3 Months of Real Use
The Roomba Max 775 Pet Combo ran in my house from June through August 2026. Same house, same floors, same dog, same kid clutter that every other robot in the testing pool deals with. Nothing about this test was staged.
The short version: it scored a 7.2 out of 10 and it is not Just A Dad Approved. That is a closer call than the verdict makes it sound. This is not a bad robot. It is a good robot at a price where good is not enough anymore.
One thing I want to be upfront about. The 775 looks a lot like the Roomba 705, which was a complete disaster — that one shipped with serious software problems and leaking. This is not that robot. None of those failures showed up here, and honestly the 775 feels like what the 705 should have been at launch. After an experience that bad, though, there may have been a little bias walking into this one, and you should know that.
What’s in the Box and First Setup
You get the robot, the AutoWash-style dock, a starter bag, the roller mop, side brushes, and cleaning solution. Setup is straightforward and the mapping run does its thing.
The first thing my wife noticed — before I said a word about it — was the noise. She sees every robot that comes through this house and she never complains. She knew immediately that something was different: noisier and bigger. That is a real signal, not a spec sheet complaint.
Cleaning Performance: What It Actually Picks Up
Hard Floor & Tile
Suction is 30,000 Pa and it does the job on hard floors. Debris comes up without scattering. Between the vacuum pass and the heated mopping, hardwood came out clean and stayed clean.
Carpet and Pet Hair
Carpet cleaning scored 7.5. It picks up fine. The problem is the brush roller: this is Roomba's old-style dual brush roller. It is okay with hair, but you will get hair wrap, and if it gets bad enough it can damage the roller. That is why the Hair Tangle Test only scored a 6.
This matters more than it sounds. At this price tier the competition already has proven anti-tangle systems — MOVA's dual brush roller that floats on one end, Roborock's split brush roller. Roomba is still running the old design in a robot with "Pet" in the name.
Credit where it is due on the other half of the pet story: the auto-empty always worked. Older iRobots struggled to empty their dustbins and this one never did. It vacuumed up dog hair well and emptied cleanly every single time.
Mopping
This is the best thing the 775 does — 8.3 out of 10, the highest score on the card. Heated mopping and heated spot mopping, hot water washing at 167°F, hot air drying at 122°F.
The proof was the dirty water tank. It came back extremely dirty when I emptied it — surprisingly so. That is exactly what you want. It means the robot is genuinely pulling dirt off the floor, washing, and hauling it back to the base. I was really happy with that. It is a really good mopping robot.
Edge and Corner
Here is my biggest mopping complaint, and it is a mapping problem more than a hardware one. For a mopping robot, being able to identify carpet in the app is critical — you need no-mop zones or a clean room divide right where carpet meets hard floor. The map editing tools make that hard because the app does not show the carpet while you are editing. You are guessing where it is.
Even after multiple passes at editing and getting the divide as close as I could, it still would not mop right up next to the carpet. It stays back a little. This is probably the single biggest thing Roomba needs to fix.
Obstacle Avoidance
8.2 out of 10, and it earned it. It dodges toys. It handles cords. It is a good pick for a home with pets, kids, or general clutter — and it made it back to the dock every single time. This is one of the two things the 775 is genuinely good at.
Worth mentioning here: the cleaning pattern is slightly off, and you will notice it in a big room. It runs the perimeter and then goes back and forth in straight lines, but sometimes it stops, jogs over to a different area, and picks up on another line. It also overlaps areas it has already cleaned, which most robots avoid — it will run a straight line down the middle of the carpet and then come back down almost the exact same line. It also has a harder time closer to walls. Not necessarily harmful, but it burns extra battery, and there is no reason to re-cover ground on a single-pass carpet run. If it is cleaning while you are away from home, you will never see any of this.
The Dock and Maintenance
The physical maintenance is genuinely easy and I will give it full credit. The mop roller comes off simply, the mop pad changes out, there is a little pull-out tray, the dirty water tank is easy to clean, and the sensors are easy to get to.
Hassle factor is rated very high on my list, and every robot has baseline maintenance hassle — dustbin, filter, replacement parts. That is universal. The problem with the 775 is the extra hassle: resetting the robot, hard-closing the app, re-editing the map trying to get it dialed in. That is user-interface hassle you do not normally run into, and it is why the Hassle-Free score is only a 6.
The auto-empty is loud. Roborock, MOVA, and Dreame have all figured out how to make auto-empty both quiet and effective. Roomba's is still loud.
On parts: the mop roller and the main brush are both expensive line items compared to what I pay for the equivalent parts on other robots in the pool. The overall annual cost tier still lands Low, but those two parts are where it stings.
App Experience
I had to reset this robot twice. It lost Wi-Fi a couple of times and I found it flashing red — I had to manually shut it off and then reboot and reset from the app. Something may be off with the app or the software inside the robot. Possibly fixable with updates.
The app is about a year and a half old and still new from Roomba. Sometimes glitchy, sometimes laggy — though better than some. You have to hard-close the app and log back in to refresh it more often than with other robots.
There is no do-not-disturb setting. If it cannot finish, it recharges and resumes — which could be 2 or 3 in the morning. You can turn resume off, but other robots just give you a DND toggle and there is no clear reason this one does not.
There are two separate screens — one for the map, one for the robot — that are not on the same page. Tricky to navigate, especially when you run multiple robots like I do.
And there are not many settings. What you do get is mostly frequency-based: how often it washes the mop pad, how often it empties the dustbin. At this price you should be able to fine-tune the robot for your specific home — lots of hardwood, lots of carpet, however it is laid out — and you cannot. You are stuck relying on the basics.
Where they did get it right: automations. Smart speaker integration, sensing when you leave and cleaning then. They clearly want you to automate this thing, and that part works.
What I'd Change About the Roomba Max 775 Pet Combo
- Fix the noise. It is constant the entire time it runs, and the auto-empty is loud on top of that.
- Put an anti-tangle brush roller in a robot with "Pet" in the name. The competition solved this already.
- Show carpet in the map editor so no-mop zones can actually be placed correctly.
- Add a do-not-disturb toggle. Every competitor has one.
- Put the map and the robot on the same screen, and add real per-room settings.
Roomba Max 775 Pet Combo vs the Competition
Roomba Max 775 Pet Combo vs MOVA S70
This is the one. I just finished reviewing the MOVA S70 and it is Just A Dad Approved, and it is typically less expensive than the 775. The Z60 was okay; the S70 is that platform revised and made better. It has the dual brush roller that floats on one end — real anti-tangle — the auto-empty is quiet and effective, and the app is not glitchy. If you were going to buy the 775, buy this instead.
Roomba Max 775 Pet Combo vs Roborock Curv 2
The other robot I would point you to. Split brush roller for hair, quiet auto-empty, and an app that lets you actually configure the robot for your house instead of handing you three frequency sliders. You simply do not run into this kind of user-interface hassle with a Roborock, a Dreame, or a MOVA.
Roomba Max 775 Pet Combo vs Roomba 705
The 775 looks a lot like the 705, which was a complete disaster — serious software problems and leaking. This is not that robot. None of those failures showed up here, and the 775 feels like what the 705 should have been at launch. If you are choosing between the two within the Roomba family, the 775 is the better robot by a wide margin. That is a low bar, and it is worth saying plainly.
Overall the 775 is a mix — some genuinely updated pieces alongside parts that have been around a while and need updating. That is the whole review in one sentence.