The Roomba is diligent, but it isn't smart

Let me share something. A friend moved and shoved his spare Roomba Max 715 Vac onto me, with the AutoEmpty dock. Used it for about three weeks.

The most striking feeling is that it really does let you worry less, but it doesn't understand my home.

The good side was something I didn't expect at first. Dual rubber anti-tangle brushes plus auto-empty—this combo is genuinely effective against hair. The official page and several e-commerce reviews all talk about pet hair not tangling; on my end, after three weeks, long hair and cat fur barely cling to the brushes at all, and the dock lasts several days without emptying. Suction is sufficient too—everyday dust and granules tracked out by the cat litter get picked up in one pass. For someone who doesn't want to wait on a machine every day, these two things are everything.

The problem is navigation. A review of the 775 in the same series directly said it's lazy about detection and mapping, and not exactly quiet—my unit basically confirms that. The same table leg—it bumps into it twice every week, and the map after the first run is almost identical to the map in week three. It's not learning my home.

iRobot put the value into the dock and the brushes—this is the entry point for consumables and accessories, with certain repeat purchases, and from a business model standpoint there's nothing to criticize. But that's where the moat ends. The dock is hardware, the brushes are rubber parts—the Chinese supply chain has a better cost structure for both, and catching up is just a matter of time. The hard part is mapping and strategy, and it hasn't thickened that.

This is a machine that sells convenience, not intelligence. The ceiling for convenience is hardware margin; intelligence is where the software premium is. It picked the right half, but the wrong era.