That's not entirely true. Roombas nowadays do come equipped with LIDAR. iRobot scrapped most of their in-house designs and instead chose to use generic OEM parts to build modern robots in 2025. And they are quite good.

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fullstop 2 days ago | parent [-]

It's a little too late now, no?

I wonder if they fell into a sunk cost fallacy with their camera-based approach.

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imp0cat 2 days ago | parent [-]

Probably yes, but time will tell.

Right now, their chinese OEM bought them and seems to be committed to keeping their robovacs alive.

It is my understanding that US availability of the top models (such as 705 combo) may be limited, so here is a german youtube channel that has a lot of reviews of their newer units and compares them to the old ones (usually the S9 or 980, as those are the best units when it comes to vacuuming): https://www.youtube.com/@frickhelm/videos

	▲	fullstop 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm guessing that the Chinese OEM bought them partially for the name itself, but mostly for their patents.