iRobot Roomba Combo Essential robot vacuum and mop (Y0140) - Black

The iRobot Roomba essential combo is simply that, just the essentials when it comes to everything for an automated vacuum. The iRobot Roomba Essential combo does some things really well and falls short in a few areas, however I think it was made/designed this way for a reason. This is a product that is simple and easy to use and gets the job done. While being a smart vacuum it can be used without an app with the physical buttons Clean, Home and Spot clean. What the Roomba Essential does really well is clean, the vacuum picks up just about anything that comes in front of it on hard surfaces(on super furry rugs it doesn’t work at all) and I have had no issues with its suction power. The Essential Combo was even strong enough to push over smaller items when cleaning an area. It does well when transitioning from tiled floors to rug and almost seemed to have a hop to it so it could make the transition. What really got my attention was how long this vacuum worked without having to return to its power station (it easily went an hour and 15 min while still having 50% battery remaining). The mopping function works well also the only thing you need to do is make sure the pad it presoaked before adding the attachment. Cleaning the dustpan or adding/removing the mop attachment is easy. There is even a small brush that is attached to the dustpan to get any small items that don’t fall out. The app for the vacuum is easy to understand and gives you all of the essential information. I did notice that on the IOS app you get a bit more information than the android version, however both work just as well. While the iRobot does a really nice job cleaning/mopping it does fall short in certain areas. The application is very limited and is a hit and miss when it comes to mapping and has glitched on me a few times. There is no way to add areas to vacuum, all you can do is set how long you want the job to go for. This was one of the biggest short falls of the vacuum since you can’t send it to a particular room of your choice. Since the mapping is a hit and miss it does take a while to know where the home station is, thankfully the battery life is amazing so you don’t have to worry about the battery hitting 0% before it gets back to the home base. The obstacle avoidance isn’t the best and just like the mapping is a hit and miss. Overall the iRobot vacuum does a really good job when it comes to cleaning and most of the issues I had are with the software and the missing features are usually for the higher end products in the automatic vacuum cleaners. I was impressed with how well it cleaned and mopped it would be a great entry spot for anyone looking for a automated vacuum.

I recently got the iRobot Roomba Combo Essential Robot Vacuum & Mop for my home, and have used it for about a week now and have had a mostly positive experience, along with some little annoyances. The convenience of the Roomba is a nice addition to the home. With just the push of a button, a simple voice command to my smart assistant or scheduling it to run in the iRobot app the Roomba will vacuum and mop throughout my home, picking up dirt, dust, and debris on both hard floors and carpets. The intelligent navigation system allows the Roomba to map out my home's layout, though it did have some issues with running over a random foam block causing it to get stuck, getting caught under an awkward piece of furniture, getting tangled up on the cable cord and dragging a shag rug. So, I do recommend monitoring it the first couple of runs throughout your home. What sets the Roomba Combo Essential apart from other robot vacuums at this price point is its dual-functionality as both a vacuum and a mop. The vacuuming performance is decent, with strong suction power that lifts and removes dirt and pet hair from the floors. The mop attachment provides a nice thorough clean, leaving my hardwood floors clean and streak-free. The mop attachment comes with two mop pads that are velcroed to a plastic bracket and if you don't want the Roomba to mop, just remove the attachment and it will only vacuum. I found the best aspect of the Roomba is its ability to get under those hard to reach places that you can’t get at with a standard vacuum. The iRobot app is where you control and set up the Roomba. Setup is super easy, just follow the step-by-step guide and connect it to your WiFi and you’re good to go. The app is very user-friendly when it comes to the features and customization options that the Roomba Combo Essential offers. The iRobot Home app allows me to schedule cleaning sessions and has a feature that will only run when I’m not at home. You can set cleaning preferences if you want to use the mop or just vacuum, which allows me to keep my place clean even when I'm not around. I do wish I was able to see a real time heat map of where the roomba is currently in the house, but you can only see the heat map after it has completed its job. In terms of maintenance and upkeep, the Roomba Combo Essential is a breeze to clean and maintain. The dustbin and mop reservoir are easy to empty and refill. Roomba does recommend you change the brush and filter every 6 months. The dust bin is on the smaller size, so I recommend emptying it after every 2-3 cleans. Also at this price point, I do wish the docking station came with an automatic dustbin disposal. Overall, the iRobot Roomba Combo Essential Robot Vacuum & Mop is a good automatic Vacuum in terms of performance, convenience, and versatility. That being said, I do not think it will 100% eliminate your need for a standard vacuum, where you will still want one for those immediate spills, big homes with multiple floors, and especially if you have more than one animal that sheds. Just go into viewing the Roomba as a partner to the standard vacuum, where it cleans those tricky areas that you can't get to and just keeps your home tidy. Pros: Convenient and hands-free cleaning with intelligent navigation. Dual-functionality as a vacuum and mop for comprehensive cleaning. User-friendly app for scheduling, customization, and monitoring. Suitable for both hard floors and carpets with strong suction power. Cons: May struggle with very high-pile carpets or shag rugs. Some may prefer a larger dustbin for less frequent emptying. Docking station does not have an auto empty dustbin Not for big homes.

