Roomba Max 875 Combo debuts SealForce carpet tech as iRobot returns to IFA under new owner

iRobot is back at a major tech trade show for the first time in several years, using IFA in Berlin to introduce its first flagship robot vacuum since emerging from bankruptcy. According to The Verge, the Roomba maker is exhibiting under Picea Robotics, the contract manufacturer that acquired the struggling US robotics company out of bankruptcy in January.

Two machines lead the lineup: the $1,199 Roomba Max 875 Combo, the new top-of-the-range vacuum and mop, and the cheaper $899 Roomba Plus 678 Combo. Both are on sale now through iRobot's own store, with the 875 offered in black or white.

SealForce presses the vacuum into the carpet

The headline cleaning upgrade on the 875 is a system iRobot calls SealForce. When the robot senses carpet, a skirt lowers around the cleaning head to form a tighter seal, pushing airflow further down into the pile. Combined with a new vane-type blower motor that chief engineer Adam Pope says moves 20 liters of air per second, iRobot claims the feature delivers carpet cleaning three times deeper than the robot achieves without it.

The Verge reports that the 875 is rated at 35,000 Pa of suction, the strongest figure iRobot has published to date — a shift in itself, since the company spent years declining to disclose detailed suction specifications. There is a design trade-off: the machine uses a single rubber brush rather than the dual rollers iRobot has long been known for, a change Pope says is necessary to preserve the seal against carpet.

Elsewhere, the 875 navigates using lidar and camera-based vision, has a slimmer body than the earlier Roomba 775, and can climb over thresholds up to 3.5 cm high.

Mopping gains a heated mist and a self-washing dock

The mopping side gets its own additions. A roller mop can extend sideways to reach along edges, and a new feature called ThermaMist sprays a heated mist ahead of the roller to loosen stains before it passes over them. A retractable cover shields the mop while the robot vacuums so carpets stay dry, and the bundled dock empties debris, rinses the mop with hot water and dries it with heated air. The 875 also picks up a hair-cutting anti-tangle main brush alongside an anti-tangle side brush.

The cheaper model swaps features for a lower price

The Roomba Plus 678 Combo keeps the roller mop and the SealForce system but steps down to 30,000 Pa of suction and 18 liters per second of airflow. It skips ThermaMist and the mop cover entirely, and instead offers SprayForce, which squirts cleaning solution onto set-in stains to soften them, then circles back to mop them up afterward. The 678 also raises its mop by 10 mm whenever it detects carpet.

Both robots work with Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Siri Shortcuts, and are currently working through Matter certification, according to Pope.

Why it matters

This launch is the first real test of whether iRobot can compete again after a stretch in which rivals such as Narwal and Dreame — whose Narwal Flow 2 and Dreame X60 Max Ultra flagships carry comparable sealing technology — moved ahead on innovation. The Verge's assessment is that the 875 brings the company much closer to the current state of the art than its previous relaunch managed, thanks to genuinely practical additions rather than gimmicks like arms and legs. Sealing a vacuum to carpet is a problem upright manufacturers have chased for decades, and if Roomba's version works, it targets the most common weakness of robot vacuums on deep pile. Just as telling, a polished flagship debut at IFA signals that iRobot under Picea Robotics is once again operating like a company planning to stick around.