Customer Ratings & Reviews

We had new flooring put in and decided to try this unit. Does a great job of cleaning, still some areas you will need to sweep like behind the coach, or areas it cannot get into. Takes about an hour to clean our main floor. Noise really louder than I thought but not as loud as a normal vacuum.

Exactly what i was hoping to get. Very easy set up amd does the job well. My floors are sparkling clean each time

This definitely has more favorable capabilities than my previous Roomba. It performs like a pro and the self emptying feature is a added plus.

This thing cleans! It does a really good job for my small 1,110 sq ft apartment but I'm sure it would do just fine with a larger home. It's way quieter than my previous roomba (about 5 years older).

this roomba barely picks up the animal hair in my house. it’s more for very minimal pickup. but you can get like a few uses out of it before it starts bugging you for new parts/filters replaced. i have to typically run around the house about three times to see a good difference in the house. not sure what i thought i was going to get for this price point but my expectations were higher.

Very effective at cleaning and mapping the house to clean specific areas as desired.

In general it gets the job done I can tell the 85% if the time, it completes the vacuuming routine. The battery drawn in the middle of the routine when it does not finish it. But most of the time it completes it.

I have an ancient Roomba for over 15 years, and it just keeps running. That is what endears the brand to me: it is modular with replacement parts available to repair or replace most anything that may go wrong. Certainly, the battery is one item that WILL eventually need to be replaced, for all rechargeable batteries have a definite life span. But swapping out the battery in my vintage Roomba is about a 5 minute chore, taking out a few screws, removing the cover, and repeat the steps to secure the new battery in. My old 500 series Roomba was powerful enough to keep up with a shedding dog, and 3 children growing up. I had the robot make the rounds every day, and every night I would empty the bin, about a 7 minute chore. It has the old bristle brushes and a bin that needed manual emptying. Yet there was, somehow, a degree of satisfaction in seeing how much hair a Jack Russell terrier can shed in a day, every day! And that hair was not building up in nooks and crannies throughout the house, so the routine was worth the effort. As other aspects of my semi-smart home became automated, the Roomba just kept on chugging along. The lights, garage door opener, doorbell, music/speakers, outside garden faucet all succumbed to remote control and automation. But my Roomba would not die. The Roomba was finally retired when we remodeled the main floor of the house. The kitchen was completely redone, with new cabinetry and island. The Roomba of old, which maneuvered itself by a slam and ricochet algorithm was banished, for fear of scarring the new, and expensive, woodwork at ground level. The i5 model is not the top of the line, but it really checks off all the boxes for our home. It is rather stylish, with a grey tweed fabric ring on the top cover. There is a small, discrete brown leather tab to open the master dust bin, where a backup bag is stored. New bags will need to be purchased, for alas, they are not reusable. The i5+ does lack a built-in foldable handle, that the old series 500 had. But the handle was used mostly to transport the Roomba back to base station when it ran out of power and was marooned in a remote part of the house. The new Roomba senses its waning power, and makes its own way to the recharging station, so the handle is superfluous. "Find