New Roomba i7+ remembers a map of your home
IRobot's new robot vacuum, the Roomba i7+, will know which room in your house needs cleaning the most, and will act accordingly.
Perhaps even more importantly, the i7+ will be able to empty itself, meaning you'll likely be worry-free when it comes to vacuuming for weeks.
Announced on Thursday, the Roomba i7+ is the first of iRobot's smart vacuum cleaners that'll be able to remember the floor plan of your home (in fact, it can remember up to 10 of them). It'll keep track of where it's been and where it needs to clean, and it will adapt to changing home environments, iRobot claims.
You'll also be able to give orders to the i7+ through Alexa or Google Assistant, provided you have a device supporting either standard. So, an order like "Hey Google, clean the living room" is now a possibility, and iRobot claims no other robot vacuum cleaner on the market can do this.
It's a convenient feature that also sounds like a potential privacy nightmare -- it'll be much easier for thieves to rob you if they can get ahold of your home's floor plan. In an April interview with The Verge, iRobot CEO Colin Angle said this data would be "protected," and will never be sold to third parties. Still, security measures sometimes fail -- in the case of IoT gadgets, it happens quite often -- so it's something to consider.
If you get the Roomba i7+ with a base station called Clean Base, the robot will automatically empty the contents of its dust bin into it. The Clean Base is good for 30 bins, meaning you'll typically only have to empty it once or twice per month.
On Thursday, the company also launched the cheaper, simpler Roomba e5. It rocks iRobot's 3-Stage Cleaning System tech, and dual multi-surface rubber brushes, as well as an edge-sweeping brush, which is good for getting rid of dirt that accumulates near edges and corners. The Roomba e5 connects to your home network via Wi-Fi, and can also be given orders via Alexa- or Google Assistant-enabled devices.
The Roomba i7+ with the Clean Base is available in the U.S. and Canada for pre-sale now, starting at $949. Without the Clean Base, the price falls to $699, and the Clean Base can be sold separately for $299.
The Roomba e5 starts at $449 and will be available in the U.S. and Canada on Sept. 12.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
