iRobot Combo Review

Combo is the first mop by iRobot and vacuum robot. It's also one of the most stylish. The brushed aluminum top and iRobot Logo are more elegant than the blatant designs of other competitors.

The iRobot Home application is used to guide and configure your robot. The app gathers usage data and maps of your home that include furniture and obstacles. Maps and images are only shared with iRobot if you opt-in.

It's a mop

The Combo irobot, a very smart mopping robot, has all the capabilities of the excellent Roomba J7+ and adds a reservoir of water onboard and mopping pads, and a robot arm that can raise and lower the pad. It can do many tasks in the 111 minutes it takes before running out of juice and automatically returning to its base station for recharge.

The combo model also features the iRobot home app, meaning you can begin and stop cleaning runs. The robot is also stylish, with matte black material that does not show fingerprints or dust and a brushed aluminum top piece that has the tiny iRobot logo.

It is a fantastic tool of vacuuming, with no issue crossing over large area rugs or transition strips between flooring surfaces. It can even pick up fine dust that many robotic vacuums miss. It's not great at mowing. It can't get rid of dried milk stains, unless you've sent it a few times.

iRobot's dedicated Braava Jet M6 mopping robot, that is available in combination with the J7 Plus, often for less than the combo Combo is much more effective at this and other tough tasks. It can even suck up ketchup and wine spills but I'd suggest sending it after any kind of liquid with a significant sugar content.

It's a vacuum

It's one of the more attractive robot vacuums. The top piece is smooth and doesn't show fingerprints or dust as easily as some of its competitors. The tiny dustbin and water tank of this vacuum are easy to open, but they're not the largest. The Combo j7+ has all the smarts you'd expect from iRobot. This includes map and obstacle avoidance maps that work reliably and quickly. The mopping arm is the thing that makes this model stand out from the rest of its competitors. The mop pad is placed on the top of the robot vacuum. However, if it detects a surface that requires mopping, the pad is lowered beneath and behind the robotic vacuum. This is a major improvement from other robot vacuums that require users to manually remove the mop pad to Effortlessly Clean and Mop with iRobot Roomba i5 hard floors and carpets or even turn the whole machine off to mop.

It's an electric charging station.

Place your Combo Irobot on the changing station, and align the metal contacts on the base. The charging station is reliable and is simple to set up. In my tests it took the robot a few moments to charge before it would make noise when finished. Once the Combo robot is fully charged, you can begin a mapping run on the app to help the robot better understand your home. You can also mark specific objects like lamp cords as permanent avoidances within 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 utilize acoustic and onboard sensors to discover the kind of floor it's stepping on, as well as the furniture in your home. It also combines this knowledge with maps of your space and image data from the robot's camera to develop a custom cleaning plan for each space. This makes it smart enough to stay clear of your sofa, lamp cords and other objects you wish to keep. Of course, as with any device that is connected there are concerns regarding the privacy of this data. However, iRobot Roomba i7: Smart Mapping Alexa-Compatible Vacuum affirms that it will never sell customer data and no images are captured without customers' permission.