iRobot Roomba Combo Essential Review (2024)

The $274.99 iRobot Roomba Combo Essential is an affordable robot vacuum and mop hybrid with a few useful upgrades over its predecessor, the Roomba 694. It has an attachable mop pad, for one, along with stronger suction power and smarter navigation. In testing, it proved proficient at both mopping and vacuuming, rivaling the performance of models that cost a lot more. Though it lacks smart mapping technology for customized zone cleaning or the convenience of a self-emptying dustbin, it supports app and voice control. So, while relatively simple, the Roomba Combo Essential works well for its budget-friendly price, earning it our Editors’ Choice for entry-level robot vacuums.

Design and Features: Just the Basics

iRobot launched the Roomba Combo Essential alongside the vacuum-only Roomba Vac Essential ($249.99) as a new line meant to replace its entry-level Roomba 600 series. The hybrid Combo Essential has the same $274.99 price as the vacuum-only Roomba 694 and comes with upgrades like improved navigation, 20 times the suction power, and 25% better hardwood pickup, according to iRobot, in addition to mopping abilities.

iRobot makes a lot of different Roombas and refreshes its lineup often, so it can be confusing the differentiate them. In general, Roombas with Combo in the name both vacuum and mop, and those with a plus sign are self-emptying. The j series adds a camera for obstacle avoidance, and higher-end models in that line like the Combo j9+ ($1,199.99) have a retractable mop to clean hardwood floors and carpeting in a single run without getting the latter wet. The Roomba Combo 10 Max + Auto Wash Dock ($1,399.99) is the most hands-off model in iRobot's lineup, with the ability to not just empty its dustbin but automatically wash and dry its own mop pads.

Given that the Combo Essential costs a fraction of the price of high-end robot floor cleaners from both Roomba and its competitors, it's understandably missing a lot of niceties, such as computer vision-powered obstacle avoidance and self-maintenance abilities. It can’t nimbly navigate around obstacles like its more expensive siblings, so you'll want to keep your floor relatively clear of clutter.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

On a mopping run, you’ll need to block off your carpeted floors or manually detach the mop pad for a vacuum-only run. Inside the robot's dustbin is a mopping liquid reservoir, which holds enough water to mop up to 500 square feet in a single run. Between runs, you’ll need to manually empty the dustbin, wash the mop pad, and refill the mop water reservoir.

In terms of design, the Combo Essential blends in with the rest of Roomba’s lineup with its mostly black exterior and disc shape. It’s 3.15 inches tall and 12.99 inches in diameter, so it’s slightly shorter and smaller than the Combo j9+ (3.4 inches tall and 13.7 inches in diameter). At 6.17 pounds, it’s also lighter (the Combo 9+ weighs 8.97 pounds).

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

On the bottom, it has a multi-surface main brush roll with V-shaped bristles designed to reduce hair tangles as it cleans, and a single edge-sweeping brush. The mopping pad Velcros onto a hard plastic attachment that snaps into place on the bottom of the dustbin when you want to switch to mop mode. The bottom of the robot also houses contact sensors for regaining charge, cliff sensors to help it avoid falling down stairs, two main wheels flanking the main brush roll, and a front caster wheel for turning.

The top has three buttons: The center button starts, pauses, and resumes cleaning. The button on its right, with a circled dot, starts spot cleaning, where the robot navigates in a spiral pattern to thoroughly circle the area. The third button sends the robot back to its dock.

The front of the robot has a reflective panel housing specialized sensors, including a gyro and infrared sensor for navigation. The back houses the dustbin, which you can remove by pressing down on a gray release lever. The dustbin is easy to pull free for manual emptying. The top flips open so you can dump its contents into your trashcan, and the bin has a small brush nestled in a slot on top that you can use for a quick wipe-down. A blue plastic lid next to the flip-open top pivots up so you can fill up the mopping water compartment.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

The Combo Essential has Wi-Fi, so in addition to the buttons on top, you can control it with the iRobot Home app (available for Android or iOS) or even voice commands if you have a device equipped with Alexa or Google Assistant. In the app, you can customize cleaning runs with three levels of suction power and three levels of water output.

