iRobot Roomba Max 705 Combo Review: The LiDAR Comeback, Under New Ownership

iRobot spent six years watching every Chinese competitor ship LiDAR while the Roomba navigated by bumping into things. The Roomba Max 705 Combo, launched in September 2025 at $1,299.99, is the apology: the first Roomba with a real laser scanner (ClearView Pro LiDAR), the first with PrecisionVision AI obstacle recognition, and the first with a mop iRobot is not embarrassed by. On the hardware spec sheet, it is the most ambitious robot the company has ever built.

Then two things happened. The reliability complaints started piling up, and in December 2025 iRobot filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Today the company is owned by its Chinese contract manufacturer, the street price has already fallen 38% to around $799, and the question this review answers is no longer “is this the best robot vacuum?” It is “is iRobot’s comeback flagship worth buying from a company that just went through bankruptcy, and at which price?”

What it is

A flagship robot vacuum and mop combo with a self-emptying, self-washing dock, sold as the Roomba Max 705 Combo Robot + AutoWash Dock. iRobot rebranded its lineup in 2025 around Roomba Plus and Roomba Max tiers, and the Max 705 Combo sits at the top of what is actually shipping in the US as of June 2026.

The headline hardware: 13,000 Pa of suction (iRobot markets this as 175 times the old Roomba 600 series in spot mode, which is true and irrelevant if you are cross-shopping anything modern), dual rubber anti-tangle brushes, and the new PowerSpin Roller Mop with PerfectEdge. The mop is a continuously rotating roller running at 200 RPM, washed with heated water at the dock, and it extends toward walls and toe kicks for edge cleaning. The AutoWash Dock self-empties for up to 75 days, washes and heat-dries the mop, and refills the robot’s water tank.

Navigation is the real story. ClearView Pro LiDAR plus PrecisionVision AI maps about 1,000 sq ft in 8 to 9 minutes, supports up to five saved maps, and auto-names rooms. The robot stands 105 mm (4.13 inches) tall, so unlike the slimmer LiDAR-free designs, it will not fit under low sofas or beds. It supports Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, and, unusually for a 2026 robovac, Apple Home via Matter.

There is one more fact buyers should sit with: the Max 705 was developed with Picea Robotics, the Chinese original design manufacturer that has since acquired iRobot outright. The “American robot vacuum” framing that historically sold Roombas is, mechanically, no longer accurate.

What reviewers found, and where they disagree

Synthesis reviews live or die on honesty about disagreement, and the Max 705 splits its reviewers cleanly between the hardware and the experience.

Where everyone agrees: hard floors and obstacle avoidance. On hardwood and tile, this is a genuinely strong machine. BestRoboVacuums measured 92 to 96% pickup across long hair, short hair, coffee grounds, and fine sugar, and noted the rubber brushes do not wrap hair. RTINGS rated it among the highest for hardwood and strong on pet hair from carpet. Consumer Reports’ lab testing put it among the better robots for hardwood. Obstacle avoidance is the quiet triumph: BestRoboVacuums ran it through 50-plus deliberately messy runs (cords, plush toys, single socks, a banana peel) and it avoided every one, never tangling once across 12 sessions in a home with a Goldendoodle. That is a first for any Roomba they have tested, and arguably class-leading overall.

Where everyone agrees again: the mop is good. Homes & Gardens called the PowerSpin roller the closest thing to a deep manual mop clean it has had from a robot vacuum. BestRoboVacuums said dried coffee splashes that the previous-generation Combo j9+ smeared, the Max 705 actually scrubbed off in a single pass, and singled out the carpet-protecting auto-mop cover (a physical shield that slides over the wet roller on carpet) as an industry first.

Where they don’t: carpet, and reliability. On carpet the picture flips hard. BestRoboVacuums measured 65% pickup on cereal and 69% on coffee grounds on low-pile carpet, well below the 90%-plus its same-price rivals hit, and pet hair on carpet at 84%. Their verdict: if your home is more than 40% carpet, this is the wrong robot. Reviews.org was harsher on the whole experience, titling its review “Comedy of errors,” pegging combined clearance around 80%, and describing a sensor port that needed wiping almost daily and a dock fussy enough to erase the convenience you buy a robovac for.

Owner reports widen the split rather than resolve it. One Reddit owner with a husky said the 705 kept up; another with a lower-shedding dog and mixed flooring complained about how poorly it did on hardwood. BestRoboVacuums’ read, which we share, is that performance here depends on your specific floors and debris more than with most competitors, which is itself a mark against a $1,300-MSRP machine.

