Customer Ratings & Reviews

Over 20 years have passed since the first Roomba debuted, in an era long before smartphones were in nearly every pocket and where dial-up Internet was still the most popular way to get online. iRobot was selling a glimpse of a future that wasn’t yet certain, taking a chance by starting a new wave of home automation that was further ahead than its time. Many bright and futuristic ideas fizzle out shortly after debut, but two decades on the robot vacuum market is bigger than ever. Iterating on their success in a competitive market, iRobot’s Roomba options compete up and down the pricing gamut. The new Roomba Combo 705 sits at the top of the home robot vacuum stack, offering both iRobot’s most advanced dry floor vacuum yet and integrating a mop wash function to clean multi-surface floors. Offering both dry and wet floor cleaning in the same device made me wonder where the compromise is, but much like my previous Roomba i6, I was impressed by its overall performance and ease of use that makes full cleanings a far less frequent chore. More time to put my feet up and watch NASCAR on the TV! - Unboxing & Setup Setting up the Roomba Combo 705 will take some time. The biggest consideration for this dry-wet vacuum is where to locate the base station, as ideally you’ll want it on a hard floor, in or near a kitchen, bathroom, or laundry room where a sink is available. The Combo 705 uses reservoirs to wet and empty the mop portion of the vacuum, so while you can place it anywhere that it fits, keep in mind you’ll need to manually empty the dirty water and refill with clean. You will also need some clearance around both sides of the base station and a few feet in front for the Roomba to navigate entering and exiting the base station. Setup with the Roomba Home app (available on both Google Play and iOS App Store) is as streamlined as it gets. The app acts as the device’s manual with picture guides and animations showing basic maintenance for the vacuum, and really does a thorough job walking through setup. Sadly, an iRobot account is still required (it’s 2025…single sign-on with an AppleID or Google account should be the standard), but the app seems to stay logged in in perpetuity making this a one-time frustration. One annoyance with the new Roomba Home app is that it cannot control older Roombas, and you’ll need to keep the iRobot Home Classic app installed to control older models. I hope iRobot will merge apps soon, but this smells of planned obsolescence. Funny enough, in my review of the Roomba i6 from 2021, I pined about this exact topic and now we have a “Classic” app that we can only hope will continue to receive security updates. Foreshadowing! Once your Roomba is set up and fully charged, an initial Clean Everywhere will run so that it can begin mapping out your floor. The process can take up to 30 minutes, though mapping the 600 square foot floor area where I have the Combo 705 was done in under 10. - Cleaning Performance As with my previous Roomba, I was expecting good “in-between cleaning” performance on dry surfaces, and that’s exactly what I got - with standard cleaning settings. Now featuring four power levels to balance noise and battery life against cleaning performance, the vacuum and rollers of the Combo 705 do a great job pulling dust and dirt out of medium-pile rugs on the standard setting, and the corner brush sweeping along the wall gets almost everything. Hardwood and laminate vinyl plank floors are no trouble at all for the Combo 705. I did notice that the dust container fills fairly quickly, but the self-emptying mechanism makes this a non-existent pain point compared to my older, beloved Roomba i6. Though I enjoyed messing around with the multitude of vacuum settings, what I was more curious about was the mopping function as two-thirds of the floor area I’m running the Roomba Combo 705 on are hard surfaces. There are tons of settings you can adjust for the mop function, from water temperature (yes, this thing has a heater!) to drying time, and enabling cleaning solution to be dispensed from the base. In an ironic twist, my partner spilled a can of soda in our kitchen while I was looking through the options for the first time, and decided to let the Roomba handle cleanup with cleaning solution and warm water selected. It was a little noisy and squeaky when mopping (but about what I expected there), though once it was finished the spill on our kitchen floor was nonexistent, with our freshly washed floor looking good as ever. The fact neither of us had to mop, scrub, or otherwise