The Roomba Max 705 Combo Is as Close to a Deep Manual Mop Clean I've Ever Had From a Robot Vacuum

The Roomba Max 705 Combo robot + AutoWash dock is one of the most powerful, but also expensive and physically imposing robot vacuums I’ve lived with.

It's up there as one of the best robot vacuums for mopping, but falls a little short at vacuuming, which is disappointing given it is not cheap.

On paper, the Roomba Max 705 Combo [at Amazon] is iRobot’s most advanced hybrid to date. In reality, its appeal is limited. Read on to find out why.

The One-Minute Summary

The Roomba Max 705 Combo is a high-end robot vacuum and mop that works best in homes with lots of hard flooring.

During my month-long test, in a house of children and pets, it was consistent at vacuuming everyday mess and was genuinely excellent at mopping. The heated roller mop cleans more thoroughly than basic pad systems I’ve used, and the AutoWash dock takes care of washing, drying, and emptying, so you don't have to rinse out mop heads or buckets each time. This makes the 705 Combo closer than most robot vacuums I've used to making mopping feel easy.

It’s not without its flaws. Vacuuming on carpet is good but not great, especially when it comes to getting rid of hidden dust and pet hair. The robot is bulky and isn’t an appliance you can put in a corner out of the way. Plus, aside from being conspicuous, its size means it struggles to clean under beds, sofas and between chair legs.

If you have a large, open-plan home with mainly hard floors, the Roomba Max 705 is a strong choice and the price will feel justified by the time it saves. However, if you have lots of carpet or pets, the eufy Omni S1 Pro is much better at handling hair consistently, and the Yeedi S20 Infinity is a great all-rounder.

Roomba Max 705 Combo: Specifications

Roomba Max 705 Combo: Setup

I should have known the Roomba Max 705 Combo was going to be a beast of a machine by how big and heavy its box was. I couldn't lift it on my own and ended up pushing it like a sled into my kitchen.

Inside, everything was well organized in cardboard boxes and sections – the robot vacuum was in one box, the dock in another, and a small plastic bag with the brushes, a replacement filter and instructions was on top. The lack of packaging generally, but especially the lack of plastic was welcomed.

The brushes don't come fitted as standard, to protect them from damage I presume, but they're color-coded and labelled clearly so it takes seconds to install them on the underside of the vacuum. The water tank and mopping heads are then already in place.

The dock similarly comes with minimal setup. Filling the clean water tank and solution reservoir takes seconds, and the dust bag (plus a replacement) are neatly where they need to be.

The StayClean cleaning solution isn't in the box as standard and you have to buy it separately ($28 from Amazon). Roomba stresses you can only use its own version in the 705 Combo but I used a DIY cleaning solution and had no issues. Just be aware that there may be warranty problems if the vacuum breaks from the use of a non-Roomba solution, so approach with caution.

In total, fully unboxing the Roomba Max 705 Combo Infinity took less than five minutes.

The app portion of the Roomba's smart home setup proved less efficient.

Despite scanning the on-board QR code the app couldn't identify the model, then couldn't connect to my Wi-Fi. After 10 minutes of troubleshooting; being asked for the Wi-Fi password repeatedly and just generally facing loading screens I ended up Googling the issue. A factory reset – which itself didn't work properly the first time – fixed things but it took a while.

Once connected, however, the app is basic – in a good way. iRobot doesn't bombard you with multiple menus, features or over-the-top design elements. Everything you need is clean, simple and within reach.

It then guides you through how to map your home. It took just over 25 minutes to map my downstairs and the resulting floor plan was pretty accurate for a first attempt. Especially considering we have a drum kit in the living room and that's not easy to navigate around. This accuracy further improves the more the robot is used.

Roomba Max 705 Combo: Design and Features

The Max 705 Combo is unapologetically large. The robot itself is wider than similarly-priced competitors, and the dock resembles a small piece of furniture rather than a charging base.

The upside is that the white model I tested, with a faux-material cover on the dock, has a surprisingly cozy modern aesthetic meaning it will suit most homes. I can't say it blends in seamlessly, given its bulk, but at least it doesn't look ugly or industrial in the process.

On top of the robot, things are kept fairly minimal. Two physical controls sit flush, allowing you to start or pause a clean (via the Power button), or send the robot back to its dock (via the Home button) without opening the app.

There’s no raised navigation module, as seen on rival models like the Roborock Q7. Instead, the LiDAR system is built into the body with cameras and sensors positioned around the front, rear and underside of the robot. There’s also the onboard water reservoir on its back, which is pretty small.

Flip the robot over and you'll see two rubber brush rollers, designed to help lift debris on hard floors and carpets while also helping reduce hair tangles.

Towards the rear is the cylindrical PowerSpin Roller Mop. Unlike flat mop pads that drag moisture behind them, this roller spins continuously and sits slightly off center to help getting into corners and edges.

