Should I buy a Roomba in the Black Friday sales? No – here's why

Black Friday is fast approaching, and if you were considering using the annual sales event to pick up a cut-price robot vacuum, one brand that might be on your radar is Roomba. This was the original robovac (or at least, the first commercially viable, consumer grade model) and has graced TechRadar's best robot vacuum ranking ever since it changed the floor-cleaning game all those years ago. (Until recently, at least – more on that in a second.)

What might not be on your radar is that Roomba's parent brand iRobot is in the middle of some serious financial difficulties – so much so that it's looking increasingly like the Roomba's days are numbered. If the brand is unable to secure emergency funding or a buyer, it could go bankrupt in a matter of weeks. So, should you still consider buying a Roomba this Black Friday? I probably wouldn't recommend it.

Even though iRobot isn't out of action yet, it's looking like it's going to go that way. If you were to buy one now, you'd be taking a risk in terms of aftercare if anything went wrong down the line, and you needed customer support or even a replacement.

More than that, though, I probably wouldn't recommend one of the current wave of Roomba bots in the first place. iRobot's robot vacuums were once top of the pack, but in recent years, the brand has struggled to keep up with the competition.

In March 2025, the brand culled and completely replaced its existing range, and while the new lineup looked promising, responses have been mixed at best. My reviewer called the iRobot Roomba 205 DustCompactor a "crushing disappointment" due to unreliable mapping and navigation, and noisy operation.

While I suspect there will be plenty of iRobot Roomba deals floating around in this year's Black Friday sales, I'm sorry to say I personally wouldn't buy one, no matter how great-value it looked.

What robovac brands should I look at instead?

My favorite robot vacuum brands are Roborock and Dreame. If you have a bigger budget, both have superb high-end bots in their range – the Roborock Qrevo Curv is my top recommendation right now, and the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete picked up TechRadar's Robot Vacuum of the Year award for 2025.

Alternatively, both offer strong budget-friendly options. The Dreame D9 Max Gen 2 and Roborock Q7 M5 are both simple but effective, and among the best cheap robot vacuums I've come across.

The robot vacuum market is fairly saturated, and I'm anticipating plenty of discounts across the board from both brands, on Black Friday and in the weeks leading up to it.

What's happening with iRobot?

The most recent development in the iRobot story is a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing that states that the brand's "financial condition continues to decline" and if it is not granted a loan waiver extension, it "may be unable to secure the additional funding needed to continue [its] operations."

iRobot has been struggling for some time, and a potential brand-saving proposed Amazon acquisition bit the dust in 2024 due to push-back from EU market regulators. As a result, the brand significantly streamlined its operations, and in March 2025, it discarded its current range and unveiled a completely new lineup. Unfortunately, it proved not to be the saving grace the brand must have been hoping for, garnering very lukewarm reviews. At the time of writing, the brand's future is looking increasingly uncertain.

If you're interested in iRobot's meandering brand journey, TechRadar's Editor at Large Lance Ulanoff goes into more depth about the brand's history in this article – it's well worth a read.