iRobot Roomba Plus 515 Robot Vacuum and Mop Combo Review

This is the 515, sitting right in the middle of the Roomba Plus lineup — between the 415 below it and the 575 above it. iRobot also sells the 515X, which is functionally the same robot, just sold exclusively on Amazon. Everything in this review applies to both.

How It Compares to the 415 and 575

This shares the same overall look and body size as the 415 and the 575. The real difference from the 415 is suction power and hot water mop washing — the 415 doesn't do hot water mopping at all. More importantly, this one has an internal water tank inside the robot that sprays water onto the mop pads to keep them wet during a run. The 415 doesn't have that; it relies entirely on the docking station to wet the pads beforehand, which isn't really an improvement in the same way. That internal tank also means this one can handle a somewhat larger home than the 415 before struggling. Neither the 415 nor this one has a solution tank in the dock, though — the 575 does, with its own proprietary bottle design. And on obstacle avoidance specifically, the 575 is a dramatic step up over both the 415 and this one.

Cleaning Performance

The optical avoidance sensor here — which doubles as the navigation sensor — isn't as good as what's in the 575, and mapping came out a little off during testing, nothing too worrying, but noticeably less precise than the 575's better front sensor. I do like the spring-loaded side brush: it's not a physical extending arm, so it's not 100% corner coverage, but it does a genuinely good job for a passive design, reaching into corners and bouncing out of the way cleanly when it hits something. The mop pad also has a small guard that keeps it a little ways off the wall — I'm honestly not sure that's necessary, since other robots with extending mop pads skip it and do just fine without it. Vacuuming and mopping performance overall was fine — not the best I've tested, but not bad either, right around "good."

Hair Wrap and Maintenance

The brush roller is a very basic single-piece design with a comb but no real long-hair management system. In normal testing I didn't get any hair wrap, but when I pushed it with extreme long-hair testing, I did get wrap on it — it's easy enough to pull apart and cut free, but worth knowing going in if you have long-haired members of the household. The dustbin filter is also a maintenance headache: it's got a plastic piece glued into half of it, so you can't actually clean the filter — you just replace it, more often than you would on a robot where the filter is cleanable.

The Wifi Problem

This is the biggest issue I ran into, and it's a real one. The robot keeps disconnecting from wifi — not as badly as the 575 or the Roomba 775, but a genuine, repeatable software glitch either in the app or the robot itself. I contacted iRobot's customer support and was on hold over an hour; when I got through, I had to hand over my full network setup — router details, phone and software versions, all fairly technical information that could be a real barrier for less tech-savvy users. I don't think this is just my setup, either: I ran a poll on my YouTube channel, and roughly 60% of respondents reported the same wifi-disconnect issue on their own units. The only fix is a hard reboot — holding the power button down for 10 to 15 seconds — and sometimes a reboot inside the app as well. I also had to force-close the app on both my iPhone and iPad more than once because it looked locked up and wasn't pulling current status. I tested this robot in two different locations with two different wifi networks, and I run several other robots on those same networks without this problem, so I don't believe it's a network issue on my end.

App Experience

Beyond the wifi issue, the app itself is fine but a little disjointed — the map and the robot's day-to-day settings live on separate pages, which makes some settings harder to find than they should be. There's also no do-not-disturb function in the app. That matters more on a smaller robot like this one: if it's cleaning a bigger home during the day and doesn't finish before its battery runs low, it'll return to the dock, recharge, and then resume cleaning once fully charged — which could end up being the middle of the night. Every other robot I've reviewed has a do-not-disturb setting specifically to prevent that. Its absence here is a real miss.

Parts Availability

Parts are available directly from iRobot's own website, which is good, but not currently available on Amazon, where I prefer to buy. Overall parts availability isn't bad, but it's a step down from robots where everything you need is a one-click Amazon purchase.

Is It Worth the Price?

At full retail this is an expensive price point for what you're getting, especially for a robot that's sized more for a smaller home or apartment and doesn't have great obstacle avoidance. For the same or less money, a Mova P10 Pro Gen 2 or a Roborock S-Pro-series robot gets you more features and does a better overall cleaning job. If this one drops well below its regular price, it starts to look reasonable for a smaller space — but at full price, I'd point you toward one of those instead.

Just get the Mova P10 Pro Gen 2. That's my honest bottom line here.