First time owing a roomba and i am more than impressed how how well it cleans up it saves me time while i do other things. I can turn it on before i get home from work and clean floors.

iRobot is iconic for its creation of what we now call "roombas". Those little helpers are a staple in many households, chipping away at some of the chores that we all pretty much hate, such a running the vacuum and mopping. Even if we have come a long way, these machines still aren't able to fully replace cleaning by hand, but they do help maintain the floors from dirt between two deep cleaning days. So let's have a look at the newest product from iRobot, the Roomba Essential 2 in 1. The unboxing was a positive experience, the Roomba is well designed and is sturdy, there are soft foam "pegs" on its sides to avoid damage to furniture and base boards (a great idea). Navigation is smarter than the average and the device seems to be able to manage more complicated surroundings better than my other two robots. The suction power is amongst the strongest I have ever seen and the motors driving the Roomba are VERY powerful (it's the first time I saw a Roomba pop a wheelie and I'm not even kidding). Now that we have seen the vacuum function, let's have a look at the mopping. Mopping is not great. In order to use it, you take the dust compartment out which features a soft plastic latch that pops open to add cleaning solution and water. Sadly the compartment is about the size of a shot glass and it's a bit hard to get the mixture right at first. Once that was done, I put the mop adapter plate and slightly wet the pad (of which there are 2 in the box). I pulled up the app and had it start the vaccum+mopping function. I let the Roomba do its thing while I watched a movie. I came back and it was parked and charging (good!). It wasn't until I went to empty the dust bin that I realized that the device had sucked up a small amount of mop water which turned everything in the tray into a wet mess. I think that the way the Roomba runs it's path, it sucks up parts of the previous track it was cleaning as those slightly overlap. I'm planning on trying this again but as of now, I am not a fan of the mopping (even though the floor was very clean without streaks on hardwood floors). The companion app is very well made, it doesn't have too many options in which you'd needlessly drown and the two main functions are right there on the first page, allowing you to essentially start the cleaning in two taps on your phone. The remaining of the app is just a intuitive and easy to navigate with notifications on the cleaning process. That's another clear win for iRobot. This new model comes with improvements and a competitive price point, ready to trade blows with other brands and it might very well come out on top. As I have mentioned above, the only big problem I have encountered was related to the mopping function, which needs some work. Aside from that, be it the suction power which is great, the simplicity of the app or the generally less erratic pathfinding (which plagues most low cost solutions) all offer overall better cleaning results. This is what happens when you care just as much about your hardware as you do your software. I would have given the Roomba Essential a better rating if the mopping function worked better as this is 50% of why you would purchase this device. Nevertheless, aside from that, there is hardly anything wrong with this Roomba and it does do a good job at maintaining your floors from dust and dirt.