bend over to clean up a spill was something we swooned about through half of dinner that night! The most impressive part of the vacuum and mop functions is how well it transitions between the two when moving from carpet to a hard surface and vice-versa. The Combo 705 has a mop “door” of sorts that keeps the wet rollers from touching carpet, and though it takes a second or two to process the surface change, I found only a hint of moisture on the edge of the carpet in my living room immediately following a full vacuum & mop section, and it was dry within half an hour. The Roomba will perform passes similar to a lawnmowing job, working in discrete rows across the floor and navigating around obstacles only as necessary, ensuring it doubles back to get around all sides of an obstruction in a circular fashion. It will take several full passes of the space to reach a point where the Roomba makes an accurate map of the floor and improve its cleaning efficiency. - Navigation & Noise Mapping your space is something the Roomba Combo 705 gets somewhat right. Unfortunately the mapping algorithms don’t seem particularly improved from my i6 (which is about four years old), but they give a good starting point for you to tweak, edit, and finish in the Roomba Home app. What *is* improved is the Roomba’s navigation. While it will still occasionally bonk into a chair or table leg, the Combo 705 is significantly better at avoiding obstacles and covering the entire area to be cleaned without getting lost or stuck. The LIDAR sensor is putting in work here. In my week of testing the Roomba only got stuck once, dipping a wheel into an HVAC vent on a floor register I didn’t know was loose. I also noticed that the Roomba Combo 705 was better at low-light navigation, which let me run daytime cleaning cycles without needing to put any of the house lights on while my older i6 ran into issues in the early evenings. As mentioned earlier, the Roomba has four power level settings for the vacuum and this has a direct impact on how loud the Combo 705 is in operation. At standard cleaning performance it seemed no louder or quieter than my old model, which is to say you’ll know where it is if you’re a room or two away, but even up close the noise level is never obnoxious. On maximum power, though, the whirr of the vacuum motor gets much louder and a little irritating…still better than any canister vacuum I’ve owned, but worse than any stick vacuum as well. The drive wheels also squeal a little bit from time to time, most notably when changing from one surface type to another. Think this might simply be a lubrication issue as it’s reduced a bit in the week I’ve had it. - Emptying & Maintenance If you thought previous Roombas were easy to empty, auto-emptying ones like this are a dream. The vacuum compartment in the base station can hang on to weeks’ worth of dust and dirt, though iRobot’s claim of 75 days is a tall order unless you’re running passes fairly infrequently. The mop compartments are also a bit overrated in terms of time between emptyings…and the dirty water especially is something you’ll want to empty the same day as the mop cycle runs. That stuff starts to reek fast, and even if the base station can contain it I’d rather not open up to two-month-old rancid liquid. Yuck. All the basic maintenance tasks are shown in the Roomba Home app with step-by-step instructions and animations to guide you through each function. While I personally would have preferred a physical manual, the app is well laid out, intuitive, and definitely more eco-friendly than a printed manual. Most consumables can be ordered through iRobot or Best Buy, and the app can both show you the estimated remaining life of the consumables and notify you when it’s time to reorder. - Bottom Line With the competition heating up, the best needed to get better than ever, and iRobot delivered. My first Roomba was transformative in how it let me approach cleaning my newly-acquired house, and now years on it’s been another transformative experience. Though not without its faults, the Roomba Combo 705 is a huge step forward in quality and outright convenience, making cleaning the most trafficked areas of my house ten times easier. Just about worth the price of admission! And that price of admission is the last thing to comment on. At its MSRP of $1,299 I would have some pause, but on sale the Combo 705 matches its best competition on price, and having had plenty of friends and family share their stories of rival offerings, let’s just say the iRobot brand name commands the premium. Recommended!

