Vaccum: Mapped entire first floor after two runs, map surprisingly accurate. Having the map means you can designate rooms or areas to clean. I divided my large living room into three "rooms" so I can clean specific sections more often than others. Zones work great (i.e., an "avoid" zone around wires). I brought the vac to a different floor and it recognized that, and made a second map for the floor on its own. I have a large dog that sheds a LOT and I run this every morning in the room where he spends the most time, and most other rooms several times a week. Unlike my previous dumb robovac, which pingponged around the house aimlessly, cleaning the same areas over and over until it ran out of battery, and getting stuck in my barstools every time, this robovac goes straight to the area you select, cleans in straight lines, works the perimeter, then returns to base. Never gets stuck. You can tell it to clean several rooms in any order you want, or clean "all." I didn't get the smart base because I read that it got clogged with pet hair, the bags seemed expensive, and I figure I'd be emptying it almost as often, anyway, with all the hair. My pet hair load means I have to empty the dust bin after every room or two, but that's not exactly onerous. TBH, it's kind of satisfying to empty out the bin and see how much hair it picked up. If we didn't have pet hair, the dust bin would probably suffice for the whole house (2000 sf) or more. I have wood floors with a few short-pile rugs. Cleans the wood floors great and the carpets ok. Only complaint is that it's too tall to get under my particular kitchen cabinets so I don't use it in kitchen. The app is great. Alexa commands are inconvenient because it's a whole conversation ("Do you want to start the mop afterward?") and then it usually has some kind of communication issue and I end up grabbing the phone anyway. But the app is easy and you can make favorites so it's just a tap or two to get regular jobs going. This is a sanity saver for me because pet hair drives me mad. In some ways, it vacuums better than a big vac because it really gets under the furniture. However, if the mom-in-law is coming over, might want to pull out the big vac and get in the crevices that this can't get to.The battery life is good and it will vacuum most of the main floor (about 1400 sf) before giving out. Unfortunately, doesn't save enough juice to get back to base (poops out about 15 feet from base) so it doesn't re-charge and resume vacuuming as advertised. Not a problem for me since I tend to vacuum the house piecemeal anyway. I bought it on sale (altho not as cheap as it got before Christmas) and it's worth it. The robomop is a different story. I bought the two bundled. It's true that you can set the mop to start when the vac finishes. HOWEVER, the vac & mop do not share mapping. The mop has to do several runs of its own to make its own map. It will have different "rooms" unless you take a lot of care to ensure everything is exactly the same as the vaccum. And if you create a zone on one ((say, for a Christmas tree) you have to go to the other one and put it on there in exactly the same way. And here's the big problem: if you tell the vac to do Room 1 and the mop to start afterward, the mop doesn't recognize that the vac only did Room 1, and the mop cleans the entire house, not just Room 1. So the "mop after" feature is useless unless you vacuum the whole house first and you want the whole house mopped. Maybe there's a way to do this but I couldn't figure it out. Also, the iRobot floor cleaner, which they say is the only cleaner you can use, leaves streaks on hardwood floors. As other reviewers noted, water does better. So you are limited to water and like to use products that make my wood floors glow. Plus, this mop takes forever and doesn't get up dried on food or other hard stains. And for some reason, my mop doesn't recognize that I put the "wet mop pad" on it, and will only offer to "dry mop" , which is what, exactly? I haven't bothered to try to fix it. Plus, you have to put on the mopping pad and fill the reservoir with water every time. Easier, faster and better to just grab my Bona mop with its great hardwood floor cleaner and make a pass over my floors from time to time. To be fair, the robomop might work better for someone who works away from home and can schedule the vacuum and mop to run while they're gone, and then come home to clean floors. And when I have used it, it does make the floors appreciably cleaner than just vacuuming.

