What testers say about the iRobot Roomba j7+
The iRobot Roomba j7+ is a vacuum-only Roomba that finds its way with a front-facing camera: iRobot's PrecisionVision navigation uses it both to map the home and to recognize obstacles such as pet waste, charging cables, socks and shoes, and steer around them. It cleans with two rubber brushrolls and one edge brush, and its Clean Base empties the bin into an enclosed bag that holds up to 60 days of debris. It works with Alexa and Google Assistant.
Vacuum Wars tested it with toys, cables of every size and a lot of fake pet waste, and it recognized and avoided all of it. It covered the test home as well as or better than the best Roombas before it, scored 91 in the carpet deep-clean test (sand worked into medium-pile carpet), second only to the Roomba s9+, and picked up cereal, sand, coffee grounds and kitty litter cleanly from hard floors. At about 61 decibels it is among the quietest robots Vacuum Wars has measured, and it is low enough to get under furniture. RTINGS confirms the picture: its camera-based hazard recognition is accurate and reliable enough to run it in cluttered rooms, it cleans in an organized pattern, and it does well on hard floors and decently on carpet.
The weak spots: Vacuum Wars measured very low suction and airflow, as with most Roombas, which shows in a below-average score for dirt in deep crevices, and long human hair wrapped around the brush axles. iRobot quotes 75 minutes of run time, which Vacuum Wars calls below average for a premium robot, although it mapped the test home with time to spare. RTINGS found that it leaves some fine debris along walls and in corners, that the edge brush can fling light debris away, and that short pet hair pressed into carpet is hard for it. It does not mop. Vacuum Wars calls it one of the most well-rounded Roombas it has tested, and for a home with pets and clutter, where steering clear of pet waste matters more than raw power, it is a safe choice.