Our synthesis: the hardware is a 9, the experience is closer to a 7, and the honest score lives in between.

Living with it

The pattern in owner reports is consistent enough to plan around. The most-reported problem is that the heated mop wash often does not actually heat. One owner set the dock to 161°F and reported it never came close; BestRoboVacuums only hit warm-but-not-hot on about half its wash cycles. The second is odor: the dirty-water tank develops a swampy smell within a week of daily mopping, manageable only with OxiClean or weekly scrubs. The third is mop clogs on heavy-shedding pets, with multiple owners on their second, third, or fourth mop replacement. Layer on the frequent “unknown error” notifications Reviews.org flagged and the iRobot Home app’s sluggish 10-plus-second screen transitions, and the day-to-day is more hands-on than the AutoWash marketing implies.

To its credit, the dock genuinely delivers six-plus weeks of hands-off operation in a small household (closer to 45 days for a busy four-person home with a pet), and the sensors that need wiping snap right back once cleaned. Running cost is reasonable at roughly $180 to $220 a year in OEM parts, cheaper than Roborock Saros consumables, though third-party parts barely exist for this model, so you are locked into iRobot’s pricing.

That lock-in is where the bigger risk lives. iRobot filed pre-packaged Chapter 11 on December 15, 2025, after its annual filing carried a going-concern warning, with less than $25 million in cash. Its Chinese contract manufacturer, Shenzhen Picea Robotics, took 100% of the equity and forgave most of iRobot’s debt. The process completed on January 23, 2026, when iRobot emerged from Chapter 11 as a Picea-owned US subsidiary. iRobot says app functionality, warranties, and customer service continue without disruption, and so far they have. But a robot vacuum is a multi-year, cloud-and-app-dependent, proprietary-parts purchase, and you are now making it from a company that just reorganized through bankruptcy under new foreign ownership. That is not a reason to never buy it. It is a reason to buy it at the discounted price, where the downside is bounded, rather than at MSRP.

Against the alternatives

eufy X10 Pro Omni ($449–$550, our review): BestRoboVacuums scores it 9.2 against the Max 705’s 7.6, with cleaner carpet pickup and a faster app, for less money. If reliability and value matter more than the iRobot brand or Apple Home support, this is the more sensible buy and the one we would cross-shop first.

Roborock Saros 10R ($1,099–$1,399, our review): a true premium flagship with far more suction, the best measured obstacle avoidance in the category, a 3.14-inch profile that fits under low furniture (the 705 cannot), and stronger carpet numbers. It costs more, but it is the better cleaner and the company behind it is not in restructuring.

Dreame X60 Max Ultra (street $1,360–$1,600, MSRP $1,699.99, our review): the spend-more pick, with a claimed 35,000 Pa and aggressive threshold climbing. It outclasses the 705 on raw cleaning; the 705’s counter is its mop quality, carpet-protecting cover, and US support.

The honest framing: the Max 705’s real competition at $799 is not the premium tier at all, it is the eufy X10 Pro Omni and Dreame’s mid-range, which clean as well or better for the same money or less. What the 705 adds is the best mop in the comparison, the best obstacle avoidance, Apple Home, and US phone support. What it gives up is suction, carpet performance, software polish, and corporate stability. For broader context, see our guides to the best robot vacuum of 2026 and the best robot vacuum for pet hair.

Verdict

Our synthesis score is 7.5. Since we have not tested this unit ourselves, here is where that number comes from: BestRoboVacuums’ 7.6/10 after eight months of testing, Reviews.org’s 3.75/5 (about 7.5), the Criticaster meta-aggregate of 79/100 across 11 expert reviews (about 7.9), Homes & Gardens’ strongly positive mopping verdict, and RTINGS’ and Consumer Reports’ hardwood praise, set against the documented firmware and odor complaints. Those center on roughly 7.6. We nudged it down a tenth, not up, because two of the biggest buyer risks (the reliability bugs that fill the owner threads, and the post-bankruptcy continuity question on parts, app, and warranty) are exactly the things a synthesis score should weight for a multi-year purchase.

The short version: the Max 705 Combo is the best mopping robot iRobot has ever made, with the best obstacle avoidance and finally-competitive navigation, wrapped in software and reliability that have not caught up to the hardware, sold by a company that just went through Chapter 11. At the $1,299.99 MSRP, it is hard to recommend. At the discounted $799, for a hard-floor home that values mopping, obstacle avoidance, and US support, and that goes in clear-eyed about the bugs and the bankruptcy, it earns a guarded buy. iRobot is back in the conversation. It is not back on top.