Enjoying this combo vac & mop! We have a large 2800 square foot house and one standard clean (there are a few to choose from) will drain the battery and it will need to recharge. You can also set the vac to AutoEmpty at different frequencies. Lots of settings on the app! Definitely worth the purchase for us.

Its awesome does a great job, its a smart one alright

This is the 3rd Roomba I've purchased and is far and away the best. Looks like a very high end product and the set up process through the app is very intuitive. Does everything its supposed to with no issues so far...Highly recommend to anyone in the market for a robot vac.

iRobot came to wipe the floor (no pun intended) with the competition! This Roomba 705 Combo Vacuum & Mop truly does it all and even cleans itself (somewhat). What will you do with the time you get back?! Overall, I found this Roomba to be a true marvel of technology and more importantly, great at doing its job of keeping the floors clean and sheen. +++ Pros +++ * Easy to get started. Download the app which guides you thru adding the Roomba, updating the software and creating your floor plan map. * Once the map is created, it’s very easy to split or merge rooms, name rooms, add furniture and set Keep Out zones and No Mop zones. * Keep Out zones and No Map zones are virtual replace the physical gates my older Roomba had you use - no more physical clutter! * The app makes it easy to setup and execute Routines or Spot Cleanings. * It's equally easy to manually empty the dust bin, wash the mop/rinse the dock and/or dry the mop at the docking station. * Thorough options for Routines: set Vac & Mop, Vac Only, Mop Only or Vac then Mop; there’s options for the type of cleaning, suction level, amount of liquid used when mopping, cleaning passes, SmartScrub and lastly you can tap the clock icon to set these preferences to run on a set schedule on certain days/times. * Obstacle avoidance is very good - not perfect - there were times when it ran into a trash can, door and it did not get along very well with the doorstopper hanging off the wall behind my main entry door. * Clever design with the LIDAR sensor placement (to allow for a lower height profile, which improves its ability to navigate under furniture) and the cover that keeps the mop from getting carpets wet. * Dual multi-surface brushes and dual side edge sweeping brushes allow the Roomba to clean more effectively and efficiently. * On the docking station the dust bin, clean water, and dirty water tanks are easily accessible and have their own light indicators for troubleshooting. * Sleek, discreet compartment inside the docking station for an extra dust bag. * Solid stain detection and eradication. With SmartScrub and the deep clean setting most stains can be picked up in a single cleaning. * In the event that the Roomba is low on battery, it will return to the base station, charge itself and pickup where it left off until it finishes the job. * There’s a Robot Health section of the app that tracks and clearly lays out how all of your consumable parts are doing: filter, dirt disposal bag, roller mop, edge sweeping brush, multi-surface brush and dock washes. This area is nicely laid out and easy to navigate to see at a bird’s eye view what supplies you may need to order soon. ---Cons--- * The Roomba misses corners. This could be improved if the side brushes had a way to extend out to really reach corners. You'll likely need to manually sweep corners for best results. * High maintenance. It seems counterproductive to have a robot vacuum to cut down on cleaning time only to replace cleaning tasks with maintenance tasks. These includes cleaning the brush cover (every 6 months); charging contacts (every 2 weeks); dust bin (as often as needed); edge brush (every 2 weeks); multi-surface brush (weekly); filter (weekly); front and rear caster wheels (every 4 weeks); roller mop (as needed) and sensors (monthly). * Consumable part costs will add up quickly. as stated earlier under Robot Health, there’s a lot of consumables that must be ordered to keep the Roomba cleaning at its best: concentrated cleaning solution, filters, dirt disposal bags, roller mops, edge sweeping brushes and multi-surface brushes. *** Pro Tips*** * The docking station supports hot water temperatures to really sanitize the mop. Distilled water is recommended if you decide to go this route. * The dedicated compartment for concentrated cleaning solution is best. Avoid putting any other solutions or cleaners into this area or directly into the clean water tank, as these could cause issues with the Roomba down the line. * I highly recommend putting Listerine in the dirty water bin tank to minimize odors.

Really great. It's basically magic that it knows when to mop and when to vaccum. Don't be concerned that the first run takes forever and it goes back to base a dozen times - it's just learning your house.

