This is my third robotic vacuum. The first two were epic fails (neither of them had the app for home mapping, which is a feature I feel is a *MUST HAVE* if you want your vacuum to run correctly.) I can't believe I actually paid $650 (with tax) for this one, but I have to say I'm pretty happy I did. Overall, the Roomba j7+ is an awesome way to keep your house tidy—with a few exceptions. See below:The good: The first day was intense. It took a total of 8 hours (including two breaks for a recharge), but I finally got it to map out my house. It's an open concept design and on Roomba's map, I unfortunately couldn't tell where some rooms begin and others end. The placeholders (rugs, doorways, etc) aren't set to scale, and sometimes my estimations of the boundaries were way off based on Roomba's diagram. Part of the problem was my fault because I was so picky about getting the boundaries accurate.Once it was all set up, Roomba and its software really showed its strength. I was very impressed with how efficient it was at cleaning. It even readjusted and learned better ways at cleaning tight corners after taking a few trips around the same space—proof that the vacuum truly does get smarter over time, as is promised. This was a welcome surprise because I usually have to vacuum daily due to our pets.The bad: The living room is the only room where the Roomba completely failed. I tried running 8 separate cleaning sessions on this room, and it only seemed to get more confused over time. It's your typical rectangular room with a couch, multiple chairs, end tables, a few planters, and a coffee table on a rug in the center. The rug is a high pile, so I never expected the Roomba to be able to tackle it (even traditional vacuums struggle with it). Surprisingly, the Roomba *was* able to make its way over the rug, but only after fighting and curling the rug every which way, which I fear will damage it in the long run. ... AND... It never correctly identified the rug on the map. If it had marked it as a rug, I could have drawn a shape over the area and marked it as a zone to avoid. But without the map, I have no idea where the rug is in the app. I tried making an estimated guess, but it ended up missing important parts of the living area off the rug. And each time I edited the rug, I had to run the vacuum again to re-map it. I finally gave up. This will just have to be a room I continue to vacuum manually.The fugly: After cutting my son's hair, I figured I'd let Roomba clean up the mess instead of cleaning it myself. MASSIVE MISTAKE. The Roomba gathered all the hair into a tidy pile on the bathroom floor, then proceeded to mow right through it and drag huge clumps onto the rug over by the shower! Then it backed up and ran more clumps over the rug again. After it had sufficiently painted the rug with hundreds of tiny hairs (which I swear I'll never be able to get all out), it went outside its boundary and spread more hairs into the bedroom. I was convinced that Roomba would somehow fix this based on its dirt detect technology. But no, instead of going back and cleaning up the mess it made, it traveled merrily back to its home base, leaving a long trail of hair behind it.On the clean-up summary, there was no mention of dirt detection, and no indication of an irregular cleaning session. Lesson learned, and I was the idiot for sending a robot to do a human's job. I won't make the mistake again.All that to say, I wouldn't trust Roomba again if there was a mess to clean up, such as spilled chips. I'd be afraid the vacuum would just crush them and spread the bits all over the house. Where it really seems to excel is cleaning small day-to-day things, such as dust and pet hair. It does a really solid job of this. My house was already clean when I started using it, and I've watched each day as it cleans up new clumps of pet hair and little bits of dust and debris. Overall, I'd say it's a good vacuum for "maintaining" an already clean home. For that, I'm still pretty happy. It saves me a lot of work. I run its cycle daily and it's so much nicer to not have to do the work myself.I got this J7 plus on sale for $599 so for what I paid it's a really decent vacuum. I've owned a lot of iRobot Roombas for the past 20 years so I consider myself sort of an expert. Also keep in mind I do not hand out 5 star reviews lightly. This one gets 3 stars because I had some issues with the app, and getting it set up. I also can not use the function where you look at the photos with my iphone 11 pro max. I was finally able to do the set up using my OLD ipad air 2. I find it unacceptable that the app will not work for one of the main features or to set it up, using my newish Iphone on the latest iOS software. In talking to other users this problem is common. Had I not had the old iPad I would have had to return it because without connecting it to wifi via the app, it's worthless. Once I got it set up, I can do the schedule etc from my iphone but it won't show me the photos for the obstacles it finds. I get the error message on my phone but if I open the app on my iPad I can see the photos and deal with them. I do not like that I have to go get out an old device to do it and do not understand why iRobot does not deal with it. I also tried to contact them about it and got no response. I might end up just turning off the feature because it's not that big a deal to me. I did try turning it off and was hoping it would shut that light off but the light still is shining even with the feature turned off. It seems like it would waste power having that light on all the time and if I don't use the feature why is the light still on?Ok so on to the actual vacuuming. This model does an great job on hard surfaces but does not really do the greatest job on carpet compared to my older 980 which had a carpet boost setting that most of the other 900 robots lacked. I also liked that I could set my 980 to focus on cleaning and could turn off edge clean. It's probably silly on my part but I like to see the neat lines on my carpet after it cleans and it seems to do the back and forth cleaning with the j7 and then go around the edges so I see these deep marks on the edges and going around any furniture. I liked that I could turn that off with my 980 so I just saw neat rows. I could always go turn it on once in awhile but honestly that edge feature is more important with hard floors, than it is with carpet.One other thing I find odd is that the app shows me carpet the robot has detected, yet there are no settings