The iRobot Roomba, with models like the Roomba 690 and Roomba 980, has become the standard when it comes to autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners. It's a growing and competitive market, however, and iRobot needs some new features to stay ahead of the pack. Well, the new Roomba i7+ will have all the vacuum cleaning and obstacle avoidance of previous generations, but it will also include something new. The i7+ will empty its own dust bin. And thank goodness, too, because that was really the last bit of work required on our part for vacuum cleaning.
Other new features include Imprint Smart Mapping. With this new ability, the Roomba i7+ doesn't just learn a floor plan and adapt to it. The machine can now learn multiple floor plans at once as well as names for individual rooms. You will be able to customize the robot's cleaning path by specific rooms. Use the iRobot Home App or connect it to Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant and you'll be able to control the Roomba without getting up. Imagine being able to say "Clean Billy's Room!" and it just goes to the room and starts a sweep. That's nifty. And because it can learn multiple floor plans, you'll be able to use one Roomba i7+ for different floors of your house. Once iRobot teaches these things to go upstairs without being carried, you may never have to pay attention to cleaning again.
The new Clean Base Automatic Dirt Disposal is where the i7+ will empty its dust bin when it's full. This doubles as the charging station, so it's also where the Roomba will go when its low on power. The iRobot cleaners are already designed to recharge their batteries and continue the work without any interruption, so it makes sense they drop the dirt off at the Clean Base, too. All of the dirt gets stored in a closed bag, and you will get a notification through the app when it's full. Just pull out the bag, replace it with a new one, and throw the old one away.
The Roomba e5 is another robotic vacuum cleaner iRobot announced, and it's meant to be a budget version still packed with features. At $449, it's definitely going to be less expensive than the i7+. Still, there are a lot of budget options out there. The Eufy RoboVac 11S is just $230 and has earned a lot of praise from users and critics. The Ecovacs Deebot series also has a lot of praise and usually sells for around $200.
The new Roomba i7+ will retail for around $949.99. You can pre-order it right now through iRobot, and it will start shipping September 12. You can also order the Roomba i7 for $699.99, which is the same robot vacuum without the Clean Base, but considering the Clean Base will sell for $299.99 on its own, that's probably not the best idea.