the exiled Roomba" is a game that I am happy not to be playing. The i5+ Roomba is quiet while running, compared to the ancient 500 series. Except when it empties its on-board dirt bin into the base station. It empties itself! I admit that to a small degree I miss the visual affirmation of the mass of dust, hair, and Legos that the Roomba has harvested. But emptying the master bin once a month rather than daily is easy to adjust to. The emptying of the mobile bin is NOT quiet, however. You hear the wind tunnel force at work when the robot’s bin is emptying into the base station. The i5+ comes with two storage bags for the debris; one installed and a spare in the upper part of the base station. You will need to buy new bags, and alas, the old bags do not seem to be recyclable in any way. The bags are widely available from multiple sources, including BestBuy for official iRobot brand. Third party bags, which I have not tried, tend to be significantly cheaper. The bags have a sliding divider that seals off the dust and dirt, containing the mess inside the bag before you remove it, making the process quite hygienic and tidy. The tower on the base is certainly more obtrusive than the old charging platform, which was no taller than the Roomba itself. The i5+ really does not take up more floor space, just higher. So the i5+ Roomba will not fit under a piece of furniture that has only 15 cm of clearance. Where the new generation shines is in the robotics. Sort of what you would expect from a company called iRobot. The automation is wonderful: both a phone app and voice control. And they have added Apple’s Siri as a supported voice assistant after years of only Alexa and Google Home. This was accomplished via a software update that occurred sometime in the past couple of years. After one pass through the main floor, Roomba had mapped the floor plan. You can use the iPhone or Android app to set and adjust barriers to separate the various rooms. You can add or delete barriers and assign each area its own name. So a voice command, “Siri, have Roomba clean the kitchen and dining room” sets just those rooms into the crosshairs. You can in the app set a routine time to have Roomba run, and specify which areas are to be cleaned. If the robot runs out of battery power before the sequence has completed, it will return to the base station and recharge. Once power has been recharged, it will then return where it left off and finish the chore. And after the initial mapping, Roomba will have learned where the walls, obstacles, and stairwells are located, and come to a stop before slamming into the base of the cabinet or the wall. It slows down, senses the obstacle, seems to sometimes lightly touch the surface (as if for a confirmation of the map) and then diverts back to the plan. The OLD Roomba was truly a random walk, careening around the room and eventually by random, Brownian motion, effectively getting most everything vacuumed. The NEW Roomba does a methodical, back and forth, in a stepwise progress across the floor with each pass paralleling the prior swath, moved over by about 15-20 cm. Cleaning the old bristle brushes, although not needed daily, was at least a weekly chore. You needed a circular ring tool with central spikes aimed inwards to effectively remove hair from the bristles. Not a difficult chore, but was truly a chore. iRobot has moved from bristles to their signature dual green rubber brush rollers, which makes hair removal quite easy in comparison. And no special tool needed. All told, I am extremely pleased with the upgrade over my vintage Roomba. The durability, reliability, and ease of repairs by the owner have been halmarks of my former Roomba, and I hope this will continue that heritage.