Setup and App Controls: Keeping It Simple

The Roomba Combo Essential includes the vacuum itself, the base station, two mopping pads, the mop mount attachment, the side brush, and instructions.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

To set it up, you need to download the iRobot Home app and create an account. Position the small, rectangular base station against a wall near an outlet, and with some free space around it so that the vacuum can easily come and go. Specifically, iRobot recommends giving the base station 1.5 feet of clearance on either side, four feet of clearance in front, and four feet of clearance from stairs.

Plug in the base station and use the recess on the back and the Velcro strap to secure any excess cord, then wake up the vacuum by lining up the charging contacts on the bottom with the contacts on the base. The robot chimes once it's awake. The instructions warn it can take a few minutes, but it happened within moments for me.

Next, open the app and tap the button in the upper right corner to open the options menu and hit Add Your Product. The app walks you through the rest of the setup process: You go through various agreements, then connect the robot to your Wi-Fi network. Note it needs a 2.4GHz signal specifically. From there, you press the clean button on the robot to confirm setup and give it a name. Altogether, the process took me less than five minutes.

Once it’s set up, the app walks you through tips and controls, and then you’ll see an image of your robot with its status and battery life at the top of the device page. Buttons on this page let you quickly start the robot in vacuum-only mode or vacuum and mop mode. Other app features let you change suction power and water usage settings, set up a cleaning schedule, and give the robot a time limit. Under Run History, you can see a rough outline of where it cleaned. Hit the menu button in the upper right to connect it to your smart home ecosystem and enable voice controls through Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.

(Credit: iRobot/PCMag)

Unlike its more expensive siblings, the Roomba Combo Essential doesn't produce a customizable map in the app. Other models let you label specific rooms on the map for targeted area cleaning and set up Keep-Out Zones so the robot automatically avoids those places.

Before you start a mopping run, you need to fill the water reservoir, wet a mop pad, attach it to the mop mount with Velcro, and snap the mount to the bottom of the dustbin. Since the robot does not automatically avoid carpeting while mopping, you’ll also want to make sure you’ve removed any area rugs and blocked off any areas with carpet so that the robot doesn’t drag the wet mop pad over them.

Good Battery Life, Average Navigation

After giving the Roomba Combo Essential time to charge, I turned it loose in my home. In testing, it ran for up to 127 minutes on a charge, outperforming iRobot's estimate of 120 minutes. In terms of sheer battery life, it beats the high-end Roomba Combo j9+, which lasted 115 minutes.

When I closed it in a single room, it had no trouble thoroughly cleaning the entire space. It rarely got stuck on common household objects like chair legs and flooring thresholds, which tend to halt budget robot vacuums, though it did bump into things while shuffling itself out of jams.

During whole-home runs, it struggled to cover my entire 1,500-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment. Out in the open, it consistently got lost, repeatedly covering certain areas while missing entire rooms. Or, it covered some rooms thoroughly but only traced the perimeter of others before returning back to its base. It sometimes ran out of battery in the middle of the floor as it was unable to find its way back to the base station in time.

Given its sub-$300 price, it understandably lacks a camera or any sort of laser radar detection like more expensive models, so you can't expect perfect navigation abilities. For the most thorough cleaning, it's best to close in a certain room instead of giving it the full run of your place, if possible.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

Its predecessor, the Roomba 694, uses bump navigation to get around, meaning it runs in a straight line until it hits something, then turns, shifts over, and starts off in its new direction. The Combo Essential's gyro and infrared sensors help it create a heat map as it works and move in more systematic rows for less theoretical overlap.

Without collecting reference points or visual data, though, its internal map is easily confused. So while it can clean in organized rows, it can also fairly easily get lost against a given wall and start cleaning the same area again from a slightly different angle while the vacuum thinks it’s in a new spot.

For the most part, if you want a robot vacuum with better navigational capabilities, you’ll need to jump up a tier in terms of price or look beyond Roomba. The older Eufy RoboVac G30 ($349.99, but regularly on sale for less) only ran for 88 minutes on a charge in our tests and doesn't have mopping functionality, but it has no problem systematically navigating between rooms.

