Customer Ratings & Reviews

The Roomba Plus 505 Combo Robot Vacuum and Mop with AutoWash Dock is a new robot vacuum and mop from iRobot. The offering is one in their new line of vacuum/mop combination robots. If you are familiar with their products, then the 505 will be in line with those. Components The 505 combo comes with the robot vacuum and the dock. The dock has two water resoviors. One for the clean water and one for the dirty water. Both are easy to access and sit on top of the dock. The robot is a little larger than some of their vacuum only robots. Setup Setup is simple and as straightforward as you would expect. Charging takes a little time. The clean water reservoir is easy to remove/insert in the dock. Use There is an app that needs to be used with the 505. The app helped me to register the 505 and get the firmware updated. In the app, I initiated a mapping of my home. The mapping didn’t take too long. Once that was done, I was able to schedule the first cleaning operation. The app also allowed me to designate space that was not automatically designated by the mapping. I was able to use that feature of the app to mark my hallways and my deigning room and kitchen. The two are essentially one large room, but due to the feature of the app to manually set boundaries for rooms, I was able to separate those to. The downside I experienced when doing that is that it takes a few minutes to do it. The app was really slow at setting the new boundaries. A plus to the app is that when I want the 505 to clean everything, I can set settings for each individual room if I want to. For instance I was able to set vacuum and mop for my hallway and set vacuum only for my carpeted living room. Putting the mop pads on the 505 is easy to do. The pads are located underneath the rear of the robot. The robot can extend one pad out a little to edge while mopping. This designed worked ok for the most part. Whether vacuuming or mopping, the robot doesn’t get up as close to edges of baseboards and other things as I would like for it to have. It is better than my 600 series iRobot vacuum though. The 505 did brush up against a few things, but it didn’t do that often. With the camera helping it, it doesn’t bump into things like my earlier model which bumped into everything. As expected, the 505 fills with clean water when it needs to and empties dirty water when it needs to during a cleaning operation. It will also return to the base when it needs to charge or clean the robots dust bin. As one would expect, I only have to set settings for an operation and schedule it. I don’t have to do anything else except make sure the clean water reservoir is filled and the dirty water reservoir is emptied. The 505’s motors are quieter than my previous model. I like that as my previous model was somewhat loud. Final Thoughts The 505 is a good offering from iRobot. They have improved over the previous models. The vacuum and mop combination is helpful to me. I can now stop using the slow cumbersome robot mop I was using. There are only two things I would like to see improved. One, I would like to see the app not be so slow when marking rooms. Two, I would like it to do just a little better at edging when mopping and vacuuming. Three, the latches for the lids on the water reservoirs could have been made a little better. Time will tell if the cheap lid latch design will be a problem. It’s not as if I will be opening the lids each day, but still, iRobot could do a little better with that. None of these three things are a show stopper type of problem, but it’s something to be aware of. If you are wanting to get a robot vacuum/mop combination system. iRobot’s Roomba Plus 505 combo robot vacuum and mop with auto wash dock is and option. iRobot is a brand that most know and they have been doing this for a long time. Quality is good, vacuum and mop capability is good, and the app is good. Not perfect, but two of the three things mentioned above can be addressed by firmware updates and app updates.

We have been using the Roomba Plus 505 exclusively for our vac and mop and duties and a few small annoyances aside, it is a really solid piece of equipment. Build quality is awesome. The base and all components are plastic but are all thick and feel sturdy, nothing cheap or flimsy to anything. It also has a storage compartment that is covered with a nice piece of fabric, this same feature is mirrored on the lid cover of the robot itself, a nice tie-in. The app and getting up and running were a little tedious. Registering went smoothly until it came time to connect to the Roomba. The app would freeze when connecting not informing me that things were connected. So I would go back and try again and the app would freeze again. I did this 3 times before saying "well, I'll just come back to it, let me skip ahead and just see what is next" and when I did this I was already connected to it. Aside from that, everything setup wise went well and we were up and running in a few minutes. Operation-wise, the unit a very powerful. I can hear the difference in suction and scrubbing power compared to our other robotic vacuums. Once you have your floorplan mapped you can select whether you want to vac/mop or do either of those things solo, when to do it, what intensity the cleaning should be performed at, so on and so forth. Really you can completely customize every little detail. There is also a nice breakdown of the replacement intervals for all main components; mop pads, sweeping brush, filter, etc - everything has a "hours left" or similar breakdown in the app. This is very nice to know to keep things operating at tip-top levels. The only other annoyance I had was setting a custom mop space within a room. To avoid a rug in the space I had mapped out a single area a number of times, each time adjusting the area a little further due to the fact the mopping would not happen in the exact place I needed it do, a place well within the area I painted on my floorplan. No matter how much I adjusted it the 505 would not get any closer to the rub, leaving a good ~12" buffer area not mopped leading up to said rug. Other than that, every other bit of performance was as expected and thorough.

