iRobot Roomba s9+ (9550) Wi-Fi Connected Self-Emptying Robot Vacuum - Java Black

The iRobot - Roomba s9+ Wi-Fi Connected Robot Vacuum with Automatic Dirt Disposal has a fresh new look and a good addition to my smart home equipment. It gets the job done, but let’s be completely honest, it not necessarily a set it and forget it type machine. Maybe for some folks who keep their floors nice and orderly, but for those with small children, there is definitely some prep work that needs to be completed before letting this thing just run off and vacuum anything in sight. Not that you don’t need to clear off your floors beforehand when vacuuming the old fashion way, but with the old fashion way, you know when you are vacuuming and therefore can clear off the floors, or catch anything that is not meant to be vacuumed up while you are doing your cleaning. Just something to consider with automating any sort of scheduling. So, what did I really like about this vacuum? Admittedly, this is the first robotic vacuum I have ever owned or done any significant research on. I was quite impress with this vacuums ability to work in corners, prevent itself from its crashing death going down the stairs and make its way through each of the sections of my main floor. During the two weeks I had the unit, I took note of certain messy areas to ensure that the vacuum would eventually clean up those areas. The cleanup time for my main floor took over 3 hours, so it’s not like I am going to wait around to see if and when it gets to those areas. At the end of the process, I was pleasantly impressed that the vacuum eventually circled its way back to clean up those areas. The addition of the automatic dirt disposal (which I know was introduced with a previous model) is a nice feature. You don’t have to empty out the vacuum after each clean and the disposal unit comes with a small disposable dirt back for easy clean up. I did find that the amount of time to clean my main floor is a lot longer than what the battery unit can withstand, however the vacuum is smart enough to know that the battery is low and make its way to the charging base and then resume the cleaning once it has been recharged. My main floor is mostly hard wood, with a large rug in my living room and some smaller rugs in the entry ways. The vacuum had no problem transferring to and from carpet, although I will warn you that some smaller rugs have corners flipped or pushed around. Fortunately for me the smaller entry rugs I have do have some weight to them, so it didn’t cause any issue of the vacuum getting stuck. Smaller mats or rugs should probably be removed before cleaning. The mobile app has some nice features. Once your vacuum has completed its cleaning, you can click on the details and it shows a map of its cleaning area. You can definitely make out the layout of your floor and see where the vacuum did not clean either because of either due to walls in your house or objects preventing certain cleaning areas. With this app, you can also set up smart Maps, which essentially maps out your floor similar as the clean summary, however you can use this to identify rooms on the floor in which you can have your vacuum clean certain areas on particular schedule. It also sends you a notification if the unit is stuck, which came in handy while I was on another floor watching a movie, otherwise it would have been stopped and no cleaning would have continued. Now, if you were away from home or sleeping during this time, there isn’t really much you can do until you find the unit stuck when you return or wake up. Which is a good Segway into some of the dislikes. It’s pretty loud. I mean it is a vacuum and vacuums are loud. I was hoping that I would be able to have this thing scheduled for nightly runs, but there is no chance that it won’t wake up the family in the middle of the night. And if it needs to empty out dirt into the dirt dispenser, that adds more noise. So really you only have the option to let this thing run while you are out of the house. Which is fine if you are normally out of the house, but if you have someone at home at all times or when kids are out of school for the summer, it’s hard to really schedule this thing during the day. Don’t forget that if and when you do schedule the unit to run, that all the floors cleaned up. For family with young children, you need to make sure all them small toys are picked up. So setting up a schedule and forgetting it, really doesn’t work in this case. During my first run of testing the unit, I did try to send the unit “Home” to see if it would find its way back to the base. I never could get the buttons on the vacuum to work right to send it home. With the app, I was able to send it home, but not without running into a hiccup one of the three times. Not sure if the 3rd time was due to attempting to send it home with the physical buttons on the unit itself. Another issue I had was the app had sent me a notification that the unit was stuck. When I went to see what it was stuck on, there was nothing there. It was in the middle of the floor. Good news is that I was notified, however as mentioned previously, if you were not home during this time, you would come home disappointed that your cleaning was not completely finished. Overall, my impressions of the unit is pretty good. I do wish there were added functionality of base placement to clean multiple floors. As of right now, I believe you can have it set on one floor with smart maps, but I am thinking if you don’t care about smart maps and just want it to clean the whole floor, you can just probably move the base, but not 100% sure.