We already own one roomba (roomba 860, bought in 2016). WE use the old one 2 to 4 times a weeks and still runs great after 4 years (to my surprise we didn't have to replace the battery yet). However I really wanted to get a new "smarter" roomba to run on the first floor and keep the old roomba on the ground floor to clean rooms in parallel. The roomba I7 has been a game changer. 1) NAVIGATION: the I7 is so much smarter in navigation compared to the old 860. The old 860 was using a random pattern that was very unefficient and very time consuming. The i7 is methodical with parallel strokes and finishing by vacuuming the room edges. It gives me reason to believe all room as been vacuumed and it is a lot faster so can get more job (more sqft) done in the same amount of time. If it runs out of battery during a cleaning it will go back to the dock station, recharge, and resume where he left off: altough we don't really use this feature (we typically plan cleaning runs that are well within a battery charge) it is a nice one. 2) SMART MAPS and APP: the smart map is so useful. No need to baby sit the roomba by putting lighthouse (the light fences) or move it room to room manually. Now with the app I just choose which room I want clean and the roomba undock, goes to the room(s), clean only that room(s) and come back to charge once finished. Making a schedule on the app is very fast and easy. Remote start is also a nice thing (example we checked in the morning that kids have not left stuff in their room and then we can start the roomba after leaving so he does his job undisturbed). We didn't buy the self cleaning station. The price premium was excessive and we didn't think it was necessary. We always clean the roomba after each run (we have a normal vacuum that we use to vacuum the dust bin and the rollers). Said that it is probably a nice feature for families with different habits / needs. The two cons that I have is that a) the dust bin is smaller than the old roomba. Said that it has never been an issue for us. We run the roombas in short task (30 minutes cleaning in average) and we clean it up after each run, so the risk of overfilling is very low for us. Said that it coud be a minus with familieis with different habits. b) it will NOT run in the dark, it needs light to operate (otherwise the camera cannot detect the rooms). Again this is not an issue for us as we always run it during daytime when we are home or in the office. Based on this roomba i7 is a 5 stars for us and we stronlgy recommend it.

Pros of the i7: • Cleans VERY thoroughly on both hard and soft surfaces • Will circle around chair and bed legs to thoroughly clean around them • Will push partially closed doors open so it can vacuum under them • Will boss (push) lightweight shoes around to clean under them. • Will remove all the dust bunnies under the beds and furniture that the robot can fit under but you cant/wont. • The built in HEPA filter leaves no dust smell in the air. • Very intelligent – does a good job of extricating itself from narrow spaces and tangled electrical cords. • Will vacuum your house on a regular schedule if you are too forgetful/lazy to do it yourself • Nice cell phone app allows you to label rooms on a map and set up cleaning tasks • Customer support/care is good. • iRobot may have more replaceable parts than other makes • iRobot has a good reliability reputation Cons: • Pretty noisy. Not too loud, but rather annoying. Emits loud whirring noise with random whining and bumping noises. Maybe this is a necessary consequence for strong suction and cleaning. • Can be startling if run on a schedule when you are home. Can also be startling if it is running a task, runs low on battery power, recharges itself, and then restarts itself several hours later to finish the previous task. The latter can be avoided by breaking large tasks into several smaller ones. • Cannot run at night in the dark, though that would wake you anyway even if the lights were on for it. • Spends a lot of time bumping into things. Sometimes it will come up to a wall and gently tap it, but often it will run full speed into chair legs and furniture. The hard plastic bumper has some play in it, and I have not noticed any marks on the furniture yet (though I have only used it a few times). You might want to add a white rubber or felt strip to the bumper. iRobot sent me a white vinyl adhesive “bumper extender” strip free of charge. • Takes a long time to clean (though it does do a very thorough job). Much longer than if you did it yourself. This is only a problem if you are at home, since it is noisy. My guess is that the i7 will clean faster than the less expensive versions since it is more intelligent and usually cleans in a serpentine manner rather than the haphazard “rebound off the wall” methods the others use. You might want to invest in a lightweight cordless vacuum instead, and vacuum the area yourself in one quarter of the time. • You need to empty the dust bin every hour or so. You also need to pull the small HEPA filter out and knock it sharply to free the dust from it. I found the small accordion like folds in it still retain a lot of dust so I use my hand held dust-buster to suck out the remaining dust. You can avoid emptying the bin and HEPA filter if you spend the extra $200 for the i7+ self- emptying accessory, which is another vacuum cleaner that automatically sucks the debris out of the i7. • You need to keep its dozen or so sensors