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.

I have a very sheddy lab mix, and my own back problems. I bought a very basic 105 from HSN and I LOVE this thing! Wish I'd gotten one years ago.

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.

Roomba 105 combo (auto empty) - I don't use the mop as it can't clean anywhere near as well as a good manual scrubbing with an old school foam mop, hot Hot HOT water and detergent. Yes, I know this subreddit is very anti-Roomba but for a budget robot vacuum it was my choice. My days of buying very expensive uprights from Shark, Dyson, Kirby etc. are over. The simple Roomba scheduled daily and a once weekly with the Shark does a great job at keeping our rugs clean. I just wanted a simple robovac that can map our house, stay on a schedule and stay out of certain rooms and hoover the carpets in our house and empty itself so I only need toss the bag once a month or every other month and do it for under $250 The Roomba does that. I don't have children at home, I don't have non house trained dogs and we tidy up after ourselves so we have no need for obstacle avoidance to avoid dog poop, children's socks or toys or robotic arms to pick up crumpled balls of paper like it seems so many other people have a need for. Nor do we have a need for our robovac to send a photo of what's in its way because there isn't anything in its way as I said, we tidy up after ourselves. I also don't need to hoover anything but the living room on a daily basis as the bedrooms only get used at night to go to bed so they only need a sweep once a week or every 2 weeks, so it never runs out of power with how we need it to clean the house. It would be a massive waste to send out the robovac to hoover the living room, 3 bedrooms and a den on a daily basis when 90% of our waking hours is spent in the living room only. If I were to do that, then our robovac becomes more of a toy than a tool to help clean our home. Our old 650 Roomba would get stuck under our sleep number bed as it sits so low so now we shut the door or block the room as it's a small room where a king bed takes up nearly the width of the room so we manually hoover that room for the small walkway on each side of the bed and the area at the foot of the bed as we did always before robo vacs. Edit: I bought it for $249 on prime deal and laughed with my partner seeing a regular price of over $400 and said, it'll never go up that high, it's just there to make people thinking their getting a good deal. I checked this morning and sure enough the same vacuum is now at over $450, so I don't feel that $239 was a bad deal at all for a nice, solid robo vac with LiDAR navigation and self emptying.

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...

The Roomba 105 will avoid carpet when it's mopping, but it may not avoid it 100% of the time, and you have to install the mop pad yourself every time you want it to mop. It doesn't have the ability to raise the mop pad up to traverse over carpets.

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.

The q7 L5 doesn't automatically map out carpets, you have to designate no-mop areas in the map manually. The q7 l5 lacks a dedicated carpet sensor and relies upon brush resistance to trigger suction boost on carpet. But this system is not accurate enough to map out carpeted areas. The roomba 105 on the other hand does appear to have an ultrasonic carpet sensor and should avoid carpets by itself. No roomba made in the last few years will work with the old virtual wall units. The 105 has virtually nothing in common with older irobot designed units and is completely incompatible with old parts or accessories.

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.