iRobot Roomba i4 EVO Wi-Fi Connected Robot Vacuum – Clean by Room with Smart Mapping Compatible with Alexa, Ideal for Pet Hair, Carpet and Hard Floors

I wanted to write this review after balking at some of the negative reviews for this robot. People have far too high expectations of technology. No, it will not be perfect, and yes, it may miss some spots. If you expect this bot to pick up every single stray hair with the silence and agility of a stealth jet, you will be disappointed. That said, this is a fantastic cleaning companion, and it is much quieter than running a vacuum, especially if you frequently run your regular vac with the brush roll setting. The app is fantastic and it’s easy to stop or start the bot from anywhere. The only thing it struggles with somewhat are our thinner ruggable rugs (it has no issues with the thicker ruggables) but it does vacuum them well. (The edges do bunch up due to the vacuuming but that is easy to smooth out after it is done.) It also tends to accidentally shut itself in the bathroom when it bumps the door, so we usually only vacuum the bathroom when we are home and can let it out if it becomes trapped. (The smart mapping is great!) It does a stellar job everywhere else and keeps the house very clean. I have a small hand vac for picking up in hard to reach places, but it does a great job under the bed and tables and is easy to empty. We are very happy with our roomba!

While this unit is still a better device than Neato, it has serious flaws. First off, I have hardwood floors, and the Roomba will clean around the base, pushing it all over the place and occasionally unplugging the charging base from the wall. When it's finished with cleaning, even if I put the charging base back in its original position, the Roomba will not find it half the time (I'll come home to find the Roomba dead under furniture in another room of the house). On the rare occasion it does manage to find the base and dock itself, it will not connect again the next time I need it to run. I spend 10-15 minutes EVERY TIME I WANT IT TO RUN just getting it to connect to the app, having to reboot it dozens of times before it finally connects. Contrary to what the company would like you to believe, the device WILL NOT RUN WITHOUT BEING CONNECTED TO THE APP!!!! When it works, it works great, but the pain in the ass of having to reboot the damn thing every time you want it to run is why it only gets 2 stars. If you contact customer support, no matter how many times or for what reason, their initial response is always, "This does not appear to be a warranty issue, we cannot help you." Every. Single. Time. Customer service is pretty much non-existent. EDIT: I have now dropped my rating to one star. For the past couple of months, I have had to manually place the unit back on the charging base, as it is simply unable to find it on its own. Now it has a new habit. Once on the base and halfway charged, it will turn on, back itself off the base, and sit 3" from the base while the battery drains. I have resorted to having to stack books in front of the unit to keep it on the base so it will be charged for the next time. I STRONGLY URGE YOU TO AVOID BUYING THIS DEVICE. I am currently shopping for another brand to replace this useless thing.

We purchased this Roomba August of 2023 and I waited to review. I wanted to give it time to run consistently so I could give an honest review. We use this vacuum three times a week to vacuum our entire downstairs and everyday to vacuum our kitchen, roughly 1200 sq ft. downstairs of hardwood floors and tile. We have two dogs and it does a great job cleaning. It has been a fantastic vacuum and is very consistent in its patterns. It took a few runs for it to understand and map out the house but after that it has been a dream. We wipe down the machine with each run and empty and clean the filter, brushes and sensors as well on a regular basis. I recommend setting it to stop running once the bin is full to prevent any issues. Once in a blue moon it acts up and roams like he is lost when going back home but it’s a piece of equipment, it won’t always be perfect. We are thankful we no longer have to sweep daily. I highly recommend this vacuum, we love it! Don’t hesitate to order, you will not be disappointed. Would love another for upstairs for our carpet but can’t just yet. In time we will add another. Added a few pictures to show how awesome it picks up. Yuck dog hair but it proves it works and works well.

The product which I got was used

I know these have been out for awhile and I always thought they were a little odd.... gimmicky, but my wife wanted one so we got one. Man was I wrong , this thing is awesome! We have hardwood floors and It does a pretty good job not as annoying as I thought at all. It mapped the floor and now we can tell it ( even through Alexa) to vacuum a certain area(s) or just do the whole floor. Now when we need to do some house cleaning I say something I never thought I would say ... I'll vacuum LOL.

So far, we’re really liking this little guy. Does a great job of cleaning up basic dirt and pet hair. Because of our cat, we do have lots of pet hair, and the small dustbin fills up pretty quickly. We possibly should’ve got the plus model that has the homebase dustbin that it empties into, but for the price of $130 through an open box warehouse deal we couldn’t pass it up. It mapped our upstairs pretty well. It took about 45 minutes to map a living room, kitchen and three bedrooms and hallway. And it’s really cool to be able to say “Alexa, ask Roomba to clean the kitchen… or Alexa, ask Roomba to clean the bedrooms” once you have favourites set for a room or combination of rooms. Of course you can have it clean everywhere all at once as well. Noise level isn’t bad at all. It’s quieter than I expected after seeing reviews and videos of it. Much like my video it comes across on camera. It’s stairs/cliff detection is really good. It gets right up to the edge and then stops. We haven’t had any issues with stairs yet. And the portable barrier thing it comes with that you can place anywhere stops it from going behind our couch and getting stuck. Object detection works well, it navigates itself around tables, cat stands, and anything that’s been on our floor quite well. We’re impressed.

We purchased this vacuum because we bought a Shark robot vacuum 5 years ago and loved it. It was starting to get old so we figured we would get a new one with some fancier features. This iRobot was much more expensive than our Shark, we have had way more problems with it, it is so much louder and doesn’t clean as well as our old one. My recommendation would be to buy the Shark. Alternatively, we purchased a Eufy robot vacuum and would much rather have that over the iRobot.

This was my second room roomba I’ve purchased. The first was when they first came out. It stopped working after a year or two. Wasn’t going to buy another one but caved two years ago. It recently quit working and nothing I tried would get it to work. It wouldn’t even let me factory reset it. These products are absolute garbage. Will NEVER buy another roomba. For the price of them, they should last A LOT longer than that.