clean. This 30 second job probably only needs to be performed after every few hours of cleaning time. • You need to put chairs on top of tables if the chair legs are too close together for the robot to pass through, or if all the cross bars in the chair are too low for the robot to get under (although it only needs access on at least one side of the chair to clean under it). • You need to tie up electrical cords. The i7 does a nice job of not getting stuck on them, but it pulled my cell phone charger (fortunately I did not have my phone in it at the time) and my electric toothbrush charger off my dresser. • Can be too aggressive and damage thick wool carpets. Read your carpet tag – don’t use the robot if the tag says: ” do not use beater bar”. I had to set up a large “keep out” zone and now have to vacuum it by hand (along with the stairs). Run the robot on a small section first and then check the dust bin. If the bin is full then run the robot in “map” mode first, which maps out the entire floor without the roller brush running, then set up a “keep out” zone on the map. I called Customer Care and they sent me four “keep out” beacons for free (normally cost $40 each) – I don’t know why they did not have me try the “map only” mode at the time. • Can yank rag ends out of “rag rugs” thus making holes in them and getting hopeless stuck trying to swallow the ends. I had to set up a “keep out” zone and now do this rug also by hand. • Don’t let it get tangled up in string. Somehow it knocked a spool of fishing line out of a stand and took me 15 minutes to untangle it (my fault). The rollers and spinning brush are removable but the wheel bearings don’t seem to be. • Is quite interesting to watch so you can end up wasting lots of time watching it, which you could have spent vacuuming by yourself. • Deprives you of exercise unless you use that time to exercise doing something else. For anyone who has a cleaning service - do not consider permanently replacing the service with this (though maybe a temporary suspension during the Covid winter?). It obviously only vacuums floors, it will not: vacuum stairs, mop floors, dust furniture and sills, clean bathroom fixtures, clean countertops and stove top, vacuum cobwebs off walls, straighten rooms, do & fold laundry. So far the time I have spent researching, setting up, learning, and watching the Roomba vacuum for the last two weeks has been a lot longer than the time it would have taken me to vacuum the house by myself. Hopefully the Roomba will save me time in the long run as we learn to trust it.

This product is life changing. We searched long and hard for a robot vacuum before choosing this one. Things to note: We have a golden retriever—he sheds, A LOT. This sucks up his hair with ease, and goes back over extra hairy/dirty spots. Our bin probably needs emptied 3 times per cleaning (thanks to our Golden). Not an issue for us. If that bothers you, get the automatic bin disposal system. READ YOUR MANUAL AND CLEAN YOUR ROBOT AND BIN FREQUENTLY, HOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO. If you do that, it will work wonders. The one time it left behind clumps of pet hair, like you see in other reviews, was because the rollers needed taken off and cleared. This takes less than a minute to do. Pretty simple, really. Just like anything else in the world, you have to maintain it and take care of it. You have to rinse the bin and let it dry after so many uses, and tap out the filter. It’s not that hard. This also takes less than a minute to do. If you can’t do a small amount of maintenance, you’re the problem. Sucking power is great. It does make a noise, but it’s definitely not loud enough to bother us, at all. I actually feel silly even mentioning that it makes a noise, because it’s not loud or bothersome. Based on other reviews we were worried it was going to be really loud. It’s not, at all. You do need WiFi to run this. If your WiFi sucks, this isn’t the vacuum for you. The battery life could be just a tad bit longer. When it does die, it takes itself back to the home base to charge and takes about 1.5 hours to recharge. Sometimes it can’t finish an entire level before it dies. If in need and in a hurry for a quick clean, I have it clean the rooms I specifically want done first, then have it do the less important rooms last. Otherwise, this really isn’t a huge issue either. There has been a couple times where it couldn’t put itself back on the home base on our upstairs level. This is because the location where the carpet meets the baseboard had a slight slope into the baseboard. This made the front edge of the home base come off the carpet slightly and the robot will not drive up to it if it is not level. Easy fix—make the base level. Seriously people, this isn’t rocket science. Looking back, we have to laugh at some of the negative reviews people left about this vacuum. I question their trouble shooting ability. This iRobot will not cook or do your laundry for you, but it will sweep your floors and keep your house clean if you use it correctly. iRobot i7 is the greatest purchase of our adult life. Hands down. With a new baby, a 6 year old, and a dog.. it makes life so much easier!!!! So glad we got this make and model. Perfect for those of you with pets and lots of hair. You won’t have issues with it if you clean and maintain it how you’re supposed to. We’ve had this product for 1 month at this point. I will update the review if anything goes south.

