Roomba Combo J9+ review

The final time I reviewed a Roomba I used to be wowed by its most notable evolutionary leap: its skill to acknowledge and keep away from pet poop. Admittedly, I had by no means thought of the potential catastrophe of a robotic vacuum colliding with canine droppings, however the advantages of averting it have been fairly clear.

However the issue iRobot’s new flagship Combo J9+ addresses is one I have thought of – and doubtless each different robotic vacuum consumer has as nicely: How do you greatest maintain a mopping robotic vacuum from making a watery mess on rugs and carpets? Producers have give you quite a lot of imperfect options, starting from putting bodily and digital obstacles round carpeted areas to outfitting their robots with mops that elevate themselves just a few millimeters earlier than rolling over rugs.

iRobot might need give you the best concept but: a totally retractable mopping arm. The arm sits unobtrusively on prime of the Roomba Combo J9+ till you provoke a vacuuming and mopping job; it then lowers to the underside. When carpet is detected, the arm retracts again to the highest of the robotic till it resumes cleansing hard-surface flooring. As a result of the mopping plate strikes utterly away from the ground, there’s no danger of carpeted surfaces getting soaked.

The retractable mopping arm was really launched with the Roomba Combo J7+, an improve of the J7+ talked about above. The Combo J9+ retains that characteristic and several other others, whereas incorporating some all-new enhancements. One of the vital hanging is the brand new Clear Base design.

An progressive charging base

As charging docks get bigger to accommodate water tanks and self-emptying bins, it turns into tougher to hide them amongst family furnishings. iRobot says it needed to verify the J9+ base station may mix in with the design aesthetic of the house, whether or not it was positioned in the lounge, bed room, or kitchen.

The result’s one thing that might cross for a small piece of furnishings, that includes a black matte end, beveled entrance door, and a fake woodgrain prime that capabilities as a desk floor on which you’ll be able to place small objects, reminiscent of a plant or family knick-knacks. In follow, this final contact helps the dock additional mix together with your décor, regardless of its portly 16.3 x 15.8 x 16.4-inch (HxWxD) dimensions.

The door on the bottom station supplies entry to a water reservoir that holds 30 days of liquid to robotically refill the robotic’s onboard tank, and a mud bag that may maintain about 30 days of particles emptied from the robotic’s dustbin. Certainly one of my favourite design touches is the pair of slots on the within of the door that maintain further mopping pads and dirt luggage, in order that they don’t get misplaced.

The robotic itself measures 3.4 x 13.7 x 13.7 inches (HxWxD) and contains a single button on prime to start out, pause, and resume cleansing. When the robotic is at relaxation or vacuuming, the mopping arm sits on the again, the place it blends into the highest floor. On the underside are a pair of ribbed rubber rollers and a single spinning edge brush.

The front-facing digicam, first launched with the J7+, has been saved and so has the impediment avoidance expertise, together with pet waste recognition backed by iRobot’s P.O.O.P. (Pet Owner Official Promise) guarantee: In case your robotic plows into pet poop inside the first 12 months of your buy, the corporate will ship you a brand new robotic without charge to you.

Michael Ansaldo/Foundry

Setup and efficiency

To arrange the Combo J9+, you plug within the Clear Base and insert the robotic into its slot to cost. The iRobot Residence app facilitates the connection to your Wi-Fi by means of a simple prompt-driven setup. You’ll additionally must take away the water tank from the Clear Base and fill it with plain water or a suitable cleansing resolution earlier than your first cleansing job. Lastly, you need to elevate the mounting plate from the highest of the robotic and fix one of many mop pads.

The robotic can study and map your house because it cleans or throughout a devoted mapping run. The latter is faster and is simpler on the battery, however the possibility is buried within the app, so I simply let it discover because it cleaned. After its first run, the robotic had precisely mapped all of my residence’s accessible house and labeled the rooms. It additionally populated the map with numerous icons indicating the kind of ground surfaces, the dirtiest areas, and the place it encountered obstacles. I used to be capable of edit it to appropriate any inaccuracies and add cleansing zones and no-mop areas.