I love this! The set up and app are very easy to use. With a few clicks on my phone, my iRobot is vacuuming my whole house. Does a great job!

Working well as expected and works well on carpet too.

Easy to program and schedule. It even does the carpet and rugs. I've only had it a couple weeks but I love it and would buy another one.

I’ve never used a Roomba before, so this review is my first time experiencing what these little machines are capable of. My upstairs is a smaller space with some winding corridors, so I was curious to see how well the Roomba would navigate in the area and how good of a job it would do at vacuuming the hardwood floors (and bathroom rug). Here are my thoughts… FEATURES The Roomba i5+ features 3 cleaning components – the Edge-Sweeping Brush which spins all the time to catch debris hidden in corners and push it towards the Dual Multi-Surface Rubber Brushes. Those brushes flex to different floor types, such as my hardwood floors and bathroom rug, to pull up dirt. Finally, the Power-Lifting Suction pulls that dirt away and helps load it into the Roomba. I didn’t have super filthy or dirt covered floors to start with, but I did have cat fur flying around and some visible debris on the floor. The 3-Stage Cleaning System did a great job picking up in my home. The automatic cleaning function utilizing the Clean Base Automatic Dirt Disposal is great! I do not expect my upstairs to ever be a heavy traffic zone since most dirt ends up downstairs near the entrances to my home. So, having the clean base automatically empty the Roomba and hold the dirt in a quality vacuum bag that doesn’t have to be replaced for 60 whole days is awesome! I am not even close to needing to replace the bag, but keep in mind, that might be different if you use your Roomba in high traffic areas, like your kitchen and living room. The Imprint Smart Map feature is pretty cool. I picked up my floor, told the Roomba to clean everywhere, and it made a pretty accurate map of my upstairs. In the Roomba app, I defined where each room started and ended, gave each room labels, and now I can command the Roomba to clean particular rooms instead of the whole upstairs. I’m a big fan of this feature, and really, I didn’t expect the Smart Map feature to do a good job, but it’s surprisingly accurate. SMART INTEGRATIONS If you have a Google Home or Amazon Alexa system (I think Siri/Homekit would work here too), you can tell your voice assistant to clean a room – just make sure it’s labeled in the Roomba app – or have it clean the whole house/floor, and it will vacuum that area for you. I love it, it’s a great feature and I’ve used it often for quick spot cleaning, because why not have rooms be extra clean when I’m done using them! You can also set the Roomba to clean when you leave home and to stop cleaning when you come home! I’m a huge fan of this feature and I hope to see it integrate with lots of smart systems in the future. For now, you can enable location services on the iRobot app and let it determine when you are or aren’t away from home. Personally, I enjoy integrating this with other smart services, such as ecobee or August, so that those systems can use their own presence detection to alert the Roomba of when it should start cleaning. Again, I hope to see more integrations built, but this is a solid start – and as a heavy ecobee smart thermostat and home security user, I’m overjoyed to see this integration already exists. NAVIGATION The Roomba supposedly cleans in neat, straight lines. I don’t think that’s the case in my own house. I’ve watched the Roomba clean quite a few times, and I’m always wondering “Wow, where is this thing navigating to?”. Sometimes it seems to get hard-focused on a spot and keep going over it, even though that spot is squeaky clean. I think the Roomba may still be learning and adjusting to my environment, but it’s not like my bed or tables have moved since the device was installed. I’ll just believe that this will continue to improve with software updates, but as it stands now, sometimes I feel like the device gets a little confused. Note though, I haven’t had an experience where it completely misses a spot. The device is thorough, I just don’t understand the navigation logic completely. And as expected – this Roomba does not fall down the stairs. It will stop itself before tumbling down a whole flight of stairs. I was sure to test that! CONCLUSION I really like the Roomba i5+. I think this device is perfect for my use-case – hardwood floors upstairs in a space with minimal foot traffic. I think it can also work in other environments, but I’d be curious to see if it can handle more heavy-duty cleaning cycles with a family of four, for example. I’m impressed though and I’m happy with how the device performs. I can’t say for sure if this device will get better and better through software updates or not, but I certainly hope iRobot continues to improve the product as time goes on. Right now, I just hope it can improve its navigation functions a little bit more – not because it’s not doing a good job cleaning, but because I know the device can still be more efficient.