This is my fourth robot vacuum, my first in the past 4 years or so. The technology has come a long way. This Roomba is leaps and bounds above the "dumb" ones that bounce around all over the place. It takes some time for the vac and the app to map out your space and learn where obstacles are (which adapts when things are moved). But the wait is worth it. I let mine run a total of 2.5 hours or so with a charge in between and it was able to map out most of my 1700 sq ft first floor. I was then able to easily adjust the boundaries of the rooms that the app guessed and named each room so I can easily tell Roomba to clean the kitchen, for example. It's pretty amazing, actually. The vacuum indeed does go back and forth in a z-pattern a lot more than previous generations instead of bouncing around, but it does have a hard time going around chairs with angled legs like most mid-century modern chairs. It figures it out eventually, but it is painful to watch LOL. Just let it learn on its own and pay no attention to it unless intervention is absolutely required. I have a new dog and the vacuum did a good job of cleaning her hair (I purposefully left some there a couple of days knowing this vac was coming). Its bin needed to be cleaned once in between my first two sessions. The only thing I hate is the user agreement and app permissions, which are detailed in other reviews and online. It's the sacrifice we make these days for technology like this, I guess. I'm trying not to dwell on it. Once my space was mapped out, I was able to schedule the cleaning of specific rooms on specific days. I tried connecting it to Google Assistant so I can control it by voice, but when I did, the Roomba lost its connection to the internet and wouldn't get it back until I disconnected it in the Google Home app again. Don't ask me to explain that one. I will try again soon. I will report back if I run into any other problems. In the meantime, if you are reading this, I am still using and enjoying my Roomba.

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 am fairly new to the robot vacuum scene, but I am glad i've finally arrived. 2 years ago we replaced all our 20 year old flooring to waterproof laminate flooring. Beautiful, durable, but SUCH a pain to clean. I was literally tearing my hair out which wasn't helping with the cleanliness of my floors. We have a busy household - people constantly in and out, but I couldn't stand to walk barefoot on my floors because they were constantly dirty. Sweeping, vacuuming and then mopping every day was not an option with a new baby either. I finally broke down and bought a robot vacuum. I opted for a lesser known brand hoping that I would be impressed enough to one day "upgrade" to a roomba. I was impressed sure enough and a few weeks later after some frustrating connection issues I exchanged my purchase for the Roomba i7. I opted for the model without the automatic bin empty thinking if I liked it and felt like I needed it I could buy the base later. More on this in a minute. The Pro's: This thing picked up so much dirt. We had been running the other vacuum daily for a couple of weeks and I was impressed with how much it had picked up. The first run around with this one and it picked up even more that the other had left behind. I was both mesmerized and horrified by what we had been living with on our floors. The app was great - setup was super easy, I had no issues connecting to wi-fi like we had with the first purchase. The vacuum ran around the house about 4 times before it had created a layout of the house that I could then separate into rooms. This was probably my favorite feature because it meant I could put the baby down and have the rest of the house be vacuumed, then have the vacuum just go to the babies room after naptime. Our house is small enough that it didn't need to charge in the middle of a job, but if it needed to it would recharge. No go zones. You can set a section of the house to be a no-go zone. Say you don't want it to clean under the kitchen table, you set a no- go zone and the vacuum cleans around the table, but not under. I had one set where I frequently leave my computer cord hanging so that it wouldn't get stuck around the vacuum and didn't have to think about or remember to lift it out of the way. You can also set a clean zone - which meant I could pull the couch out and send the vacuum to clean just under the couch. The cons: To schedule different parts of the house, you have to have a 3 hour block of time between the start of one schedule and the start of another. Even if the vacuum