Robot Vacuums in 2026: Why This Is Not a Ranked Shoot-Out, and What to Check Before You Buy

The Roomba j7+ is gone and iRobot was sold out of Chapter 11 in January 2026. That changes what a robot vacuum guide can honestly claim, so this one lists checks instead of winners.

The robot vacuum most readers arrive at this page looking for is not on sale. iRobot’s own store lists no j7 or j7+, and the j7 now appears there only as a model eligible for trade-in. Its maker filed a pre-packaged Chapter 11 on 14 December 2025 and came out of it in January 2026 wholly owned by Shenzhen Picea Robotics. That fact governs every purchase in this category right now, which is why what follows is a set of checks rather than a ranking of machines nobody here has touched.

Key facts

• Roomba j7+ was announced 9 September 2021 at $849 with its Clean Base; iRobot no longer sells it
• iRobot scrapped its whole Roomba range except the Combo 10 Max in March 2025
• Chapter 11 filed 14 December 2025; emerged January 2026 owned by Shenzhen Picea Robotics
• Current iRobot US prices run from $249.99 to $1,399.99, checked 1 September 2026
• iRobot says it supports a fleet of more than 50 million devices already sold

Why you will not find a ranking on this page

Read Vault does not test hardware, and this guide will not imply that it does. A ranked comparison of robot vacuums needs a floor, a shelf of machines and a lot of measured dust. What our editorial team has instead is a verified record of what manufacturers, courts and regulators have put in writing, and in this category that record covers one company in any real depth.

Stating the limit is more useful than hiding it behind five invented paragraphs about suction. Nothing in our fact base establishes a price, a runtime or a navigation claim for any brand other than iRobot, and printing one anyway would be fabrication. So this page does the two things it honestly can. It sets out what happened to the largest name in the category, and it turns that into the questions worth answering before any money leaves your account.

March 2025: the whole line went, except one model

TechRadar described iRobot wiping out and replacing almost its entire Roomba fleet in a single move, with four new models going on pre-sale from 18 March 2025 across North America and parts of Europe: the Roomba 105 Combo, the 205 DustCompactor, the Plus 405 Combo and the Plus 505 Combo. Of everything sold before that date, only the Combo 10 Max stayed in the range.

iRobot’s own store, checked on 1 September 2026, prices the survivors like this: Roomba 105 Vac with AutoEmpty Dock $249.99, Roomba 105 Combo with AutoEmpty Dock $269.99, Roomba 205 DustCompactor Combo $469.99, Roomba Plus 405 Combo $799.99, Roomba Max 705 Combo $1,299.99 and Roomba Combo 10 Max $1,399.99.

Set that against the j7+, announced in September 2021 at $849 with its Clean Base. The closest thing iRobot now sells to it, a mid-range machine that empties itself, is the 105 Combo at $269.99. Whatever else has gone wrong at this company, the money required for that feature set has fallen a long way in four years.

Fifty million machines sold, and no source of capital left

Amazon’s $1.7bn offer for iRobot collapsed in early 2024 after EU antitrust objections. Amazon paid a $94 million break fee, part of which went to repay a Carlyle Group loan, and iRobot then cut 31 percent of its staff. On 12 March 2025 the FY2024 annual filing carried a going-concern warning, with auditors pointing to a history of operating losses and negative cash flows.

The Robot Report tracked what followed. Second-quarter 2025 revenue was $127.6m, down 23.3 percent year on year, against $24.8m of cash. By October 2025 the company reported no sources of additional capital. In November, Santrum Hong Kong, a subsidiary of Shenzhen Picea Robotics, bought $190.6m of iRobot principal and interest from Carlyle affiliates, while iRobot separately owed Picea $161.5m for manufacturing, of which $90.9m was past due on 24 November 2025. Picea set a deadline of 15 January 2026 for audited financials or forced bankruptcy.

The Chapter 11 filing came first, on 14 December 2025. Common stock stopped trading publicly and Picea took the company outright.

What an existing j7 or j7+ owner is actually exposed to

No remote removal of j7+ features is documented anywhere in our fact base, and we are not going to imply one. The exposure is continuity rather than confiscation: an app and a cloud service, for a model the manufacturer stopped selling, now operated by a business that changed hands through a bankruptcy court.

iRobot’s answer to the ownership question is structural. It set up iRobot Safe Corp, a US subsidiary governed by an independent board of US citizens with its own data-security staff, kept its Bedford, Massachusetts headquarters and kept Gary Cohen as chief executive. The Robot Report also carried a reader reporting poor spare-parts availability even for recent products, which is the more immediate practical risk for anyone running a four-year-old machine.

None of that is a reason to throw out a working vacuum. It is a reason not to spend more money on the platform than you would be comfortable losing.

An obstacle-avoiding vacuum is a camera on wheels

On 19 December 2022 MIT Technology Review published 15 screenshots that had been captured by development-version Roomba J7 units between June and November 2020. One showed a woman sitting on a toilet. Another showed a child lying on a hallway floor. They had been posted into private Facebook and Discord groups by gig workers in Venezuela who were annotating the images for Scale AI.

iRobot said it had taken every precaution to ensure personal data was processed securely, and then-chief executive Colin Angle said the company was ending its relationship with the provider responsible and that the leak breached a non-disclosure agreement with Scale AI. A follow-up in January 2023 reported that testers felt misled by the consent agreements they had signed.

The buying lesson generalises past one brand. Obstacle avoidance in this category is done with a camera, and a camera in a hallway is a data pathway. Anyone shopping now should be asking where the images go, whether humans see them, and what the consent screen actually covers.

Six things to establish before you pay

1. Find the exact model on the manufacturer’s own store page rather than a retailer’s listing, and confirm it is still there the week you buy.
2. Price the dock separately: iRobot sells the 105 as a $249.99 vac with an AutoEmpty Dock and a $269.99 combo with the same dock, so the sticker you remember may not be the one you need.
3. Ask what the machine still does with the app closed, and who is running the servers behind that app after an ownership change.
4. Establish whether obstacle avoidance uses a camera, where the footage travels, and whether a human ever annotates it.
5. Check consumables and spare parts, because that is the point at which a discontinued model becomes an ornament.
6. Read the limits on any guarantee: iRobot’s pet-waste promise on the j7+ ran for one year from purchase, offered replacement product only, and was available in limited jurisdictions.

The one we would not spend money on right now

We would not buy a j7+ from a clearance seller or a marketplace listing at any price. The reasons are all on the record: iRobot does not sell it, the line it belonged to was cut in March 2025, the manufacturer passed through a bankruptcy court and into new ownership in January 2026, and a reader account carried by The Robot Report describes parts as hard to get even for newer machines. Meanwhile a new self-emptying model from the same company lists at $269.99.

The honest version of the advice is dull. If you own one and it works, keep it. If you are buying, buy something the manufacturer is still willing to put on its own website, and treat every specification claim you cannot find on that page as unproven.

Sources: iRobot · TechRadar · The Robot Report · Silicon Republic · MIT Technology Review