Roomba Combo i5 Robot Vacuum & Mop - Clean by Room with Smart Mapping, Works with Alexa, Personalized Cleaning Powered OS, Ideal for Pet Hair, Carpet and Hard Floors

For the first week of ownership, we were disappointed in the robots random movements, but we had read in other reviews that it needs some time to explore and update itself, so we gave it a chance. The more it explored, the more software updates were downloaded, and the more efficiently it performed. Here are the pros and cons of owning this model: PROS: - Software updates that have greatly improved the i3's capabilities. - - Scheduled automatic cleaning is easy to setup in the app. - Unlike the more expensive Roomba models, it works in the dark. Lights off? curtains closed? No problem. - Sucks up a lot of dirt, lint, and hair from our floors. Long hair (we have a lot) collects at the ends of his rollers and is easily removed. - We have 2 steps down from the main level to our family room. It vacuums to the edge, but has never jumped. - The app isn't needed for a cleaning. For our family room, we don't use the app. We just set it in the room, press the button and away it goes, cleaning in an efficient manner. - Durable. Sucked up a USB cord and a sun hat string that had been left out on the floor. These items got tangled up, jamming the robot and causing it to shut down, but no damage was done. - Widely available replacement parts... for a day may a come when his little mustache stops whisking dirt into his big suck face. CONS - It took 5 days of assigning it to "clean everywhere" before it accurately mapped our single-story 1500sf home, then allowed me to divide up and label rooms/areas, and the ability to assign it to clean specific rooms. - It can't clean our whole house in one charge. It goes back to the station recharges itself and then finishes the job. - The main con is having patience with the robot exploring and the software updates (my experience below). It will take some time for all of the features to become available. Make sure you have strong Wi-Fi signal throughout your house and send the robot out on cleaning runs and the updates will happen. Software Updates: - The app and the robot started with limited functionality. After doing a few whole house cleanings over 3 days, it started getting updates and more features were added to the app. It took another few days before it was fully updated and had an accurate floor plan. While it was cleaning it was also doing a lot of exploring, going back over the same areas, pausing to ponder the universe, etc. I think this was part of preparation for the next software update regarding the mapping. After cleaning all accessible areas of my house a few times, a map appeared on the app and asked me if it was accurate or if the robot should remap my house. Some parts of rooms were cut off or shaped weird, but I clicked "accept" anyway. It then prompted me to add/delete partition lines to divide the house up into rooms. The lines can be moved any direction and rotated 360° so you have good control over creating different areas. After doing a few more whole house cleanings the map updated itself and accurately represented our floor plan. In the end I'm glad we had patience with it. It cleans great now and it's efficient.

When my 360 S5 lost it's mind I resorted to my old upright for a while but really missed a robot cleaner. The 360 was a quality vacuum but after a couple years decided it would only work in the kitchen, in every other room it acted like it was terrified and would not clean but a small area. Now to the iRobot i3. First I purchased it used as the price was really attractive. When it arrived it was in perfect condidion and had obviously never been used. It was unblemished and clean and included everything except it's original packaging. The software was easy to set up and tho I did have to run the mapping feature twice it mapped my small apartment quickly and accurately. Setting up the layout of rooms was easy and a nice feature (I don't always want to clean the whole apartment). Suction is OK (the 360 S5 had much stronger suction). I don't have pets so I'm not sure how well it picks up various kinds of hair. The spot clean feature is nice, with my old vac you set up a spot via the software with the iRobot you just put it where you want to clean a press the button on the robot. The dust bin is a bit on the small side but adiquate for my needs. The software is fairly easy to use and has some nice features (keeping track of the health of bushes and filters and a setting to prevent the robot from cleaning when the bin is full are nice). iRobot branded replacement filters are a bit expensive compared to off brand but might be worth it for me as I may only need one every 3 months or so. Overall if I'd paid full price I'd still be happy with the i3. That I paid considerably less for a used (though as I said above truly like new) robot I'm realy very happy.

