iRobot - Roomba® 105 Combo Robot

I just picked up a roomba 105 combo for 100 bucks during black friday. It has all the features that the other companies developed when irobot was treading water living on brand name only. I thought I was finally getting a good deal on a domestic company robot vacuum. That didn't last long. I hope the robot does.

I bought Roomba 105 combo vacuum after reading that roombas are the best for pet hair and seeing that it has LiDAR navigation which I thought was great. Well it has been completely nightmare. I’ve called customer service four times already and I’ve had it for a week!!! I had a VEAVON robot before we bought for 100 bucks which they don’t even make anymore and that worked better then this Roomba! I am looking for a recommendation on a robot vaccum that is not insanely expensive. Also it seems this Roomba vaccum is 7000 Pa suction which is much higher compared to so many others like Roborack. Is there really no better vaccum out there for picking up German Shepherd hair? These are the following issues I have been having with Roomba which I would like to minimize or avoid: 1: the brush roll that claims not to tangle with hair is always tangled with hair and I have to manually remove the hair after even one room clean. It even has the dock that sucks the dustpad but clearly it doesn’t touch the hair from the brush roll. 2. The mapping is absolutely terrible, it’s wrong and when it claimed to “discovering “ the room that it missed almost completely, it still did not put it on the map. My old VEAVON literally just added a map as it went alone if it was able to see it, even like the patio that it saw from the screen door. And then simply if it couldn’t reach the room, it would move on but it was still on the map. This Roomba will keep trying to reach a room and would get stuck all the time with unable to reach error. I just closed the doors on my VEAVON for rooms I didn’t want to clean before, much faster than selecting rooms. This Roomba doesn’t seem to like that function, BUT when I select to clean one room because mapping is so wrong it does not clean the room like it should but goes into another area or missed a big chunk of room. 3. I thought Roomba is suppose to avoid cords, it eats the cords all the time. Not a huge issue as my VEAVON had that problem, but would be nice if a robot could not do that so I don’t have to unplug things everywhere. 4. ***HUGE ONE** The vaccum cleaning performance on my thin rug is absolutely horrific, I don’t see how it’s 7000 Pa suction. It leaves chunks of hair all over the rug. It doesn’t even look like it’s been vacuumed all the way. 5. Spot cleaning: why can’t i send the robot to spot clean on vaccum only function?? It says to attach the mop. Stupid, as I mostly need it for vaccum only and I use spot clean a lot. Yes I see you can customize frequently used places but still not same as random spot cleaning. 6. The battery was stuck at 93% charge, once again customer service told me to reboot. I have literally reboot the robot about 8 times since I bought it a week ago, not exaggerating! They said it was a bug. What vaccum does not have all these constant issues requiring rebooting? bought Roomba thinking it will make it easy for me to keep floors clean without doing anything. Since it has the tower to empty dustpan I thought great I only have to tend to it once in a while. I have a baby and I really don’t have time to be cleaning the brush roll, calling customer service, resetting the robot, helping to move it when it’s stuck on a rug or tangled, customizing the map for milllionth time. SOMEONE PLEASE HELP, I really need a robot vaccum that can be more help than headache and be more independent without breaking a bank, I think I am returning the Roomba. Also, I would prefer one with a mop but not absolutely necessary if it can do really good job independently vacuuming.

Thank you for your awesome response! The battery would not go past 93%, it did before but now it’s stuck there no matter how long it was charging. Seems like the reset didn’t fix it. Also I just realized which I don’t know how to add to my post but the battery on the Roomba sucks. It vacuumed the living room only and it needed to be charged. I did have it at max suction to see if it does better on my living room rug. It’s been charging for 2 hours and still only at 30%. I need a vacuum that can clean most of the house in couple of hours. One room only is insane to me

I have a 105 that sucks up an impressive amount of dog hair on vacuum mode. I have not tried the mop function yet.

Roomba 105 said “docking? never heard of her.” If nav + no-go zones matter, go Roborock Q5 for laser brain, pet-hair beast. Shark Matrix is better than old Shark, but still a bit lost sometimes. Just pick the smart one.

5 months ago I got a Roomba 105 for hardwood floors and would absolutely NOT RECCOMEND. I would rather sell both kidneys than buy another. I would rather sell my body for science, before I'm dead, than use this thing. Nothing I try to do with this thing is easy. Simple tasks like connecting to WiFi is an all-day affair. It's not even half-baked, and should have never been brought to market. Last week I got an Eufy Omni S1 Pro, for mostly carpet and a little bit of tile. Compared to the Roomba it's like night and day. Ok, the Roomba 105 is a low-end unit and the Omni S1 Pro is a top of the line unit. Even taking that into account the Eufy is so much better. The software and app are, umm, usable! I haven't ran into a single issue with the Omni S1 Pro. It even properly mops the plastic mat under my desk chair. Looking at what the Omni S1 Pro leaves in the vacuum bag... It does pick up a good amount from my carpet! Not as much as my Bissel upright manual vacuum or my Samsung cordless stick vacuum, but enough where I'm now concerned that I'm going to need to replace the vacuum bag after 8 "vacuum the whole floor" cycles. Ok, well, I'm off to order more bags...

I bought the Roomba 105 combo with auto empty dock for $250 for prime day. I don't use the mopping feature, but I love it so far. So easy to maintain that I do it after every run or at least once a day. Less than 30 seconds to check on it and tap out the filter if needed. With a double coated dog shedding currently the "60 day" bag needs to be swapped tomorrow probably. It took a bit to figure out how to navigate all the different rug heights, but now it goes around just fine. Super pleased as it's my first robot vac and I didn't want to spend a ton and the dog murder it lol. Overall love it. Only downside is my hair getting caught in the wheel, but again super quick to pop out. I didn't want anything sharp that would prevent that from happening with pets around.

I just got a Roomba 105. The app works 1000x better than my old ecovacs. it's a bit louder, but the app is less frustrating that's a win for only $179 I'm happy.

I don’t have a cat anymore, but I have a german shepherd, and my wife has long hair. I bought a Roomba 105 Vacuum (only vacuum, no mopping) a couple of weeks ago and it cleans our house quite well. The nice thing about the vacuum only model is that the dust bin (for dirt, hair and whatnot) is nearly twice the size that it is on the vacuum/mop combo model. I paid $179 at Amazon for this, so it’d be well within y9ur budget. Oh, also it has Lidar mapping so it won’t go down the stairs.

Yes. Roomba 105 navigates smarter but sucks (negatively) at vacuuming and would be a nightmare with hair tangles in the brush. Roomba i5 has more basic navigation, but is a much more "thoughtful" machine in terms of actual cleaning capabilities.

Oh finally we're speaking! - Roomba classic dual rubber brushes - DirtDetect - PrecisionVision RGB camera Seems like a mix of iRobot IPs on a Picea-iRobot jointly designed shell. Looks like there is no side wall sensor (unless it's hidden behind the black number) which would be a downside for me. But overall, much better than the initial series Roomba 105-505. Will there be a Combo version of 705? Curious to see 805/905/1005.

We have the Roomba 105. It's great on hard floors but doesn't do much on our living room area rug. I'm pretty disappointed with that. We have 3 cats, and the fur and cardboard bits from their scratchers are always left behind on the rug after vacuuming.

Yes. The mapping is actually really good!