Robot vacuums · iRobot
Owners keep the S9+ for the strong, thorough clean it delivers when it runs, and the trade-off they keep making is living with its navigation and firmware quirks.
Owners are divided on how the S9+ finds its way around. Those on the positive side keep it in service, often as a dedicated single-room machine, because it does the job well in a contained space; those on the negative side say newer lidar and camera robots map faster, quieter and more reliably.
Reliability is a clear complaint. Owners describe internal communication errors, docking failures, the robot ignoring its own no-clean zones and getting stuck, and recurring problems that arrive with firmware updates.
Pick up to three. You get a page with just those, side by side, on the subjects owners raised.
Once the novelty passes, the thing owners still notice is the suction. Several describe it as loud on the highest setting, and some who later bought a quieter robot say they first assumed the new one was faulty because it made so little noise by comparison. Opinion on whether that noise buys better cleaning is divided, with roughly as many owners happy with the pickup as not.
The adjustment most owners describe is around navigation. Some have moved the S9+ to a single room, a bedroom for instance, and let a different robot handle the main living space. Others who compared it directly with newer machines say the S9+ takes longer to cover the same floor and maps less well, and that is the point at which they stopped relying on it as the main vacuum.
The failure pattern owners describe is software as much as hardware: internal communication errors, trouble returning to the dock, and behaviour that changes for the worse after a firmware update. Hair wrapping in the rollers and frustration with the app are both clear complaints too. When it works, owners say it works well; the complaint is how often it does not. The usual response is to relegate it to a smaller area or replace it outright.
The long-term record here is thin. Only a small number of owners gave an account of reliability at all, and while nearly all of those were negative, that is not enough to say how a typical S9+ fares after a year or more. Treat the reliability verdict as a warning from a few owners, not a survey.
Nothing with a clear majority yet. Owners who raised these subjects were split, or too few to judge.
Nothing has a clear majority against it yet. Counted from the owners who raised each subject, not from everyone. A subject is judged once at least 4 owners raise it.
The same owner, asked again at each point. Fills in as owners answer.
More in robot vacuums: Neato D7, Neato D8, Ecovacs X1.
Public discussions we read and summarised in our own words. Nothing here was submitted to Still Kicks.
Counted from public accounts by people who said they own it, and summarised by Still Kicks in its own words. Not a manufacturer claim, a lab test or an estimate.
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