The Roomba Plus 505 delivers an impressive cleaning performance, truly surpassing any other robot vacuum I've owned. It effectively tackles dirt and debris, leaving my home noticeably cleaner. However, this excellent cleaning is significantly overshadowed by one major flaw: its severely limited battery life, which makes it difficult to recommend without reservations. Key Features: One of the strengths of the Roomba Plus lies in its versatile app-controlled cleaning options - Vacuum Only, Mop Only, Vacuum and Mop, & Vacuum then Mop - Light, Normal, & Deep Clean - & My personal favorite, Smart Clean, which intelligently adjusts cleaning settings for different rooms based on factors like messiness and foot traffic. Setup and Mapping: While the cleaning quality is top-notch, the initial setup and mapping process presented some frustrations. After the Roomba mapped my home, I found myself manually editing room names and adding furniture such as beds, tables, chairs, couch ect... This was a surprisingly tedious task, especially when compared to previous robot vacuums I have had that used AI to automatically detect and name rooms, and even identify furniture and appliances. I also had to manually establish no-go zones, for instance, around my entertainment center. Before I did this the Roomba kept rolling onto the bottom entertainment center shelf and the sweeper brush repeatedly got caught, even falling off a couple of times. A particular issue arose when I initially set my main living area to Smart Clean mode. I had assumed the robot would distinguish between carpet and hard flooring, but it unfortunately started mopping my living room area rug. This required a further manual edit to the map, adding no-mop zones over all carpeted areas to prevent future incidents. The Battery: As for battery life, I scheduled the Roomba to vacuum only my kids' two bedrooms. Despite the floors being entirely free of obstacles, the robot completed just one bedroom, and its battery had already plummeted from 100% to 30%. It then had to return to the base to recharge before it could even begin cleaning the second bedroom. I'm hopeful that a future software update might resolve these battery draining issues, but as of right now, the Roomba Plus 505 requires around 2-3 recharges just to clean my entire apartment. Luckily, I've only noticed this severe draining during vacuuming; the battery life appears to be fine when in mopping mode. This constant need for recharging means that if you're home during cleaning cycles, you'll be waiting around for hours as the Roomba cleans, recharges, continues cleaning, and recharges again. If, however, you typically schedule your cleanings when you're not home, this might be less of an issue, as you won't experience the interruptions. Overall: All in all, while the battery life is genuinely frustrating, the cleaning performance is exceptional. It really scrubs the floors effectively when it mops and demonstrates strong suction power when vacuuming. Unfortunately I find it difficult to recommend this robot vacuum based on my experience.

Tl;dr: Roomba’s latest vacuum is a nod to those households which mix hard floors and rugs. It has two scrubbing pads which wash down hard surfaces using a refillable water reservoir. It’s less efficient than cleaning with traditional tools, but can do its things when you’re not around. One of the standout features was the speed at which it mapped the entire cleaning area. It swiftly created a comprehensive map, which is crucial for efficient navigation. Its object avoidance capabilities were impressive. The robot navigated around obstacles, seamlessly integrating furniture into its mapped environment. The map reflected separate, distinct rooms out of large areas to make it easier to manage the cleaning schedule. Additional refinement can be added by adding lines to the map. In terms of performance, the vacuum did a good job picking up dirt, as well as the cat hair which had been floating in a number of places. There were no tangles or wet hair gumming up the cleaning pads. Overall, the Rooba was effective at reducing dirt and making the areas feel more comfortable. Robots do not move as fast as humans. Cleaning the living room alone took the robot about an hour. With a broom and Swiffer, this takes me about 15 minutes. However, the robot can do it’s cleaning while I’m at work and the cat is napping. All said, it ultimately saves me time as long as I set it to clean different rooms on different days. The Roomba won’t fit under my chairs, so they have to be moved on the days it’s cleaning the dining room. A point to consider is the requirement for proprietary cleaner. While this is a minor inconvenience, it does leave the room a little less clean than when I use the Swiffer. It’s likely that a no-rise formula would work in place of plain water, but Roomba doesn’t warranty that option. As much as they’re charging for the robot, they don’t need to be greedy and make us shell out for supplies as well. That’s the main reason to take off a star.