The iRobot Roomba Combo Essential is their newest entry-level floor solution. This is a vacuum-mop combo, which is surprising to see at this price point. I have used a couple of Roomba’s in the past, and a couple of vac-mops so I had some idea of what to expect. My current basement vacuum is a Roomba J7+, which I really like, so I had a positive outlook for the Combo Essential. Design and Features The Combo Essential sticks to round shape that Roomba’s always have. It measures in at Ø13.0” x 3.1”. The main cleaning path (roller head width) is 6” along with a side brush that picks up dirt along the edge. The top of the vacuum is pretty simple – black plastic with the silver iRobot logo and 3 buttons. The 3 buttons are return to home, spot clean, and power/clean (big button). The power/clean button lights up white when fully charged and pulses white while charging. The front of the device has the sensor array with light, touch, and cliff sensors. The rear of the device is the dustbin/water tank, which is removable. The bin/tank combo also carries the cleaning brush in a little molded spot for safe keeping. Opening up the dustbin compartment reveals the removable filter, which can be washed to prolong its life. The dock of the is pretty small, so its easy to locate a spot for it. It has a built in Velcro strap on the back to bundle up any extra cord length, which I thought was pretty nice. The dock uses an IR emitter to guide the vacuum home. Controlling your Combo Essential is done with the iRobot app. I already had the app installed for my J7+, so this was one less step for me to take. Pairing it with the app was easy and getting it onto the home Wi-Fi was no problem. Compared to the J7+ the feature list was very brief. There is a scheduling assistant, settings for vacuum suction strength, runtime limits, and mop water amount. As far as cleaning presets there is only “Vacuum Everywhere” and “Vacuum and Mop Everywhere.” I thought I would have to start with a mapping run, but that is not an available feature. The feature set is pretty basic and is almost reminiscent of earlier robot vacs that bounced around the house for a few hours before stopping. Setup and Initial Run The setup process was just as easy as my other Roomba. I located the dock according to the guide book directions, and put the vac on the charger to wake it up for setup. I breezed through the app process of adding it to the Wi-Fi and giving it a name in just a few minutes. The quick setup guide gives you details on how and where to position the dock. The whole process is very easy to follow even if you aren’t very tech savvy. I let the vac charge for a few hours, per the manual, before it set off on its first vacuum-only run. I let it run for almost 2 hours before I had it return to the dock, so the run-time claim checks out. The vacuum had 2 instances where it got tripped up in the initial run – it got confused around the base of the refrigerator, and when told to return home it spent a decent amount of time finding the base. Neither of these issues have happened since, so it was kind of odd. Transitioning to mopping meant pulling off the dustbin to attach the mop pad to it and fill the reservoir with water. In the app you can choose between 3 water dispersion levels. Prior to starting the mop run you need to block off any carpet areas because the vacmop doesn’t differentiate between flooring types. You will end up with wet carpets if you don’t block them off. With this vacuum there is no map to configure with “Off Limits Zones” or anything like that. Again, I would liken it to the old style of robovacs that aimlessly bounced around – not much to configure. In the Combo Essential’s case the pathways for cleaning aren’t random though, and it does clean the floor in nicely laid out rows. Cleaning Performance Cleaning is pretty simple – vac or vac+mop are your only options, and you can toggle the suction strength, water dispersion level, and runtime. From there you just hit clean and the vacuum does its thing. It runs up and down the floors in nice lines. There is no small object detection, so you have to make sure the floors are picked up beforehand. It found a sock under a bed on one run and some cords on another. The vac handles the top of the stairs with ease – no tumbling down to the basement. It navigated the thresholds between rooms and handled hard floors, area rugs, and carpet just fine. I have 2 huskies that shed plenty, so I paused it a few times to check how full the bin was. About halfway through I had to empty it, but that’s similar to how I have handled my other robovacs that don’t self-empty. Corners are still difficult due to the round shape, but that is an issue across the board with all the round robovacs. I had to clean out the roller after a few runs to undo the long hair/dog fur combo before it impacted the rollers ability to spin or clean effectively. This is fairly standard for me when it comes to robovacs. I felt like it handled the hardwood pretty well, and it did so without making much noise. Carpet performance on a medium pile carpet was OK. There was still some dog fur and hair left behind that a cursory manual vacuuming would clean up. The run-time is pretty long on this vacuum, which impressed me, so it has the ability the cover the upstairs space more than once. Switching to mop mode is easy enough. You select a new cleaning job in the app and pick the vacuum+mopping option. The mop attachment is a simple pad that attaches to the dustbin. You will want to block off any carpet beforehand. The mop pad is washable, and the vac comes with a spare. Compared to my experience with other vacmops - one that utilized rotating scrubber heads, and another that used ultrasonic vibrating cleaning pad, I would put this down at the bottom just behind the vibrating pad. The stationary pad can only handle so much, which should be expected. It does a good job on surface dust, and water spots, but that’s about it. Stuck on debris, sticky spots, etc. will not be fully cleaned. A cheap steam mop will take care of these issues much more effectively. I will say if you have a relatively clean house that just sees a lot of surface dust then this would be more than adequate. I think someone like my mom in Arizona would benefit from a vac-mop like this. An adult home that stays picked up, big floor plan, mostly hard floors, and no difficult floor messes (just desert dust). Overall, the Roomba Combo Essential is a good starter robovac. I was surprised at how bare bones the feature list was compared to my j7+. I would have expected some basic mapping features like no-go zones or room designation, but I guess the sensor suite isn’t able to handle that degree of floorplan mapping. It does beat out the old robots that would bounce around aimlessly. I really think this would be a good vacuum for someone with a well-kept house already, and without pets that shed a ton. The long run time would be great for larger floor plans. Even though the scope of the mop’s effectiveness is limited it would still be useful to someone that wants to take care of surface dust with more than just the vacuum suction.

