We put the best Roombas of 2025 head to head in a robot vacuum brawl (2025)

How we tested

Only a select few are willing to pay over $1,000 just to take a few chores off of their plate. So naturally, the fanciest Roomba will only be a practical investment for homes with several pets, homes with high-traffic hard floors, people who hate mopping, or folks who want the highest possible level of automation. And even if you do have the budget, anyone considering the Roomba Combo 10 Max should absolutely wait until it goes on sale for $999.

The Combo 10 Max is also a wise next step for households that have been using an outdated Roomba for too long and want to upgrade. Rather than enduring the struggle period that is re-mapping, the iRobot ecosystem allows home maps to be transferred between Roombas via the iRobot app.

Only one main feature separates Combo 10 Max from all of the Roombas before it, but it's a huge one that makes me definitively recommend the Combo 10 Max over the Combo j9+: a self-washing and self-drying mopping pad.

Before the Combo 10 Max dropped in the summer of 2024, iRobot was in limbo in terms of innovation — it was the only big robot vacuum brand that still made its users manually wash their robot vacuum's mopping pad. In my experience, having to face the soggy mopping pad every few days was enough to make me avoid mopping with any older Roomba altogether, so the Combo 10 Max's AutoWash dock is an upgrade to take seriously. The water tanks and dust bag can also be accessed through a door on the front of the dock rather than the top, allowing the Combo 10 Max to hold decor full time.

The Roomba Combo 10 Max is also one of the most powerful cleaners of all the Roombas, dishing out what iRobot says is 100 percent more suction power than the Essential series and lower-tier j series Roombas through a four-stage cleaning system (versus the typical three-stage system). While it's pretty reliable on various crumbs and cat hair on my rugs, I've personally been disappointed with the hit-or-miss results in the corners of my bathroom and along the edges under my kitchen counter.

I've noticed the boosted cleaning power much more on the mopping front due to iRobot's SmartScrub feature, which spends extra time, water, and elbow grease on any extra dirty areas that you designate in the app. I can feel the tension in my shoulders release when I see the Combo 10 Max go back and forth over spots I know would still be sticky after one pass.

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People in small apartments often turn down automatic emptying because the dock takes up too much room. If that's your current situation, you'll appreciate the brand-new dust-compacting Roomba.It can be stored under existing furniture like a bed or entertainment system (as long as it's against a wall).

Though the Roomba 205 can technically recognize rugs well enough to avoid mopping them, I've personally watched it flop when trying to hoist itself over rugs in my apartment. Given the number of times it has given up, I'd recommend the Roomba 205 for spaces without a complex rug arrangement —perhaps rooms that are either fully carpeted or rooms that have rugs that can be picked up easily.

iRobot picked up on the fact that many small spaces just don't have an extra cubic foot or two to house a self-emptying robot vacuum. Still, emptying a tiny dust bin multiple times per week dramatically diminishes the overall hands-off-ness of the robot vacuum experience.

So, iRobot found a space-saving solution: instead of making the dock more compact, why not compact the dust itself? The smushing technology keeps the collected debris compressed enough to fit inside the 205 for up to two months. When it's finally time to empty, you just un-click the dust bin and dump it into the trash.

The cleaning capabilities of the Roomba 205 fall in the middle of the Roomba lineup —sufficient for the average crumb and debris tracked in from shoes, small dried and wet spills, and other daily stuff. It could probably be on shedding duty for one pet if you're not that much of a stickler about it past the visible furballs. Compared to the most basic Roombas, the 205 sees improvements like stronger suction power and the option for more thorough mopping with SmartScrub —promising considering the 600 Series and Essential Series Roombas were borderline helpless in my testing. Unfortunately, I found myself not opting to mop with the 205 Combo, because it's annoying to click the tank on and off when the vacuum lives under a TV stand.

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If you live in a small home or apartment, you may decide to forego a self-emptying dock to conserve space. But opting for a standalone Roomba doesn't mean you have to settle for a basic one that gets stuck all the time. The Roomba j7 is the cheapest standalone Roomba with small obstacle avoidance —a clutch choice if your floors are often littered with rogue phone chargers or pieces of laundry.

The lack of "Combo" in the title means this j7 doesn't mop, so ideally, you won't have a ton of hard floors that need to be mopped, or you'll be OK with mopping manually.

There are cheaper, more bare-bones Roombas than the j7, and there are more expensive, more self-sufficient Roombas than the j7. But iRobot keeps the plain ol' j7 relevant by putting it on sale for $299 pretty often. At its full price of $599.99, the j7 is way too expensive compared to other non-Roombas on the market that do way more for the same price. But when it's 50% off, it's an absolute steal.

In my experience, the j Series Roombas have a near-perfect track record when identifying various chargers, extension cords, and random socks laying around, when other brands missed a few. The j7's suction power and corner cleaning wasn't as meticulous as the obstacle avoidance when sweeping my apartment, but it was reliable enough for daily upkeep of my high-traffic areas —especially for $299.

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The cheapest mopping Roomba will satisfy anyone who can settle for not-the-most-thorough-but-decent cleaning if it means they don't have to spend more than $500. This is especially true in homes where only one or two rooms, like the bathroom or kitchen, require mopping. Potential i5 owners will also have to be OK with physically switching out the water tank for the dry dust bin, depending on the flooring. The i5 is a "Swap and Mop" Roomba rather than the kind with a built-in mopping pad.

iRobot's summer 2023 product drop extended mopping capabilities to one of the more affordable existing Roombas. At $549.99 for the self-emptying version or $349.99 for the standalone vac, the i5 more than halves the $1,399.99 price tag of the Combo j9+. You probably wouldn't clock that price difference upon first glance, though, because the i5+ has shed the tall, skinny auto-empty dock it had for years for the stylish compact one of the j7+.

