iRobot launches two new robot vacuums

iRobot has announced a new flagship robot vacuum, which it will showcase at IFA in Berlin this week, the company’s first big tech trade show in years. The Roomba maker will be exhibiting under its new owner, Picea Robotics, the contract manufacturer that purchased the once-troubled American robotics company out of bankruptcy in January.

The $1,199 Roomba Max 875 Combo is the company’s newest top-of-the-line robot vacuum and mop, and it debuts alongside the $899 Roomba Plus 678 Combo. Both models are available now at irobot.com.

The key vacuuming improvement is a new sealing system iRobot is calling SealForce that takes vacuuming “to a level beyond what’s previously been possible,” iRobot chief engineer Adam Pope said.

This works by lowering a sort of skirt around the cleaning head when it detects carpet, enabling a better seal that directs airflow deeper into the carpet. Paired with a new vane-type blower motor that Pope says moves 20 L/s (liters of air per second), SealForce helps the Roomba 875 deliver three times deeper carpet cleaning than without the feature.

The 875 offers 35,000 Pa suction power, the highest iRobot has ever published—for years, the company refused to publish detailed suction-power specs. It uses a single rubber brush rather than the company’s signature dual rollers (my favorite for pet hair on carpet). Pope says this is to accommodate that better seal against the carpet. It uses lidar and camera-based vision to navigate and detect obstacles and has a slimmer footprint than the Roomba 775. It can also climb thresholds up to 3.5 cm high.

The 875 Combo is also a mopping robot, with a self-cleaning roller mopping system that adds more downward pressure than the 775, plus a new heated mist feature called ThermaMist, which sprays ahead of the mop to pretreat stains. The mop includes a retractable mop cover that extends during vacuuming to keep carpets dry and can extend to get along edges. The robot comes with an auto-empty / wash dock that automatically washes the mop with hot water and dries it with hot air.

This SealForce tech is new to iRobot, but not to robot vacuums; Narwal and Dreame have variations on this on their latest flagships, the Narwal Flow 2 and Dreame X60 Max Ultra. But it is novel in the space, and combined with ThermaMist, a new hair-cutting anti-tangle main brush, and an anti-tangle side brush, the 875 shows that iRobot is inching closer to catching up with its competition than with its last relaunch.

The company is releasing a midrange version of the 875, the Roomba Plus 678 Combo. This also has a roller mop and the new SealForce tech, but it drops to 30,000Pa suction power and 18 L/s of airflow, and there’s no ThermaMist or mop cover.

Instead, the 678 has its own treatment system called SprayForce, which sprays cleaning fluid on stains to presoak them, then comes back later. It lifts its mop 10mm when it detects carpet. Both new models work with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Siri Shortcuts, and are currently going through Matter certification, according to Pope.

A robot vacuum with better vacuuming is less flashy but more practical than those that sprout legs and arms. We’re seeing several manufacturers adopt this type of sealing technology — one upright vacuum makers have been trying to perfect for decades. It will be interesting to see if Roomba’s version solves that very real problem when it comes to cleaning carpet.