I have owned an "off branded" robot vacuum for quite sometime now, and I was relatively impressed with the performance. I did not see the point or the need to spend a huge amount of money on a robot vacuum. What could possibly be so different? Is it really worth the cost? In came the iRobot Roomba s9+, and I must say, I am honestly blown away. There most certainly IS a difference in the quality and performance. All I can say is, you get what you pay for. The Roomba s9+ is the latest edition to the robot vacuum world from iRobot. The product came well packaged with easy to follow instructions. I was able to get the whole thing set up in under 15 minutes. The charging station/dirt collection tower plugs right into a wall outlet. It also has a place to wrap the excess power cord which is nice because it gives it a much cleaner look. The robot vacuum deviates from the normal iRobot design. Instead of being perfectly round as previous models have been, it is straight on the front side. This, per iRobot, allows the Roomba s9+ to get into corners and hard to reach places better than the previous models. Much to my impatience, I charged the vacuum for a few hours prior to the first use. During this time, it allowed me to connect the vacuum unit to my wifi network. After the initial charge, I was all set to let it clean! You can start the cleaning process from the app downloaded on your phone, or by pressing the "Clean" button on the top right of the vacuum. The vacuum comes to life! It makes some cheerful chirps and a new light ring that surrounds the dirt bin cover lights up and flashes. This new light ring is the vacuums visual way of communication to you, the owner. The vacuum backs up off the base, turns around, and starts cleaning. This is where I truly became impressed with the technology. The vacuum no longer wanders around like my old robot vacuum. It cleans with rhyme and reason! This vacuum cleans in straight, connected lines. Once it goes till it has to stop, it turns and goes the opposite direction right next to where it just vacuumed. This is much more efficient than my other robot vacuum. Upon approaching a wall or obstacle, the robot suddenly slows down and quietly bumps the object or wall, then makes its turn. My other vacuum slammed into everything! The vacuum blew my mind when it reached the edge of a wall where it had to turn to adjust itself to the wall edge. The vacuum turned, backed up to straighten itself in line with the wall, and then began vacuuming again. I was impressed. The vacuum navigated my areas of both hard floors (stained concrete) and carpet with ease. During the cleaning process, the vacuum navigates my house with impressive precision. Not only is there a host of sensors on the bottom, which iRobot named "PerfectEdge Technology", but there is also a camera on the center of the unit which, I assume, is part of how it navigates. The Roomba s9+ cleans your home, and at the same time, learns your house. It creates a map inside the iRobot app that allows you to see where the robot cleaned, where it found large amounts of dirt, and it also allows you to select specific rooms for the Roomba to go and clean without it having to clean your entire house! While the Roomba cleans, it sucks up a massive amount of dirt. It is advertised that this vacuum has 40x more suction than one of the previous models. When it encounters an area with excessive dirt, the light ring around the top turns blue and the vacuum continues to vacuum that single spot. Another amazing feature is that the vacuum, if the dirt bin gets full, will return to the "Clean Base" and empty itself and then it will continue to vacuum where it left off. I love this because usually, it cleans my entire house and won't stop just because the dirt bin is full. The dirt gets emptied into the clean base which has a disposable vacuum bag inside. Now to discuss a few things I don't like or that maybe I do not understand. There is always the issue of the disposable items. The Clean Base tower that automatically empties your Roomba's dirt bin has disposable bags. I would rather have iRobot design a dirt bin that is able to be reused. The dirt bin on the s9+ itself is washable and reusable, why is the dirt bin on the Clean Base a disposable vacuum bag. People will pay a large amount of money for this robot vacuum. This is a huge investment for their home. I would have thought the vacuum bags were a thing of the past. With the increased suction power, this vacuum is loud. This can be remedied by changing the setting from the phone app to a quieter cleaning setting, but who wants to dumb down the power on the vacuum? I want it to suck up as much dirt as possible. Sometimes the vacuum approaches objects/walls and slams right into them. This is NOT what the vacuum is supposed to do. When the vacuum is acting correctly, it approaches walls/objects and immediately slows down and barely bumps them. I am not exactly sure what the cause of the issue is. I have cleaned the camera lens and sensors on the underside of the unit. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it does not. I also have two recliners and for some reason, the Roomba s9+ does not understand them at all! In its defense, my old robot vacuum also had issues with my recliners. I do not know if it is the distance from the bottom of the recliners to the floor, or some other issue, but the vacuum seems to think there is nothing there and will continue to bump the recliners like it is trying to go through them. It is annoying as I feel it is wasting battery life. For a piece of technology to be so intelligent, it does have an occasional unintelligent moment. In summary, even with minor flaws in either design or software, this is the BEST robot vacuum I have ever seen or used. You definitely get what you pay for. If you are on the fence about buying one, save up your money and opt for the Roomba s9+. You will love the Clean Base and you will love how clean the Roomba gets your home!

