Review: Thinking about getting a cleaner? Maybe this robot is actually what you need. 

Thinking about getting a cleaner? Maybe this robot is actually what you need. 

iRobot Roomba Review by Francesca Ritchie

Like most working people, I've often daydreamed of having a cleaner. The idea of coming home to a freshly cleaned house - without having to spend hours of my weekend scrubbing, vacuuming, mopping and dusting seems almost too good to be true. 

The rise in use of robot vacuums has made keeping the floors clean without lifting a finger an option for many households, and now, with the addition of combination vac and mop - these clever household innovations have become a hands-off way to staying on top of some of life’s more mundane chores with ease. 

The Roomba Max 705 Combo Robot Vacuum Cleaner and Mop is the latest model from iRobot, boasting an impressive resume of mess-busting technology - so I began to wonder, could this be the ‘cleaner’ I've been looking for? 

Setup is user-friendly, the robot arrives in one (albeit rather heavy) box, simply clip on the side brushes, fill up the clean water tank and position the dock before plugging it in. Scanning the QR code inside the box will take you to the Roomba Home app to complete the setup for your machine. 

This would have taken just a minute or two,  if I didn’t have a comma in my wifi name which did manage to cause an initial headache, however, once that was sorted and it was connected, the rest of the setup was very straightforward.  

The robot then gets to work mapping out your home, complete with 3D furniture , and was ready for me to add the zone names and cleaning rules for each space. You can set 'Keep Out' zones for any areas you don't want the robot to go in, easily select between vacuum only, mop only, or vacuum and mop, and change the intensity of the clean depending on your needs. 

I set the robot up to do a full house vacuum, and a mop of the hard floor areas every other morning once we have left the house for work. It is also set to do a quick vacuum of the kitchen area around half an hour after we normally eat dinner, catching all the dinner crumbs and any cooking mess, meaning I can get on with other tasks (or sit down with a G&T) knowing the hard work has been done for me.

The app itself is easy to use and offers up all the information you should need about when to refill the water, and when to change out the brushes without having to spare a second thought or set a reminder in your calendar. 

The machine navigates spaces incredibly well, manoeuvring around chairs, and getting right up to the toe kicks under the kitchen cabinets and skirting boards, and around kids toys, table legs (or sleeping dogs) with ease, and automatically returns to the base to empty the onboard dust bin when needed during the clean, before returning to where it left off. The dock's vacuum bag can hold up to 75 days' worth of debris before you need to change the bag, making it very hands off from a user perspective.  

The dock also has separate clean and dirty water tanks alongside the vacuum bag so there is no messing around after each clean, simply fill the clean water tank in the dock and the app will notify you of when these need to be emptied or refilled. Not only does the machine empty and refill itself as needed, but the station also cleans and dries the mop head after each use, meaning fresh, sparkling floors every time.

If you have a voice assistant system for home like Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri, you can also link your Roomba up and use you voice to kick-start a clean or set up a future clean. Helpful if you have little people who love to bake but often end up with flour all over the floor or simply spot that one area needs some extra love, ‘Hey Siri, tell Roomba to vacuum the kitchen’  or ‘Hey Alexa, tell Roomba to mop the bathroom at 9am'.

Going into this, my biggest concern was how my dog would react to the robot. Most dog owners will agree with two things, they love to chase the vacuum cleaner (or any strange noise making object), and they can drop a lot of hair. I had worried that my dog may even jump on the robot, or try and sit on it and ride it around like a magic carpet, however, the robot itself is pretty quiet, and my dog doesn’t seem to be bothered by it at all, in fact, he is often detected on the post-clean report as an obstacle that the robot has carefully cleaned around whilst he continued to enjoy a snooze in a sunny spot.

Is it fool-proof? Not entirely, as to be expected I had a few funny moments, mostly from user-error, like when I accidentally set it to mop the carpet, or when its wheel became entangled in one of my daughters blue-glittery-clip in hair extensions, but with a single level home made up of mainly hard floors, this felt like it could be a handy piece of tech to add to the lineup, yet I don't think I truly realised just how much I would love it. 

I started reviewing this model mid-December, in an incredibly busy time of the year, and nothing brought me more joy than walking in to the house after a busy day and seeing the robot hard at work, or getting a notification while at my desk or out with the family that the cleaning has been done and ill be heading home to sparkling clean floors.

So, while it won’t scrub the bath, having one less job on my to-do list has really been a game changer - a machine that not only looks slick, but does a very good job at keeping the floors beautifully clean and crumb-free without you needing to lift a finger. 

And do I still dream of getting a cleaner? Surprisingly not, consider yourself hired Roomba. 

iRobot Roomba Max 705 Combo Robot Vacuum and Mop is Available at Noel Leeming

Noel Leeming
Westfield Newmarket, Level 3, 309 Broadway.