It does the job, but the battery dies rapidly. The mopping is not the greatest.

Initially love this Irobot. This is my third one however, the Irobot started moving in circles and not cleaning as it should and I believe the technology portion was out of whack therefore I had to return it. And since they had gone bankrupt a bit like I would never get it repaired.

This product is a great gift, got this for my older mother.

I’m happy with my purchase. The AI cleaning feature works

This is my first Roomba, but my fourth robot vacuum, and unquestionable the absolute best all around. The build quality is solid and certainly feels premium. No flimsy or loose attachments, hinges, or flex points. The materials are well above par and have a nice feel and appearance. This extends to the packaging. My Roomba arrived in possibly the most secure packaging I've seen. It's as if they know how some of the shipping providers are a little less than careful with packages. Setup is rather straightforward, especially if you have previously used this type of vacuum. Everything revolves around the app - which is fantastic by the way. Once you decide on placement, there is some minor assemble but nothing that should challenge most users. I charged my Roomba overnight prior to the initial setup, which is probably a little over kill. Connecting my device to Wi-Fi was quick, and that connections has remained solid, without interruption. As with just about every product on the market there was a firmware update which went quickly as well. The first run, which maps out the cleaning area does take longer than subsequent runs, as the device is learning the layout. This vacuum located almost 100% of my floor, missing only the area behind one of my couches, which is near a wall but does have space for the vacuum to fit. I'll take that degree of accuracy. Cleaning is fantastic. The vacuum finds and collects so much more dust and debris than my previous devices. It seems to grab more from the corners and edges, along with having a stronger suction. I have all laminate hardwood floors for reference. The mopping is a welcome feature. One of my previous robot vacuums also had this feature and it was a bit underwhelming, so I was hopeful but cautious with this Roomba. I can say I was pleasantly surprised at the mopping capabilities. Heated, quick drying, and complete coverage. I would not go so far as to say you'll ever need to clean your floors again, but this easily works for that daily or weekly maintenance. It also does a great job of not running itself over a freshly mopped area. The cleaning and waste collection is top notch. I appreciate the auto-refill of the mop cleaner. The heated self-cleaning and drying of the mop roller is fantastic, and a welcome addition. The app is easily the best I have used. The LiDAR sensor creates a clear view of the cleaning area. The interface is clean and easy to use. You can view the remaining lifespan of replaceable parts, label rooms, set cleaning types per room, start / stop cleaning, perform a spot clean, and even setup automations. Overall, this is a great device. I have absolutely no complaints. About the only "negative", which is subjective, is the size of the dock. I have enough space that this is not an issue, but for some this could be harder to "hide" out of the way. But if you want an absolutely solid robot vacuum / mop combo - this is it.

Broke within 28 days. Worst possible product of you have dogs. There is no way this was picking up the dog hair.

I have the iRobot Roomba vac and mop Combo with the AutoWash dock and I think it is a solid machine overall. The vacuum part works well on my mix of hardwood floors and a few medium pile rugs. It picks up dust cat hair and small crumbs without any trouble. The suction feels strong enough for daily cleaning and it rarely leaves stuff behind. The mopping function is convenient because I don't have to switch robots or attachments. It lays down a decent amount of water and the pad scrubs light sticky spots like dried coffee drops pretty effectively. For heavier spills I still grab a regular mop but for maintenance cleaning it does the job. The mapping is accurate in my 1900 sq ft floor. It learned the layout after three runs and now it goes room by room without bumping into furniture much less than my old Roomba. I like that I can label rooms in the app and tell it to clean just the kitchen after dinner or the living room on weekends. The no-go zones work fine too so it stays away from the dog bowls and the carpet in the bedroom when it's in mopping mode. The AutoWash dock is the feature I use the most. After each mopping run it goes back washes the mop pad with clean water and dries it with hot air. The dirty tank gets pretty gross after a week but it's easy to dump and rinse. I only have to refill the clean water tank every four or five days because the robot uses water sparingly. The dock is big takes up more floor space than a regular charging base but I put it in the laundry room corner and it fits ok. Battery life is good. It cleans my whole place on one charge and still has 20-30% left. When it needs to recharge mid-clean it goes back to the dock tops up and then finishes the job which I appreciate. Noise level is average not too loud in vacuum mode and almost quiet when mopping. A couple small complaints. Sometimes the mop pad gets tangled with long pet hair and I have to pull it off manually. Also the robot occasionally gets stuck under my low couch even though I blocked it with a virtual wall but that's rare. The app is simple but it logs me out every once in a while and I have to sign in again which is annoying but an easy fix with a future update. Overall I am happy with the purchase. It saves me a lot of time during the week and the floors stay noticeably cleaner. If you have mostly hard floors and some rugs and don't want to hand-mop every day this combo is worth considering. I would buy it again.