What if I told you purchasing a tech item could improve your marriage and reduce overall stress and marital strife? Instead of getting frustrated about trying to stay ahead of your cleaning duties or spending a chunk of money monthly to hire a cleaning service, I would seriously consider buying this Roomba to eliminate this aspect of contention in your life. The Roomba s9+ has completely exceeded my expectations as I haven't owned a Roomba in about 8 years. This unit has a number of massive improvements I didn't think was possible until I saw them in action. Here's a quick rundown of what makes Roomba s9+ special: 1) Roomba gracefully learns and maps your house. It slowly and gently bumps around and adjust to furniture and obstructions in your home, and over time learns and adapts to the features of your house to maximize cleaning efficiency. In just the second run it was into my kitchen and cleaning everything off the tiles there. 2) Roomba s9+ will automatically return to base and charge to complete the job instead of stopping dead in its tracks. It has about 1:30 hours of clean time depending on surface before it has to go back to charge for about the same amount of time before it goes back to finish the floor. 3) After confidently mapping your floorplan, you can choose which rooms to clean based on need and traffic. 4) The Automatic Dirt Disposal empties the Roomba's bin each time it returns to base so you never have to empty the Roomba directly. The base bin holds ~30 loads of dirt. 5) Handles stairs and obstacles without any issue. Watch as it turns back to missed spots after seemingly moving on. Watch it sidestep open stair wells and thresholds without skipping a beat. 6) App setup is fast and simple. Monitoring and control is also seamless and perfect and also has Alexa integration. Baby or cat made a mess in a room? Call Roomba to clean it! 7) Surprisingly nimble around objects like furniture, chairs, table legs. On my mapped picture, you can see the frame of our dining room table. 8) Can learn multiple floors with the same Roomba Some notes that aren't negatives but facts you should be aware of. Roomba is not quiet, it is loud and purpose built like any vacuum and certainly not a toy. On hardwood or uneven tile it can be loud moving across those surfaces. Roomba also needs some light to operate properly so we run it while we are at work. Roomba doesn't need completely clear spaces, but it is just less efficient if there are large items or toys scattered about. It will "bully" and push movable objects but if you want a good clean you are better off moving things around. We still use our corded vacuums for deeper cleans once a month or so, but the Roomba will not only clean up on a more consistent basis, but it will also help you keep things off the floor to help Roomba clean more efficiently. At the end of the day you have to ask yourself, is Roomba worth the $1300, or $100 or so a month over a year. Do you pay that much a month for cleaning? Over 2 years? 3 years? Now that I have had a chance to use a Roomba I can say it is worth it despite the price when you see how effortlessly clean all of your rooms can be.

It’s been almost 17 years now since the first Roomba was introduced. In some ways they’ve changed quite a lot, but in others things have mostly stayed the same. They still mostly rely on virtual walls to stay out of dangerous areas. They still look like oversized hockey pucks. And you still need to clean the brushes daily if you’ve got pets with long fur unless you feel you’re overburdened with money. But apparently now that the Roomba is almost old enough to vote, iRobot has decided that the time has come for some changes. The S9+ has abandoned just about all the classic Roomba design cues in the name of producing a robot vacuum that is far more capable than any model I’ve seen in just about every way. And I love every bit of it. To begin, the new design. The hockey puck look has been completely abandoned for a U-shaped design that more and more devices have been adopting as of late, and I’m very pleased to see it. The circular body design was effective at stopping the Roomba from getting stuck, but you paid for it in terms of coverage. With the brushes placed right between the wheels they could never get any closer than about 2 inches to baseboards, furniture, or doors. Rotating edge brushes set ahead of the wheels attempted to fix this by directing debris towards the center, but as anyone who used Roombas regularly could tell you it was far from a perfect solution. With the S9’s squared off front it can go places an older Roomba never could. They’ve also been able to make the brushes bigger and better protected against the dangers of cat hair wrapping itself around the bearings or cutting through the brushes. I’ve still been clearing them about every other day out of habit, but outside of shedding season I think you could probably let it go for a week and not run into any serious problems. Roombas were already just about the best thing you could imagine when it came to managing pet hair, but I think this is the first one I can believe won’t eventually be killed by it. Now, generally, you’d expect the addition of corners to mean the Roomba is less maneuverable than its cylindrical brethren. And that might have been the case if not for the improved navigation system, which verges on magical. While it did spend the first couple of days unsuccessfully stumbling around my apartment and getting itself into trouble, at the end of each attempt it presented me with a basic overview of what it