iRobot Roomba 675 robot vacuum review

At this point, we’re almost used to Roomba sticker shock, like the $1,099 Roomba s9+. For those without corporate bailout money, the company’s $269 Roomba 675 means you don’t have to mortgage your house in order to clean it. You know what’s even better than a sub-$300 Roomba? One that performs well. Thankfully, we found in our iRobot Roomba 675 review that this bot is impressive enough to join the Roomba s9+ on our best robot vacuums list.

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iRobot Roomba 675: Price and availability

The iRobot Roomba 675 is currently available at Amazon and BestBuy for $269. It’s also available via iRobot.com, but it’s $30 more there (take a look at our iRobot coupon codes page to see if you can get a lower price). The Roomba 675 is similar to the $249 Roomba 614, but includes Wi-Fi connectivity, meaning you can control it remotely via the iRobot app on your smartphone. The Roomba 614 can only be controlled via the buttons on vacuum or by a separately purchased remote control.

iRobot Roomba 675: Design

If you asked a child to draw a Roomba, chances are that it would look very much like the iRobot Roomba 675. It’s round with matte grey plastic around its sides and a shiny black top. In the center of the lid there are three buttons arranged in a concentric circle: Clean, Spot and Dock. Near the front, you’ll find a recessed matte grey carrying handle. We appreciate the inclusion of the handle, which makes it easier to carry up and down stairs. The whole bot feels sturdy and solid. This was especially noticeable when it was bumping into chairs and startling the dog.

At 13 inches in diameter, the Roomba 675 is slightly wider than the Eufy RoboVac 11s (12.9 inches) and much wider than the 11.8-inch iLife V3s Pro. The Roomba 675 is noticeably taller than both of those vacuums, too; its 3.7-inch height stopped it from traveling under a low-clearance couch that the 2.87-inch RoboVac 11s easily tackled.

On the underside of the Roomba 675, you’ll find two large, rubberized wheels on either side and a spinning caster wheel at the front. iRobot uses a dual brush roll system on the Roomba 675 that’s similar, in theory, to the dual brush rolls found on higher-end vacuums like the Roomba i7. The smaller brush is composed of rubber fins and the larger has bristles interspersed with hard plastic fins. By comparison, the Roomba i7 and Roomba s9 use two rubber brush rolls. Both brushes on the Roomba 675 were easy to remove for cleaning, but untangling hair from the rollers was tedious, even with the included cleaning tool. It was much easier to remove hair from the three-spoked rubberized side brush that’s off to the side on the front of the machine.

The dustbin on the Roomba 675 resides at the rear of the bot and was much sturdier than other dustbins such as the one on the Eufy RoboVac 11s. A push button releases the bin from the vacuum. Unlike the Roomba 690, we had to use a little force to fully remove it. Once removed, the dustbin is open on one side with a half-height gate holding back most of the debris. To fully empty it, you have to open the gate. However, the gate doesn’t stay open on its own, causing it to repeatedly fly shut while we tapped the bin into our garbage can. We definitely preferred the dustbin on the iLife V3s Pro, which opened like a small lunchbox. 

The dock included with the iRobot Roomba 675 is small and unobtrusive, but we wish it included a wrap for cord storage like Neato uses for their robot vacuums. Not only does it look better, but the Roomba 675 got tangled in its own cord on two separate occasions. 

iRobot Roomba 675: Setup and app

Setting up the iRobot Roomba 675 was incredibly quick and easy aside from one small hiccup. After plugging in the base, I turned on the 675 and placed it on the base contacts to charge. When I checked on it a few hours later, I realized it hadn’t charged at all. I re-seated the bot and waited for the faint charging indicator light to start pulsing. It lit up for a minute or so, then went dark again—giving me no indication of whether it was charging or not. Thankfully, there is another way—the app.

I connected the Roomba 675 to the iRobot app (Android and iOS) by following the on screen steps, which took approximately 2 to 3 minutes. Once the bot was connected, I could see from the app that it was charging and my problem was solved.

Controlling the Roomba 675 from the app is straightforward. There’s a large “Clean” button on the robot’s homescreen. Along the bottom of the screen are options for scheduling, cleaning history, help and settings. Should your Roomba go rogue, the Settings page is where you can locate it by making it play a sound. The only way to start a spot cleaning is from the button on the vacuum.

Connecting to the iRobot app means you can start, pause, resume and dock the Roomba 675. You can also schedule it to run at a specific time once a day-- ensuring that you’ll always come home to clean floors. Though the Roomba 675 won’t create a map of your home, it will alert you on the app when it requires your attention, such as if it gets stuck on a rug. The bot itself gave a more detailed explanation of which error it had encountered and advised us to move the vacuum to a different location and restart. Tapping the app notification took us to a help page specific to the error  which explained how to fix it, what caused it, and further steps to take if the error persisted.

