. My fav is the thing likes to get close to the wall and gets stuck in the drawstring for the curtains. So it’s down to one star and wish I hadn’t wasted my time and money supporting this company since it’s inception. I emailed multiple times for support, got one generic reply and zero follow up to asked questions and the last email I sent directly before end of warranty was just ignored. Useless.

I went back and forth about which version to buy for weeks, After some research I opted for the i7 because of the customizable features. I'm so glad I did this thing is amazing and it settles my OCD nature of wanting to vacuum at home. Here's the good: Packaging is amazing you get an extra agitater brush, filters, and it also in 1 virtual wall. The virtual wall keeps the roomba out of areas you dont want it to go. After training your roomba it gets use to your home and where things are. If you are running your roomba and it seems like an aimless wonder, place it in training mode... I would suggest a couple of sessions with lights on,off, and natural sunlight. You will notice that your roomba will become more precise in its cleaning pattern. Once the training is completed you can setup your rooms and room barriers this will allow you to set schedules if you want a different room cleaned at a specific time of day, or day of the week. Alexa integration can use a bit more work, however I have learned that with each new feature it still is a learning curve for the Alexa app and the end user. I have to use specific verbiage such as " Alexa, tell roomba to clean" she will respond " do want roomba to clean all rooms" Suction power is great, I'm glad my roomba can get to spots I can't get to with my upright vacuum like under the couch,table,bed and dresser. It picked up a lot of dirt that my upright didn't get. "Where did all this dirt come from" was my initial reaction. The roomba does well with the transition between hardwood,tile floors to carpeting. It will sometimes pause before going from carpet to hard surface as the edge detection may have something to.do with this. The not so horrible. Roomba doesn't do well with clumps of hair especially long hair. I found small balls of hair tufts around the areas it vacuumed, the was also some hair that got pretty tangled in the side wall brush that I had to get out. With any vacuum you have to get rid of the clutter around the house this will eliminate the roomba getting stuck or missing areas in the home. In conclusion this was a great buy. I am happy with the app features that shows me how long the roomba cleaned and the areas it clean and where it detected hi dirt traffic. I named my Roomba Wall-E and it has been a great addition to.my ever evolving smart home!

This is the first automated vacuum that I have owned and maybe my expectations are too high. The following review is based on the first two weeks of owning the unit. Cleaning: It does an adequate job. I have tile, carpet, rugs and mats in my home. The unit cleans all of them and I have seen no issues with it transitioning from one surface to another. The reason that I say it cleans adequately is that when the unit is finished and I walk around my home, I have always found something that the unit did not pick up – even though the unit has clean the room and gone over the place where something was missed. It fairness this seems to be an issue with the tile floors and what I have observed is that the spinning arm sometimes flings dirt out of the way instead of into the path of the unit. However my expectation prior to the purchase was that that unit would clean everything which it clearly does not do. I envisioned never having to sweep or vacuum again – which is not the case. I would say the iRobot it more like a helper, albeit one that is a young child (I appreciate the help and effort, but at the end of the day I still have to seep / vacuum myself). I now plan on using the unit for my daily sweep, knowing that on the weekends I am still going to have to break out the equipment and do it myself. Something that I did not anticipate I would have to do when I invested several hundred dollars in this unit. App / Connectivity: After unboxing the unit and charging it the initial set up and connection was fairly quick and flawless. As with most things I purchase that have software and connect to the internet – there was a software update. I followed all of the instructions and prompts and was advised that the update would complete in 10 to 12 minutes….4 hours later I found myself Googling the issue and based on my limited research this seems to be a fairly common issue. The fix was simple enough: hold down the clean button for 20 seconds to perform a reboot – which I did and it fixed the issue and completed the update and I was off and cleaning. However the next day the unit reported that it could not talk to the cloud, which in two weeks has happened a handful of times. I have also experienced issues with the app not connecting to the iRobot servers (ie Cloud). The “fix” that I have tried and seem to work is to either reboot the robot and / or force stop and app on my phone and restart it. There seems to be some issue with the unit / app / cloud connecting and communicating. For those still reading and wondering I have no issues with my internet. I have great up / down speeds and can stream movies and music on multiple TVs at once without any issues (and not I do not have all the TVs on when I am trying to vacuum). My WIFI operates without issue as well and I have tested it in all areas of my home (inside, garage, outside) and have excellent signal strength. I have no issues with my security cameras, sensors or smart “connected” products getting connected or staying connected. The cloud issue is specific to this unit only and as I noted above: Something that I did not anticipate I would have to do (deal with) when I invested several hundred dollars in this unit. Customer Service: Probably the most frustrating aspect of the purchase is dealing with iRobot customer service. Initially I attempted to call, but after a very lengthy hold (In fairness the website did warn about higher than usual hold times and being 2020 I expected no less.), decided that I would just send an email to them and address my concerns. The main issue I wanted to address with customer service was the smart map not allowing me to add a “clean zone” to it. I had read the directions and FAQ and yes the unit had run several times (and) completed the map of the house. Additionally I had walked through the map setup and even added exclusion zones. I had run the vacuum after setting everything up and it worked as expected – however I still could not add a “clean zone” to the map. I explained all of this in detail in my email and when I received a reply it told me that the map was not available unit the unit had completed the mapping (usually 2 complete cleans) and referred me to a link in the instructions. My reply back asked them to READ the email I sent and AGAIN explained in great detail the steps already performed as well as the results and issues. They were nice enough to reply a second time directing me to once again REBOOT the unit and suggesting that I click on several links to read FAQ and articles (no of which addressed what my issue was). I equate this to me calling “AAA” auto club and telling them that I have just run out of gas, they advise that I need to replace my battery – no I just need some gas, maybe you should try rotating your tires………..ugh I just need GAS. Maybe they don’t employ customer service people who have the ability to read or understand emails or they utilize and automated bot – both of which are BAD ideas. Would I purchase another automated vacuum: YES. Would it be iRobot brand: Maybe if they were the most inexpensive of my options and promised not to email me further. Would I try a unit from a competitor: Absolutely – I mean at this point I have already wasted a ton of money on something that does not live up to the hype so what would I have to loose?