Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There's a lot of "wow" to the new post 600 series Roomba, but unfortunately most of it never makes it off the back of the box or the online item description to actually work in your home. In a word, I'm "unimpressed", but if were to use more words I would also say I was annoyed, aggravated, exasperated, perplexed, angry, and surprised (both in good and bad ways). Let me just cut to the chase -- I returned it. The main reason why I returned it was because the much touted "Smart Mapping" feature simply didn't work. With the i3 model, you can't have the vac just learn the Smart Map of your house while it vacuums. Instead you have to send it out on a mapping only mission, where it doesn't vacuum at all and instead uses the battery just to find it's way around your entire house with the idea that once it's done it will creat this editable "Smart Map" so the next time you want use the vac you can just tell it, "Clean the kitchen, living room, and family room". After wasting a total of 8 hours (4 hours twice) supposedly "unlocking the Smart Map feature" by creating my first Smart Map, I still had no editable Smart Map, even though in the history it showed that he vac went literally all over my 3800s/f home. Okay, so I can't use one feature -- why is that so bad? Well, the problem is that all these new Roomba models are completely based on that feature! Since none of them use a random vac pattern anymore, they need to be able use a map to know when their job is done. Unless you successfully create a Smart Map, that job everytime will be your entire house. Since there is no other way to like remote control these vacs start in a particular room or only clean part of the house, you have to be able use the Smart Map feature. Also, because it use row by row movement instead of random, the first time the vac runs in your house it takes a LONG time to figure things out, so unless you want it to take the same long time every time it needs to have a map to move around and do the job faster, even if it's doing your whole house. Another reason why this feature is important is because I also bought the iRobot Braava Jet M6 mopper, which also uses Smart Map and is supposed to share information back and forth between the Rooba i3 and the Braava Jet M6, specifically the map. Not being able to tell a Roomba to go vac one room is one thing, but the Braava Jet M6 can't mop your whole house every time. You HAVE to be able to tell the Braava to go mop like only one or two rooms. Well, the Braava does figure out the Smart Map as it mops, so it will eventually learn the whole house. However, I was hoping to use the supposedly quicker Smart Map creator of the Roomba i3 to create a Smart Map of my house to immediately share with the Braava. But nope -- that's not happening. So now I have to wait for the Braava to run like 4 continued mopping/charging cycles before it will finally learn the Smart Map of my house. So because that one feature isn't working, this "high end" original robo vac actually performs much worse than my much cheaper (yet better featured?) Coredy hybrid vac/mop that it was supposed to be replacing. I welcomed the Coredy vac back with open arms after dealing with all the Rooba frustration/annoyance. But before you think I'm just being picky about this one feature, the i3 has numerous other issues, too: 1. It wasn't able to go over a single rug in my house. Not a single one. No matter if it's a rubberish mat, low shag, cotton like cloth, etc. it wouldn't transition from the tile/hardwood floor to the rug. Sometimes it would roll it up under the wheels, stranding the vac with its butt up in the air until it screams for help. Someetimes it would suck up the corners of the rugs in the "no tangle dual roller system" (I don't think they know what "no tangle" means). It's so bad at transitions it wouldn't even go over a lamp cord on the floor and there are several rooms in the house that go from tile to wood so they have a raised tile or wood transition, and it would get stuck on top of that. Seriously. It's only like 1/4" high and it could barely get over that. 2. Although it had trouble going over tiny transitions, sometimes it would actually do almost like a kind of wheelie going over things it shouldn't and would actually strand itself with most/all wheels off the ground. 3. The i3 is surprisingly tall, wide, and just big. Basically it fits under VERY little in my house -- including just the kitchen cabinet overhangs. It also won't fit between my rather standard dining room chair legs, kitchen table chair legs, or bar stool feet. It also gets stuck/wedged trying to go under my rocking recliner chair. My Coredy robot vac fits in all these places (and more) no problem! 4. I cannot emphasize how annoying it is that you cannot remote control this vac, like to get it where you want it to clean, or if it misses something and you want it to go back, or it gets stuck, etc. There should be a way to control/steer this vac from the app (or at least from an included dedicated wireless remote control). This is especially needed when the Smart Map feature simply doesn't work. 5. The dust cup on the i3 is less than half the size of the dust cup on my Coredy vac. That's actually okay though (not really) because it picks up less debris than my Coredy vac does, so although it's difficult to determine a true suction comparison (since iRobot only lists it's suction power as compared to its own 600 series Roombas -- like 3x, 10x, etc.), I suspect that my Coredy vac has stronger suction. 6. The battery on the i3 doesn't last as long as my Coredy vac does. I don't know what the specs are of either batteries, but I know it's must be significantly different because the Coredy seems to clean better (stronger suction) and the battery lasts almost twice as long. 7. Even though the advertise it as specifically NOT doing this anymore, the i3 still slams into things just as much as I remember my first Roomba doing over a decade ago. Again, my Coredy vac doesn't do this, so although they both use a bumper technique for navigation (rather than lidar, lasers, cameras, etc.) the Coredy is much more gentle. I thought my wife was going to destroy the i3 when it started repeatedly slamming into her beloved Wolf oven (KABANG KABANG KABANG!) I'm sure there's negatives I'm forgetting, but that's most of it. It was mostly an annoying/aggravating experience. Okay, on the positive side -- there's only one. I'm mildly impressed with the straight line row by row vacuuming. I'm one of those people who will go nuts watching the usual robot vac randomly clean the floor completely missing a big chunk of debris for HOURS. This new method/technique should definitely solve that syndrome, but unfortunately without the Smart Map feature it's just not a very viable method of cleaning. So, my summary would be the same as it's been since I bought a Roomba over 10 years ago. Do not buy a lesser model Roomba. You can spend the same amount and get a really high end, well featured non-iRobot brand that will do a much better job. That being said, even though I could buy it, I'm not going to buy iRobot's top of the line Roomba either. I simply do not trust that will work as advertised any better than their lower end models do (don't), and they definitely haven't earned my trust in their products enough to pay $1000 for their top of the line model.