The iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner line has been on the market for years; it was invented in 1999 by MIT engineers Craig Fong and David Harris. They came up with the idea of using robotic technology to clean our floors on the back of their research into animal navigation science.
The iRobot vacuums are an effective and efficient way to eliminate dust and dirt from your home. They are also very easy to set up and can greatly add to any household. We tested several models to find the best one. But, of course, you’ll love what it does best if you’re a Roomba fan.
In this article, we look at the best iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaners.
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What to consider when choosing the best iRobot Roomba Vacuum?
When it comes to choosing an iRobot Roomba, the most important factors to consider are:
Dust capacity and auto-emptying Docks
You can buy the i3 Evo s9 or j7 separately without the clean Base, or you can buy the robot and the clean Base together in one package, which is where the + in the name comes from.
You can read our article Best 5 robot vacuums with a docking station in 2022
When the dustbin is full, the Roomba will automatically return to its dock station to dump itself into a larger bin. That reduces the frequency with which you must empty it, and it is perfect if you suffer from allergies because dust is not released into the air as regularly.
Smaller dustbins require more frequent emptying unless you have a self-emptying model.
350ml is an adequate volume for guidance.
Navigation & Mapping
No-go zones
A no-go zone indicates areas of the home that the Roomba should not attempt to navigate, such as stairs or areas with delicate furniture.
Targeted rooms
That means that the robot vacuum cleaner will only clean the area you designate. As a result, you won’t waste time cleaning the house when you are not at home. In addition, the robotic vacuum cleaner will be able to clean the area you are in and your entire house if you are away.
Multiple floors
If you have many floors, look for a Roomba that can support multiple maps. That way, you’re not restricted to just one floor.
Obstacle Avoidance
If you prefer a robot vacuum cleaner over your manual vacuum, you should consider buying one with this feature.
The iRobot vacuums usually have a built-in obstacle sensor that detects and avoids objects. The iRobot can stop or reverse itself whenever it encounters an object.
The latest Roombas, such as the J7 and S9, are outfitted with Precision Vision Navigation technology. Which uses a small camera on the front of the device to identify obstacles, such as pet messes and cords, and operate around them rather than through them.
Wi-Fi connectivity & Scheduling
The Roomba Wi-Fi connectivity and scheduling feature makes it possible to control the Roomba by using the Roomba app or any mobile device. For example, you can schedule the cleaning time and get instant notifications on your mobile device when the robot is finished cleaning. The app can also control the Wi-Fi connectivity of the robot so that the Roomba has access to the Internet connection.
Imprint link
Imprint Link Technology is a great feature if you want to go with your home cleaning automation to the next level and mop your floors after your iRobot finishes vacuuming.
This feature enables the automation between compatible Roomba iRobot vacuums (i3 Evo s9 or j7) with the iRobot Braava jet m6
Noise Level:
If you have pets or children or are sensitive to noise, you should consider the noise level of the robot vacuum. Self-emptying Roombas appear to be especially noisy during the “emptying” phase.
What are the 5 best iRobot Roombas?
iRobot Roomba s9+
Specs:
- Size: 12.3 x 12.3 x 3.5 inches
- Dust bin capacity: 388 ml
- Weight: 8.2 pounds
- Mapping: Yes
- Battery Life: 120 mins
- Charge Time: 3 hours
- Navigation system: vSLAM navigation
- Filter type: HEPA Filter
- Smart home compatibility: Alexa, Google Assistant
Pro’s
- Powerful suction
- Self-emptying Base
- Attractive, premium design
- Perfect for corner cleaning
- Spot-cleaning
- Obstacle avoidance
- Mapping was quick and easy
- Perfect for pet owners
- Easy-to-use mapping controls in the app
Con’s
- Loud vacuum, loud dustbin
- Very expensive
iRobot Roomba j7+
Specs:
- Size: 13.3 x 13.3 x 3.7 inches
- Dust bin capacity: 500 ml
- Weight: 7.4 pounds
- Mapping: Yes
- Battery Life: 90 mins
- Charge Time: 3 hours
- Smart home compatibility: Alexa, Google Assistant
- Filter Type: Replaceable HEPA filter
Pro’s
- Excellent navigation
- Obstacle avoidance
- Able to clean just one room
- Fast cleaner
- Great for pet owners
Con’s
- Clean Base is very loud
- Expensive
iRobot Roomba i3+ EVO
Specs:
- Size: 13.26 x 13.26 x 3.6 inches
- Weight: 7.4 pounds
- Dust bin capacity: 500 ml
- Cleaning Performance: 90.1
- Pet Hair Score: 75.5Bin
- Smart Home Compatibility: Alexa, Google Assistant
Pro’s
- Self-emptying Base is great for those with allergies
- Excellent hardwood performance
- Auto-detects dirtier areas