Cleaning Performance: A Pleasant Surprise

During our mopping test, the Roomba Combo Essential’s random navigation actually played in its favor. I spread a quarter ounce of raspberry jelly on my closed-off kitchen floor and let the vacuum run. After a single pass, the Combo Essential left a large smear and most of the jelly on the floor, but then passed over the sticky substance two more times while bumping its way around. By the time it had completed the job, most of the jelly had been wiped up, with only a few seeds remaining stuck to the floor near the original stain, and nothing spread elsewhere in the room.

Remaining jelly after one pass (Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

When mopping, the Roomba Combo Essential simply drags its wet pad behind the vacuum, and lacks the scrubbing power of more expensive models, so don't expect it to remove set-in stains. For comparison, the Roomba Combo j9+ applies downward pressure on the mop and moves in a back-and-forth motion, the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni uses two spinning mop pads, and the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra uses a vibrating pad. These higher-end models also work more efficiently, completing the job after a single pass over the stained area in our testing.

The Combo Essential isn’t a powerful mop, but it’s a thorough one. After the jelly test, most of the sticky residue was on the mop pad, but a few raspberry seeds were stuck in the brush roll.

For vacuum performance testing, I closed the robot in a 100-square-foot room with a specific amount of debris spread on an otherwise freshly vacuumed floor and let it clean in Auto mode. I weighed the robot's dustbin before and after the run, yielding specific particle pickup stats to compare across devices. I perform these tests using rice (representing large debris) and sand (fine debris) on both hard flooring and carpet, in four separate runs. If you’re curious, check out all of the details of our vacuum testing.

On hardwood, the Combo Essential picked up 91.45% of the rice and 91.70% of the sand, both excellent results. In fact, it surprisingly outshined the high-end Roomba Combo j9+, which got a little lost during this test and occasionally flung dirt with its side brush, only managing to capture 88.40% of the rice and 54.30% of the sand. The Combo Essential also completed its hardwood cleaning runs with a faster average time of 23:57 against the Roomba Combo j9+’s 42:59.

The vacuum-only Dyson 360 Vis Nav ($1,199.99) also struggled in our hardwood vacuuming tests, picking up just 59.90% of the rice and 74.73% of the sand. Both of the higher-end models were significantly better at navigating my entire apartment in a single run, but in a closed room with a long stretch of dark space under my bed, they became disoriented.

For reference, the Dreame X30 Ultra ($1,699.99) was the top-scoring model on our hardwood vacuum tests, picking up 96.70% of the rice and 94.70% of the sand in an average time of 13:58. In other words, for vacuuming small homes with hard flooring, the Roomba Combo Essential is nearly as good as models well above its price range.

That said, its lower suction power compared with more expensive models and the drawbacks of its randomized navigation became apparent in our carpet vacuuming tests. During these runs, it sometimes missed spots, and it left a clump of rice untouched. It still picked up a competitive 90.68% of the rice but only collected 23.78% of the sand, with an average cleaning time of 14:20. The Dyson 360 Vis Nav was the top-performing model for this test with 97.60% rice pickup and 53.58% sand pickup in a snappy 8:29. The Roomba Combo j9+ expectedly did better here as well, gathering 95.80% and 38.50% of the rice and sand, respectively, in 16:52.

For the most part, the Roomba Combo Essential will thoroughly vacuum and mop small areas, even if it doesn’t have the suction power for a deep clean. It did well with pet hair, cleaning up after myself and my two cats without leaving any dust bunnies in its wake or getting its brush roll tangled with hair.

Verdict: The Right Stuff at the Right Price

The iRobot Roomba Combo Essential is a winner for its sub-$300 price, building on its predecessor with the ability to not just vacuum, but also mop thoroughly. And while it isn't quite as advanced as pricier competitors, it still supports scheduling and can be controlled by app or voice. In the budget-friendly price range, it's hard to beat the performance and versatility of the Roomba Combo Essential, so it earns our Editors’ Choice award for affordable robot vacuums. If you can increase your budget, consider upgrading to a model with self-emptying functionality like the $699.99 Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo N8 Pro+.