I’ve been a big fan of Roomba for years and have steadily upgraded as the technology got better. When I had the opportunity to grab this new model I absolutely jumped at it! There are many things this one does well compared to my last one. The first thing being that it’s a pretty excellent mop! When I saw the waste water after the first time it cleaned I was impressed and a little embarrassed. I’m kind of astonished at how great a job it does given it’s just two small mop pads, but it’s definitely the star of the show. The area where I still struggle with usefulness is the ability to effectively pick up pet hair. It certainly tries its might, but I end up with various patches of pet hair ‘tumbleweed’ around the cleaning area. This after I’d already used my more powerful vacuum to pick up the majority of it. It’s an easy fix to go around quickly and suck up the patches with another vacuum, but I’d really like to get to a point where Roomba can handle the complete job. All things considered, it’s super easy to set up - has very, very detailed voice prompts when it’s doing something (or runs into an issue) and considering it’s still much better than the last one i had, I’d definitely recommend it.

I wanted to get a robo vacuum & mop for quite sometime and had a few choices in mind, but eventually picked on the Roomba 505 after visiting the Best Buy store and talking to the technical support there. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I nevertheless, decided to give it a go. Honestly, I have been happy with the overall performance of the 505, it does a pretty good job at vacuuming and mopping the hardwood floors and the vacuum on carpets is quite decent. It literally scans through the entire room and picks up anything and everything that it finds in its way. So far, so good. Would recommend this to anyone who has a combination of hardwood and carpets in their home. I do not have pets and therefore, I will not be able to talk about how effective it is on pet hairs, but my gut feel tells me that it would do a good job. Go for it in case you need something that is powerful and easy on your pocket.

I had a few weeks to not only test this vacuum but I use it as my primary cleaning tool in my home. It has a compact size footprint that does a good job of blending into the background so that it does not standout or look tacky. SETUP The connection setup was pretty easy, the app connects to your wifi and then guides you step by step. The vacuum just needs to have the stickers and safety cushions removed, attach a brush and fill the water tanks. I do wish it came with some cleaning solution but it did not. Overall the setup process took about 15 minutes and it was painless. CLEANING I have two reactions to the vacuum aspect and the mop feature. The MOP feature does a really good job cleaning the floors, the circular motion of the dual cleaning pads makes for a visibly cleaning process...you can see the brushes rotating, plenty of water to get any hard stain out and the vacuum feature sucking up the excess. It's really satisfying to watch clean because it is the one machine I have tried that actually looks like it's mopping not just dragging a wet rag behind it. VACUUM- this feature was good but not as great as the mopping feature, it did a great job with suction and picking up dirt but it left a little to be desired when it came to edge cleaning. There was small debris left behind near the edge of the walls and furniture. I went behind with my stick vacuum to just clean the outline of the room. APP The app is pretty much standard when it comes to scheduling and mapping the floor layout. Where it stands out is the versatility when customizing the type of cleaning per room, suction, mop or vacuum or both. It lets you do a light vacuum in a gently trafficed area and lets you go FULL cleaning cycle in a room with heavy use. BONUS FEATURE The self heating drying pads is a big plus, I used to wash the pads and dry them because if you did not you would get a funky smell. You still have to wash and dry them but you can go much longer period of time and let the cleaning station and vacuum do it's thing with minimal attention. GREAT PRODUCT! I have lightly clean vacuum 2x a week and mop once a week. The floors look good and the motor isn't too loud, enough so that my dog doesn't run for the hills when it's cleaning.

