iRobot Roomba 960 Robot Vacuum- Wi-Fi Connected Mapping, Works with Alexa, Ideal for Pet Hair, Carpets, Hard Floors,Black

Roomba does not live up to expectations, and the major benefit of paying for the 900 series does not in fact work reliably. Let me start by saying I was a very happy Roomba user for months. It worked flawlessly. Then iRobot flashed the firmware and obviously made significant changes to the logic handling charging. Prior to this update, my Roomba would return to home base to recharge with about 5% of the battery remaining, and it reliably made it to the charger, recharged the battery completely, and continued the job. During a normal cleaning cycle in my house, the Roomba would return and fully recharge the batter twice. This would result in a a total job time of around 5.5 hours, and a report showing about 2200 sq ft cleaned. Immediately following the update, the Roomba would wait until approximately 1% remaining batter prior to returning.....so about half the time it wouldn't make it to the recharger. If this happens, the job cancels,you have to manually put it on the charge, wait until it's charged, and restart the job. If it did by chance make it to the charger.....it would only charge the battery half way before restarting. This means that it would then return to the charger in half the time. Now it would take 5 or 6 trips back to the charger to actually complete the job. It almost never made it through the whole job, as it would run up against the depleted battery, die before making it to the charger, and cancel the job. I bought two new replacement batterries, and the problem remained. I inititiated a support request. Suddenly, after dealing with the charging issue, the Roomba started having more issues, like going in a circle or returning to the charger immediately. Support first sent me a replacement wheel, which did not help, then decided to send me a new Roomba. Well, they sent me a 980, and directions to put the battery from my 960 into it. That didn't work at all, the new Roomba was worse. New support request, they had me send it back, then told me the issue was that the 960 and 980 had different batteries...that was the first I'd heard I got a 980 replacement (they look identical). So they shipped me another new 980, AND a new 980 battery. The new Roomba ran great, finished a job, I was happy again! Ooops, soon as it phoned home, it got the latest firmware upgrade and.....BAM. Now the new one is doing the same thing as the original 960. So here I have nearly a thousand dollar piece of high tech gadgetry, that was purchased for the sole reason that it could recharge during a job, and continue the job..........and now that function doesn't work. I now have essentially what I could have gotten from a different brand for under 200.00.In addition, the 980 is supposed to have a much stronger motor and perform several times better...this in fact does not seem to be the case. Instead, the motor goes into "turbo" mode which basically appears to mean it gets noisier, and nothing more. Based on these issue, I would strongly recommend that you do not spend the money on either the 960 or 980 if your primary reason for purchase is the "return to charger" function.

PET OWNERS- I’ve hesitated on posting this and what rating to give it. I do really like my roomba, and I’m running it daily. BUT we opted for the more expensive “pet friendly” version as we’d just ordered new carpet and wanted to keep the pet hair under control. Our roomba arrived the same day as the carpet. To be honest I have very hairy dogs with long hair and despite brushing and grooming hair is a fact of life in our home. So there is that, and I’m sure we are not alone. We should volunteer to be testers for iRobot as here’s what’s going on.1) we noticed clumps of dog hair being left behind, so we have to follow around and pick up balls of fur, so started trying to figure that out.2) we have to empty the bin at least twice during a full cleaning (guess we are dirtier than most as this is new carpet with roomba from day one). We do live in the country.3) the rollers get hair wrapped around the ends and when I say wrapped, it’s a lot. I have a handful after clearing the rollers. I cleaned the rollers yesterday before running it, I had to clean them again this morning for example and you must remove them to clean out the ends.So my bottom line is that paying more for the pet friendly version may not be necessary. So if you want to save a few $’s a different model may suffice. And yes I’d be happy to test future models as we can truly give it the pet test!

