As a professional robot vacuum reviewer, I’ve been iffy about the Roomba legacy for a while now — and further evidence just dropped to back me up. You no longer need to wonder whether Roombas are the best robot vacuums. The better question is whether you’re even going to be able to buy a Roomba at all soon.
iRobot’s stock dropped by over 30 percent on Monday, Oct. 27 after the company disclosed that its most recent potential buyer dipped out. There aren’t any more takers left in the queue, meaning the once-iconic robot vacuum brand could be facing bankruptcy proceedings eventually, unless something drastic changes.
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iRobot’s struggles to stay relevant aren’t new. It’s been an uphill battle to sell the company ever since the plans for Amazon to acquire iRobot fell through back in early 2024. Since then, iRobot’s financial situation has gotten pretty dire — it was calculated that revenue had fallen by 44 percent in the last quarter of 2024 as compared to the same time in 2023. But when we reported on that in March 2025, there was still a crumb of hope left: iRobot had also just released a fleet of new Roombas that month, and it could have been the boost the company needed to get back on track.
But this wasn’t your average iRobot new product release. For the past few years, iRobot typically saved major new Roomba releases for August, and major Roomba drops typically didn’t involve more than a couple models at a time. So iRobot’s move to overhaul its lineup with eight new Roombas announced on the same day was… interesting. It was either a quiet upswing for the company or a “Hail Mary” pass. Now, it sounds like that last-ditch effort to keep the company afloat wasn’t enough to entice a buyer. It’s hard to see where the Roomba legacy goes from here.
While Roombas plateau, competitors are cooking
iRobot’s latest stock market woes reflect another trend: Customers aren’t all that impressed by Roombas anymore. And as someone who tests robot vacuums for a living, I could have told you that months ago.
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Roombas were once the pinnacle of robotic cleaning technology. iRobot pioneered many of the staple robot vacuum features that are standard today: The self-emptying, smart mapping Roomba S9+ was a huge deal when it came out in 2019, and the Roomba j7+’s small obstacle avoidance set a new standard for robot vacuum brainpower in 2021. I hyped up both of those vacuum cleaners to everyone at the time.
But at some point in the past two or three years, iRobot’s innovation plateaued. Its flagship releases started to feel less and less groundbreaking while still being some of the most expensive robot vacuums on the market. iRobot seems to forget that its vacuums don’t exist in a vacuum — and with the likes of Dreame and Roborock pumping out advanced, powerful, and practically priced botvacs left and right, there are way more opportunities for Roombas to be upstaged than there were back in the day.
iRobot’s proprietary auto-lifting mopping pad is cool, but doesn’t scrub as well as other robot mops.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable
The Roomba 105 is the first not-crappy budget Roomba in years. But it took forever to get here.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable
I found the most impressive robot vacuum under $500. You’ve never heard of it.
It’s not even like the newest Roombas are bad. They’re a fine bunch of robot vacs, and I actually think that the Roomba Plus 405 Combo and Plus 505 Combo are solid bangs for your buck (especially when they were on sale for October Prime Day). But there’s no wow factor with the 2025 Roombas, with most of the new models merely playing catch-up to the competition. Sure, iRobot deserves some credit for finally offering an affordable mopping Roomba with self-washing and drying mopping pads, but brands like Narwal and Eufy introduced budget-friendly models that did the same thing as much as a year earlier.
Roombas’ suction power isn’t hitting like it used to, either. For instance, the most powerful Roomba you can buy right now is the Roomba Max 705 Combo with 13,000 Pa of suction power. If you’re not a mega robot vacuum head like I am, that number might sound impressive — but it’s actually quite low for the $1,299.99 price point, and quite low compared to other flagship models. 13,000 Pa is a good bit less than the 18,000 Pa of the identically-priced Narwal Freo Z10 Ultra that came out in September, and less than half of the 30,000 Pa dished out by the impressive new Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller.
In its original bleak financial report from March, iRobot admitted that it could be going under for good within the next 12 months. It’ll be interesting to see if the release of all of those new Roombas seven months ago provided any type of financial cushion for its parent company. But with no buyers in sight in the thick of Q4 2025, the writing might be on the wall.
This article reflects the opinion of the writer.
