iRobot Roomba Combo j5+ review

Many of the best robot vacuums have advanced features like obstacle avoidance, a self-emptying bin, and mopping — but cost upwards of $1,000. However, the powerful and versatile iRobot Roomba Combo j5+ offers many of these same features for less than half the price.

It can detect poop on your carpet and send you an alert without plowing over it (and making a huge mess). You can talk to the bot through the Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant bots, which makes cleaning easier. And, the iRobot Roomba Combo j5+ can mop and vacuum.

While a few performance issues do exist, overall the iRobot Roomba Combo j5+ is is one of the best cheap robot vacuums you can buy.

Roomba Combo j5+: Price and availability

The Roomba Combo J5+ (which includes the self-emptying base) normally costs $729, but at the time of this writing, was just $449 at Best Buy and other online retailers. That’s because the J5+ is an older model — it came out in 2023, so it’s nearing the end of its cycle.

Roomba Combo j5+: Design

The first thing you might notice about the Roomba Combo j5+ is that it’s remarkably similar to the more expensive iRobot Roomba j7+ with one caveat: While both models can mop the floor, the iRobot Roomba j7+ Combo can retract the mopping arm when it detects carpet. With the Roomba j5+ Combo, you won’t have that luxury. You have to swap out the dustbin for the mop bin -- which is not that laborious unless you want the robot to do every last task for you.

In almost every other way, the Roomba Combo j5+ looks and operates in a similar way to the Roomba Combo j7+ .

A small camera and a light on the front of the vac help with mapping the room and detecting objects. (Both the Roomba j5+ and Roomba j7+ can even detect poop.) Both robot vacs share other design features, including the silver top and the undercarriage that has the wheels, suction, and a tri-stroke brush. Let’s just say you are in good hands here: The Roomba Combo j5+ is about as smart as it gets and is well-designed, relatively quiet, and a top performer.

The Roomba Combo j5+ comes with the Clean Base for automated self-emptying. When the Roomba Combo j5+ gets full, it will head over to the base and discharge its own dustbin. You can also empty the dustbin by hand, but the Clean Base makes it far easier and lasts about 60 days before you need to actually do some work and empty it out.

As we mentioned in our iRobot Roomba j7+ review, the new base has a nice lid with a leather pull tab. When you use it and drop the lid back into place, it makes a satisfying thwump sound to let you know it’s all sealed and ready to use. Replacement bags for the Clean Base cost about $14 for three right now on Amazon, which is a pretty good deal.

Roomba Combo j5+: Vacuuming performance

This might be as expected, but the Roomba Combo j5+ performed admirably and even well above par in most of our tests, earning an overall score of 85.29.

That’s a little lower than the iRobot Roomba j7+ which scored 91.81 overall. It’s also not as high as the more capable iRobot Roomba s9+ which scored a whopping 96.83 overall score.

Compared to the best overall robotic vac, the Roborock S4 Max with an overall score of 96.25, the Roomba Combo j5+ is still on the upper end of the floor cleaning scorecard. Keep in mind that most of those competing models (even those from Roomba) still cost more. In fact, the Roomba s9+ is $400 more but performed incrementally better than the Combo j5+.

That means, comparing the Roomba Combo j5+ to other models comes down to a price-versus-performance decision. The Roomba Combo j5+ won’t clean your floors with as much precision as the spendier options, but it is a solid performer for the price. There were only a few minor frustrations to know about, as explained below. Overall, it worked like a champ -- detecting objects easily, routing itself around obstacles like cords and furniture, and passing all of our tests with mostly flying colors. Overall, it’s a smart floor-cleaning bot.

I tested the Roomba Combo j5+ over several weeks and sectioned off an area of my house on both carpet and hardwood, sequestering the bot in a 5 foot x 5 foot area. In six different tests, I dropped 20 grams of pet hair, Cheerios, and kitty litter onto both areas and let the bot do its work. In all cases, if the dustbin on the vac filled up but the job wasn’t finished, I emptied the bin and let it keep going until the bot said the floor was fully cleaned.

I decided to have a little fun with the general testing. For the mopping function, I tested the Roomba Combo j5+ in my upstairs bathroom and asked it to do two passes. I sprinkled a little dirt on the floor and the mopping function kicked in as expected, added some slight wetness to do the cleanup. The Roomba Combo j5+ is not a full mopping robot like the iRobot Braava jet m6 in terms of spraying a solution and mopping thoroughly. Instead, it uses a pad on the mopping dustbin to augment vacuuming with a wet mop. You can use approved cleaning solutions either made by iRobot or others to make the mopping more effective.

