Customer Ratings & Reviews

Does a good job and has come a LONG from the first one I brought about 15 years ago. It figures out how to get unstuck most of the time but still does get stuck. Does a pretty good job getting to most of the floors. Doesn’t seem to have trouble with rug fringe anymore. It is expensive.

The best vacuum to use during the week while I’m at work

Our original Roomba 860 seems to have more cleaning power. It picks up more dust and dog hair. I am going to try the turbo setting to see if this helps Roomba 981. I like having the new Roomba 981 on the computer to compare results and length of cleaning. It touches borders softly so it won’t make dark marks on the surface. Our original Roomba 860 came with the Dual Mode Virtual Wall Barrier which keeps Roomba in the places you want to be cleaned. It creates an invisible barrier that only Roomba can see. I am using this device with our new Roomba 981. We only want Roomba to clean our kitchen floor.

Can't believe how much this picked up from my carpet! Works great! Was concerned it might get hung up on the area rugs on top of my carpet but it works like a charm.

I held off getting one of these robot vacs, but since my wife and I have become more disabled over time, it was nice to offload vacuming from our basement. We have 2 dogs and a cat, and that's sadly something this exact vacuum doesnt handle well, it leaves a lot of clumps of hair behind. However, it is pulling the dirt up as our carpet feels refreshed everytime we use it. we do have to emply it once in the middle of the vacuum cycle, but that's not too bad for a well used 1000 sq/ft basement.

I have owned a robot vacuum before but I got rid of it after just a couple months because it was not adequate for a home with two dogs that shed a TON. However, we no longer have pets so I decided to give it a try again. This vacuum is actually much more powerful than I was expecting and the little brush that sticks out the side to pull in anything that it can’t run over is so stinking awesome!! It runs along my cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms and the little brush grabs all the crumbs and dust and pulls it out so the vacuum can suck it up. That’s seriously my favorite feature ever. The app is very user friendly and easy to navigate. You have to download it to complete the setup and I had that all complete in about five minutes. Once it was fully charged I set the vacuum to go and clean and it ran until the battery died, for almost an hour. It got a good chunk of my house in that time. When the battery got low the vacuum took itself back to the charger and stayed on it until it was charged back up, probably about an hour, and then it just took off and resumed cleaning. It even picked up in the same room it had left off. At one point it did get stuck on one of our floor vents and the app notified me right away. I picked it up and set it back on the carpet and it continued on its way. The app also gave me a notification when the bin was full and once I emptied it, there it went on its merry way again. Scheduling the cleaning is super easy and is vital, in my opinion, because it is SO LOUD. I schedule the cleaning to be done while we are all out of the house otherwise you can’t hear anything over the sound. It’s a vacuum, of course, so I don’t expect anything less but the noise is really overpowering. However, that is literally my only complaint! Overall this is a great little machine. We’ve named it Ragnar Roomba and we love when we come home and the house is freshly vacuumed. I definitely recommend to try it out because I feel that everyone should have the convenience of having the vacuuming done for them.

This exceeded all expectations! Works realty well, sucks all the dirt from the house, be it hardwood or carpet, battery life is great.

Awesome, had first generation, is a nice upgrade. I have dogs and they shed, so this keeps the floors clean with minimal effort.

its very good and clean all type of floors, we are enjoying with it

It works great! I highly recommend this product to everyone

Best helper to my wife our house!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Picks up everything. Great product. Would definitely recommend.

Works better that my old model, found it at a great price

This is a great introduction to the Roomba brand, but you get what you pay for. The mapping is lacking and it's really ideal for a space with not much in it. It was a sale purchase and I'm glad to have it, but prefer some other models better.

