What I learned about the Roomba i7+ After One Run

Robot vacuum cleaners have come a really long way in the last 20 years, and like they were when the industry started, Roomba finds themselves on top. The company behind Roomba, iRobot, was generous enough to send the Roffel household the Roomba i7+ device to use in our home. While we received the product free of charge, these opinions are our own!

What is the Roomba i7+

The one downside to Roomba has nothing to do with the devices themselves – it’s all about their naming decisions While I’ve learned a few things here and there while researching – anytime you see the + in a Roomba product name, that means it comes with a self-emptying base – the naming system doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There are i# models and three digit models. There are models that come with base stations and models that don’t. To their credit, though, Roomba does seem to have a product for everyone.

The iRobot product we are using is the i7+, a smart mapping vacuum robot that charges and empties itself via a base station. In the box you will get your vacuum, base station, power cable, extra filter and brush, an invisible wall (that we have not tried), and of course some paperwork. If you remove the time it took to update the Roomba – about 12 minutes on our 40mb Wifi – it took less than 10 minutes to get my Roomba from the box to the floor, and charging on the stand.

While we will get into various ways to get your Roomba started at a later date – using the app, pressing hte button on the Roomba itself, or using smart home devices – for my first run I decided to control the vacuum via the app.

“Robby’s” First Run

See Robby glide. See Robby suck. OK, we could write a child’s book about Robby the Roomba, but we won’t…for now. iRobot, call us!

But in all seriousness, before hitting that “Clean” button I knew we had to prep the house for a vacuum. We picked up all the large toys, blankets, couch pillows and more. We removed a few clothes items that had fallen out of a clean basket, and lift up the various cords lying on the ground. After a quick 5 minutes, we had (thought) the rooms on our main floor were clean and ready to be vacuumed.

Mistake.

Our main floor is quite large, and consists of a connected dinning room and kitchen, as well as a large family room. Robby zoomed around the kitchen and dinning room as he began to learn our house for smart mapping. Although he will eventually clean in straight, efficient rows, as he learned the layout of our home, he went here, there, and everywhere. Seriously, iRobot, a children book is begging to be written!

It’s important to note when your Roomba begins to learn your home, he won’t just go one room at a time. He went all over. Dinning, kitchen, dinning, family, dinning, family, kitchen, family, dinning….you get the point. He’s learning.

The kitchen and dinning room were fine, as there were very few obstacles. I was even pleasantly surprised to see Robby gliding just beneath the bars on my kitchen chairs, cleaning up as he went. The family room, however, was a completely different situation. My wife wouldn’t put me up for “tidying man of the year” awards, and for good reason. While I did a great job picking up the visible floor in the family room, I forgot that perhaps Robby might find his way under the couch. And he did. And it was a mess.

For the most part, Robby just flung the large Duplo blocks, wooden toys, and large pieces of debris out from under the couch, and I was able to quickly and easily pick them up. But then there was a booklet for a Google Hub Max on the floor. In most cases, I think Robby would glide over a book-shaped object with little issue, but since this booklet was light enough, it go sucked up and stuck to the bottom of Robby, some of it getting into his brushes. While he didn’t shut down completely, the noise he was making wasn’t great – I pulled him out and cleaned him out.

This happened another half dozen times. One item, however, was worse than others – a face mask from Old Navy, with elastic strings attached. I’m pretty sure Robby loved this piece of debris more than anything else, because he got himself tangled up in it faster than you could imagine. The elastic band on the headset was wrapped around his wheel and severely wrapped around his brush. This ultimately did cause Robby to shut down and flash an error screen on my iRobot app.

By the time Robby finished his hour+ long run and returned to his base, I realized he had done a bang-up job. The floors looked great, and I knew they would only get better once he knew the house layout better. I also knew the excess clutter under the couch was my problem, not his. Like if you were going to vacuum a room yourself by hand, it is important to make sure you pick up various objects around your house so your robot can work uninterrupted. I learned the hard way with the mask, and although we avoided any potential issues this time, I will definitely be more careful next time!

We will have a full review of the Roomba i7+ so stay tuned!