The media could not be loaded.  I had high hopes for this robot, considering I thought I was buying the top-of-the-line unit from the company best known for robot vacuums. I've had a Neato since 2012 - so I was excited to finally "upgrade" to the industry leader.Turns out, in a majority of instances, this robot won't be able to complete a simple vacuuming job on it's own, without some intervention from me. Looking at the history of job's in the app, I've counted that over the last 3 months, the success rate of the vacuum starting, cleaning, and returning to charge is about 40%. Which i think is unacceptable for such a costly unit, and poorer than my 6-year old Neato.The most frequent reasons this Roomba won't complete it's jobs are:1) It won't start because it indicates it's bin is full. Except, the bin is actually empty. Apparently there's a known issue where the dust sensors on the robot get clouded with, um, dust - and therefore *think* the bin is full but it's actually empty. There's a work-around that iRobot puts on it's support forums which involves cleaning sensors on the bin and the robot quite frequently in order for the machine to work. But needed to worry about work-arounds is unacceptable on a brand new, supposedly latest tech vacuum. My 6-year old Neato wins on this one.2) It'll get stuck in random places - even on an open floor. Not on any objects or barriers - it just get's trapped into some corner or chair and won't be able to figure out how to get out. And there's no consistent pattern to where it'll get stuck, so I can't even use a wall barrier to limit the Roomba's path (not that the wall barrier works well either!). Again, my 6-year old Neato does a better job on this.3) Probably most frustratingly, it will complete its vacuuming job - but won't be able to return to it's dock to charge. See attached video. It sees the dock, moves toward it, but can't latch on and charge itself. And it'll keep trying until the battery completely drains. As a result, whenever I really need to quickly start the vacuum, it's sitting there - pretty and dead. My 6-year old Neato has almost never missed docking itself!Quite honestly, there's more hype than substance with Roombas. My house as two levels, and for the second level I have bought a Neato Botvac D3 Wifi Connected. It has practically all the features (incl. wifi / maps etc.) that this Roomba has, but for half the price and twice the performance.I really regret buying this Roomba and wish I could return it for a refund.

My housekeeper vacuums the living room every other week, but here is what 10 minutes of the Roomba picked up. Love it!

Works exactly as advertised.Pros:- Goes over kitchen mats and floor rugs and onto hardwood floors without any issue.- Short enough to go under bed and couch.- Will sense ledges and not fall off - I can put it on the kitchen counter or stairs and it will sense the end of the ledges and turn around.- Can be turned on from work using smart phone.- Notifies you when garbage is full- Recharges itself when battery is low and goes back out- Remembers which parts it's vacuumed and which areas it hasn'tCons- Still expensive for a vacuum (~$1,082 including tax)- Can't leave papers or receipts on the floor (will suck them up and shred them)- Won't vacuum up crumbs on the couch - needs to be on a flat surface

The media could not be loaded.  I have a 2-bedroom 2-bathroom all-hardwood apartment with a dog. From my research you have to buy the top-of-the-line model (or close to it) since the lower models are apparently no good. I bought the 960 and it's amazing. Very intelligent, slows down and gently nudges my dog when he gets in the way, very thorough in finding all the rooms and corners to vacuum. I supervised it at first but after the day one I realized I didn't have to. Highly recommended.

Loved the vaccum until it broke 90 days into owning it. It was not purchased direct from a reputable source even though I got it here on Amazon. There is no warranty past 30 days, I should have known but paying that much I just expected better craftsmanship.iRobot and OneDealOutletCanada both refused to do anything to help me. Now on top of the rediculously high purchase price I'm buying replacement parts out of pocket.Read the fine print and don't get screwed like I did.

I have been using this for a few weeks now and it is amazing. I did a lot of research on the robot vacuum that would work in my house. I have a lot of cables and tassles on my rugs and other stuff that tends to get jammed up in vacuums. THis guy does not eat them, it has an anti jam feature that prevents this. Also it is very systematic, meaning it just does not go randomly everywhere, this model does grid lines, so you do not get frustrated watching it work. I would have to say that my floor layout is very complete with tons of stuff everywhere and it does manage to get every piece of open floor space and get under every chair, yes every chair (dinning, sofa etc..) . it is the prefect size to fit where a normal vacuum i just ignore. It never gets stuck anywhere.

I have never written a review before, but am compelled to leave one for anyone on the fence about buying this Roomba. I was on the fence for years, not being able to justify the price and being deterred by some neg. reviews. I have now had my roomba for a few weeks and love it beyond words. As a single mom, there are never enough hours in the day and this vacuum does an incredibly thorough job. We had a kids' party last weekend and as you can imagine, there were crumbs and messes everywhere. I set the Roomba for when I took the kids upstairs for bed and by the time I got back downstairs, the floors were spotless. Before leaving for work, I simply move some chairs or objects off the floor and Roomba makes the floors sparkling for when I'm back home. It navigates on and off all my carpets (low-pile) and I LOVE that it smartly returns to charge at the docking station. I love the phone notifications and the ease with which I can empty the dust bin (which looks small but collects TONS) and clean the filter. THE BEST!!!