The iRobot Roomba 981 is a very good robot vacuum, however, it is missing, in my opinion, a very important feature that would make it a great robot vacuum. For context, this is my first robot vacuum. I was very excited to see what it could do. I am using it downstairs, where it is cleaning my living room, dining, kitchen, and hallways. They are all hardwood with a few area rugs. So I did not test on any full carpeted rooms. That being said, these are also the highest traffic areas in my house, and I vacuum them several times a week, if not daily. First of all, setup was pretty easy. You take everything out of the package, take off all the stickers, and find a good permanent spot for the vac. This was a bit tricky for us, because we don't want it too out in the open, but all the places we really wanted it, it didn't have the recommended 3-4 feet of clear space around it. This is very important for it to be able to easily get in and out of the dock. Once you have a good spot for the home base, then you can set up the app. Again, pretty simple. You create an account and then you're pretty much good to go. From here, it's a simple step of telling the vacuum to start cleaning, either through the app or by pressing the button on the vac. This is where I really didn't know what to expect. It's louder than I was expecting, but when I thought about it, it's no louder than my cordless handheld vac that I normally use. The first time I ran it, it was very interesting to see it navigate all around the house. I must have watched it about 90% of the time it was running. You can see it is a very intelligent little device, and when it gets into a nice open area, it cleans in very neat and tidy rows. When it comes into contact with things like furniture and walls, it does a very good job of navigating around them. I have a few smaller area rugs where the corners are just slightly curled up, which gave the vac some problems. These rugs aren't super important to me, so I just rolled them up in subsequent cleanings. For my larger area rug, it did a fine job, and since it is a rug, which is a bit more difficult to clean than bare floor, you could hear it go into a bit stronger cleaning mode. There were a few times it got stuck, but this was because there was a random toy under the couch or other item. You just have to be very careful about giving the vac a very open area with no small obstacles. When the vac was all done cleaning, it went back to the charging doc on it's own as expected. This is when you can clean out the dirt bin, which I was actually quite impressed and disgusted to see how much junk it cleaned off my floors. Once done, there's a few interesting things you can check in the app. First, the amount of time it took to clean, which for me was about 1.5 hours each time, and it tells you the total area cleaned, which for me was about 500 square feet. And finally, you can see a map of what it cleaned. Again, I was actually very impressed with the fact that I could recognize my home's layout in the map it generated. I was very curious how this was going to work and if it would miss spots or anything. But based on the map, it got everything I would have wanted, and more, like under my sofa and loveseat. This brings me to the one feature I think this vac is missing. And that would be the ability to tell the vac to only clean certain areas. Best I can tell, this vac does not save the maps that it generates anywhere, so you can't like select parts of the map or create rooms or anything. You just set it to clean, and it cleans everything it has physical access too. The only way to make it clean a certain area is to physically block it off by closing doors and such. However, I have an open concept downstairs, so if I just want it to clean my kitchen, I am kind of out of luck. This really would be the killer feature that I would say would make this an absolute must buy. Hopefully they can add it later with a firmware upgrade or something. But as it is today, this holds it back slightly. Overall, it is a really nice robot vac, and it will definitely save me some time cleaning. I just wish I could tell it to clean certain areas.

The Roomba 981 is an improvement over previous versions. The new cleaning pattern is a big improvement over the pattern used by my 600 series. The 981 seems to have much better coverage. It has three modes for the motor, eco, automatic, and performance. Eco will reduce the noise of the motor and allow for a longer runtime and performance will run the motor at full power with reduced runtime. In eco mode it can clean my whole home, but with performance mode on, it has to recharge once to finish the cleaning job. It also doesn’t bump into things as hard as my 600 series does. This may be due to it using a camera on top of the Roomba. It also picks up much more than my 600 series, but I haven't yet had a problem with the bin filling up. The 981 worked well on my hard wood floors as well as my high pile carpet areas. Overall, this is a big improvement over lower series models. I would recommend the 981 for someone wanting to replace a lower series model or looking to get a new Roomba.