So first let me say that I have been VERY skeptical of these Roomba type vacuums for years. I just never trusted the claims, I didn’t trust the ability to maneuver from hardwood floors to carpet and back. Oh, and what about mats/etc or other things that may get in the way. I just was in disbelief of the ability of these devices to accurately discover, map and vacuum areas. Well, (Start the recording) I WAS WRONG…lol Just to be clear, setup was easy. I just unboxed, placed into an open space in my 1st floor living room since it’s not used a lot and has some space. I charged it, then downloaded the app, went through the process of connecting to my wifi and then it was time. I had to perform the initial “map”of my areas. I clicked start and set the little sucker on its way. Keep in mind that discovery and mapping does NOT vacuum, it just performs the mapping. It took about 1.5 hours to do this. During this time, I was in disbelief. I didn’t understand the logic of why it went where and when. I also cursed it and moved it like a puppy when it tried to go into my fireplace under my fireplace screen and mess with all my lava rock. I did the same thing when it tried to go under my tv stand and mess with cables and such. I quickly learned to put things like a box, etc. in front of things to inhibit it from trying to crawl under things I didn’t want it to. It’s intuitive, don’t be intimidated, go with it, it’s easy. Once it finished mapping, it parked itself back home. I found it interesting that during the process it stirred up some dust bunny/dog fur that it encountered along the way. This was a good sign. I then set it off to Discover and Vacuum. I have a large area of hardwood and a one large room downstairs with carpet. This is basically my living, dining, kitchen and breakfast and ½ baths that are hardwood. The Den is a large room with carpet. It started in the living room hardwood floor and then moved to the carpet. It really did a meticulous job of going back over its mapping (I had to move a few objects to ensure it didn’t go under the tv stand) but it did an amazing job! What was even more amazing was that since our carpeted area obviously had more dog fur in it due to it being early summer and our chocolate lab was shedding, we had much more fur in the carpet. Our Roomba apparently filled up and then took itself back to the charging station and the auto empty feature of the i5 kicked in and emptied the Roomba !! this was amazing! It did it on its own! It then started back up and went off the stand and started to finish vacuuming the remainder of the downstairs area. Next, I used the function to select my map that had been created. It shows a rough view of the rooms that I mapped. You can then adjust the room designations boundary lines. This helps you further define the actual rooms and once done with that, you can give each room a specific or custom name. This is awesome because then you can go into the app and tell Roomba to go vacuum a specific room or rooms, really cool! I have to say, I was VERY skeptical of this unit, my wife wanted one but I was not sold but now I am! As I write this, it is finishing cleaning the remaining hardwood floors. I don’t know yet how this will be 6 months or a year from now compared to a regular vacuum that may last years but I must say, my initial impression of this has been dramatically changed for the positive. I hate that we cannot give ratings between four and five. I really cant give it a five but even though I am giving it a 4, its really like a 4.5 to me! I highly recommend this Roomba i5 with Auto Empty, it’s a really great addition to our cleaning arsenal !

The Roomba i5 Self Emptying vacuum will work for a certain audience. If you have pets that shed a lot, this might not be the right vacuum for you for several reasons. If you are only cleaning dust or keep the floors clean then this will work very well for you. This vacuum will clean the floors thoroughly and do a good job. Having the ability to self-empty the bin on the Roomba into the docking station will let this robot be a set it and forget it for a few days. From the sound of the sucking of the docking station, you can tell it will do a pretty good job clearing out the bin on the Roomba. I did notice that little rocks the size of BB's do not get sucked out of the bin on the Roomba. The base is notched out so that the Roomba will always consistently dock properly. Having owned Roombas without the self-emptying docking station, the Roomba would occasionally not dock properly and drain the battery. With the self-emptying dock there is a cradle where the wheels will sit in and align the Roomba perfectly with the charging pads. Now this Roomba will not work out for me and my big dogs for a few reasons. First is the self-emptying features. The way the Roomba empties its self is from the rear of the machine and through a tunnel into the dust back on the dock. If you have a clump of dog hair in the Roomba bin, it gets stuck trying to get out of the Roomba into the tunnel on the docking station. If you have a small thin dog hair and is sparse, not clumped together, it will suck up just fine. But if your dog is shedding its coat, which many breeds do, this will give the self-empty feature a run for its money. In addition, the collection back is another weak point. Unless you plan on just throwing out the dust collection bag after its full, then ignore this next point. If you were planning on saving money and just clean out the collection bag and reuse it, then good luck. The collection back has a 1-inch hole where the dust is sucked into. There is no way to open the included backs and shake out the trash. If you have dogs that shed, you will know how hard it is to get hair out of things. Its as if the hair sews itself onto things. The hair just sticks to the inside of the bag, requiring you to try and pick out the trash out of the 1-inch inlet hose. The Roomba comes with two bags. Perhaps if you find a replacement back that allows you to empty the contents occasionally, you might be fine, but the included collection backs appear to be one time use and disposable. This may increase the cost of running this Roomba in the long run. If a reusable back is not offered, one may want to try and cut the collection back and install a zipper or Velcro to gain access to the inside of the bag to clean it out and reuse it. Another issue I ran into using this Roomba for the first time was mapping out your area. When the instructions say make sure you have 4.5 feet of clearance around the Roomba, they weren't kidding. The only spot it my house near an outlet only has 2 feet of clearance straight ahead of the Roomba leaving the dock. This causes the Roomba to map in a 2 feet circle and then return home. It refuses to map out the rest of the floor if it cannot back out of the dock the full 4.5 feet. After using an extension cord and giving the Roomba ample room to back out of the dock, then it works properly. So if you do not have a way for the Roomba to back out of the dock properly, you might have issues. Overall, this is a good robot that does an excellent job cleaning. Its just not the right system for people with heavy shedding pets or limited floor space.

