iRobot Roomba 105 Combo Review

The Roomba 105 Combo is the Roomba 105 Vac - the same ClearView LiDAR, the same map, the same keep-out zones - with a mop pad fed by a micro-pump and a back-and-forth SmartScrub mode. It is the cheapest way into an iRobot machine that mops, and at roughly thirty dollars over the vacuum-only model it is good value on hard floors. In a home with rugs it is the wrong machine, because it avoids carpet while mopping rather than lifting the pad, so a mop run leaves your rugs unvacuumed.

#	Product	Best for	Score	Price
01	iRobot Roomba 105 ComboThe 105 Vac with a pump-fed mop pad bolted on for thirty dollars more. The mop is better engineered than most at this price and the carpet handling is the compromise you pay for it.	Cheapest Roomba that mops	6.8out of 10	$179.00 - View on Amazon $319.9944% off #ad Price last verified September 21, 2026. How we are funded

Scores come from the published rubric on How We Pick: suction 25%, navigation 25%, pet hair 20%, running cost 20%, setup 10%. Editorial judgments about published specifications, not test results.

Four-stage cleaning, and still no Pascal figure. iRobot publishes a multi-surface brush, an edge-sweeping brush, suction and a microfiber mop pad. What it does not publish, here or anywhere else in its range, is a suction rating. The headline is "70x more power-lifting suction" and the small print makes clear that is relative to iRobot's own 600 series, a machine from around 2012. That is a marketing comparison and not a specification - it cannot be checked against a competitor or against anything else. On our rubric an unpublished figure is scored as unverified rather than assumed weak, so this machine takes 6.0 for suction, the same as the 105 Vac.

Navigation: ClearView LiDAR, and it is the real thing. iRobot states laser mapping that builds a plan of the home, cleans in neat rows and works in the dark. Keep-out zones, room targeting and adjustable pass counts all follow from that map. This is the feature that makes the 105 line interesting at its price, and it is identical on this machine and the vacuum-only one - the mop is the only difference between them. Our is LiDAR worth it guide covers what a map does and does not buy.

The mop is genuinely engineered, which is rare here. Two published details matter. The first is a micro-pump metering water to the pad so it stays uniformly moist through the run - the alternative, which is most of this price range, is a tank that gravity-feeds a pad that is soaked at the start and dry by the end. The second is SmartScrub, a mode iRobot describes as scrubbing back and forth for "2x deeper scrubbing". A pad that moves relative to the floor does something to a dried spill; a pad dragged in a straight line does not. On both counts this is a better mop than the price suggests, and we say so on best for vinyl plank, where it earns a place.

Modes: vac only, mop only, or both. You can run it as a plain vacuum on days you do not want the mop, which partly mitigates the carpet problem below - but only if you remember to schedule it.

Dock: charging only. There is no self-emptying at this price from iRobot. The AutoEmpty version of the 105 exists and sits well above this site's $300 ceiling. You empty the bin and rinse the pad by hand.

The distinction costs money elsewhere. The Roborock Q10 S5+ raises its pad 8 mm on ultrasonic carpet detection, increases suction and keeps cleaning, so one run covers hard floor and rugs. That machine is roughly a hundred dollars more, and this is most of what the hundred dollars buys. We set the three published behaviors side by side on best for area rugs.

In practice, a home that is mostly hard floor with one or two rugs is fine - schedule a vacuum-only run for the rugs. A home that is half carpet should buy something else, and that is what the skip-if on this page says.

These two machines are the same robot. The question is whether the mop is worth about thirty dollars to you, and it is a narrower question than it looks:

• Mostly hard floors, and you would use a mop: take the Combo. Thirty dollars for a pump-fed pad with a scrub mode is the best value decision in iRobot's budget range.
• Mostly carpet: take the Vac. The mop you paid for would spend every run avoiding the floor you have.
• You are not sure you will bother mopping: take the Vac. A tank to fill and a pad to rinse are two chores, and an unused mop is thirty dollars and a part to store.

Against the rest of the category rather than its own sibling, the comparison that matters is Roborock vs Roomba - and the short version is that at this price you are buying the map and the app, not the specification sheet.

iRobot consumables cost more than the generic parts the budget brands use, and this machine adds a washable pad to the usual filter and brush. None of that is unreasonable, but it is the reason this machine scores 6.0 on running cost where the brushless Lefants score well above 8. The arithmetic across the category is on running costs.

The offsetting argument is real: iRobot has been selling robot vacuums since 2002, and its parts are stocked everywhere and unambiguously labeled. A cheaper machine whose filters come from a single marketplace listing is cheaper right up until that listing disappears.

Someone on mostly hard floors who wants a map, wants the Roomba app, and wants a mop that is pumped rather than dragged - for under two hundred dollars. On that description there is nothing else quite like it, because the cheaper mopping machines do not have iRobot's app and the machines with a better mop cost meaningfully more.

We have not handled this machine. Everything above is read from published specifications and the manufacturer's own documentation, cited below. These are the specific claims we could not check:

• The suction. iRobot publishes no Pascal figure for this or any machine we rank, so we cannot place it on the scale the rest of this site uses, and we have not measured it.
• The "70x more power-lifting suction" claim, which is relative to iRobot's own 600 series and cannot be independently checked.
• The "2x deeper scrubbing" figure for SmartScrub. iRobot does not state what it is measured against or how.
• How reliably carpet detection finds a low-pile or dark rug. Listings do not say what sensor is used for it, and we have not tested it.
• The height of the machine. iRobot publishes no height figure, so we cannot tell you whether it fits under your furniture - see best for low furniture for what is published across the range.
• Battery life and coverage area. Neither is stated on the listing for this model.
• Noise. No decibel figure is published, by iRobot or by anyone else in this price range.
• Long-term durability of the pump and the pad mechanism, which no published specification addresses.

That list is not a disclaimer bolted on at the end. It is the actual scope of this review, and anywhere a competitor's confident phrasing implies they checked these things without saying how, it is worth asking the same question of them.