Woooohhh… I got myself a new robot vacuum. Yes, I know we have reviewed a few of them in the past – but this one is from the OG that made robot vacuums such a desirable household item – iRobot. That might not sound like a name that you’ll recognize, so let me tell you its other name – Roomba.
Yes, this is the iRobot Roomba j7+. It’s my first time interacting with this brand’s robot vacuums and I’m curious – how clean can it get compared to what I’ve used in the past? Is it better? And is it worth the price of RM6,299? I have the answers to all of these questions after spending the past 3 weeks with this robot vacuum.
Firstly, when we get the robot vacuum – we have a box with everything that is nicely laid out. Everything else is nicely segregated and labelled and they actually included a lot of stuff. I want to highlight a few things here – we have a sample bottle of hard floor cleaning agent, two mops that can be washed and reused, a spare filter inside that is surprisingly small, and also a spare sweeper.
Now, I want to talk about the dock first. It looks really sleek and one might think it’s a part of some fancy home interior designer piece of furniture. There is a piece of leather-like flap that can pull up and reveal the vacuum bag inside. It’s a simple assembly – and it is here that we can find the spare vacuum bag as well. Nice of them to put it in the dock.
There is also something that looks like a QR code on the dock. First of all, it’s not – but it is an important part of the robot vacuum’s functionality. We’ll talk about this later.
The robot vacuum itself is very sleek in terms of its design. The first thing I realized is the lack of an upper piece like what I’ve seen on other robot vacuums – so it can go under some low-rise furniture with ease. But, that also means this robot vacuum does not have a LIDAR sensor for ease of mapping.
The mop assembly is also very different. It is attached at the top instead – and it does have a piece of alignment tool in the middle so it won’t misalign. I wish other robot vacuum brands do this too, actually.
To fill in the water tank, we can press the button and the entire container swivels out from the front. Filling in water and whatnot is as simple as ever so I’m really not sure what is there to see here. You can also access the filter by popping out this piece as well. Really simple.
Another thing I want to highlight is in terms of servicing the robot vacuum You can remove the sweeper by just unscrewing and the entire piece comes out in one go. It’s important as the sweeper will degrade over time and hair can get tangled around the axle.
Surprisingly, this robot vacuum also uses dual rubber rollers. It should help in terms of cleanliness and it can also be taken out easily too.
All of the consumable parts are available for sale online and from what I’ve found, they’re pretty cheap and also widely available. This is great news.
After getting everything set up, I pressed go and let the robot vacuum do its thing. I’ve used it once every 2 days – totaling up to around 10 times of usage and every time I let it run, my mom will say one thing – “wow, the floor is really clean”. Yeah, my mom is the co-reviewer of this robot vacuum.
She said that this robot vacuum is cleaner than the previous one that we had – and that is due to the dual rubber roller and also the design of the mop as well. Since the mop swivels from the top to the bottom, it gets pressed down onto the floor and creates extra downward force. Once it detects carpets, the mop returns to the top – hence keeping the carpet dry.
Now, since this robot vacuum does not have a LIDAR sensor, everything is done via the camera at the front. It has a torchlight to help it see in the dark, and it does the job very well. However, this robot vacuum’s forward force is really strong and because of my room’s weird layout, it always closes the door and traps itself inside. I need a doorstopper of some kind to prevent that from happening.
This is where we’ll return and talk about the QR code on the dock. That is actually a fiducial that helps the robot vacuum to enter back the station with precise alignment. The robot vacuum uses the camera to look at the QR code, then homes in according to the fiducial’s location. It’s a technique used in many 3D mapping technologies – and it’s interesting to see it implemented here.
This IKEA footrest is also the bane of all robot vacuums. My previous one kept getting stuck on this thing and the iRobot does the same thing as well. No idea why this happened, so I just pick it up and place it somewhere else.
Overall cleaning capabilities – are magnificent. My mom already said it’s super clean and I didn’t even use the hard floor cleaning fluid yet, by the way. Oh – this fluid is also for sale in many places.
Now it’s time to talk about the app. It has a standalone iRobot app that does all of the functionalities that we’ve come to expect – it shows the robot’s status, the battery level, and also the water tank level which is nice, but lacks the functionality to display which part of the map is the robot vacuum located or where it has cleaned and hasn’t.
The iRobot app also lacks one more thing that I think is crucial. We can’t share the robot vacuum with other people. If I want to share this vacuum with other people, I have to log in my account on their devices. I really wish the feature to add access to other accounts will come soon as it is rather important.
The app itself though, I think is fairly simple and straightforward. There are a few settings here and there and also labeling the map or creating no-go zone and no-mop zones, but overall – pretty typical in terms of the app functionality but quite lackluster in a way.
Should you buy the iRobot Roomba j7+ robot vacuum?
So overall, I think the iRobot Roomba j7+ is definitely the most expensive robot vacuum that I’ve used – but the availability of replacement parts are readily available while being easy to replace, and the cleaning capability is very good. I am impressed that it is actually cleaner than other robot vacuum that we’ve used in the past.
There is another version of the iRobot Roomba j7+ that doesn’t have the self-cleaning dock included, and that’s called the iRobot Roomba j7. Yes, it’s lower in price – but I don’t think the self-cleaning dock is sold separately so we can’t upgrade the j7 to the j7+ at a later date.
Where to buy? (Affiliate links)
- iRobot Roomba j7+
- iRobot Roomba j7 (no self-cleaning dock)
- iRobot Roomba j7/j7+ replacement parts
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