The i5 series is one of iRobot's Swap and Mop models that can't vacuum and mop on the same cleaning run, meaning you have to be around to physically swap the dust bin for the water tank. The convenient part is that, despite its inability to detect small obstacles like phone chargers, the i5 remembers specific rooms as well as the carpeted spots you want it to avoid while mopping. (A 2022 firmware update unlocked Imprint smart mapping capabilities for all Roomba i series vacuums, aside from the i1 and i2).

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Read my full review of the iRobot Roomba Combo j7+.

After settling on getting a Roomba that mops, the next question is whether you'd like to be able to freely switch between vacuuming and mopping mode even if you're not home. If your home has hard floors outfitted with several rugs that would need to be carefully avoided while mopping, iRobot's retractable mop is worthwhile.

The Combo j7+ is the cheapest Roomba that has that retractable mop on board. These Roombas know to not mop when carpet or rugs are detected and can lift the mop accordingly, offering handy flexibility in homes with many different floor types. Even on sale, $799 is a pretty hefty investment —but unless you have multiple pets that shed onto thick carpet and hard floors with heavy foot traffic, the Combo j7+ provides a nearly-identical experience to the Combo j9+ for much less money.

The Combo j7+ was the very first true vacuum and mop hybrid from iRobot. Though it's since been upstaged by the 2023 Combo j9+ and 2024 Combo 10 Max, the 2022 Combo j7+ will always be pivotal for iRobot's legacy —and because it's not the newest 2-in-1 anymore, it's also usually on sale.

Compared to the fancier two Combo models, the j7+ has less powerful suction power, less forceful scrubbing, and doesn't automatically refill the water tank aboard the vacuum through a bigger tank in the dock. Compared to the j6+, the j7+ has more meticulous obstacle detection and can pinpoint hurdles like socks, towels, and pet bowls on top of cords and pet waste. Its ability to dodge those pesky items that might be on the floor at any given moment, plus its ability to vacuum and mop in the same cleaning session, make the Combo j7+ a much more hands-off experience than the cheaper Combo models.

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iRobot's base-tier mopping Roomba is obviously the most budget-friendly choice, and would only really be satisfactory in single-person homes with simple layouts, no pets, and a low likelihood of random objects on the floor.

Even then, anyone prioritizing a low price could easily find a better cheap robot vacuum in the $200 to $400 range. For instance, the Roborock Q5 Pro+ or Dreame D10 also mop and self-empty, but more importantly, bring smart room mapping into the picture.

I'm actually not really recommending the Roomba Combo 2 to anyone —I'm merely explaining its part in the Roomba lineup, then giving the heads up that this isn't the cheap robot vacuum you want to buy.

The biggest red flag here is the lack of smart mapping. This was a surprising call for iRobot to make in the good year of 2024, especially when several other similarly-priced robot vacuums from other brands do have smart mapping. A bot that knows the layout of your home is more crucial than mopping or even automatic emptying in my opinion —it's the biggest factor playing a role in whether your robot vacuum even makes it to the right rooms in the first place. I tested the Combo 2 early in 2025 after months and months of strictly testing vacs with smart mapping, and the experience was pretty infuriating. Not being able to grab my phone to send the vacuum to clean a specific room or zone just feels impractical at this point. I quickly found myself not wanting to use it because of how likely it was to get lost or stuck.

At any rate, if you can find the Combo 2 on sale for less than $300, it'll take care of hard floors sufficiently. It mops and self-empties — features we hadn't previously seen on the lowest-tier Roombas — and has 18 times the suction power of the 600 Series Roombas.

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The Roomba j9+ is the way to go if you want a powerful robot vacuum for pet hair on carpet but don't have much need for mopping past a single tiled bathroom. That's a pretty specific use case, and you also have to consider that similarly-priced models from other brands wash and dry their own mopping pads,which the Combo j9+ does not. I really only recommend buying the j9+ if it's on sale.

But if you're really set on a Roomba, opting for the Combo j9+ over the Combo 10 Max (which does autonomously maintain its mop) will save you several hundred dollars.

I'm not so much picking the Roomba Combo j9+ as I am including it to provide context for you to choose a different Roomba. The Combo j9+ actually isn't the best Roomba at anything, but on sale, its ability to bring home iRobot's best suction power and market-leading small obstacle avoidance could still make it an OK value. I personally enjoyed testing it, except that manually removing and washing the mopping pad made me want to skip mopping altogether. That shouldn't be happening with a vacuum that costs over $400. (It does refill its own water tank, though.)

That obstacle avoidance technology is also an inarguable reason to choose the j9+ over the previous most powerful Roomba, the 2019 Roomba s9+. Despite the s9+ being slightly more affordable, the small price difference isn't worth having to tidy up cords, socks, or pet toys off of the floor before starting a cleaning. I would know — I lived with both the s9+ when it was the fanciest Roomba and the mopping version of the j9+ when it was the fanciest Roomba. The Roomba s9+ is so outdated that it's unlikely to be found in stock, anyway.

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