This thing will run over stuff so make sure you have cords and other items out of its way. The unboxing was easy along with the setup. Like most other pieces of technology, you have to download their app to set up the Roomba combo. The app is straightforward to use. Pick a spot in your house for the charging dock. It came fully charged and you hit the "vacuum" button! You will watch this thing move and navigate throughout your home. It's quite interesting seeing it maneuver around items and corners. How it easily handles rugs as well. My hardwood floors have to be swept once a week. I ran this thing 3 times which wasn't needed. One time was more than plenty. I just wanted to see this thing in action. It can vacuum under objects and beds. It hits those hard areas my cordless vacuum can't. With the app, you can set up a schedule to vacuum and mop. If you did this once or twice a week you'd be fine. You clean the trash bin easily with the click of a button. You'd be amazed at how much dust was collected. I did not use the mop function because there was no need to. This thing isn't the quietest, I tried running it while I was sleeping. That didn't fair well. It's not the loudest but I'm a light sleeper. You will hear it from time to time running into something. No worries not like it will damage anything. My main problem was I could not get the app to display the Map feature. It would be nice to see the layout and configure it for different days. I tried everything to get this feature to work. Last, but not least, make sure you remove anything on the ground. Any type of cord can be a problem because this thing will run it over and pull it. It could potentially snag a cord out of something or pull something over an edge.

Solid starter robot vacuum, doesn’t have mapping so he does get caught under the furniture very frequently

This one is extremely helpful. I have it on an automatic schedule 3 times a day and it makes my life so much easier. Extremely helpful if you have pets that stay indoors.

