REASONS TO BUY
Cleans rice with ease
Picks up fine debris
REASONS TO AVOID
Hits furniture
No room mapping feature
No multiroom coverage
No barrier protection
No disposal system
iRobot Roomba 675 Review
This machine doesn't have the best algorithm to clean your house effectively and lacks otherwise standard features
Credit: iRobot
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Our Verdict
The iRobot Roomba 675 offers some mixed performance with a few very specific high points, like doing an excellent job of cleaning rice from carpets and flour from hard surfaces. However, the 675 does an ineffective job of cleaning your whole house, lacks the intelligence to keep from abusing furniture or avoiding pet droppings, and lacks some of the otherwise standard convenience features and functions. We wish this model had a dust collection system, which we've become accustomed to by testing so many other more capable models. While it may have an attractive price, you'll get what you pay for, and you'll generally be disappointed that you didn't consider a better option. We think you should check out other top robot vacuums in our review.
Our Analysis and Test Results
While the iRobot Roomba 675 might be attractive as a first foray into robot vacuum ownership because of its relatively low price point, you'll get what you pay for dollar-for-dollar with poor overall performance.
Not the best model we tested, but the 675 does a decent job on hard surfaces.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Performance Comparison
We purchased the most promising and highly rated robots, then tested them in a series of challenges before awarding scores based on their respective performances. Overall, we determined that the iRobot Roomba 675 is not a worthy candidate for your dollar.
The 675 is a less than phenomenal offering, shown navigating a room.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Navigation
A robot vacuum's ability to autonomously navigate an environment is the essence of a robot vacuum. Therefore, we weighted navigation to comprise 30% of each vacuum's overall score, and the iRobot Roomba 675 performed poorly.
This model is abusive to furniture.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
While it managed to navigate around furniture okay, the 675 would never finish an area around furniture before moving to a different part of a room. Its movement was also different than that of other Roombas and generally shaky left to right.
Aside from strange navigation that avoided cleaning areas near hard-to-navigate furniture, the iRobot Roomba 675 was quite harsh on furniture and seemed to lack any sense of direction.
The Roomba 675 navigates its way back to its small docking station.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Home Coverage
We expect autonomy and enough intelligence from a robot vacuum to cover all areas of our homes; as such, our team tested home coverage. Comprising 20% of each robot's overall score, the iRobot Roomba 675 did a decent job cleaning around edges in our tests but also had some serious faults.
The Roomba's simplistic app interface doesn't handle multiple rooms or virtual barriers.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
The lack of room-to-room functionality was detrimental to the Roomba 675's performance. Its inability to do multiple rooms, combined with a lack of barrier avoidance and smashing of furniture, left a lot to be desired.
Our test team's edging and corner test.
Credit: Jessica Riconscente
Carpet Cleaning
Carpet cleaning is the only metric where this model did a decent job compared to the other vacuums we tested in our product lineup.
This robot did an above-average job cleaning carpets.
Credit: Jessica Riconscente
It did an excellent job picking up rice, and great job picking up oatmeal, an above-average job picking up breakfast cereal, and an okay job of cleaning up flour.
It's fair to say that the iRobot Roomba 675 generally does a good job cleaning carpets, and it would suffice to keep a carpeted room clean until your next regular house cleaning.
The simplistic brush is surprisingly effective at carpet cleaning.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Hard Surface Cleaning
In our hard surface challenges, the Roomba 675 did a surprisingly good job cleaning rice but struggled to clean oatmeal, leaving behind a pile of oats and dust. It could not pick up breakfast cereal and ultimately dragged some before leaving a lot behind, even after circling back to the mess multiple times.
The 675 does a great job of cleaning rice off of hard surfaces.
Credit: Jessica Riconscente
The Roomba 675 also did a decent job cleaning flour off of hard surfaces, only struggling to extract flour from cracks completely. In general, it is an average performer when it comes to hard surfaces.
The iRobot Roomba 675 tackles hard surfaces.
Credit: Jessica Riconscente
Pet Hair
Comprising 10% of an overall product score, we measured each vacuum's ability to pick up pet hair, and the iRobot Roomba 675 did a rather unexceptional job. This model earned a less than stellar score after failing to pick up over 80% of the 5 grams of pet hair used in our test.
Convenience
The iRobot Roomba 675 is a rather feature-lacking robot vacuum. It has no physical remote, and the app lacks many settings and intelligence to improve convenience.
This model lacks a dust removal system, seriously impacting its convenience.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
For example, the app lacks convenience-enhancing features and settings such as the ability to draw virtual barriers, adjust suction power, repeat a function, and it has no cleaning map. For the lack of convenience features and functions, the Roomba 675 scored one of the worst scores in this metric.
The iRobot Roomba 675 on its way to a fairly feature-less docking station.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Should You Buy the iRobot Roomba 675?
The iRobot Roomba 675 earned one of the lowest overall performances in our product test lineup. While it is one of the most affordable robot vacuum models we've tested, you get what you pay for. While it does a decent job cleaning carpets, it does not excel at anything else. You would be better served by increasing your budget and getting more performance out of other models.
What Other Robot Vacuums Should You Consider?
With an increase in budget, you would be better off considering the Eufy RoboVac X8 Hybrid, a much more capable robot vacuum, or the iRobot Roomba J7+ for more pet-specific features.
—
Jessica Riconscente and Benjamin Hickok
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