On either side, edge-sweeping brushes pull trapped debris from corners and edges rather than scattering it outward.

Most of the control happens in the Roomba app, which is easy to use even if you’re new to robot vacuums. You can set cleaning schedules – the app calls them Automations – choose which rooms to clean, tell it to avoid certain areas with no-go zones, and adjust how much suction or mopping power it uses in different spaces.

If there’s a specific mess to deal with, you can also send it to clean a single room or zone rather than the whole house.

A small but useful feature is being able to identify the type of furniture you have rather than just flagging them as obstacles. The Max 705 Combo knows the difference between a table vs a sofa, for example, and even a fridge vs a cupboard and this comes in handy when setting cleaning zones, or directing the robot for spot cleans.

When the robot finishes cleaning, it automatically empties the dirtbag into the dock's dust container. In fact, if the bag gets full mid-vacuum, it takes a detour to empty it before returning to its job.

The dock also washes the mop with heated water, taken from the dock's white, clean water tank; dumps the waste water in the black dirty water tank; and dries the mop, so you’re not dealing with wet, smelly pads after each run either. There's also a small reservoir inside the white water tank where the cleaning solution goes.

Elsewhere, the app lets you enable the child lock and check on your robot's "health." The latter lists how close you are to needing to replace or clean all of the robot's parts, such as the filter, brushes, and dustbag.

This is a good place to start if your vacuum keeps getting stuck or isn't working as it should. I also like that you can order the parts directly from this screen; another small but significant touch.

Over time, the robot builds a detailed map of your home and starts to recognize high-traffic areas, using that information to suggest more frequent cleaning where it’s needed. You can accept these suggestions or ignore them; the system works either way.

Overall, the design of the Roomba Max 705 Combo is clearly aimed at substance over style. That's not to say it's ugly, and everything feels deliberate and well thought through. It has a strong focus on hands-off use too. The downside is that it means sacrificing space more than with simpler robot vacuums.

What Is the Roomba Max 705 Combo Like to Use?

Once the Roomba Max 705 Combo is set up, you don’t have to think about it much, which is exactly what you want from a robot vacuum at this price. The app is easy to use and over the testing period, I didn’t run into glitches, dropped connections, or cleaning jobs that failed to start.

The robot works room by room in neat lines and keeps track of where it’s been on the app. This makes cleaning speed steady rather than fast. A full clean of my downstairs takes around 2.5 hours depending on settings. Thankfully the battery life can more than cover this, even if the charging time of around five hours (on average) isn't ideal.

Obstacle avoidance is strong. Shoes, messy cables and pet toys were usually spotted and avoided rather than pushed around but the vacuum often got spooked by obstacles that weren't there – even highlighting these phantom objects on the app. A small, slightly weird inconvenience.

The Max 705 Combo crossed thresholds and moved between hard floors and carpets easily, but it struggled in tighter spaces. Narrow gaps under furniture and between chair legs were often skipped because the robot couldn’t fit.

And in terms of noise, during regular cleaning, the Max 705 Combo averaged around 71 decibels, which is easy to live with in another room. The dock is much louder when it empties the dustbin or washes the mop – as much as 85 decibels – but those bursts are short.

All in, the Roomba Max 705 won't be the go-to for deep cleaning your home but in day-to-day use it does a decent job of keeping on top of the dust, debris and hair until you do have time for a deeper cleaning session.

Roomba Max 705 Combo: Vacuuming Tests

For the vacuuming tests, I ran the Roomba Max 705 Combo by cleaning hardwood flooring and low-pile carpet using sugar, lentils, and cereal. I scattered a quarter cup of each across the floor, making sure some debris reached edges and corners.

On hard floors, the larger, cereal debris was handled well. Most of the Cheerios were picked up on the first pass, even pieces near baseboards. The robot didn’t fling debris around or spit it back out, although some cereal was nudged forward and pieces in the very corners of my kitchen were missed.

As the debris size decreased, though, so did the performance. The lightweight nature of the lentils meant they were flung around. I was still finding lentils in random places for days after the tests. Sugar was mostly lifted in open areas, but residue remained along edges and in corners. A second pass on both improved results, but I still needed to wipe up light traces by hand.

Carpet performance was more consistent. Lentils were collected much more reliably and sugar was removed more thoroughly, with less visible residue left behind in the edges and moldings, which can be one the hardest cleaning tasks even when done manually by the best vacuum cleaners.

Sadly this performance was let down when it came to hair. Both our chocolate labrador's short hairs, and my long hair were often left behind or ended up wrapped in the brush rollers over time. Despite the brand's tangle-free promise.

On carpet particularly, hair was lifted from the surface but not always pulled fully out of the pile and my son often complained about getting dog hairs in his Lego when building on the floor.