Trash it doesn’t work. It leaks everywhere and you can’t get mop replacements. Avoid do not buy this is garbage

Worked for 1 week, a replacement part was sent and still not working. On back order for several weeks and replacement still not shipped

The bottom line is that the Roomba Max 705 Combo Robot is the best combo iRobot has produced but it's not perfect. I love the aesthetic with the faux wood and sleek design. This is far from an eye sore in any household. This is good considering that it's bigger than my prior j9+. I don't like that the base opens from the top instead of the front like the j9+. This makes it harder to utilize as a flat surface. I'm also uncomfortable having the handle for the water bins being part of the bin lid. I can see the lid accidentally not fully closing and the weight of the water causing a big mess. It hasn't happened yet however. My favorite part about this robot is that it's actually a mop vs a damp rag like on my prior models and it shows. My kitchen floor came a lot cleaner with the roller mop. They aren't perfect however. There's still going to be those spots that you'll have to scrub harder yourself. I like that the mop extends out so that it can get closer to edges and that it has dual edge-sweeping brushes. This works fairly well but it took a couple runs for it to get close. I really like that the base will heat clean the mop roller as well when it's done. This is a huge improvement over the pads you just throw in the washing machine. I didn't feel any heat coming from the mop roller during cleaning though so I don't know how accurate that advertising is. I think the water container on the robot needs to be bigger. The robot had to refill quite a few times to finish mopping our kitchen. I think the j9+ might of refilled just once. The mopping is fairly quiet but as with prior models the vacuuming and dust bin emptying is very loud. For me it's too loud to do overnight. There's also a low hum when the roller is drying. Floor type detection worked great. We have tile, carpet, and various rugs. The robot always put the cover over the roller so we didn't have any wet carpet. I really like the wheels on this model, they are more aggressive than prior models. Our j9+'s wheels are getting pretty worn after a couple years. The thing I hate most with this new robot is that you have to use the new Roomba Home app. I had to remap the house, which with prior robot models I could just download the same maps. The frustrating thing with this is remaking the room layouts and this app doesn't show you where your floor type boundaries are. The robot obviously knows but this isn't getting shown in the app. The app isn't very intuitive. There's also no progress report back of found obstacles, just a routine history showing where it cleaned. It just seemed like a clunkier app with less functionality so it made no sense when the prior app is so much better. A useless feature on this model is the voice notifications. I'd rather have app notifications on what the robot is doing. It calls out it's actions and even with the audio 100% and standing right next to it the robot moving and vacuuming is too loud to hear what the voice is saying. Overall, outside of my complaints, I would highly recommend this over the other iRobot combos. All the maintenance conveniences built into the dock and a heated roller mop just seal the deal for me. I'm hoping that the app and the robot navigation improve with future software upgrades.