had learned about the shape of my home. By the third day this had turned into a rudimentary map – complete with dividing lines indicating where it thought the transitions were between the different rooms. Some manual tweaking was still required to get it right – but I have to say it got a lot closer than I expected it could, even spotting the barely-there transition between my living room and dining room. And all of this was manageable from iRobot’s excellent app for the vacuum, which provides you with all the statistics you could ever need as well as notifications on what the thing is doing, an advanced scheduling feature, and even an option to set how loud the vacuum’s motor is allowed to get and how many passes it should make over a single area. Once the system knows the topography it’s working with there really is no need for virtual walls, and no worries about the tracking grid from your VR setup inadvertently turning the entire living room into a No-Robot zone (as happened with my previous Roomba.) Watching the system gradually learn how not to get stuck was surprisingly entertaining too – though for those of you who are less amused by such things may just want to make use of the training mode which just has the Roomba drive through the house for a few hours without trying to clean anything until it’s got a good sense for the layout. The final feature is, of course, the fact that this is the second self-cleaning Roomba. When the Roomba returns to the charging base, there’s a port on the underside leading directly to a sealed off compartment within the dust bin that forms a seal with a matching port on the base. Within the base is another, more powerful vacuum that sucks all the dust and debris straight out of the bin and into a small disposable bag that they claim holds about 30 bins worth. I’d say based on my experience after a week of cleaning up after both a cat and a dog that this looks slightly optimistic – but your mileage may vary. And speaking as someone who often would forget to empty the bin for several days, it’s a nice thing to have. Now, having gushed about just how awesome this thing is, I do have to admit there are a couple of downsides. To start – the machine vision system that the Roomba uses doesn’t work well in the dark. In fact it really doesn’t seem to work at all in the dark. This was a bit disappointing as I generally prefer to let it do its thing in the wee hours of the morning before the sun’s up and the animals are too tired to try riding on it. Of course I probably wouldn’t be doing that with this anyway thanks to the other downside. “Quiet” is not a word I’d use to describe this thing. Even operating in low power mode it would be hard to sleep through a 5AM cleaning cycle, and even if you could learn to live with that the base is even louder sucking all the dirt out once its done. It’s also a pretty talented climber – the first time I tried to run it I missed one of my dog’s chew toys while cleaning the floor. It had absolutely no trouble climbing up over the hard nylon bone and getting it caught within the brushes. No damage was done, but it’s certainly got some blind spots which you’ll want to be aware of if you’ve got pets and/or small children in the house. Despite these few nitpicks, overall I have to say I’m extremely happy with the performance of the S9+, and look forward to many years of not having to think about cleaning to come.

We bought this not even a week ago and it had been nothing but problems. I keep trying to give it another chance and its aggravating. The first day the app failed- which was not irobots problem however literally in the first 24 hours the brush broke in 2 from wrapping. Its unreal how fragile the brushes are. Irobot said they would replace it but its not normally something covered by warranty- but due to time I ordered a replacement. Then the poweboost stop working on carpet. It is running very weak. WHEN it works it is an amazing product. However we've had more issues then we should in one week. Id rather just vacuum myself at this point to not deal with all the issues. Will be returning and trying a different brand.

This iRobot-Roomba is as good as advertised!! I’m impressed with the technology and the work horse attitude this unit has. I have hard wood floors and carpet. The Roomba can tell the difference, when it goes over the carpet, it turns the vacuum on high, when leaves the carpet and goes to the wood floors, it idles down the vacuum for the hard wood floors-you can literally hear the difference. Finally, when it finishes it’s tasks, this Roomba goes back to its base automatically empties the Roomba unit into the base!

I have had my iRobot Roomba s9+ for almost a year. I switched from other vacuum that I have had for two years. The most convenient feature of this vacuum is the automatic dirt disposal, you won't have to care about emptying the bin of the Roomba s9 for some time. It has some convenient features like Smart Maps (you can train the vacuum to learn the sq footage of your house), then you can tell the vacuum to only clean sections of your house. The App works well with my phone. I paired it with the Braava jet m6 mop, and it has a cool feature where you can set up the Braava to mop after the vacuum has finished cleaning a floor. Something annoying that I have found in the vacuum is when it returns to the dirt disposal, sometimes the lead of the vacuum will open, this creates that the vacuum does not work until you close the lid. Is easy to use and if you have pets it will do a great work by collecting must of the hair.