for changing vac power level and it does not act differently on carpet, so why is the thing worried about detecting my carpet?I ended up having to set it to clean twice once one way and once across what it vacuumed to get it as clean as it got it with my 980 alone. I probably would have been better off going with the s9 for carpet but I did not want to pay that much and upstairs there is not as much dirt so it does and acceptable job. I just think they could have given it a little more power and more settings. on vac power.I love that I can set it to do certain rooms, and no longer need those dumb walls. In that respect it's so much better than my 980.One other thing it seemed my 980 did better with was area rugs in the bathroom. My 980 used to knock them around a bit but did not get stuck on them. The j7 gets hung up on the little cotton rugs on the floor. I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with that. I want it to clean our bathrooms but it's a pain to have to pick up the rugs each day so for now I turned off the bathroom cleaning.The self emptying feature is great. I do not have to empty the bin and once I do have to empty the bag it seals and goes in the trash without me having to get a puff of dust all over. I also love that they lowered the height with this self emptying bin so it's not a huge tower. I've been running it 3 times a week upstairs for over a month and have not had to empty it yet. I'm thinking I might just change it at 2 months if it does not give me a notice that it's full. I can feel stuff in there but I guess there is room for more. I'm not sure what has to be in there to trigger it needing to be changed. The bags to me seem reasonable. Even the irobot bags are only around $5 a bag which seems reasonable considering I'm not having to change it often, and it's worth it for me to not have to deal with the dirty dust puff all over my cleaned area. It makes me want to upgrade my s9 to the self empying base and I might do it at some point if they lower the height of that self emptying base too.Over all this is a decent robotic vac. It's great if you have hard floors but with carpet it's just so so. I'd prefer a deeper vac power for carpet, but it's passable.Thanks for reading my reviewHaving three long haired, heavy shedding dogs at home, I was pretty skeptical that this could hold up to all the hair and dirt they trek in, but this wonderful piece of tech has been nothing short of a godsend for me! It was very easy to set up if you follow the enclosed instructions, and had a full mapping completed after about 3 full runs. My only gripe is that for the price, I would have expected it to come with a larger battery than 2410mah. Thst limits the operating time to about 1.5 hours (on all laminate flooring) before it has to return back to back to base to recharge. There is a battery upgrade option available for an extra $125 that increases the battery capacity to 5400mah, which I'm waiting for delivery on. Will update my review when it arrives and is tested. Other than that though, I couldn't be happier with the purchase! Highly recommended!We struggled to decide between the new J7 model with better nav, or the S9 with more powerful suction. After reading many reviews, we opted for the J7 due to its updated nav with pet "mess" avoidance. Our rationale was that we don't have any carpet, and we do have pets. In hindsight, we very much wish that we had gone for a model with stronger suction. The nav engine is excellent, battery life is excellent, the app is excellent, and overall usability and convenience is great. Fortunately we haven't needed to try the pet poop avoidance feature, so I can't comment on that. Unfortunately, after a few weeks of regular use our Roomba has only collected about 2tbsp of dirt and we find ourselves needing to use the conventional vacuum cleaner much more often than we had anticipated (almost as much as if we didn't have Roomba). We sincerely hoped that the Roomba product line had crossed the threshold from novelty to practicality, but sadly we feel that we have purchased an expensive novelty item. Perhaps it would work better on carpeted floors, and perhaps we will give Roomba another try when they come out with a stronger suction model with the updated nav. It's still a fun conversation piece, but don't plan to retire your real vacuum yet.I purchased the Roomba as a Christmas gift for the for the family. Worked great for about 10 days before the side brush stopped spinning. I contacted iRobot support and was assured a replacement brush module would be shipped. Three days passed with no shipping confirmation. I followed up with support and was informed that the replacement part was out of stock, so I would have to wait. Five days after the initial contact with support, I received shipping confirmation for the new parts.Without the side brush, dirt and hair just get pushed to the edge of the room. Perhaps iRobot should replace the whole unit when a brand new one fails.Overall, impressive performance but beware that after-sales service is slow.My puppy chases the human wielded cleaning devices and my 13 year old dog has always run away from them. The literally let the iRobot bump into them. When I leave the house I say, "Hey Google, vacuum". This settles the dogs and what a treat to come home and find a clean floor.I have very thick rubber doormats and it manages to climb up. However the beater bars were ruined after a couple weeks, iRobot replaced them happily. I am not sure if the mats caused it or not as the house is a bit of a construction site. I do pick up the mats, I believe I get a better cleaning this way.I have an Ikea chair that I must pick up as well. The vacuum sees the leg as a transition strip and keeps trying to get over it. It is the only place it has ever gotten stuck. I could set it up as a keep our zone in the app very effectively but we move the chair often.Other than the chair and theats I don't need to move anything else. Sometimes I do leave the kitchen chairs and sometimes I don't and it still works effectively and cleans where there were previously obstacles.Twice a week I carry it up to the upper floor which it has mapped and it is equally as effective.When a dog leaves a toy in the way I get a lovely photo of the toy and I can teach the vacuum that it is a temporary obstacle. When away from home I get notifications if there is a problem and when it finishes. I can stop or start it away from home on the app.To summarize, I SHOULD HAVE BOUGHT ONE AGES AGO