The maps are disappointingly primary, although. They’re rendered in drab monochrome with little element. For comparability’s sake, contemplate the maps produced by Roborock’s premium robotic vacuums, which use shade coding to delineate rooms, mean you can add furnishings like couches and beds, and might be rendered in 2D or 3D. The iRobot app’s maps are ample for understanding and managing the place the Combo J9+ cleans, however they’re fairly crude for such an in any other case refined product.

The Roomba Combo J9+ comes with three ranges of suction energy and computerized carpet increase that ratchets up the suction when it acknowledges carpeted surfaces. The most recent model of its robotic working system, iRobot OS 7.0, additionally provides Grime Detective intelligence to assist it shortly establish and prioritize cleansing the dirtiest areas of the house first, and a SmartScrub mode that permits the robotic to use a back-and-forth scrubbing movement to raised clear stains and sticky messes from hard-surface flooring. When you approve a map, all of this goes into impact because the robotic plots an environment friendly cleansing path, understanding the place to use extra suction, the place to mop, and the place there are obstacles to be averted. This all appeared to work as marketed in my testing.

There was loads of tracked-in mud on my laminate flooring resulting from heavy rain throughout my testing interval, and the Combo J9+ did a strong job of eradicating it. It was arduous to see the scrubbing movement in motion because the robotic labored, however the elbow grease utilized was evident within the outcomes. I’ve a single space rug in my front room, however the retractable mop arm labored flawlessly every time the robotic approached it.

Michael Ansaldo/Foundry

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Notably, the Combo J9+ doesn’t embrace a pad-wash characteristic in its Clear Base. Self-cleaning mops have turn out to be extra frequent, however iRobot says it needed to keep away from the odors a lot of these docks have a tendency to provide over time, together with the additional cleansing customers should carry out to defeat them. To that finish, the Combo J9+’s mop pads are mechanically cleanable, so you possibly can merely toss the soiled one within the laundry and swap in a clear one after every job.

About that lackluster app

The iRobot app isn’t at all times simple to navigate, and I might’ve appreciated to have seen extra of the robotic’s controls positioned up entrance. The house display shows buttons for initiating cleansing jobs and manually emptying the robotic’s dustbin and refilling its water tank. However just about each management, together with belongings you’d seemingly wish to regulate earlier than each cleansing job, reminiscent of suction energy and water degree, are relegated to a sub-menu.

The app doesn’t assist a stay map, both, so you possibly can’t see the robotic’s present location and the place it has cleaned in actual time. The app additionally devotes appreciable house to the iRobot retailer and to pushing messages reminiscent of assist suggestions and reminders to subscribe to iRobot’s mailing listing. Finally, I discovered it enough however not notably pleasurable to make use of. There’s quite a lot of room for enchancment.

Do you have to purchase a Roomba Combo J9+?

The Roomba Combo J9+ doesn’t really feel just like the quantum leap the Roomba J7+ did, however that’s comprehensible provided that it retains all of that vacuum’s many inventions. It’s automation enhancements and new furnishing-friendly design simply make it one of the refined combo robotic ground cleaners you should purchase. However shoppers ought to fairly count on a $1,400 robotic vacuum to have a extremely polished companion app, and in its present state, the iRobot app falls wanting that; its design is lackluster and requires an excessive amount of searching to search out important instruments and options.

That stated, the Roomba Combo J9+ remains to be value contemplating should you want a 2-in-1 mopping robotic vacuum, however we’d advise ready till the worth comes down a bit to get your cash’s value.

Not the proper robotic vacuum for you? Take a look at our round-up of all the most effective robotic vacuums we’ve examined, for our prime suggestions.

This assessment was first printed in our sibling publication, TechHive, and has been reproduced for inclusion right here.