goes out for just 10 minutes to clean a room. So in our household it meant we were having to run the vacuum at strange times. This vacuum bumped into walls far less than the other vacuum did, but I expected it to eventually learn where the walls were and stop bumping altogether - it never did. It was constantly trying to get around walls that never changed. Noise: this vacuum was far noisier than our first. We couldn't watch TV or carry on a conversation while the vacuum was running in the same room because it was so loud. The dust bin was constantly claiming to be full and the vacuum would refuse to go out. It got so bad we were having to "empty" the bin (which wasn't full) and wipe down the sensors every single time it went out. This was making so much more work for us than just vacuuming the floor ourselves. This may be where the self emptying bin comes in handy, but I wasn't happy enough with the vacuum itself to waste the money. Another con to the dust bin always being full was the fact that the dirt and debris would be clogging the opening of the bin which is angled towards the floor so when you pull the dust bin out of the vacuum it spills out onto the floor it just cleaned. We started finding piles of debris on the floor under the vacuum that was not making it's way to the bin so again we would have to empty the bin and sweep the floor and wipe down the vacuum. The brush rollers have these little pockets in each end that is the perfect trap for my long hair to wrap around. not sure why it isn't a solid end, but every time we pulled the dust bin out we were having to clean the rollers, and pull the hair out of the ends of the brush rolls. So frustrating considering we got this to make my life easier, not ad more work of a different kind. Lastly - in spite of doing all of this making sure it was clean after every single cleaning - the brush roll snapped in half. Snapped in half!!! There was nothing for it be wrapped around, no cords, no shoelaces, not enough hair to shake a stick at, but it was completely severed. I planned to change parts out quarterly, if not every other month, but this didn't even last a month. I really expected so much more for a $500 vacuum with a well known name but I was sadly disappointed.

Wow! This is great! This is our third Roomba. We have owned a 300-series, a 600-series and now the i7. The i7 is head and shoulders above the others. Improvements abound. We did not buy the tower that allows the i7 to empty itself. We thought the filters required for that unit were too expensive to justify the expense. You're going to have to empty *something*... the tower just alters the frequency. Neither the size of the i7 dust bin nor emptying the dust bin on the i7 has not been a problem for us. What I like: *Mapping - My i7 learned the floor plan of my house (hint: use mapping runs to do this quickly). I was then able to adjust the dividers to represent the rooms and hallways in my house. I was able to designate areas to avoid (where the i7 had difficulty, such as near the pet food bowls) and places where we needed focused cleaning. Then I created jobs to tell the i7 where to clean and when to clean. We have high traffic areas cleaned three times a weak and other areas cleaned less frequently. *it's easy to create ad-hoc jobs. Click the New Job button, select the rooms to clean, and go! *It works while we are not home. And the app gives us progress updates. While the unit is the quietest Roomba we have ever owned, it can get annoying after 30 minutes or so. We frequently start big jobs when we leave and monitor them while we are away. *It does a great job with pet hair. We have two pit bulls that live in the house. The i7 does an excellent job of picking up pet hair on all surfaces. After the initial curiosity about the device, the dogs pretty much ignore it now. *It works well on all of our flooring. We have tile, carpet, and hardwoods. The i7 does an outstanding job on all these surfaces. *It can pause a job, recharge, and pick up where it left off. *I prefer the cleaning pattern on the i7 over the previous models. The i7 uses consistent rows as opposed to the apparently random motion of the older units. *It is gentle with our furniture. The i7 is probably the best robot vacuum we have ever owned with respect to protecting furniture and baseboards. The sensors and cleaning logic seem to be much improved over the other models I have owned. Overall, a great investment. I would buy it again.

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?

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?