Con’s
- Poor pet hair pickup on the carpet
- Lacks smart mapping
- Very loud Clean Base
iRobot Roomba 694
Specs:
- Size: 13.4 inches x 3.5 inches
- Dust bin capacity: 350 ml
- Weight: 6.8 pounds
- Charge Time: 2 hours
- Battery Life: 90 mins
- Smart home compatibility: Alexa, Google Assistant
Pro’s
- Solid cleaning performance
- Affordable
- Timed cleaning options in the app
- Location-based cleaning options
- Can operate with or without Wi-Fi
Con’s
- Lacks high-tech smart features
- No mapping
- No obstacle avoidance
- A similar model still available for less
iRobot Braava jet m6
Specs:
- Size: 10.6 x 10.6 x 3.5 inches
- Weight: 4.85 pounds
- Mapping: Yes
- Smart home compatibility: Alexa, Google Assistant
Pro’s
- Able to mop specific rooms
- Wi-Fi connected
- Works in tandem with some Roombas
Con’s
- Expensive
What do The best iRobot Roomba Vacuums have in common?
There are certain qualities and features that all Roombas have, for example:
- Each Roomba has a patented two-brush roll design that makes Roomba exceptionally good at carpet cleaning. If you look at other types of robot vacuums on the market, you’ll find that they have one brush, whereas Roombas have two; even the cheapest Roombas, like the 600 series, outperform high-end robot vacuums from other brands, at least with carpet cleaning, so the two brush thing seems to be a huge advantage, and every Roomba has it, and others don’t
- All Roombas also have basic features like drop sensors which prevent them from falling downstairs
- They will all automatically return to their charging dock
- They all have a feature called dirt detection, which is a sensor that can tell if they’re vacuuming a particularly dirty area so that it will give it more attention
- All robots on this list are Wi-Fi enabled, meaning that you can control them even when you’re away from your house with your smartphone, with which you can also schedule cleanings and get alerts if it’s stuck or something like that
- They are also all able to be controlled with voice commands using Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant
- They very well pick up debris like pet hair and human hair from the surfaces of hard floors and carpets.
- I think Roombas have great build quality in common; they have a huge selection of parts filters brushes, and motors available for sale online both from them and third parties, so those two things combined mean that you should be able to keep your Roomba running for a long time.
Let’s Compare what differentiates the best iRobot Roomba:
Moving on to the differences let’s pick the most obvious physical things that make them different, which are:
Auto-Empty Base:
Three of these Roombas can be used with iRobot’s clean Base, an automatic bin emptying system where a motor in the Base kicks in when the robot returns to its Base. It empties the contents of the dust bin into a bag in the clean base iRobot says these bags can hold up to 60 days’ worth of debris before needing to be replaced. I’m a big fan of empty auto bins and use them exclusively at my house these days robot was one of the first to make this feature work really well. Their clean-based design is still one of the best, in my opinion.
Suction Power & Performance:
Another hardware difference is the suction power i robot measures suction in relationship to the standard suction of the 600 series they say that the i3 evo and j7 have 10 times more suction than the 600 series where the S9 has 40 times more in my experience with testing the suction and airflow of these robots while you can notice a very slight difference in cleaning performance between these robots because of the suction difference it’s not as if the 692 or 694 isn’t powerful enough to do the job in fact going back to the carpet deep clean test the 600 series robots consistently outperform robots two or even three times their price and score way above average as you can see the main difference i’ve noticed about suction is with the S9 because it has so much more than the others at 40 times suction and the s9 still holds the record for the best carpet cleaning performance i’ve seen on that test and i should note that suction is a lot less important when talking about hard floors so if you have mostly hard floors in your house i wouldn’t worry that much about suction at all.
Brushrolls
- The S9 is also the only Roomba that has a different shape. Also, its main brushes are about 30 wider than any other Roomba, so it has a larger cleaning path and would clean in fewer passes
- Another hardware difference is that the 600 series has the older style brush rolls with the bristles compared to the newer style main brushes, which are a little bit better at resisting hair tangles
Navigation
One of the biggest differences between the cheaper Roombas and the more expensive Roombas is the way they navigate around your house. The 600 series navigates using reactive navigation, which uses various sensors like their bump sensor and IR sensors, as well as an algorithm to clean more or less randomly.