Going to be fully transparent here. I've purchased and used a ton of robot vacuum's over the years. This isn't my first rodeo and it for sure won't be my last. I was honestly quite excited to see a LiDAR based navigation system on a Roomba product. Previous Roomba's deployed a mixture of optical floor and or cameras to predict and determine where to go. This specific 505 uses a LiDAR + camera. Opposed to optical + camera. My previous Roomba's include a 960 (camera + optical), i3 (Optical), and the more recent j9 (camera + optical). I've also used a few competitor LiDAR bots, one in which I still keep around, but more on that later. UNBOXING AND SETUP: Unboxing was pretty straight forward. Base is a lot bigger than my previous i3 and j9 robots due to the large water reservoirs. Pretty easy to setup and get running. Requires APP setup and firmware update and then charging the unit. Battery had around 60% charge from factory. The 505 Requires a newer Roomba home app relative to legacy models. BUILD QUALITY: It's okay. Doesn't stand out, but it also isn't exactly terrible. Just decent. The two large tanks seem pretty "cheap" in regards to having a plastic latch that just has to be forced down.. I think they could have really done a better job here. With that said, I've noticed a significant downgrade from the 960/980 and "I" series generations.. IE: iRobot started removing things like cliff sensors (7/9 series) and started making the dust bins cheaper.. The dustbin in this specific robot is smaller than both my Legacy i3 and j9. So it's just average for a better lack of terms, even compared to entry robots 1/3rd the cost. PROS: - Large mops. Does a very good job and getting deep stains out in small areas like kitchens. - Navigation is significantly better than the j9 and previous Roomba's before it. - Crisscross LiDAR patterning. Goes over areas twice in default mode when vacuuming. - Has very modern features like mop drying CONS: - Mopping tends to run out of water in larger areas. This is due to having no internal tank to keep it topped off or produce continuous flow. Seems counterproductive for something that's suppose to have emphasis on mopping. This indirectly causes obvious water streaks at the beginning of run and seems very dry after it's been running for a while. -Vacuuming and or deep cleaning carpeted areas is honestly terrible. The 960 from 2016, The i3 from 2020 and the J9 from late 2023 all do a better job. In fact, I think the i3 has the best overall performance on a specific black rug that I have in my living room. The 505 is also worse than a competitor single roller LiDAR robot from 2019, so I assume it's just a combination of removing the extra roller and less overall suction power vs my legacy robots. -Battery drains fast in conjunction with mopping and vacuuming large rooms. A whole house run at ~1800 SQ FT requires multiple runs. Relatively, the original battery in my competitor robot model from 2019 can still finish the entire home when set to normal power. -Legacy parts like side brush are completely new.. That means if you have older Roomba accessories in supply, it's not going to work with this newer model. Brushes, roller, and filter are a completely new design. -Will mop dry in the middle of a room cleaning run. Takes around an hour to get back and running. OVERALL: I do like the general design and move to LiDAR but I think iRobot has to go back to the drawing board. The Navigation improvement is well welcomed coming from a slower VSLAM optical and camera system, but at the same time, the job this product is suppose to do has been downgrade from my perspective and experience with other robot vacuums, even those 5 years older. The best analogy I can give is comparing it to the Roomba i3. It had a stronger auto empty bin, and better overall performance than my other Roomba's in my specific environment, but it was slow and dumb in regards to navigation. It's like they traded off the best parts of what "made a Roomba" only to be an average LiDAR robot in a sea of competitor options. I'm actually very disappointed with this, especially on a scale of relative value. The competitor LiDAR robot that I keep around is still VERY good despite being a single roller model from 5+ years ago. It can deep clean my black rug and is comparable to the legacy i3 that I unironically praise for being a good deep cleaner. Yes, I have to manually dump the bin on my other LiDAR bot, but it does per room cleaning quick and fast.. With the Roomba 505, I find it takes a long time to clean and more or less just leave streaks when it should have an optimal emphasis on mopping. If you've made this far, I cannot recommend the 505. It has well improved navigation coming from last gen flagship Roomba's, but it's just an average robot that doesn't excel in any specific area.

