Roomba 104 Review — Powerful, Smart & Easy Cleaning

The Roomba 104 is an entry-level robot vacuum designed to automate everyday floor cleaning with smart navigation and app-based controls. It combines a 3-stage cleaning system, dual brushes, and ClearView LiDAR mapping to cover rooms efficiently and avoid obstacles.

Who it’s for: busy households that want a hands-off way to maintain floors between deeper cleanings — especially homes with mixed hard floors and low- to medium-pile carpets. Quick verdict: the Roomba 104 is a capable, budget-friendly option for routine cleaning that emphasizes mapping and targeted passes over advanced extras.

What’s in the Box

• 1 Roomba 104 Vac Robot
• 1 Charge-Only Dock

(If you’re expecting extra brushes, filters, or a remote, those are not listed in the manufacturer’s included contents.)

Design & Build

The listing does not provide exact materials, weight, or dimensions for the Roomba 104. What is clear from the specification set is that this is a compact, disc-shaped robot intended to move under furniture and through doorways, and it uses the same outward design language as other Roomba units (Not specified: exact size and weight).

Ergonomics and practical form factors you can expect:

• Low-profile, circular chassis designed to get under couches and beds (exact clearance not listed).
• Top-mounted controls for simple onboard operation; app and voice control reduce the need to touch the unit frequently.
• The included charge-only dock is a basic home base; the listing doesn’t specify whether it includes a side brush spare or extra filters.

If you need exact dimensions or weight for storage or compatibility with furniture, those figures are Not listed in the manufacturer’s summary.

Key Features

70X More Power-Lifting Suction

Benefit: The Roomba 104 advertises “70X more power-lifting suction” compared to the Roomba 600 series, which indicates a significant bump in raw suction force over that older baseline (source: listing, checked 2025). In real life this matters when you want quicker pickup of pet hair, dust bunnies, and tracked-in dirt — fewer passes required to see visibly cleaner floors.

Where it helps: Homes with pets or heavier foot traffic will notice the difference on hard floors and low‑pile carpets; suction helps pull debris into the bin rather than pushing it around.

ClearView LiDAR Mapping & Navigation

Benefit: ClearView LiDAR builds a detailed map of your home and steers the robot with more deliberate, efficient paths. Compared with random or purely sensor-driven patterns, LiDAR-based navigation generally improves coverage and reduces missed spots.

Where it helps: Large or multi-room homes where methodical cleaning prevents wasted battery and overlapping passes. The mapping also enables features like room-targeted jobs and keep-out zones.

3-Stage Cleaning with Dual Brushes

Benefit: The Roomba 104 uses a 3-stage cleaning system paired with a Multi-Surface brush and an Edge-Sweeping brush. The three stages typically mean agitation, extraction, and suction — the brushes loosen debris and direct it to the suction path.

Where it helps: This setup is useful for mixed-floor households — sweeping along baseboards and edges with the edge brush while the multi-surface brush handles transitions between floors.

Fully Custom & Targeted Cleaning

Benefit: Through the mapping capability you can schedule cleans by room, select the number of passes, and adjust suction levels. That lets you prioritize high-traffic areas for more frequent or intense cleaning while leaving lesser-used rooms on a lighter schedule.

Where it helps: If you want morning cleans in the kitchen and evening touch-ups in the living room, targeted scheduling reduces run time and keeps the battery focused on what matters most.

Easy-to-Use Roomba Home App

Benefit: The Roomba Home app enables tap-to-start cleaning, delivers time estimates for jobs, shows filter status, and allows you to set keep-out zones. Managing maintenance (filter life) and scheduling from your phone keeps the robot working reliably without frequent manual checks.

Where it helps: Households that prefer to control cleaning remotely, receive job feedback, or set geo/timed schedules. The app-centric approach simplifies day-to-day management.

Spot Cleaning for Extra-Dirty Areas

Benefit: Spot cleaning lets the robot focus on a small area for repeated passes for up to 5 minutes (source: listing, checked 2025). Instead of running a full cycle, the robot intensively cleans a localized spill or a high-dirt cluster.

Where it helps: Quick response to tracked-in dirt at an entryway, a small kitchen spill, or concentrated pet activity areas.

Voice Control & Simple On-Device Buttons

Benefit: The Roomba 104 works with Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant, plus you can control it via onboard buttons if desired. That gives you three straightforward ways to start, stop, or direct a clean.

Where it helps: Voice-enabled homes and users who enjoy hands-free control — e.g., “start cleaning the living room” without opening an app.

Recharge & Resume

Benefit: When the battery runs low mid-clean, the robot returns to the dock, recharges, and picks up where it left off. This avoids incomplete jobs and improves final coverage compared to robots that stop when the battery is low.

Where it helps: Larger floor plans or complex layouts where a single battery charge might not cover every mapped room in one go.

Wi‑Fi Ready (2.4 GHz)

Benefit: The robot uses a 2.4 GHz Wi‑Fi network for setup and operation. After setup it continues to use 2.4 GHz while your phone can switch back to 5 GHz for other tasks.

Where it helps: Houses with mixed-band routers need only ensure a 2.4 GHz network is available during setup and operation.

Performance & Use

Practical setup tips

• Place the charge-only dock on an open stretch of wall with a few feet of clearance on each side so the robot can find and align with it easily.
• Create keep-out zones in the Roomba Home app for areas with cords, fragile décor, or concentrated clutter.
• During the first few runs allow the robot to fully map your floor plan so subsequent cleans use targeted paths and avoid repetitive re-mapping.

Maintenance & care

• Check the app for filter status and empty the bin frequently—full bins reduce suction efficiency (filter life monitoring available in the app).
• Inspect and clean the multi-surface brush and edge-sweeping brush regularly to prevent hair-winding and keep performance steady.
• If the robot reports navigation errors, clear the area of small obstacles and re-run a mapping pass.

Real-world expectations

• The unit is designed for routine maintenance cleaning rather than deep, once-a-week cleanups. Expect it to keep floors tidy between manual vacuums.
• Spot cleaning lets you respond quickly to concentrated messes without a full cycle.
• The claimed 70X suction boost relative to Roomba 600 series suggests stronger pickup but doesn’t replace a full-sized vacuum for deep carpet pile or heavy soiling (source: listing, checked 2025).

Pros vs Cons

Who Should Buy

• You should buy this if:
  • You want automated, map-driven cleaning that can be scheduled by room and adjusted for multiple passes.
  • You live in a mixed-floor home with pets or daily foot traffic and want improved suction over older Roomba 600-series models.
  • You prefer app and voice control for start/stop and spot cleans.
• You shouldn’t buy this if:
  • You need exact runtime, dimensions, or weight before purchasing (those specs are Not listed).
  • You require an auto-empty base or specialized filtration explicitly stated in packaging (Not listed).
  • You rely exclusively on a 5 GHz-only home network for all IoT devices — the robot requires a 2.4 GHz connection.

Simple Specs

Closing — Should you consider it?

If you want a dependable, map-aware robot vacuum that focuses on practical cleaning features — room scheduling, LiDAR mapping, strong suction compared with older Roombas, and simple app/voice control — the Roomba 104 is a practical choice for everyday maintenance. It’s best as a complement to periodic deep cleaning rather than a full replacement for a heavy-duty upright vacuum. Check that your home network supports 2.4 GHz and be aware the listing does not include certain physical specifications or accessories sometimes found with higher-tier models.

If you need help comparing the Roomba 104 to specific alternatives or want to know what replacement parts and consumables you should buy with it, tell me which models you’re considering and I’ll outline differences and recommended add-ons.