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

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.

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.

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!

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.