a robot vacuum cleaner that sucks and mops

Are you looking for a good robot vacuum cleaner? Then check out our review about the iRobot Roomba Combo i8+! This Roomba can vacuum and mop!

iRobot Roomba Combo i8+ review

The iRobot Roomba Combo i8+ (recommended price: 799 euros) is perhaps the perfect help in the house. This small, round robot takes care of many of your vacuuming and mopping tasks. Can you now put that old-fashioned vacuum cleaner with the bulky waste? We tell you in our review!

Roomba Combo i8+ review: a robot vacuum cleaner that sucks and mops

The large box contains the Roomba from iRobot and a special charging station (Clean Base). This is a special container in which he sucks up the dirt after his cleaning round. You have to pay attention the first time when this happens: because it comes with a considerable amount of noise. Luckily it only takes a few seconds.

Incidentally, the Roomba is also for sale without this large station and costs 499 euros. But then you have to manually empty the small container in the Roomba itself every time.

Set up and explore

After installing the app and making a WiFi connection, you need to give the robot a name. After doing that, we had to leave our ‘Mister Janssen’ on the base station for a while to charge and download the latest updates. Then it was ready for use.

The first few times, the iRobot Roomba Combo i8+ has to map your house and explore the area. That’s why he takes a little longer to complete his rounds the first few times. For an average ground floor of about 40 square meters, with carpet, kitchen chairs and furniture as obstacles (and some shoes on the floor), the vacuum cleaner took about 45 minutes. This was after he completely mapped out the living room.

Vacuuming with obstacles

You can hear the Roomba doing its thing while vacuuming, but the sound is not nearly as loud as a regular vacuum cleaner. In the long run, it does get annoying when you are at work or want to talk to someone, for example. That’s why it’s often just a bit more convenient to let the vacuum cleaner do its thing when you’re not at home.

Clear app

This is very easy with the Dutch app. This way you can order the Roomba to start a cleaning round wherever you are. Of course you can also set it to make its rounds at fixed times. By the way, you can also start the Roomba by pressing the button on top of the device.

Also with Siri

You can also use Siri voice commands. You can then say “Hey Siri, would you like to vacuum the kitchen?”. Unfortunately, the iRobot i8+ does not support Apple’s Home app. And that is a loss.

You can get started with, for example, IFTTT or Apple’s own Assignments app, but you have to dive into that. The Roomba does have support for Google Home and Alexa.

Rug: beware

Incidentally, the Roomba cleans well. The carpet was also no problem, but he had more issues with a high-pile mat. It eventually managed to clean (the Roomba does a kind of dance to get to all the places), but it took a lot of effort. Keep that in mind if you have a lot of these types of rugs.

The iRobot knows what to do with loose dirt, cat hair, crumbs and the necessary dust nests. He especially knows how to clean smooth floors. The only thing that sometimes happened was that small hard crumbs were launched by the brushes and ended up in places where the cleaner had already been. But that only happened very sporadically.

Slipped slippers

Also, don’t be surprised if he sometimes moves your shoes. Although the iRobot can drive around obstacles, it sometimes pushes light objects in front of it. For example, our slippers were suddenly in the kitchen instead of at the back door.

Also with mop mode

When you want to use the mop mode, you can’t just click the container with the mop in it. At least, not the first time. Before the Roomba can mop, you must scan the QR code on the bin with your iPhone. The app then installs the update and you will see the necessary information that you still need to perform.

Also keep in mind that the bin in the iRobot Roomba Combo i8+ is not emptied after mopping. You have to do that yourself. You can also indicate on the map in the app where the iRobot does not have to mop.

Conclusion iRobot Roomba Combo i8+

The iRobot Roomba Combo i8+ is a great robot vacuum cleaner. However, you should not see the vacuum cleaner as a replacement for your weekly (?) vacuuming round, but more as a support. Especially if you have pets or children who drop a bowl of chips too often, this help in the house is really a godsend. You can then turn on the vacuum cleaner when you are away from home (or put the kids to bed) and you will return to a tidy room.

The mop function is useful, but only works well on light stains. You can set the Roomba to scrub extra hard, but then it will still only remove superficial stains. So don’t expect to never have to mop again.

The collection container on the charging station is nice and prevents you from having to empty the container every time. Keep in mind that you have to buy new vacuum cleaner bags every now and then. Fortunately, you don’t have to do that very often, because we tested the Roomba for 1.5 months and the box was not even half full.

The iRobot Roomba Combo i8+ is currently the cheapest at the official iRobot website. There is currently an offer there and this version with the special charging station costs 599 euros (normally you lose 799 euros).