Received my IRobot I5+ and have been using it over the past week and love how well it does its job. I put this in my finished basement as this is an area I tend to neglect when it’s cleaning day. I knew in doing so, this IRobot would have its work cut out. Setup couldn’t be easier. Plug in the base, place the IRobot on the base to charge, download the app on your phone and simply follow the setup instructions. I had mine set up and ready to go in less than five minutes. As for performance. Remember how I said this vacuum would have its work cut out due to placing it in my neglected basement? Well it handled clean up like a champ and also accurately mapped my basement when I sent it on its initial mapping run. Only issue I ran into was one area where my daughter left her toys on the floor. The vacuum avoided those obstacles and did not map the area where my daughter plays very well. I can’t blame the robot on this. It does instruct you to pick up obstructions that may be in the way during mapping. As for its cleaning, it does the job and does it really well. After two runs I don’t feel like the floor in the least used sections of the basement feel dusty and dirty. Not only that but it was able to reach spaces that I may not have been able to. One thing I would suggest. Don’t run this at night unless you are a heavy sleeper. It can get loud especially when it returns to the dock and cleans the robots bin. That is a non issue for me so this gets a five star from me. It’s an excellent tool to add to your arsenal to allow you to focus the time you might spend vacuuming on something else.

I think I've now passed my first decade as an owner of a robot vac. This is now the third Roomba I've had in that time. This is my second with self-empty feature. As an owner of two long haired dogs, it's easy to say that every one of them has been put through its paces. The i5 comes very nicely packed; unboxing was a breeze, and best of all, it's complete and ready to go - no assembly or hazy instructions to read through. As a previous Roomba owner, I had the latest version of the app; I only needed to "add new product" which was accomplished by scanning its QR code. There was no issue with wifi, it immediately connected to my network and was ready to go. Well, almost - I noted in the app that the charge was less than half full, so I let it charge up in the dock. This is not a fault or knock on the product, just about every product with a lithium ion battery is shipped in a low battery condition for safety reasons. After an hour in the dock, the unit was ready to map. As it went along, it was immediately recognizable that it was less clunky in its movement than previous models. Sometimes, when these robots encounter a barrier, they stop, and seem to take some time to assess their next move. The i5 however was quick on its feet, if it hit a wall or piece of furniture, it would immediately rotate & move on. I'm sure the processing power is better, or could be the camera, but whatever the case, it was obvious that the i series has some upgraded hardware. Result being the mapping was completed quite a bit quicker than with previous models. As far as the mechanical part of it, the functional pieces appear very similar if not identical to previous models. Turning it over, the brushes; whiskers, etc. are identical to previous Roomba models. One thing I noticed was that the spring pressure on the wheels seemed to be a bit more. The affect of that was that the unit appeared to have a slight rake to it (meaning tilted forward.) Maybe a design feature to help it clear thicker rugs, but whatever the purpose, the i5 cleaned just as effectively if not somewhat better than my J series. And, due to the more intelligent processing, the job got done a bit quicker. The noise level in operation is about the same, although I believe the self-empty feature may be a bit quieter. (Although it still can be a bit startling when it first clicks on!) The tower portion comes with a vacuum bag installed (I did say fully assembled, right!), and a second refill is included in a side pod - thank you! The overall style of the unit is much better than previous models. the touch of linen on the robot and ribbing on the tower make it seem less antiseptic. Overall, the i5 appears to be a solid improvement to its predecessors, as I've said before, every new model seems to improve in quality.

