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As a pet owner and a busy person, I’ve owned a robot vacuum of one kind or another for years. The convenience and ease with which they can keep your home tidy between deep cleanings is important to me. While the cleaning properties and helpfulness of these gadgets have been hard to argue with, the price has kept this technology out of reach for a lot of customers. That may change with the arrival of the Roomba® i3+ EVO robot vacuum. This iRobot version is an Evolution (see, EVO) of the previous i3 and it’s packed with advanced features and a softer look. The major evolution of this is that it now adds smart mapping for room by room cleaning, something the previous i3 did not have. iRobot also knocked the price on this bot back substantially, likley hoping to make it the new go-to for budget bot choppers, and an enticing option to upgrade to if some of you out there are still running older, dumber bump-around bots.
A word about older models of i3+
I'll make a quick note here about anyone who bought the original i3+. If you purchased your vacuum a few years ago, it was simply known as the i3+, without the EVO designation. The great news for anyone who owns one of the original bots is that a firmware update will give you the mapping smarts, without you needing to purchase a brand new bot. Kudos to iRobot for that, and for dropping the price on this model, while adding those smarts.
Starting at a much more budget-friendly $549US/$699CAD, the Roomba i3+ gives you some of the features of the higher end Roombas like intelligent navigation, self-emptying capabilities using the Clean Base Automatic Dirt Disposal, and it lets you control almost every aspect of your clean using the iRobot app. So is this budget bot on par with pricier vacuums and how well does it clean? Let’s dig in since I had a chance to have one of these running in my home for a few weeks of review…
What do you get with iRobot Roomba i3+ EVO?
In the package you’ll get the i3 EVO Roomba vacuum; it has a bit of a softer look thanks to a woven panel on the top of the bot. While iRobot says it’s meant to be more durable, and that the woven texture will minimize fingerprints and collect less dust, I think it’s more likely you just won’t be able to see the dust and prints so well any more on the textured surface.
Also in this package is the iRobot Clean Base Automatic Dirt Disposal unit. This automatic empty container was launched several years ago on pricier Roombas like the i7 and s9 (and the + in the name indicates the disposal base is included in your purchase-in a lot of cases you can buy it later as an add-on if you like).
What’s the advantage of the iRobot Clean Base Automatic Dirt Disposal unit?
This automatic dustbin is a worthy upgrade-and not just for germaphobes either…
The clean base means the Roomba can empty itself into a sealed vacuum bag, so that any time the Roomba is full, it'll head back to its base station and automatically dump itself. This base is also a charging station, and the robot will go home to recharge when it needs to.
Getting started with smart mapping
For this bot to work effectively, you need it to first map your space. Essentially your Roomba i3 will go out all over your house and use its sensors to draw an accurate floorplan of your home. Then you can use that to do room-specific cleaning.
Creating the smart map will probably take several passes. You can make this happen all in one day by repeatedly sending the bot out on suction-less mapping runs, or you can just instruct it to go out and clean over a few days. The app will tell you when it's had enough time in your house to generate the automatic map.
View the map, make adjustments and label rooms
Next, view the map and label your rooms. This will involve putting dividers between rooms or spaces, and giving each room a label. The i3 did a very accurate job of mapping my space. The labelling and naming is pretty straightforward and is easy enough to manage.
I heard from viewers on my KZfaq channel that it doesn’t handle tall transitions between floors well, but in my home it hasn’t been an issue (though honestly my transitions are mostly flat). In short, I would say this Roomba does a great job vacuuming up.
The i3 EVO can get around and underneath things where the pet hair tends to collect, like underneath chairs, dressers and narrower spaces in the hallways.
That’s another difference the i3 has from the more expensive i7 and s9: the D-shape of those Roombas are meant to let them nudge into corners better. With that said, the tiny brushes that extend from the Roomba i3 do increase the robot's reach.
Overall I was pleased with how the robot was able to clean, and the spaces it was able to get into, but yes, corners and narrow areas are sometimes a challenge.