iRobot Combo Review

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

You use the iRobot Home app to set up and guide your robot. The app collects usage data and maps of your home that include obstacles and furniture. Maps and images are only shared with iRobot in the event that you choose to opt-in.

It's a mop

The Combo Irobot, an extremely smart mopping robot, has all the intelligence of the superb Roomba J7+ and adds a reservoir of water onboard as well as mopping pads and a robotic arm which can lift and lower the pad. It can do a great amount of work in just 111 minutes before it gets power cut off and returns to its base station to recharge.

The combo model comes with the iRobot Home app, so you can start or stop cleaning runs. It's also a good-looking robot, with matte black plastic that does not show fingerprints or dust and the top piece of aluminum is brushed with a small latest irobot roomba logo.

It is a great vacuum cleaner, and it does not have any trouble crossing large area carpets or transition strips between flooring surfaces. It's also able to pick up fine dust that other robotic vacuums don't. It's not very good in mowing. It can't obliterate dried milk stains, like, unless you send it out at least four or five times.

irobot black friday deals’s dedicated Braava jet M6 mopping robot cleaner, often available as a bundle with the J7 Plus for less than the combo Combo does a much better job of this and other difficult jobs. It can even clean up ketchup and wine spills however I'd recommend against sending it after any kind of liquid with a high sugar content.

It's an air vacuum

It's one of the more attractive robot vacuums. The top part is smooth and doesn't display dust or fingerprints as easily as some competitors. Its tiny combo dustbin and water tank are easy to close and open, although they're not the best in terms of capacity. The Combo J7+ comes with all the smarts you'd expect from iRobot. It has maps and obstacle avoidance maps that work reliably and quickly. But it's the mopping arm that makes this model stand out in its category. The mop pad is placed on the top of the robot vacuum. When it detects a surface that needs mopping, the pad is lowered underneath and behind the robotic vacuum. This is a significant improvement over other robot vacuums which require you to remove the mop pads for hard floors or carpets manually. You can even turn off the entire unit 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 easy to put in. In my tests, it took a few minutes for the robot to begin charging and to make a noise when it was done. Once the Combo robot is fully charged you can start a mapping run on the app to help the robot better understand your home. The app allows you to mark certain objects as permanent avoidances, such as lamp cords. You can also connect Alexa or Google Assistant to your robot so that you can use commands with your voice to navigate around the house.

It's a smart device

Combo irobots use acoustic and onboard sensors to learn about the kind of floor it's encountering, as well as the objects that are in your home. It then combines this information with maps of your space and image data from the Robot Vacuums iRobot's onboard camera to create a customized cleaning schedule for each room. This allows it to be smart enough to avoid your sofa, lamp cords and other items you want to keep intact. Of course, as with any device that is connected, there are concerns about the privacy of this data. iRobot however, states that it will never sell any customer information and that no images are taken without the consent of customers.