Roborock S8 Pro Ultra vs Roomba Combo j9+: I Ran Both for 30 Days — Here’s the Spreadsheet
Alex Morgan Both of these machines cost more than my first car. Both promised to make floor-cleaning a non-decision. Both arrived at my apartment in late April in giant boxes I could not get up the stairs alone. For thirty days, the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra and the iRobot Roomba Combo j9+ alternated daily runs of my 1,100-square-foot Mission apartment. I kept a Google Sheet. My partner thought I was insane. Here’s what the spreadsheet actually told us.
What they have in common
Both are 2026-tier flagships, both cost north of $1,000 at MSRP, both mop and vacuum on the same run, and both come with a self-emptying tower that turns the experience into a once-a-month operation rather than a daily one. They both map the floor on the first run, both let you draw no-go zones on a phone, and both will, at some point, get stuck on the same Persian rug fringe in your bedroom. I tested.
Day-by-day, who won what
Mopping (Roborock by a wide margin)
The Roborock’s mop is a vibrating pad that lifts off the floor when it crosses carpet. The Roomba’s mop is a pad that the robot “intelligently” raises by a quarter-inch over carpet, which in practice means it sometimes left damp stripes across my bedroom rug. After two weeks the Roborock had eliminated a sticky spot near my dog’s water bowl that the Roomba had been smearing around for the entire test period.
Pet hair on hardwood (Roborock again)
I have a 40-pound mutt. The Roborock’s dual rubber rollers picked up tumbleweeds of hair that the Roomba’s single rubber + bristle roller mostly nudged into corners. Once a week I cleaned the brushes on both machines; the Roomba’s bristle roller needed dental-floss-level untangling. The Roborock’s rollers came out clean enough that I stopped checking.
Carpet (Roomba edges it)
For deep cleaning a medium-pile rug, the Roomba pushed more debris into its bin per pass. Not by a huge margin, but enough that if your home is primarily carpeted, this is the one I’d lean toward. The j9+ ramps up suction noticeably when it detects a higher-pile surface, and I can hear it. The Roborock does the same thing but more politely.
The app (Roborock, by a lot)
Both apps work. Only one is enjoyable to use. The Roborock app shows a clean LIDAR-generated 3D map of your home, schedules per-room cleaning, and lets you tell it “clean only the kitchen at 6 a.m. on Tuesdays.” The iRobot Home app shows you a map, lets you label rooms, and has an alarming number of upsell prompts for Roomba-branded cleaning products. The Roomba app feels like it’s trying to sell you something every fourth tap.
The dock (push)
Both docks empty the robot, refill the water tank, wash the mop pad, and dry it. Both work. The Roomba’s dock is uglier and bigger; the Roborock’s is uglier and quieter. I now know more about robot vacuum dock aesthetics than any sane person should.
The dealbreakers I’d want flagged
The Roomba’s replacement dust bags are proprietary, run $5-7 each, and last about 60 days in a pet household. Over a year that’s around $45 in bags I’d rather not be paying. The Roborock uses a washable cyclone bin in the dock; no consumable required.
The Roborock has had three firmware updates during my month of testing. Two were uneventful. One bricked my robot for 90 minutes until I figured out how to power-cycle the dock. The Roomba had one firmware update and it worked silently.
The third option I genuinely considered
The Eufy X10 Pro Omni costs roughly $300 less and does about 85% of what the Roborock does. If you’re not a pet owner and you don’t mop daily, it’s the value play in 2026. Anker has gotten very good at undercutting Roborock by a meaningful margin while shipping software that’s now genuinely competitive.
What I’d actually buy
If your floors are mostly hardwood, tile, or LVP, and especially if you have pets, the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra is the smarter purchase. The mopping is genuinely good, the app is genuinely good, and the bin doesn’t require an Amazon subscription to maintain.
If your home is primarily carpeted and you live deep in the Amazon-Alexa-Roomba ecosystem, the Roomba Combo j9+ is the safer, more refined product. The hardware is mature; the bag tax is the price of admission.
If you’ve never had a robot vacuum before and you want to dip a toe in without spending a thousand dollars, the Eufy is the easy yes, and you can spend the saved $300 on a Nest thermostat or a really nice dinner.
My apartment is mostly hardwood. My partner now refers to the Roborock as “our dog.” The Roomba is in a box waiting to be returned. That’s the verdict.
Featured photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels. SmartBuy earns a commission on qualifying Amazon purchases.
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