Cleaning is pretty nice and has a liitle navigation the only down side is it shows the map of the cleaned area after the job is completed or stopped ... so you never know while its operating that what areas are still left

The Roomba 981 is easy to setup and start cleaning after fully charging. The app and device voice prompts made setup quick and painless. The only minor issue I ran into was that the local network setting didn’t work in iOS as depicted in the setup guide. I did not have the option to set network permissions until I hit next. That’s when I was then prompted to allow local network access. I had no other issues besides that. The base plugs into a standard AC outlet and has two charging contacts. It’s best placed with the back of the base up against a wall. Otherwise, the Roomba can push the base out of position as it mounts. The app allows setting custom cleaning routines and schedules or I can simply push the clean everything button to clean on demand. I can even run the Roomba remotely through the app. The robot sweeps back and forth in straight lines, although it does tend to meander a bit from time to time. The side brush catches debris on the side of the robot and sweeps it into the cleaning path. The Roomba does a decent job of picking up loose debris from hard floors. I haven’t tried it on carpet because we have hardwood floors throughout but it works well on our hard floors, so I imagine it would also do a decent job on carpet. It has good suction as evidenced by the amount of discharged air felt when standing behind the device while it’s running. When it approaches an obstacle it stops and changes directions. It also easily travels over the trim dividing the kitchen tile from the other room floors and avoids hazards like stairs and drops. When the Roomba is finished cleaning or has a low battery, it automatically returns to its base to charge. I can also manually send it home to the base from the app. Sound when the unit is running is loud but not excessively so. It’s not as loud as the average upright vacuum but might be loud enough to frighten anxious pets. The suggested maintenance schedule is to empty the bin after each use, clean the filter weekly, clean the front caster wheel bi-weekly, clean the full bin sensors bi-weekly, clean the cliff sensors, side brush, charging contacts, camera and floor tracking sensor monthly, and clean the extractors every 4 months (3 months in homes containing pets). Some parts also require replacement at scheduled intervals. iRobot sells kits that include replacement extractors, side brushes and filters. The only part I worry about is the front caster wheel. I’ve found third-party replacements available but I’m having a hard time finding an OEM wheel. The maintenance may sound overwhelming but most of it is simply wiping the parts and only the side brush requires a screwdriver to remove for cleaning. All other parts are accessible without tools. Replacing parts are also fairly straightforward as most replaceable parts are easily and accessed on the underside of the vacuum. The lithium battery is also user replaceable if required. The 981 isn’t the most featured-packed Roomba available but it has more than enough cleaning power for an average size household. It’s more than sufficient for our needs and isn’t a budget buster. We only use it on one level of the house but it does a good job of keeping the floors clean which results in less sweeping for us. It’s great for loose debris and light maintenance cleaning. I don’t use it on large spills such as a bag of rice or box of cereal tipping over. A broom or shop vac works better in those instances. Large spills aside, it’s perfect for maintaining clean floors with minimal effort.

My wife loves roomberto! The app is great and he does a great job cleaning thoroughly. He hardly ever gets stuck and I like that he’s self docking when he needs a charge!

I have already gone through several robot vacuums. The biggest expectation to set for yourself at first is to have clear floors. This means that your floors cannot have laundry, shoes, kids toys, or other things people tend to leave on the floor. If you do have some of these things, any robot vacuum will struggle doing its proper job. Setting up this robot vacuum was a bit of a problem with my WiFi setting. I have a router that is capable of WiFi 6 and devices that aren’t WiFi 6 compatible automatically are assigned their correct compatibility. For this Roomba’s case, that is 2.4 GHz. My router couldn’t find the connect with the vacuum cleaner. I had to go into my router and create a separate WiFi connection that was specifically 2.4GHz. Only then would the vacuum recognze my WiFi. Cleaning works well enough. After about an hour’s use, the Roomba returns to its base and recharges in order to continue cleaning the rest of your home. Other models include a temporary storage bin for excess dirt. This model doesn’t include that. Thankfully, the app will let you know when it is time to clear the dust bin so that the Roomba can continue doing it’s thing. The app comes in handy in case the Roomba vacuum gets stuck somewhere. If this happens, you will get an event notification at which point, your Roomba will stop until the event is cleared. This Roomba is great for cleaning bare floors and carpeted areas. Provided that your floors remain clear of big items. Set time apart to do one large cleaning day before having your Roomba up and running. Then, let the Roomba do daily maintenance.