Over the testing period, the robot kept my wooden and Karndean floors looking tidy. I don't always have time to clean floors daily but the robot made it easy to keep on top of and reduced my manual vacuuming by more than half. On carpeted areas, regular vacuuming was still needed for deeper cleaning the pet hairs, but it was adequate for surface-level debris.

Roomba Max 705 Combo: Mopping Tests

Yet for all its all relatively minor vacuuming flaws, I can barely fault the Roomba Max 705 for mopping. For mopping tests, I used the robot to spot clean ketchup and mustard stains out of my hardwood floors. Both were left to sit for a few minutes before cleaning so they weren’t freshly spilled.

On the mustard test, the robot removed most of the stain on the first pass, lifting the bulk of the residue rather than dragging it across the floor. A faint mark remained at the edges, but the robot automatically went back over the area and cleared it on the second pass.

The ketchup stain proved more stubborn. The first pass noticeably lightened the stain but didn’t remove it, and the robot had to return to the area twice before it was mostly gone. On each occasion, though, the robot went back to its dock, washed the mop roller automatically before returning to try again. This level of attention to detail and cleanliness is unlike anything I've seen on any other robot vacuum and I'm still highly impressed.

This is also critical when you want the robot to vacuum and mop at the same time. Other models I've tested – namely the Roborock Saros – tend to drag residue on the mop pads onto carpet. I regularly had to use a stain removal pen when using the Roborock but this never happened with the Roomba Max 705 Combo.

In everyday use, the roller mop proved to be more thorough than basic drag-pad systems. Floors were left damp rather than wet and I could usually walk across then within five minutes without leaving footprints or streaks. The floors never felt sticky, even after repeated runs, and there was no lingering “wet mop” smell once the dock finished washing and drying the roller.

Like with vacuuming, the Roomba Max 705 won't replace a deep manual scrub for older or set-in stains, but for regular upkeep and fresh spills it's as close to a deep manual mop clean that I've ever experienced from a robot vacuum.

Roomba Max 705 Combo: Maintenance

For a robot this expensive, I'd expect the day-to-day maintenance to be minimal, and for the most part, it is. The AutoWash dock handles most of the heavy lifting, emptying the dustbin automatically, washing the roller mop during and after cleaning, and then drying it so you’re not left with a damp, smelly mop inside the machine.

In everyday use, this meant I could go weeks without touching the dock itself. Most of my interaction was limited to topping up or emptying the water tanks, every few cleans. Even the robot's small, built-in water tank only needed emptying once every few mops. I liked to empty it after each run, but it's nice that I didn't need to.

Despite the rubber rollers, hair did wrap around the base over time. Cutting it off isn't a huge job, but it’s not fully hands-off either, especially in my pet-heavy home. The internal dustbin very rarely clogged with hair too, before it made it to the dock, which occasionally meant popping the bin out and clearing it manually.

Plus, when there's a problem the app sends an alert and helps troubleshoot the error. Knowing how to clean a robot vacuum is key to extending its lifespan and with a robot this expensive, it's great to see clear instructions available directly in the app.

On the Support tab you'll find articles and videos for removing the brushes, accessing the bin, and cleaning sensors and rollers. Nothing feels fragile or difficult to take apart, and routine maintenance doesn’t require tools.

In the most part, maintenance is low, but not invisible. The dock takes care of a lot of the admin but it's not a miracle worker.

How Does the Roomba Max 705 Combo Compare?

It costs $1,299.99 at full price at iRobot, but is often discounted to as low as $899,99, as it is at the time of writing. It sits comfortably in the high-end bracket, but there are plenty of robots that cost more than this, notably the Roborock Saros Z70 and its mechanical arm for picking up objects.

For around the same price, the eufy Omni S1 Pro is a great alternative if you're a pet owner. It's our best-on-test robot when it comes to vacuuming fur, as its roller is great at pulling it out of carpets and avoiding wrapping with hair.

Other notable shouts are the Yeedi S14 Plus and the Yeedi S20 Infinity which, if you find on sale at the right time, can be much cheaper than the Roomba Max 705 Combo, while offering similar cleaning performance (or in the S20 Infinity's case, better vacuuming).

How I Tested the Roomba Max 705 Combo

We take how we test vacuums seriously and it involves in-depth performance tests, meticulously going through the app, running benchmarks, and living with the product to see how it fits into everyday cleaning.

I tested the Roomba Max 705 Combo over one month in a family home with mixed flooring, children, and a dog.

To standardize the vacuuming tests, I used sugar, lentils, and cereal on hard floors and carpet, while mopping tests used ketchup and mustard stains. Noise levels were measured using the DecibelX app, and I used the scheduling and manual functions on the app in everyday use.

This helped me focus on how often the robot genuinely replaced manual cleaning versus adding to the household chore load.

Next, learn how to choose the best vacuum for every home and budget.