Don’t feel like looking at your phone? Order the Roomba 675 around using Alexa, Google Assistant, or IFTTT. In addition to using your preferred voice assistant to start, pause, resume, stop, and dock the Roomba 675, you can also ask it to locate the vac when it’s hiding out of sight. This will trigger the vac to make a series of four pleasing, but robotic, tones to help you locate it.

The cleaning history on the app reveals how many “Dirt Events” the Roomba 675 has encountered-- both in total and on individual runs. When the bot decides an area has excessive dirt or debris, it’ll spin around and clean that section more thoroughly. I watched it in action when the 675 did several pirouettes on the rug in my front entryway before continuing along on its run.

iRobot Roomba 675: Performance

Unlike iRobot’s more recent, more expensive options, the Roomba 675 doesn’t offer mapping or advanced navigation. In other words, the Roomba 675 won’t clean in a predictable, snake-like pattern. There may not be a clear method to its cleaning maddess, but I observed it methodically working its way along baseboards and around chair legs. It would hew along the edges of an area until it encountered a wall or other obstacle directly in front of it, then it would head off into another direction. This type of navigation is on par with other non-mapping robots such as the iLife V3s Pro and the Shark Ion R85.

When cleaning my mostly open floor plan first floor, the Roomba 675 didn’t miss many spots, but it also didn’t try to clean the thick shag living rug that has felled many other robot vacuums. However, it also didn’t fully climb up onto a memory foam bath mat in front of the bathroom sink. It pushed the mat around a bit and the rear of the vacuum occasionally went over it, but, as a whole, the Roomba 675 avoided the 0.5-inch thick rug.

In our lab tests, the Roomba 675 proved itself to be a capable performer, earning an overall average pickup score of 89.7, which was better than the Eufy RoboVac 11s’s 85.8 overall average, but below both the iLife V3s Pro (97) and the Shark Ion R85 (94).

*Same test performed in a smaller 5 x 5-foot area.

Cleaning up pet hair was the Roomba 675’s biggest weakness. It picked up 77% of the dog hair on hardwood and only 71.5% of the hair on carpet, earning a 74.25% overall average. But much of the dog hair was wrapped around the brush rolls and side brush, which made cleaning the vacuum itself a pain. On the carpet test, the 675 even left a small section of the hair completely untouched. By comparison, the less expensive iLife V3s Pro performed much better, cleaning up an average of 99.5% of dog hair on hardwood and carpet.

On our hardwood floor tests, the Roomba 675 was just shy of perfect on the cereal clean-up test, earning a 99.75% pickup rate. Both the Shark Ion R85 and the Eufy RoboVac 11s earned perfect scores. The Roomba 675 had a tendency to run over and crush many of the Cheerios before vacuuming them up, leaving cereal dust in its wake. On the plus side, it sucked up nearly all of that dust before it was done, leaving our hardwood test area looking and feeling clean.

*Same test performed in a smaller hardwood floor area.

The iRobot Roomba 675 performed slightly better on carpet on the cereal and kitty litter tests. It joined the Shark Ion R85, the iLife V3s Pro, and the Eufy RoboVac 11s in earning a perfect cereal pickup score. I also noted that it didn’t create as much cereal dust as it did on hardwood. 

If your cat tracks litter all over the house, you’ll want the Roomba 675 following it around. The bot picked up an impressive 96.1% of kitty litter in our lab test, earning a top score and besting the Shark Ion R85 (93%). 

*Same test performed in a smaller carpeted area.

One fun thing that sets the Roomba 675 apart from other robot vacuums we’ve tested: the company wants you to tinker with it. When I unboxed the vacuum above the typical end user agreement notice sticker it reads, “This robot contains an electronic and software interface that allows you to control or modify its behavior, and remotely monitor its sensors. For software programmers interested in giving your iRobot robot new functionality, we encourage you to do so.”

iRobot also sells a wide variety of replacement parts for its robots, including wheel modules, brushes, and extended batteries should a modification experiment go wrong.

iRobot Roomba 675 review: Verdict

There’s a lot to like about the iRobot Roomba 675. Though at $249 it’s not at the top of our list of the best cheap robot vacuums — the $159 iLife V3s Pro holds that crown — but the Roomba 675 includes advanced features like automatic dirt detection and Wi-Fi connectivity that are found on more expensive robot vacuums. It’s a solid cleaner and offers good floor coverage considering that it’s a non-mapping robot. While we would opt for the Shark R85 or the V3s if you’re battling pet hair, the iRobot Roomba 675 is a solid choice for affordable automated vacuuming.