The Roomba Combo Essential (RCE), despite being a “budget” entry model still manages to include a mop, a nice value-added from previous entry-level models. The mop feature is limited in functionality and effectiveness, for sure, but it’s nice to have rather than not. More important, the RCE’s core vacuum performance is impressive. In this light, it is a five-star product, though not without weaknesses. To be clear, you get what you pay for here, but, used in the right scenario it’s a great solution and is a terrific addition to my cleaning arsenal for sure. ABOUT THE MOP & MY EXPERIENCE WITH IT I’ll start with the mop since it’s the RCE’s “headline” feature. My conclusion on the mopping feature is, while useful, is a bit of “jack of all trades, master of none.” Its Achille’s heel is the mop pad mounts on the bottom of the RCE and is always in contact with the floor. On the other hand, most of its more expensive “smart” siblings lift the mop when going over areas that shouldn’t get wet. This is not a complaint, just something to understand about how the RCE works. Moreover, according to the user manual, only cold water is safe for use in the mop’s tank. That’s fine for a daily tile touch up, but it’s is a no-go if you want to disinfect. By example, my main level, where RCE lives, is an open floor plan with tile in the kitchen and hardwood and rugs in the family room/dining area. This makes scheduling the RCE for auto-starts here limited to vacuum-only since I wouldn’t want to wash my hardwood without the ability to immediately dry them and also, obviously, don’t want to get my rugs wet. So, in my situation, to mop my kitchen with the RCE I have to block it off with a few cases of sparkling water. Of course, if you have a less open floorplan you can just close doors. The mops itself works as advertised and is good for freshen-up, but not a deep clean. Disclaimer: this is the first robot mop I’ve ever used so I have no personal benchmark to compare the RCE’s mopping effectiveness against other robot mops. It’s probably unfair, but I have a stick-vacs with mop attachment and a steam mops, so that is my yardstick here. The positive of the RCE, and something my other mops can’t do, is vacuum and mop simultaneously. That’s the real value for the RCE’s mop. It’s a huge time saving function even if it’s not a mopping genius. In standard vacuum/standard mop mode it picked up 90% of typical kitchen debris – tiny bits of wrappers, food, and dust. Especially helpful was its attention to the baseboard areas, which are awkward for any vacuum. What RCE wasn’t able to handle was stubborn dried sauce and drippings. My steam mop and stick-vac mop can easily erase these messes with just a little pressure. The RCE ran over those like they didn’t exist. I wanted to give the RCE the benefit of the doubt so I ramped up the mop to “ultra” and vacuum to “extreme” and ran the routine again. No change at all. The dried stains remained. I wasn’t ready to give up so I placed the RCE directly on the stain and pressed the spot cleaning button. Again, the stain won. Based on these initial experiences the mop function isn’t something I see myself using much since I have a stick vac mop accessory too. Maybe if I had doors to close off my kitchen from the rest of the floor I’d use it for a quick unattended clean. But having to physically block off the kitchen to mop, well, it will be less work and quicker for me to just use the stick vac mop. I might use the RCE’s mop when I need to multi-task and short on time; the RCE can mop while I’m doing other things. ABOUT THE VACUUM & MY EXPERIENCE WITH IT (including set up). Before I get into vacuuming, a quick walk though on the setup experience. Supplied accessories include a home dock/charger, power supply, mop attachment with washable cloth, and one extra cloth. There is also a small brush to clean the roller that stores on the bottom of the RCE. (Cat or puppy chauffeur is optional. Haha). As with so many appliances these days, an app with a questionable “privacy policy” is required for set up. Using the iOS app, I was required allow Bluetooth and Wi-Fi with “precise” GPS location. I tried using general GPS location but that was a no-go. From there the app connects to your home network and minutes later your Roomba is ready to use. I’m guessing the requirements are the same when using the Android app. The app features, at first glance, looked interesting to me with configurable specific room “quick starts,” automatic cleaning schedules, and using Siri voice commands via Siri Shortcuts (voice commands are also available for Alexa and Google). After fiddling around more though it appears the RCE model is unable to “learn” the location of rooms like its upper tier “smart” siblings. So the apps true functionality with the RCE is limited to: 1) schedule automatic cleanings generally, but not for a specific room or area, 2) set up basic voice commands like start, stop, go home, for Siri Shortcuts, Alexa, and Google, and 3) adjust the vacuum suction and mop wetting levels, 4) control the RCE (start, pause, go home). I did not see an option to spot clean in the app, only a button on the RCE itself. True to the “essential” part of its name, the RCE relies on collection “dumb” sensors for navigation. When it detects its path is blocked it backs off and goes around it or changes course versus the “smart” models that navigate using a “road map” of your home. I didn’t find this to be a problem since I schedule it to clean when I’m not home and don’t really care where or how it roams as long as it cleans – and it does clean. Incidentally, the RCE’s packaging shows the RCE uses an up and down path but in my experience it starts out that way but as soon as it bumps into an object it goes random. It still vacuums the entire area but it’s not via a predictable route. The RCE roller bar is a combination of soft bristles and a (guessing) a silicone sweeper (see attached picture) so it seems designed to clean the different kinds of flooring on my main level, though I have not done any testing in that regard. If you need to define precise areas to clean then your options are to close the door or put up other physical barrier or look at a “smart” model that has that functionality. To test out the RCE vacuuming effectiveness I took it my bedroom since the floor below the bed collects dust like squirrel’s horde nuts in the fall. To save time I set vacuum suction to high. I closed the door and punched “play” on the app and watched. The room is approximately 300 sq. ft. and the RCE took about 40 minutes to complete (I manually cancelled). One of the cool features of the app is that it does give you a map of where it cleaned, and areas missed. In this cleaning it missed maybe 15% but to be fair most of these areas were blocked by furniture. My takeaway after the cleaning and checking the dustbin was “WOW!” (see attached picture). It was really disgusting, but also impressive that RCE captured all of this. I absolutely love the RCE for the reason it can more easily clean under beds and furniture that is hard to reach or too low for stick vacs to get to. This also includes baseboards which are the bane of my cleaning life. I don’t think they’ve been this clean since the last painting. The RCE’s path looked mostly random (to me) but it did logically concentrate in one half of the room then the other. It also spent more time in areas where there was more dust. I’m extremely confident now leaving it to clean unsupervised – which to me is the point of a robot vac. The RCE was quite muscular in the way it approached slightly uneven surfaces such was the transition strip between the bedroom and bath or the HVAC vent cover. It never got stuck, although, like any vacuum it does have an appetite for cables, so make sure those are out of the way. BATTERY LIFE AND CHARGING Battery life is also fantastic. Even on max suction power, after 40 minutes I still had well over half my battery left. From that I think it’s clear the RCE could easily clean a total of 700 sq. ft. in a single charge at max, or even more at standard power. When the time comes to charge, the RCE automatically goes to its charging dock, or you can send it there. There is no fumbling with plugging in a cable for each charge. WHO ITS FOR & BOTTOMLINE The RCE is an excellent robot vac for the money. Most importantly it has excellent suction. The mop part to me, for my home’s floorplan is a bonus. The RCE will supplement, not replace either my stick vac with mop attachment or steam mop. But I think the RCE could be one’s sole vacuum/mop in a small home, condo, or apartment or other space if that space has similar flooring or the user is willing to block off areas when mopping.