My initial impression is ... wow! Wow, wow, wow! Now that I’ve said that, let me state unequivocally that this iRobot Roomba S-series Robot Vacuum is an impressive machine. It really is. Unboxing was an adventure, a good one. Everything was packaged perfectly. Just be aware, the charging station is heavy. The robot itself is a nice size, and looks amazing! I almost expected the thing to talk to me. Actually, it did, to tell me the Roomba had completed its cleaning cycle. Surprised the heck outta me! Thanks, R2! Before anything else, it’s a good idea to review all the safety information in the Owner’s Guide. The warnings, cautions, and notices are important. Diagrams explain what all the parts of your Roomba are. Besides the ‘how to use your vacuum’ section, there are extensive and detailed instructions (again, with accompanying diagrams) to guide you through the proper care and maintenance of your Roomba. Use of the iRobot Home app is a must, as it’s how you activate the device, as well as, control it. The app is, in a word, great! Everything you could want, or need, for understanding how to use and maintain your vacuum, is presented there in an organized, conveniently accessible resource. After completing setting up your Roomba, you’ll want to do the software update through the app, while the vacuum finishes charging. After the first few uses, in which the vacuum learns the layout of your home’s rooms, activating the Smart Maps setting will allow you to decide which areas of the house the Roomba will focus on, and which ones it will “ignore.” This is a very cool feature. And by setting up a cleaning schedule, the Roomba will know when to get to work. Something I really appreciated was how the Roomba’s low profile allowed it to smoothly glide beneath my furniture and underneath my kitchen cupboards (reaching all those hard-to-get-at places), without rubbing up against them at all. I will say that the Roomba was louder than I would have liked, at least while on the ‘Detailed Clean’ setting. Although I got used to the sound, I preferred the ‘Quiet Clean’ option, even though on this setting, it seemed to take longer to clean my floors, which made sense as the vacuum was using less power. There is also a ‘Custom Clean’ option where you can adjust the level of cleaning power, and how many times the vacuum will pass over an area. In comparing this robotic vacuum to one I’ve previously owned from a different company, the Roomba cleaned my entire tiled flooring in literally half the time, and did an amazingly better job of it too. I’m really glad to not have to empty a dust bin. The charging station, which houses the vacuum bag, is a terrific addition to the iRobot Roomba series. When my new vacuum returned to the station, after having finished its first cleaning round, and I heard the collected debris being sucked up into the canister unit, it was such a satisfying sound. It’s also helpful that the app itself will let you know when the bag needs to be changed. So cool! By pressing the virtual ‘Clean’ circle button in the app, you can wake up your Roomba to send it on its way, then tap it again to pause. The app will also tell you how long it will stay paused before resuming cleaning, or you have the option to end the cleaning cycle. You can tap the ‘Empty Bin’ virtual button to cause the robotic vacuum to return to its home base, and empty the dust bin into the charging station’s canister bag. If the Roomba returns itself to the charging station to recharge, the app will tell you how long it will take before the vacuum is ready to continue on with its cleaning task. There are numerous other features worth exploring in the app, including iRobot BETA, which enables you to take part in any available BETA programs having to do with your Roomba. The iRobot Store lets you order replacement parts and accessories, straight from the app itself. You can even connect your Roomba to your Smart Home, with services such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. And you can review your Roomba’s cleaning History, seeing when and how many square feet of an area was cleaned. Under the ‘More’ tab, you will find a ‘Locate Roomba’ virtual button, which you can tap to learn exactly where your iRobot is in your house at that moment. Other helpful features found in the app under the ‘More’ tab, include: Care & Maintenance - with step by step guides; Help Menu - with common questions and answers, Welcome / Roomba Overview / Maintaining Roomba videos, contact info, Warranty, Quick Start and Owner’s Guide; and your iRobot Roomba Settings. The only hesitation I have in recommending this handy household appliance is, the cost. Although well worth the expense for such a high-quality device, which should provide many years of stellar service with proper maintenance and care, it is rather expensive. You are paying for not only the convenience, but also, the innovative technology this iRobot Roomba vacuum represents. Still, if you can afford it and are very much a fan of new tech, and most especially have the lifestyle a device such as this would benefit from, then this might just be the vacuum for you.