Roomba's Cheapest Robot Vacuums Now Have 3 Premium Features (Without the Upcharge)

Roomba-maker iRobot has added four new lidar-equipped robot vacuum models to its 2025 lineup, bringing premium features to a more reasonable price. They include the Roomba 205 DustCompactor, the "world's first" robovac equipped with a compacting bin, which mechanically compresses dust and debris to save space in the dock. Imagine it as being similar to the trash compactors in a garbage truck. "The net benefit to the consumer is you are going to get 60 days of hands-free maintenance without the need for the separate auto empty dock," Warren Fernandez, iRobot's director of product management, said. Fernandez told CNET that this feature, exclusive to the Roomba 205, will target people who may want to hide their robovac under their sofa -- meaning they don't want a large dock in their homes -- and avoid what some have described as the "jet engine noise" of an auto-emptying dock. The noise of the compacting bin won't "elevate itself above the noise the robot vacuum is already making." Th ... Read full article.