irobot cleaner Combo Review

Combo is iRobot's very first mop-and vacuum robot, and it's also the most stylish model from the company. The brushed aluminum top and iRobot Logo are more elegant than the blatant designs of other competitors.

You can use the best irobot Home app to set up and guide your robot. The app tracks usage data and maps of your home that include obstacles and furniture. Maps and image data is only shared with iRobot when you sign up.

It's not a mop

The Combo irobot is a very intelligent mopping robot irobot roomba that has all the advantages of the excellent Roomba J7+ and includes an on-board water reservoir, a small mopping pad, and a clever robot arm that lifts and lowers the pad. It can complete many tasks in 111 minutes before running out of juice and automatically returning to its base station for recharge.

The model with the combo also comes with the irobot Roomba mop and vacuum home app, which means you can begin and stop cleaning runs. It's also a stylish robot, with matte black plastic that doesn't show dust or fingerprints and the top piece of aluminum is brushed with a small irobot mopping robot logo.

It is a great vacuum cleaner and has no trouble crossing over large areas of carpet or transition strips between flooring surfaces. It's also able to pick up fine dust that other robotic vacuums miss. It's not very good in mowing. It won't remove dried milk stains unless you do it four or five times.

IRobot's own Braava Jet M6 mopping robot, which is available in combination with the J7 Plus, often for less than the combination Combo, fares much better at this and other tough jobs. It can even clean up ketchup and wine spills, though I'd advise against using it in the presence of liquid that has a high sugar content.

It's an air vacuum

It's also one of the better-looking robot vacuums, with a smooth top piece that doesn't show dust or fingerprints as easily as the competition. The tiny dustbin and water tank of this robot vacuum are simple to open, but they're not the most spacious. The Combo j7+ has all the smarts that you'd expect from iRobot. This includes maps and obstacle avoidance maps that operate reliably and quickly. However, it's the mopping arm that makes this a standout model in its category. The mop pad is kept on the top of the robot vacuum. However, when it spots a surface that requires mopping the pad is moved beneath and behind the robotic vacuum. This is a significant improvement over other robot vacuums that require you to manually remove the mop pad to clean carpets and hard floors, or even turn the whole unit off for mopping.

It's an electric charging station

When you're ready to charge your Combo irobot, just place it on the charging station and align its metal contacts with the ones on the base. The charging station is simple to set up and operates well. In my tests, it took the robot a few moments to charge, and then it made an audible sound when it was completed. After the Combo robot is fully charged, you can begin a mapping run on the app to help the robot better understand your home. The app also lets you to mark certain objects as permanent avoidances, such as lamp cords. You can also connect your robot to Alexa or Google Assistant, so you can use voice commands to guide it around the house.

It's a smart device

Combo irobots make use of acoustic as well as onboard sensors to discover the kind of floor they're navigating and the furniture in your home. This information is then combined with images from the robot's onboard camera as well as maps of your home, to create an individual plan to clean each room. It's smart enough to stay clear of your lamp cords, couch, and other objects that you wish to keep. As with any connected device there are concerns about the security of these information. However, irobot for hardwood floors says it will never sell customer information and all images are taken with customers' consent.