What testers say about the iRobot Roomba i7
The iRobot Roomba i7 is the i7+ without its Clean Base: the same robot on a plain charging dock, which works with the Clean Base if you add it later. It maps the home with a camera (iRobot's vSLAM navigation), learns which room is which so it can clean a single room on request, keeps out of zones you draw in the app, and cleans with two rubber brushes that iRobot built not to tangle with pet hair. It works with Alexa and Google Assistant.
Tom's Guide tested it as the i7+ and found it methodical: it cleans in parallel lines, winds carefully around chair legs and dog bowls, had the ground floor fully mapped after its second run, and was one of the faster cleaners in the lab, at a little over 18 minutes per test on average. It picked up 93.1 percent of the cereal, 87.6 percent of the kitty litter and 90.5 percent of the dog hair, more hair than the Neato Botvac D7 and Shark Ion it was compared with, and at 62.6 decibels it was a little quieter than the Botvac. RTINGS rates its pet-hair pickup as good, and notes that it adjusts its cleaning head to the floor and gives dirty spots extra attention.
The criticism: Tom's Guide found the cleaning less thorough than the price suggests, with robots at a third of the price doing better on some tests. RTINGS saw it struggle with large debris on hard floors and small debris on carpet, hair can wrap around the brushes, and several parts need regular maintenance or replacement, which makes the running costs high. It does not mop, and without the Clean Base you empty the bin yourself, although Tom's Guide notes that this bin then holds slightly more and can be rinsed with water. At about 9.4 centimetres tall it fits under most furniture. For a Roomba that learns the rooms of the home, the i7 is a solid base, and the Clean Base adds the self-emptying.
