iRobot Roomba Max 705 Vac

The Max 705 Vac is iRobot's comeback attempt: their strongest suction ever, real LiDAR navigation (finally), and the dual rubber brushes that made Roombas the default for pet owners. On the hardware it mostly lands — testers watched it clear long hair, crumbs, and coffee grounds in a pass or two, and the ClearView Pro LiDAR mapped a two-floor 1,400 sq ft house in under nine minutes, on par with a Roborock Q Revo. But owner sentiment sits at just 57% positive, the lowest of the current flagship crop, and the reasons are price and software rather than cleaning.

Day to day, this is a vacuum-only machine that leans on its dock. The AutoEmpty station stretches bag changes to around 75 days, obstacle avoidance handles cords, toys, and staged pet waste reliably, and the anti-tangle brushes live up to the name — though hair wrap still builds up over time and needs occasional cleaning. The friction is the iRobot Home app: owners report glitches, buried settings, and firmware updates that occasionally break things and lock the robot up for half an hour. One outlet also measured debris clearance at 80%, under the 90-95% expected at this price.

Who should buy it: pet households that want maximum vacuuming with zero mop maintenance, and specifically people burned by combo robots' wet systems — skipping the mop sidesteps the Max 705 Combo's known clog-and-fail failure mode entirely. But the price has to be right. At the $899.99 list you can buy a Roborock or Dreame flagship that vacuums comparably and mops too; at the recurring $499 sale price (Walmart has listed it at $699, and sealed units float around eBay for less), it becomes a defensible pick for Roomba loyalists.