iRobot Roomba i7 (7150) Robot Vacuum- Wi-Fi Connected, Smart Mapping, Compatible with Alexa, Ideal for Pet Hair, Works with Clean Base, Black (Renewed)

Updated review on 02-19-23: It's now been 13 months that we've had our renewed / refurbished Roomba i7, and after some heated debates and emotion-filled arguments with this little robot, I've come to accept and love it. Yes, I still hold to my former review that, at the end of the day, it's pretty stupid. BUT it's done a ton of work for us over the past 13 months, and slow and stupid as it can be (running into the same chairs that it literally could have avoided by a single, unchanging route since *day one*) it does fill a niche in a house with five people (no pets). I would say (as I formerly wrote) that you just have to calculate and properly plan when to use it. Normally, I still prefer my manual battery-powered Hoover which I can whip out of the closet and knock out the floors in no time (and with much better quality cleaning). HOWEVER, if this Roomba were to suddenly disappear overnight, I *think* I would reinvest in one *IF* I could get it for $250 or less (and obviously it has to be capable of mapping and "smart" vacuuming, as this I7 does). However, if this Roomba disappeared tonight, and $500 was the price tag for another one, it would be "Goodbye Roomba, nice to know you."Edit on 03-06-22: I've now been using the Roomba i7 for a few extra weeks since writing this review, and I just want to add that it *still* aggravates me with how stupid it can be, getting itself stuck and failing many of the simple jobs I give it. ALSO, one thing I didn't say before is that the app has a terrible lag / delay to it that wastes so much time. No other app I have does this.Every single time I open the screen of my Samsung Galaxy S7 phone, the app has to "Connect" the robot, which takes up to 30 seconds. That's a very long time! Not only so, if the screen merely times out, and turns off, then when I turn the screen back on (with the app still open), it has to reconnect all over again. Why!? That's another 10-30 seconds wasted.I also don't like that you can't stack jobs up, one after the other. Say that you tell it to start cleaning one room, and then you suddenly forget that you want it to also do another room. You can't go into the app and tell it to add the other room. You have to wait for it to (hopefully!) complete the job you first gave it, and then manually add another job. Yes, you can "schedule" the other room, but you have to guess at what time the first room will be complete. Very clunky and frankly, obsolete if you ask me.Oh, and again, you're gonna spend a significant amount of time cleaning this Roomba i7. I don't even have pets (just a long-haired wife) and long hair is constantly (every single day) getting wrapped up in the extractor brushes and the rotating brush on the front right of the robot. This thing would do an even worse job than it already does if I didn't baby it by cleaning it almost every single day. Kid you not. Now, I return you to my original review below from a couple or few weeks ago.****Reviewing Roomba i7 refurbished***: (I'm not paid or incentivized to do this review). A novelty, but certainly not worth the full $500-600, and only worth the refurbished cost of $250 in specific circumstances, or perhaps a well-planned long run.BOTTOM LINE: This robot is extremely slow, disappointingly stupid, and not as thorough as I would expect.THE CONS: I can vacuum a 1400 sq. ft. condo in 11 minutes flat with a traditional Hoover battery-powered upright for $120. It takes this robot 90-115 minutes to cover the same space (10-15 times as long), and it does only about 75% of the job that I do. It also can't move furniture around while it vacuums, like I do when I manually vacuum.Ultimately, if you don't pay much for this vacuum, it's biggest value will be in *automated vacuuming while you're not around, over a very long term period.* Initially, this thing is a time suck. It takes time to set it up, for it to learn you house, and to work out the kinks. Plus, I spent hours testing it scrupulously to see just how good it really worked. (I also tested the 980 model before this one, but sent it back to get this i7.)In terms of Roomba i7's mapping ability, this is nothing remarkable, and while in theory it works well, it suffers from problems. The chief problem is that this thing still gets stuck occasionally (maybe 10% of the time) in the most stupid and inexcusable of ways.GIVING UP / GETTING STUCK, AND RETURNING HOME UNFINISHEDExample: our Roomba i7 is docked in the dining room where there is a table and six chairs. Even though we move the chairs around (sometimes putting them up on the table for cleaning, and sometimes leaving them down), there is *always* a clean, unobstructed path along the wall for Roomba to get out of the kitchen. However, the stupid robot occasionally (1 in 5 times) "forgets" this fact, and gets itself stuck under the kitchen table, and then returns back to the base and gives up!Thankfully, it then lets you know that it failed its job (or rather, QUIT!) So, if you were away from home, controlling Roomba by the app on your phone, you could tell it to try again. But WHY? It shouldn't be so stupid in the first place. And you had to waste time doing what a traditional vacuum could have done BETTER, and in 1/10th the time. (And note: I'm not talking about it getting hung up or stuck on obstacles that shouldn't be there. I'm talking about it being downright s-t-u-p-i-d.)I should perhaps suggest that a little firmware or software upgrade could fix this navigation issue, and that would honestly make me feel quite a bit better about the prospects of using the Roomba. But this simply hasn't been done yet (not that I know anyway), and as such, this thing should be much, much smarter.REGARDING HAIR: I don't have pets, but a wife with long hair that sheds like a pet. The Roomba tends to gather up her hair and spit it out into a big fur ball, like a tractor in a field that cuts grass and leaves bails of hay behind. This has now happened at least 5-10 times in the last month. Super annoying.My traditional Hoover upright (battery-powered) for $120 is 10-20X faster than the Roomba (no exaggeration), much stronger in its suction, and just downright kicks the Roomba's but in every way. If I'm vacuuming manually with the Hoover, and it doesn't pick something up one the first or second pass, I just run over it 48 times in 2 seconds, and problem solved. The Roomba has no such intelligence, and ultimately only picks up 75% of what I can do.REGARDING TIME TO CLEAN: It takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r. If you have a bunch of people, pets, or obstacles moving around in the house, this isn't for you. As I said, it takes 90-115 minutes to clean my 1400 condo. I literally can do this manually in 11 minutes flat with a Hoover battery-powered.NOISE LEVEL: First, for all the negatives I've said above (and that's a LOT of negatives above), this thing is remarkably quiet. I started with the Roomba 980, which was way too loud. At first, this Roomba i7 was scarily quiet, and didn't sound like it was even doing anything (and yes, it was cleaning, not just mapping). This is quiet enough to run while you are on the phone, or sleeping in the bedroom. That's nice.CONCLUSION: Where this could be worth the $250 and time to set it up is as (for me) as follows: once you get the hang of it, and it learns your house, set it to run *automatically* when you aren't home, or when you are asleep. The least amount of thought going into this, the better. It won't do as good of a job as you can do manually (as I said above), but it will do a decent job. (How do you define decent?) Over a couple months, if you get it into a good rhythm, it can pay off both the money and time it took you to set it up.After about one month, I've let it replace about 30-45 minutes of vacuuming I do every week. Therefore, conservatively speaking, I'd say it will take 2-3 months to really make me happy I bought it. Again, I'm reviewing Amazon refurbished Roomba i7. (And please people: always state what you are reviewing here on Amazon, because Amazon mixes reviews up, and you can't always trust that what you are reading is for the item you are looking at. Get it fixed, Amazon!)