Best vacuum robot we have owned. It cleans the house pretty well. It ain’t perfect but it helps keep the house clean while working and taking care of kids, this has been a great little helper. It is a bit loud but the trade off from what I see is nicely clean carpet. I set it to clean while house is empty and I come home to a clean house that way I don’t hear the noise

The app was easy and intuitive to use. Had zero issues mapping hardwood floors. Make sure to use the Roomba Home App. It was a little confusing over which app to use as there is an old app. The vacuum/mopping function works as advertised however I would strongly suggest sweeping a mopping before hand and use the roomba for daily maintenance. Obsticle avoidance is great, The mopping function works as advertised. The robot will need daily maintenance especially if there are long hairs.

We've been long-time Roomba owners, going through multiple generations of their vacuum and mopping robots. And while they all worked well, trying to vacuum and wash floors with two robots was challenging - especially with a large home with tile, wood and carpet. The Roomba 505 is the best Roomba we've ever had. It very quickly mapped out the large first floor of our home - and was fairly easy to edit the map to section it into rooms and then set up a schedule to vacuum all of the rooms and indicate in which rooms we also wanted it to mop - blocking places where we didn't want the robot to go. With the large fresh and waste water bins and the ability to dock as needed to recharge and refill, the robot is able to simultaneously vacuum and mop our entire first floor, without intervention. We've been to put the dock into our laundry room, so the robot is out of the way - and it's able to find the docking station everytime. With the automatic washing and drying of the pads, the only interaction we have with the robot is to empty the waste tank and refill the fresh water tank before a new run - which we do twice a week. And the spinning mops do a much better job than our previous Braava mopping robot - which had a small water bin, that required refilling during the day - and didn't clean as well as our new Roomba 505. Another huge plus is the new LIDAR mapping coupled with the headlight on the robot. Because our house is so large, it can take 10 to 12 hours for a cleaning run to complete, so we had to turn lights on in the house before in order to use our previous Roomba and Braava robots, which didn't work in dark rooms. The Roomba 505 has a headlight that turns on in dark spaces, allowing it to run without requiring any additional light. And the LIDAR does a much better job of navigating around rooms, furniture and other objects. Previous robots would periodically get lost in our house - and not find their way back to their docking stations. This hasn't been a problem with our new Roomba - possibly because of the LIDAR and headlight. We strongly recommend the Roomba 505 as the best Roomba we've ever purchased. Now - if they could only figure out how to get the robot to climb stairs and do our upper floor too...

The Roomba 505 Plus is a powerful robot vacuum and mop that cleans floors thoroughly with strong suction and smart navigation. Its self-emptying and self-cleaning dock makes it super convenient, saving time and effort for busy homes.

The Roomba Combo 505 Plus with AutoWash Dock has been a big help around the house. It vacuums and mops well—my tile floors look spotless, and it handles pet hair with no problem. The AutoWash Dock is super convenient since it cleans the mop pad and empties the dustbin automatically. The only drawback is that it’s a little slow when mopping, so cleaning can take a while. Still, it’s easy to use, low-maintenance, and leaves the house feeling cleaner every day. Definitely recommend if you want a hands-off solution.

Started with the j9 model was so so webt to the 10 model better but not by much now been using the Combo 505 Plus for 3 weeks daily and it is awesome even in our kitchen our most dirty greasy room it does a great job. We actually stop our old fashion vacuuning and mopping and just have our Roomba do the dirty work. Great product

I have porcelain floors and was initially worried they wouldn’t look shiny after cleaning, since I read online that porcelain doesn’t shine easily. Thankfully, I decided to buy the Roomba anyway—and I couldn’t be happier! My floors look spotless and beautifully shiny. Every time I come home from work, I’m greeted by a floor that looks absolutely spectacular.

Roomba was easy to setup and maintain. We are also very impressed with cleaning as it mop the foors

cleans well. I feel satisfice with the purchase...

This product is amazing! I used to have a previous model and I liked it — I felt it did a good job. After about two years, I decided to buy this one, and it has been fantastic. Excellent product, it saves me a lot of time and does a great job.

Great vacuum The brushes works very well, specially when reach the corners

This is one of the best combo robots! It was easy to set up on the app, and it's been a big help in keeping the house tidy. We have a German Shepherd and 2 cats, and there is no struggle when it comes to picking up their hair or keeping the dirt to a minimum.