The iRobot Roomba 705 Combo Vacuum & Mop with Auto Wash dock works great. It's easy to set it up and connect. Connecting it to voice command makes it even easier to control. The first time I told it to start vacuuming, it mapped out the rooms in the house and did a very good job of it. I was able to edit the rooms to control which ones are vacuum only and which ones are also mopped. It did a pretty good job of vacuuming the first time out. I had left the carpet unvacuumed for the week while waiting for the Roomba to arrive so I could see how well it would do. The second time it vacuumed the carpet, it did better. It did very well on the laminate and tile floors. It doesn't get the corners very well though. Once it finished with vacuuming it returned to it's dock and emptied itself with no problem. It is loud as it empties. Using the mopping feature on the laminate floor was just as easy with voice command. It did a really good job of cleaning the floor which is my kitchen/dining room. There is a deep clean mode which I did not use as I wanted to see how it did with standard clean. It did a great job with a standard clean. It put out an appropriate amount of water/cleaner and left the floor looking great. It docked itself when finished and emptied itself out, then began cleaning and drying the mop head. The emptying was quite loud, the cleaning was less loud but not so quiet, and the drying which went on for hours was no more noise than a fan on low setting. I did have to do a little more editing on the mapping as the mopping went over the carpet a bit. I believe it's probably because where my carpet and laminate are divided on the floor is not along the wall edges. Perhaps the mapping considers the walls as the divider of rooms and that is not the case in my home. Not a big deal, no harm done and fixed with editing in the app. I love that it comes with cleaning tools that have a their own place on the docking unit, a place to keep an extra bag and replacement brushes. iRobot Roomba 705 is a great help around the home.

The mop doesn't map well and leaves marks on the floor.

This product was returned twice. I would not recommend buying this. Go with Ecovacs X11

Packaging The packaging has improved, not as much waste as before. Really nice to see its improved, and most of it is recyclable. The bin for the trash and water, the vacuum itself paperwork. And power supply. The step by step instructions / quick instructions are not in the most convenient place, i was digging through everything and started putting it together without it. It was inside the box with the roomba itself. I would suggest having it be right at the top of everything when you first open the box. Device The bin for the trash and water has a good weight to it, it is larger than expected, it takes up a bit of space. The instructions are an improvement from previous models but are still not very clear. Theres a black plate inside the housing where the roomba sits that has a green tab, i removed it but wasn't sure if the tab still needs to be there or can be discarded ( it’s not needed). The green tab could make it a bit clearer. After finally getting the bin and robot to turn on and connect to the new home app it started to do a software update. Downside is now I have two different apps for the different roombas. I do wish they could consolidate all under one app. Setting up the initial mapping was quick and easy. Once that was set it gives you a layout of the floor and has you confirm it. After setting it as the map, you can then select the job, either vacuum or mop and vacuum. I went with initially just vacuuming. The job was completed within an hour and a half. Which was a lot quicker than our older model. Doing a combo mop and vacuum I’ve encountered issues with the mop portion. The unit has yet to complete a whole job. It has stopped and completely lost charge. Other times it has been in a loop cycle where it keeps going back to one spot staying theres an issue with the bin, goes back to the home base, empties the trash then goes back to the same hallway and repeated the cycle till i finally interrupt it to cancel the job. I’ve tried canceling and restarting the job, letting it do a full charge cycle. The wash fluid in the home base bin is full. I’ve emptied the water in the device and dumped the water. I’ve looked through some community post and tried their troubleshooting steps, its seems there are a few issues with the mop part of the unit. The Vaccum works great and have had minor issues with it getting stuck but no major issues when just using it as a vacuum but for it being a combo unit and for what it cost I would not want to get it to only use the vacuum portion. The voice assist that speaks and tells you what the mop is doing is a bit hard to hear and understand hopefully. I do wish that the messages that it is staying. Would show up as notifications in the app itself. Summary If you are willing to trouble shoot the mop and risk it not working as well as expected then give it a go. The idea behind the mop is great but needs some work. The vacuum works just as well as their other robots. The voice notifications on the robot needs improvement.