iRobot Combo Review

Combo is the first mop-and-vacuum robot, and it's also the company's best-looking. The brushed aluminum top and iRobot Logo are more sophisticated than the loud designs of rivals.

The iRobot Home application is used to help you set up and guide your robot. The app gathers data on usage and maps of your home, including furniture and obstacles. Maps and image information are only shared with you if you have signed up.

It's not a mop

The Combo Irobot, a highly smart mopping robot, has all the capabilities of the fantastic Roomba J7+ and adds a water reservoir onboard as well as mopping pads that are small and a robot arm that can lift and lower the pad. It can accomplish a lot of work in 111 minutes before running out of juice and automatically returning to its base station to recharge.

The model with the combo also comes with the iRobot home app, meaning you can start and stop cleaning runs. It's also a stylish robot, sporting matte black plastic that doesn't show fingerprints or dust and an aluminum top piece that is brushed with a small iRobot logo.

It's a fantastic vacuum cleaner and is able to cross over large areas of carpet or transition strips between flooring surfaces. It's even able to capture fine dust that other robotic vacuums don't. However, it's not so well in cutting. It can't get rid of dried milk stains, unless you've sent it at least four or five times.

irobot mop And vacuum Combo's dedicated Braava Jet M6 mopping machine, which is available as a bundle with the j7 Plus often for less than the combination Combo and performs much better at this and other tough tasks. It can even clean up ketchup and wine spills, but I would not recommend it following any liquids that have a high amount of sugar.

It's a vacuum

It's also among the most attractive robot vacuums, with a smooth top piece that doesn't display dust and fingerprints as easily as other models. Its tiny dustbin and water tank are easy to close and open, although they're not the best in terms of capacity. The Combo j7+ also has the features you'd are used to from iRobot, including map and obstacle avoidance mapping that works reliably and quickly. But it's the mopping arm that really makes this model stand out in its class. The mop pad is kept on the top of the robot vacuum. However, if it detects a surface that needs mopping, the pad is lowered under and behind the robot vacuum. This is a significant improvement from other robot vacuums that require you to manually remove the mop pad for hard floors and carpets or even turn the entire machine off to mop.

It's an electric charging station.

Place your Combo Irobot on the charging station, and align the metal contacts on the base. The charging station is easy to set up and operates well. During my testing it took just a few minutes for the robot to begin charging and then make a sound when it was finished. When the Combo robot is charged, you can begin an exploration run in the app to help the robot better comprehend your home. You can also mark certain objects like cords for lamps, as permanent avoidances in the app. You can also connect Alexa or Google Assistant to your robot to allow commands with your voice to navigate around the house.

It's a smart device

Combo irobots depend on the use of acoustic sensors as well as onboard cameras to identify the type of floor they're cleaning, as well the objects that are in your home. It then combines this information with maps of your surroundings and information from the robot's onboard camera to create a personalized cleaning schedule for each room. This allows it to be smart enough to avoid your sofa, lamp cords and other objects you want to keep intact. As with any connected device there are concerns over the privacy of these data. iRobot however, states that it will not sell any customer information and will not take any images without the consent of customers.