I must admit, I was very skeptical when I purchased this refurbished iRobot i7. Not only about it being a "refurbished" item, but the whole idea of an automated vacuum. We found ourselves having to constantly sweep or vacuum inside our back sliding door because of the dog dragging dirt, mulch, leaves into the family room. We have a short haired dog that moderately sheds, the i7 has had no problem picking up the dog hair without clogging. We have wall-to-wall carpet in one room and hardwood/hard surface floors with area rugs in a couple other rooms, the i7 has had no problem transistioning from the hard surface to rug (and back again) and cleaning all of them. It has the ability to "learn" your floor plan and makes a map of it. You can then direct it to vacuum by room(s) or the entire house. You can even identify "problem areas" for it to vacuum more frequently. You can set up a schedule or use the app to run it. It also connects to Google Assistant or Alexa. Through those devices, you can direct it to clean one or more rooms. You can even set up "no go" zones so it doesn't bump over plants, dog dishes, etc. I included a photo of the floor plan "map" the device made of our first floor. It takes the i7 two entire house vaccuming sessions for it to "learn" and make the map. You then edit the map by delineating and naming the rooms. I set up a couple "no go" zones to protect small potted plants and the dog dishes from being bumped and possible knocked over. After my initial skepticism, I am VERY impressed with this i7 iRobot two weeks into my ownship of it.

We had no problems with the initial runs and mapping. Our iRobot 7 (7150) factory rebuild performed excellently in that regard. Definitely is more powerful than my previous 800 series Roomba. There is a design flaw where the opening into the dust bin is too narrow for the dirt to get in. We didn't purchase a tower system with this iRobot Roomba. The tower evacuation and charger may have handled that design shortcoming better. Overall happy with this iRobot 7. Love that it vacuums in lines and doesn't just ping pong off of everything like the 800 series did. Yes, I would buy this or better model in a refurbished condition again.

I purchased the i7+ from iRobot back in 2020. The i7 vacuum died in a year. I kept the base and kept meaning to replace the vacuum. I found this and gave it a try based on reviews and boy do I love it! It seems to do everything my first i7 did, but better and at a better price point. Hoping this lasts more than a year.

Vacuuming is a constant battle at our house. I hate doing it, wife hates it, and kids despise it. I finally talked my wife into a Roomba. We originally got the 694 because it was on the cheaper end. It worked! It did a great job of cleaning the floors, but it took forever to vacuum any space because it randomly bumped around like a drunken R2-D2. It did vacuum, but when it was done, the carpets were zig zagged and really didn't have that freshly vacuumed lookSo... We sent it back and upgraded. Since my wife had seen the light, we spent a little more and got the refurbished i7.At first, it seemed like we had bought the same thing, it spent forever bumping around and mapping our house. I truly wasn't sure that it was an improvement, but then, like magic, the maps filled in on my app and I could see how it had learned the layout of the house. This little badass was roaming my house, vacuuming dust like crazy, and then alerting me on my phone when it completed a job or whenever it was in troubleNow, Bertram (that's what she named it) can be commanded to clean any room in the house (on any of the three floors) and he goes there without our complaint, does a marvelous job, returns to his base. He only leaves behind perfectly striped, dust-free floors. Pretty sure that my wife likes Bertram more than me. This could be an issue. I think I've been replaced.