iRobot Roomba Max 715 Pet Robot Vacuum Review

3 Months of Real Use

The Roomba Max 715 is the new vacuum-only robot in iRobot's Max line, and it is the follow-up to the Max 705 I tested last year. I ran it in my home through August, on hard floors and carpet, in a house that has clutter and pets in it — the same conditions every robot in the pool gets.

The short version: this robot does two things very well and one thing badly enough to sink it. The obstacle avoidance is the best I have seen from iRobot. The auto-empty dock cannot empty the dustbin. Those two facts are what the rest of this review is about.

What's in the Box and First Setup

Setup was easy. Unbox, place the dock, run the first mapping pass. The mapping itself was easy too, and the robot uses LiDAR-based navigation with AI obstacle recognition, so it built a map without me babysitting it.

The map it built was off a little bit — room sizes and where it drew the actual walls did not quite line up with the house. Not enough to break anything, but enough that I noticed it. The app is very limited on settings. Normally that would bother me more than it does here. This is a vacuum-only robot, so there is not much to configure anyway. Four suction levels and go.

Cleaning Performance: What It Actually Picks Up

Hard Floor and Everyday Debris

Okay job of vacuuming. Not the best, not the worst. It gets the everyday stuff and it is relatively quiet doing it, which counts for more than people expect when the robot runs while you are home.

Carpet and Pet Hair

Carpet cleaning scored an 8. It handles the carpet fine.

Pet hair is a different story. The long hair wrap on this robot was bad. It has the old dual brush roller design — there is no floating brush roller here, it is two brushes with a pivot point on each end, and the long hairs wrap right around them. I saw it clearly in studio testing. It also gets long hair wrapped around the side brush. That matters because this SKU is sold as a pet robot with anti-tangle brushes.

Edge and Corner

One basic side brush doing standard corner work. Nothing here to write home about, and nothing that failed.

Obstacle Avoidance

This is where the robot earns its best score, an 8.5. That is the highest obstacle number I have given a Roomba. It reads the clutter course and works around it. If your floor is a minefield of cords, shoes and kid toys, this part of the robot genuinely delivers.

The Dock and Maintenance

And here is the downfall. The robot goes back to the dock, runs the auto-empty cycle on the dustbin inside the robot, and cannot get everything out. There was not even that much in there. I tried it five times. Every single time it failed to pull everything out.

This is the old style of dustbin and it has not been upgraded. It is the same thing that did not work on the older Roombas — the j7 and the j9 had this problem too. Being able to remove everything from the dustbin has to be a top priority on a robot whose whole selling point is that you do not have to touch it for months. If the bin stays partly full, the robot keeps running and you think it is vacuuming when it is not.

So the real maintenance picture on this robot is: open the dustbin yourself, and cut hair off the rollers and the side brush.

App Experience

Very limited on settings. For a vacuum-only robot I do not mind that much — there is not a lot to customize when there is no mop, no water tank and no wash cycle. Four suction levels in the app, scheduling, and the map. It works. It is just thin.

What I'd Change About the Roomba Max 715 Pet

• Upgrade the dustbin so the dock can actually empty it — that's the whole fix.
• Move to a real floating brush roller instead of the pivot-ended dual rollers, since the current design is a hair magnet and this SKU is being sold to people with pets.

Roomba Max 715 Pet vs the Competition

Roomba Max 715 Pet vs the Roomba Max 705 Vac

The Max 705 was last year's vacuum-only robot and this is not much different from it. My category scores came out the same across the board. If you are shopping between these two, do not let the model number talk you into paying more for the newer one.

Roomba Max 715 Pet vs the Dreame D20 Pro

This is the one I would buy instead. It is a really good robot. It comes with a mop, but if you only want vacuuming, just do not install the mop pads — you still get a great vacuum without any of the problems that hold the 715 back.