Where the i3 through the j7 all use various technologies to create maps of your house and navigate in nice neat rows, one thing to point out is that these reactive navigation robots are pretty efficient. I’ve tested this random navigation over smart navigation several times and in different ways. The random robots usually achieve the same near 100 coverage and at about the same time as the expensive ones.
The other three, the i3 S9 and J7, all create and use maps of your house. Besides ensuring better coverage in every room for every cleaning, the main benefit of this is that the iRobot knows where it has and hasn’t cleaned your house, so it will systematically clean the house. It won’t stop until it’s cleaned every area of every room. Even if its battery runs out before it’s finished, it will return to its Base to recharge and resume cleaning right where it left off, making battery life irrelevant for these higher-end robots.
The 600 series do not create a map, so they have a fixed 90 minutes to clean as much of the house as possible. If you have a smaller area or an apartment, it’s usually more than enough time to do that, but if you have a larger space or a lot of rooms or want to ensure perfect coverage every time, then you would probably want the i3 S9 or J7
The more expensive ones, like the S9 and J7, use cameras to create an interactive map of your house, unlocking many advanced app features. The i3 also makes a map but is less detailed and has more limited app features.
Obstacle avoidance:
One huge difference is that the J7 is the first Roomba to have camera-based obstacle avoidance systems which iRobot calls precision vision navigation. Until recently, robot vacuums couldn’t detect and avoid obstacles too low for their IR sensors or too light for their bump sensors to recognize things like cords and socks and the dreaded pet waste. So the solution was to put some sensors on the front of the robot. In the j7’s case, it’s a camera that iRobot has programmed to detect all kinds of objects, and it can learn to avoid even more through updates or its learning methods. I tested it in various ways and was impressed with things like cords, small toys, and novelty pet waste. So on that point, a robot seems to have spent a lot of time building models of pet waste for the robot to learn its various shapes and sizes, so much so that they have a new program that more or less guarantees that it will avoid pet waste.
APP Features:
Let’s talk about some of these newly designed iRobot app features; one of my favorites is a new part called keep-out zones. After the robot maps out your house, you can draw virtual boxes on the map, which will keep the robot from going places you don’t want it to go. For example, most homes have areas where there are a lot of cords or clutter. These keep-out zones are an amazing feature that makes a huge difference in user experience, in my opinion, and I use them a lot myself. Still, it’s an app feature only available for robots with cameras like the s9 and j7 but not for the i3 Evo.
The Genius app allows you to designate the robot to clean certain rooms. So, for example, you could tell the robot to go clean the kitchen, but you could also select certain areas within a room so you could tell the robot to go clean around the kitchen table or go clean around the front door.
That can all integrate with the Scheduling features, too, so you could, for example, set a schedule to clean certain areas one day and the other regions another day. As its name suggests, it learns a lot and automatically recommends things in the app.
One big change is integrating into smart homes; for example, you can set it to communicate with your smart door locks or thermostats to begin a job when you leave the house.
Some of the new changes with the genius 4.0 app are that the i3 Evo now has home mapping where it didn’t before, so you can name rooms and have it clean certain rooms while avoiding others though it cannot clean certain areas within a room while preventing others like the S9 and J7 and it does not have the keep out zones as I mentioned before
Imprint link:
Another thing is that the i3 Evo, as well as the J7 and S9, can integrate with the iRobot Brava jet M6, called imprint link. So when the robot finishes its job, it will send a signal to the Brava jet mop and automatically begin its mopping job, but this can’t be done with the 600 series.
Final Thought
To sum it up, The winner is the S9+; this model includes a high-performance dirt sensor, a patented cyclone design, and powerful suction that allows it to pick up even the tiniest of dirt particles.
The S9+ is also equipped with AI navigation features like map cleaning, multiple room mapping, and obstacle avoidance. It also has automatic settings and scheduling.
This technology allows for a safer environment for the S9+, especially for the elderly and children, while also reducing the amount of dust that’s produced when using the robot.
The S9+ is made to be easy to use and maintain, so even if you’re not tech-savvy, you can easily get the most out of this robot.
If you don’t like to clean at all and you want a combination vacuum cleaner and mop for more automation and luxury life I recommend the iRobot Roomba s9+ Robot Vacuum & Braava Jet m6 Robot Mop Bundle it’s cheaper than buying them separately.