I've had this vacuum for a little over a year and it's really just been an annoyance. My review is summarized below, but I would also suggest a quick Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo search with the terms "roomba terrible reddit". Confirmation bias is a thing, but so is astroturfing and premature reviewing, both of which are prevalent on this site. Let me go ahead and get the one positive out of the way: The vacuum is pretty strong. It pulls more crud from between hardwood boards than my Dyson vacuum. Yay. -----After owning an i3 since July 2022 here are my takeaways:----- * Automation should make life easier and this fails so hard it's almost impressive. I spend less time manually vacuuming and maintaining my Dyson than I do futzing around with the Roomba unit and app. It does get stuck occasionally. I knew that going in, but all the hand-holding the unit requires really adds up. * The Smart Map feature has yet to work for me and I've tried it several times. I think it was only recently added as a feature for the i3 when I purchased it, so I assume it's a feature that's been shoehorned in and that I should be grateful for their generosity. Basically, the unit will roam around the house not vacuuming. I will assume it's doing it's mapping thing, but it's not doing that either. By the time it's done not creating a map, there's not enough battery power left to really do any vacuuming. I mainly purchased this vacuum for the vacuuming feature so the Smart Map feature seems at odds with that. * The unit gets so close to cleaning the corners of rooms. So close in fact, that it's easy to forget that the robot didn't clean the corners at all, ever. This one's not a secret, but what else can't this thing do! Keep reading to find out! * The iRobot app says I have to replace the filters in 5 months. I've barely used this vacuum, and haven't had it running on a schedule in months. However, the app (as of today 8/13/23) suggests I spend $65 on new filters. It even sends me push notifications telling me that iRobot needs me to buy their filters asap. Why? Is it simply on a timer? I do have an option to "Reset" the "High Efficiency Filter" on the Product Health screen. Is that option there because it's unreliable? Is it being misdiagnosed by the app or faulty sensors within the unit? No way to know! * The app is rough. I'm not sure why honestly. It's hard to describe because the issues are so sporadic and intermittent. Maybe it's because iRobot has to support dozens of different models with marginally different feature sets in a single app. I get secondhand embarrassment even opening the app and this is coming from a person who has used the HBO Go, HBO Now, and HBO Max apps. I'm curious if the makers of my cheap, automated catfood dispenser are also MIT roboticists and engineers, because that app has more features and has been completely hands-off since the 15 minutes I spent setting it up 3 months ago. * The unit draws more power than it needs. I'm probably a stickler for this, but I'm surprised my cheap, Amazon-purchased cat toys don't draw nearly as much power continually once they're fully charged. I'd love to test it more and get some insight as to what's going on but then I wonder: to what end? So that I can get my terrible vacuum back up and running or something? Maybe it's because it's communicating to the cloud that new filters are desperately needed in 5 months! -----A couple of side notes for anyone still reading this 🤷:----- * I'm not surprised the Automatic Dirt Disposal unit is no longer for sale. I remember nearly purchasing it a year ago until I briefly skimmed all the negative review. Just now I checked the iRobot website and they indicate that there's an entirely different slew of issues there. Their business model with accessories seems to be: create the disease to sell snake oil. * iRobot, the manufacturer, uses green for its primary brand color but the design is not environmentally conscious, in my opinion. Unless my unit is very specifically defective, I think this is misleading. But at least they can say the logo was colored green back in the 90s before green = environmentally conscious. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they're just not good at branding or robots. Keep up the g̶o̶o̶d̶ work! Lastly, iRobot support, please don't respond to this review. If you do respond, please acknowledge that you decided to ignore this part of the review.

I am very happy with this vacuum. Vacuums like a dream, the mopping could be better honestly, it just drags around a damp pad but the vacuuming is excellent so I can't complain.

Lo amo, excelente

Little noisy but major upgrade from our last pet series. The mapping feature works flawlessly and with the new app support this device is perfect for a house.

Having had a Roomba 980 for about 7 years now, I was quite pleased with how quiet the i5 is. The 980 seems louder than it used to be, but the i5 is quiet enough that running downstairs it doesn't wake me up. The mapping function works quite well, and being able to program specific rooms is a blessing. There are still places in the house where either model can get stuck, so separating the jobs into specific rooms helps overall. Separating also let's me keep it out of rooms that are being used at specific times of the day - like the kitchen when making breakfast. Getting stuck is one of those things that must be lived with. A sofa that's just the right height is a trap for Roomba. On one of the main floor sofas I built a wooden frame to go around the legs which prevents it from getting trapped. The i5, unlike the 980, frequently gets stuck on some vintage air vents (about 30cm square) on the main floor. Unfortunately, and also unlike the 980, the robot cannot recover from this. It tells me to move it and press start, but it doesn't continue. This is probably the worst feature of the unit, and I hope iRobot updates the software at some point to fix it. I've taken to putting a large book on the vent and will build something better when I have time. The robot also reboots from time to time, stopping the job. It's infrequent but annoying. On the positive side, it runs to completion far more often than the 980 does and finds it way home reliably. At 1/3rd the price of the 980 I'm quite happy. A couple of small puck shaped bollards would do the trick. I've tried the mopping function on our wood floor in the kitchen and it does a reasonable job. As a vacuum it can do better than vacuuming by hand, but as a mop it is inferior to hand mopping, but it is good enough to make hand mopping be needed less frequently, which is good. It cleans well and doesn't bump the furniture legs as hard as the 980, so I'm very pleased with it overall. The 980 is now relegated to the easier and cleaner upstairs duties.

Higher models have what I need. But this is super awesome at its price point