iRobot Unveils Roomba Max 875 and Plus 678 at IFA with New SealForce Carpet-Cleaning Tech

iRobot said the main upgrade is a sealing system called SealForce. Chief engineer Adam Pope said the system lowers a skirt around the cleaning head when it detects carpet, creating a better seal that sends airflow deeper into the fibers. He said a new blower motor moves 20 liters of air per second, and the company says SealForce cleans carpet three times deeper than without the feature. The Roomba Max 875 Combo has 35,000 Pa of suction, the highest published spec iRobot has ever released; for years, the company refused to give detailed suction numbers.

To accommodate the better carpet seal, the 875 uses a single rubber brush instead of iRobot’s signature dual rollers. It navigates with lidar and camera-based vision, has a slimmer footprint than the Roomba 775, and can climb thresholds up to 3.5 centimeters high. The Combo model includes a self-cleaning roller mop with more downward pressure than the 775. A heated mist feature called ThermaMist sprays ahead of the mop to pretreat stains, and a retractable mop cover extends during vacuuming to keep carpet dry. The bundled dock empties the dustbin, washes the mop in hot water, and dries it with hot air.

According to The Verge, sealing technology similar to SealForce already appears on rival flagships such as the Narwal Flow 2 and the Dreame X60 Max Ultra. The 875 pairs SealForce with ThermaMist and new anti-tangle main and side brushes.

The $899 Roomba Plus 678 Combo also has SealForce and a roller mop but drops to 30,000 Pa of suction and 18 liters per second of airflow. It lacks ThermaMist and the retractable mop cover. Instead it uses a SprayForce system that sprays cleaning fluid onto stains and returns later to mop them, lifting its mop 10 millimeters when carpet is detected. Pope said both models work with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Siri Shortcuts and are undergoing Matter certification.