Been using this for about 2.5 weeks so far. I have two large dogs that shed so I was a but worried. Seems this can tackle the fur no probelm. Moved from hardwood to carpet easily & even jumps the higher threshholds in doorways Easy to set up and program for cleaning certain areas/rooms on certain days. You have to let it map the house prior to being able to schedule cleanings on certain areas. I wish I would have treid one of these bots sooner, save me a lot of time

## Setup Make sure you have room in your recycling bin as there is a good amount of packaging to open and then break down, which I guess is also a good thing as you know everything should be protected. Once assembled, I like that the iRobot Roomba i5+ doesn't stand as tall as the i3+, so it's a little less noticeable. It's easier to fit beneath a small table or other discreet area. Once you have everything unpacked, you set the Roomba on its charging base to "wake it up." Then, I loaded up the iRobot app to add it to my existing account and connect it to Wi-Fi. There were no updates to install (this will likely change in the future), but the battery charge was initially low, so I left it charge overnight. ## Performance The Roomba i5+ has many of the same features as the i3+ (in fact, I'm having a difficult time finding the differences, other than the height of the collection bin). The mapping feature is nice as it lets you "tell" the Roomba (via a tap in the app) which room to focus on. As the Roomba learns your home's layout, you'll see some humorous floor plans in the apps as it navigates around furniture (which it can't tell apart from a wall). However, you will get a general idea of the rooms the Roomba "sees", and you can label them for future jobs. The iRobot Roomba i5+ seems to clean in a more linear fashion than my previous Roombas. Even with a bunch of obstacles to maneuver around, the Roomba tries to put down at least a few straight lines side-by-side where it can, which is aesthetically pleasing when looking at the carpet in the room afterwards. It gets the job done, and the app will show a map of all the areas it cleaned afterwards. This allows you to verify if any spots were missed. However, you'll likely run this multiple times a week (if not every day), so any missed areas will likely get picked up on a subsequent run. Suction power seems sufficient as all visible dirt is removed from my carpet and hardwood floors. The side brush also bats in dirt, fuzzies, and hair that is under cabinets or other areas that the Roomba can't quite squeeze under. I really like the self-emptying collection bin as it can run for a couple months without needing emptying. If the Roomba gets stuck on a cord or traps itself in a corner, the app will send a push notification with information about what is wrong. The robot is somewhat loud (especially when emptying its bin), so I often find myself reaching for my noise cancelling headphones when I'm working from home while its cleaning. I've owned a Roomba for over 10 years now and I've found that, when properly maintained, Roombas seem to last 3 years or more. The battery seems to be the first thing to go, but replacements are relatively easy to find. Occasionally, one of my Roombas will have a software glitch and refuse to start, but a factory reset usually resolves it. Overall, I've been happy with iRobot's Roomba vacuums. ## Summary I'm all for offloading the mundane chore of vacuuming to a robot! The iRobot Roomba i5+ does a very good job of keeping the floors clean that I rarely need to get my regular vacuum out. I like that the app provides me details about the areas it cleaned, what parts will need replaced soon, and any problems that come up. I think it does a better job vacuuming than I do! :-D

Nothing is perfect, but we're pleased with our new Roomba. The app is essential to label and designate areas to be vacuumed. Once that is done, use the app to create jobs for Roomba to vacuum areas you want, or the entire mapped home. It climbs onto area rugs pretty well and seems to take much less time than our old robot. Auto-empties when it parks too.

This is our first robotic vacuum and we are excited. It cleans up really well so far. Each room has a transition strip and it goes over them with ease. My teenager set up the app & mapped out the house. I love how you can tell it to clean up in one specific area or room very easily. We haven't used the mop function yet, but will soon.