In my tests, the dirty floor looked shiny and clean after using the wet mop dustbin but it did get a little old having to swap out the trays every time I wanted to introduce some mopping. I also cooked up a piece of sausage that looked identical to dog poop, then placed it on the bathroom floor. Time and again, the bot detected the object and avoided it every time, which was really helpful: Having a robot vac grind dog poop onto your floor is not fun.

Cleaning performance: Carpet

The Roomba Combo j5+ was a top performer on carpet, comparing favorably to other models that cost at least $100 or $200 more. For example, the Roomba s9+ costs $400 more than the Roomba Combo j5+ but that more capable scored a similar 90 on the Cheerios test on carpet. Again, the higher-end bots will perform better, but at a higher price.

As with the hardwood floor test, the only real struggle was when it came to pet hair. On carpet, pet hair tends to clump up easily and, because it’s so light, will flutter away. The 80.25 rating seemed low until I realized that meant there were only a few small clumps left. The Shark IQ model is about the same price as the Roomba Combo j5+ (e.g., under $400) but did perform better on most of the flooring tests, scoring closer to almost 100 on the hair, Cheerios, and kitty litter tests. The Shark IQ doesn’t have mopping functions and can’t detect poop, though.

Cleaning performance: Hardwood

In terms of hardwood floor cleaning, the Roomba Combo j5+ also struggled with pet hair. Since both units are so similar, it wasn’t a surprise that the Roomba j7+ also had similar issues with pet hair on hardwood floors, scoring just 72.50. The reason? Mostly, you can blame the tri-fold brush which tends to scatter light and fluffy objects like pet hair instead of sucking them into the the dustbin. The top-end Roomba s9+ scored a 97 on the hair test, so you can see how the price-versus-performance decision starts to take shape.

Curiously, the Cheerios score was quite high (at a stellar 95) on the Roomba Combo j5+ when we did the hardwood floor test. As the test concluded, there were only a small handful of Cheerios remaining. Only a few models, including the Eufy RoboVac X8 Hybrid, scored higher with a 98.7 on the cereal sweep-up test. One reason the Roomba Combo j5+ worked so well sweeping up the Cheerios is that it kept trying and trying -- the bot made multiple passes to make sure no cereal piece was left on the floor. And, the Cheerios are heavier than the pet hair, so they didn’t scatter quite as much and succumbed to the suction easier.

iRobot Roomba Combo j5+: Setup, app and mapping

You are in good hands when it comes to the Roomba Combo j5+ design and performance mostly because iRobot has been doing this for quite a while. That history and credibility is also helpful when you go through the initial setup, use the app, and perform the mapping functions. There’s no question iRobot has some of the clearest guidance around.

It starts with the out-of-the-box experience, which is nearly perfect. Each item is easy to find, and the dustbins snap into place without any fuss. One minor gripe is the one included mop pad is tucked away inside one of the cardboard pieces, so it is a bit hard to locate. There’s one extra tri-fold brush which is a nice bonus even if you might not need it for months or even years.

The app is a joy to use from start to finish. All of the scheduling functions worked as expected, allowing you to quickly select the day and time, which room to clean, whether to use one or two passes, and even marking the no mop zones with a few clicks. In a small room, the mapping took only about 10 minutes, In a large living room, the time was more like 30 minutes. Mapping functions worked remarkably well, identifying the edge of a living room with ease and then never going into that area. You can configure multiple robo vacs as well and choose between them.

The Roomba Combo j5+ is ready for the coming AI revolution: It works with Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant in some surprising ways. For example, speaking to Alexa, we asked the robot vacuum to start cleaning in about 20 minutes, which requires a little more machine learning intelligence than normal. That worked perfectly, Asking the bot to stop and return home to charge also worked, and turned into a great AI pony trick for house visitors.

Roomba Combo j5+: Verdict

This all adds up to a powerful and capable performer. The Roomba Combo j5+ detected objects during our tests and avoided them, ran according to a set schedule, and responded to voice commands each time without fail. While it’s not one of the best robot vacuums for pet hair — the bot struggled a bit on both carpet and hardwood floors — that’s still in the same scoring range as more expensive models, such as the Roomba j7+ and Roomba j9+ bots.

For a lower price, the Roomba Combo j5+ does just about everything as the more expensive Roombas. It didn’t score as high in our clean-up tests, but can double as a wet mop. While the Roomba Combo j7+ is more capable -- it can detect carpet and withdraw the mopping arm automatically, for example -- the differences are marginal at best. In fact, for the price, the Roomba Combo j5+ is highly recommended unless you only want top performance.