Software is much improved. Unit avoids stairs and obstacles quite well. Dog hair clogs the waste container and also the opening behind. Needs cleaning by hand every day. Dog hair problems need improvement.

If you don’t give this thing a deep clean weekly you’ll find piles of fine crumbs, dust & pet hair along all your thresholds and rugs. It gives constant alerts of upkeep that it needs.

My i3 had numerous problems. Customer service was very good, but after calling back 4 times I had enough. They kindly sent me an i4 replacement which has been perfect. But they forgot to tell me to keep the battery pack from the i3, so I had sent that back. In any event, the company stands by its product and for that they deserve 5 stars plus!!!

Doesn’t do well with pet hair on low pile carpet despite the advertising. Also doesn’t clean the area where the home station is so it gets pretty dirty. Works well on tile but is going to miss spots

I have had a few roombas in the past - this one by far is the least efficient and random one. It never seems to use its map to clean in rows are the videos show. It’s constantly bumping into the same objects over and over again.

Doesn't seem to get all the dog hair. Doesn't fill the dirt compartment up. Just not great.

It works but has issues. It says the dust container is full while it clearly is not. I guess the dust sensor is too sensitive. I have to remove the dust container 2 times in the middle of cleaning a 900-square ft area. The area is very clean to begin with in my opinion. When I open the dustbin there is not much collected. This is a bit annoying and it means you can't leave the vacuum to do its job so that you can get on with your business. It needs attention which is an inconvenience. Also, I have another brand of robot vacuum that does not do the same. Additionally, this Rumba is quite loud. You better not be around when it does its work because it is very loud.

If you want a nice back & forth pattern and good cleaning the i3 robot is fine, but expect to use virtual walls. The software that is supposed to learn your house and allow you to precisely control where it cleans is so bad I can't begin to describe. You get exactly _one_ map, which can only be learned with a "mapping run" (no input, very limited editing), and you can't add rooms short of deleting the map and relearning. If you want all your rooms in the map be prepared to evict everyone and everything from your home, and pray for something that vaguely resembles your floor plan after hours of it grinding around the house. I suffered their Beta, and this abomination of a feature is now Production Release. I'd recommend one of their bumble-bots (they work great, esp for the $) or one of the upscaled models. The m6 is also a great buy. This mornng my i3 finished cleaning _one_ room and then, with the blue light flashing and the vacuum motor turned off, avoided the charging dock religiously for 15 minutes, just like in the Beta. This model is definitely the black sheep in the iRobot family. If you want good cleaning on a budget get the 694...Update 7/30/2023My I3 finally received a much-delayed software update last week, so I decided to bite the bullet and give it a shot at redemption...Much to my grateful surprise the beast is now working much more like it should. It finds the rooms properly and cleans better than the trusty bumble-bot I've been using in it's stead for over a year now. While it might get disoriented at times, it's clear that the i3 now recognizes this state and goes through a routine (albeit sometimes lengthy) to regain it's sense of location and pick up where it left off. With that, a larger battery might be a good buy...This is all, thankfully, with the map it learned long ago. I hesitate to retrain it as I already have other Roombas to cover the spaces this model had troubles with, but learning rooms would undoubtedly benefit from what I've seen thus far. It looks like iRobot now has a budget model with straightline behavior that's worth the shekels.Adding 2 stars...would be more if not for the rough start/delays getting here...

Hope springs eternal. My 600 series stopped finding its base and when placed on base it would not reliably charge. Unlike the 500-series it did not include a port for attaching directly to power. I decided to try this newer unit. To solve the navigate to base and charging issues.Like all units I have owned, it is noisy. I mostly start the unit upon leaving home. The entertainment value of watching it navigate has long passed. This unit uses solid rubber cylindrical devices in lieu of the brush in earlier units. I see no difference in performance between the 600 and current model.At first it seemed to work fine. Like all the units I’ve owned it seems to bang into furniture legs and wall harder than I like. See the white paint transfer on the bumper. My floors are mostly wood with carpet in bedrooms.Recently it has begun to accumulate dust inside the unit rather than pulling it through into the removeable reservoir. See photo. I must manually clean the dust from the unit. I cleaned the reservoir which includes a washable permanent filter (be sure to remove the small paper filter). The problem continues.I am unable to find where air flow is obstructed.Unlike earlier units that would stop and sound an alert about the problem, this unit returns to the base. The next time I try to start the unit it then shows red around the start button and prompts me to clean out the blockage. I do not program nor activate the unit via WiFi as I try to activate it upon leaving in order to avoid the noise.Hardy a maintenance-free device.

This is a good little vacuum and it seems pretty intelligent, but didn't quite work out for my needs. We have an area rug in our family room that is pretty shaggy and the Roomba just didn't like it at all. The first time, the brushes on the front side got tangled up in it. After that, it would only get so far into it and would give an error saying it was on a cliff, meaning the sensor thought it was stuck and would fall down if it moved any further. No it didn't turn around, it just stopped right there. Since we were only doing the lower level and it didn't need to worry about stairs, I found a tip that included covering the bottom sensors with clear tape coated white paper. It seemed fine and didn't give the cliff error, but then started giving an brush cleaning error. I watched videos and cleaned the brushes exactly like I was supposed to and couldn't get past the error. Finally I took the bottom plate off and the brush assembly out, then put it all back and it worked again for about 3 minutes and gave the "clean brushes" error. I realized it just wasn't going to work out for me and since the i3 will map, but won't let you do no go zones, I couldn't tell it to stay away from the area rug. I returned it and got the i7 which is MUCH better. First off, it has the camera on the top, along with the sensors on the bottom. But what I like the best is the mapping is way better and it will allow you to create and name rooms in the house and put in no go zones. I put one around the area rug and dogs dishes. Since you can separate all of the rooms on the i7 vs i3, it allows you to schedule only certain rooms instead of having to do a complete clean every time. For instance, I'm cleaning the kitchen, nook and entryway daily, but the family room is only every other day and only twice per week for the living room and dining room. Even better, it can be connected to Alexa or Google, like the i3, but you can ask it to only vacuum one room. Made a mess in the kitchen? Alexa - Ask Roomba to vacuum the kitchen. It will give you a map of the area that it covered when you are done.So in short, the i3 is not bad, but didn't work for us. I only paid $50 more for the i7 and it comes with so many extra options that one wouldn't even think about when getting their first robot vacuum.** Disclaimer - The attached screen shots are from my i7, not i3.