iRobot Roomba Combo J9+ w/Pads Replen Kit

The J9+ Combo is one of the only two robots currently on the market that purport to be able to keep medium-pile carpets/rugs dry. The other is the Dreame L20 Ultra. I got both and pitted them head-to-head. The J9 is the only one that succeeded in this goal. Note, others, like Ecovacs and Roborocks can't lift their mop pad high enough to clear medium pile carpet.I've been using the J9+ daily for 2 months now, and it has performed fantastically; and I've been using top-end robots from several manufacturers for many years. Unlike others, it created a perfect map on the first try, has never gotten stuck, detects/respects rugs, and avoids objects well.Pros: • Great mopping performance. Got off stubborn stains in less passes consistently in numerous mopping tests of different substances, such as dirt, sauce, milk, batter, cocoa, etc. (see measured test for example) • Great vacuuming performance. In my embedded rice test on shag rug, Roomba J9+ picked up 64%, compared to 42% from the L20. • Great mapping (see pics) and navigation. Just detects and handles rugs properly. Efficient pathing, never misses a spot. I don't recommend doing a mapping run. I just did an initial "Clean Everywhere" with only vacuum, and that produced a perfect map, and did so just as fast as when the map is already in place. Tested and compared mapping on a total of 5 floors across 2 homes. • More conservative object avoidance, probably owing to the P.O.O.P. guarantee. I don't need this and prefer more aggressive, but might be important for some users. • Less obtrusive dock. • Can clean under drapes and bed skirts, and not befuddled by glass doors and mirrors, like LiDAR-based bots. • Quick and easy to replace pads. Stored in dock. Recommend buying 12 more for ~$40 then only need to wash once a month. • Less long-term maintenance. Changing a pad on the top of the bot, from a stash stored in the dock, seems less work than: dumping dirty water, cleaning bottom of dock, refilling clean water 4x as often, and replacing pads every 1-3 months, as with L20. • Less complex, less mechanisms to break down (LiDAR, self-cleaning, self-drying). • Runs immediately, doesn't have to take time to wash pads first. • Cleans faster. • Quieter when not running (no dryer hum). • Simple procedure to clean unknown room: 1) Carry to target room and press button; 2) it will immediately clean whole room and return to where it started. • Can co-exist with active family. You can walk around it while it works, and it's quiet when it's not working. • App is better designed and efficient. Can do everything in less steps. No limited combinations of settings. Can clean favorites, zones, custom rooms, everything, with Google Assistant voice control. • Works on 5GHz Wi-Fi. • Good object detection of cords and backpack straps (even low-contrast), as long as they are not stretched out in a line.Cons: • Would not mop bathroom unless I removed mats. No indication of why. Guessing there needs to be a certain amount of available hard floor to deploy mop. • Doesn't mop within 2" of edges. • More frequent bumping. Doesn't bother me, but can be disconcerting to others. Doesn't do any damage. • Doesn't navigate well in the dark, however does work reliably in some cases, such as cleaning my kitchen. • A little louder, both bot and base. Measured 65db for base empty, vs 60db on L20. • Eats stretched out cords (no matter the contrast) • Leaves too wide of a berth around obstacles, typically 1'. • Each time switching to the app takes about 5 seconds to connect. • No spot clean button! • Mop arm elbow sharp and close to ground. When on a side angle due to one wheel on fireplace hearth, possibly ripped off piece of my floorboard that might have been sticking up a bit. Resolve by no mop zone around raised areas. • No Android widget. • Recommended to change mop pad after each use.

Update After 45 Days:Well it stopped scratching the floor but after just a few days of working great it started having a mind of its own, steering jobs during the middle of the night randomly. And then it stopped emptying its bin automatically. Tried everything we could find to get it to once again empty its bin... and nothing worked. Wife fed up with this expensive, non-reliable appliance. So we returned it. And after our experience with it we cannot and do not recommend it.Update After 30 Days:After a few days someone from iRobot reached out to us. Very interested in our experience with the J9+ Combo so I spent over an hour on the phone explaining what had happened and how it happened and why we were disappointed. We were told our experience was not normal and they'd like to send us out a replacement unit. It arrived, this time with mopping pads. I'd like to say their customer support is 5-star BUT... but, we reached out to support via their website on the day the unit arrived without mopping pads and their first response to that email was after we'd actually received the replacement unit 10 days later.So is it better? Yes. Using just Bona cleaning solution with zero water the floors are perfectly clean and shiny as expected with zero streaks. It is able to complete full cleaning runs without intervention and has yet to get stuck or have an error running into obstacles. So the unit itself is 5-star. The app though, well, that's another story. Still getting missing help pages and still throwing errors when modifying rooms, etc. And, unlike other robot mops you can't tell where it has completed part of a job and what part of the job still needs to be completed. I shows a rolling iRobot as it's doing it's thing which is just useless. Others we've used actually show you the pattern used to vac/mop and a realtime display of where the robot is. And there's no way to tell it to clean just a room or section of a room without first setting up a favorite for that. Other much less expensive units allow you to spot clean, room clean and even area clean right from the Home Screen.So, we debated on returning it and to be truthful, we may still do that. But the quality of the mopping is as good as we've seen. Is it twice as good as other units... don't think so but having clean floors that shine... well, if we were to try another unit we'd be very disappointed if the mopping experience was not as good. So for now, we'll keep it. But iRobot REALLY needs to work on their post-sales support, their first use supporting documents and videos and most of all, their app experience. It's the most expensive but all these things are at a level you'd expect from the least expensive option.Previous Review: Really looked forward to this arriving and all the AI making cleaning our home effortless and "smarter". For the record we have a cheaper iHome vac only robot and thought this very expensive, top of the line one would be a huge improvement. It has not been so far. It arrived without the mopping pads. I reached out to support and after 2 days haven't heard a word from them. After that we decided to at least try it. Has yet to finish a complete vac run for either a complete run or even a room at a time. It took over 10 hours to map our main floor. Also experiencing issues/bugs with the iOS app. Try to save a keep away zone when it finds one and it will not save. Try to better understand a function and click on help and it just says not found. The whole thing just feels rushed and unfinished. So far we are not impressed.

love it! This vacuuming and mopping are incredibly useful, with excellent cleaning performance. It saves a lot of time and easy to clean

I truly wanted to love the J9+ Combo, but enough is enough. I can’t recommend it. This product is fundamentally broken in so many ways. I "upgraded" to this from the Roomba 980, which I absolutely loved. However, I hardly used it because the home had to be pre-cleaned constantly, and it didn't mop. I wanted to get a Braava but never did. Then suddenly, the competition for the robotic vacuum market became actually competitive. But I had such a good experience with iRobot's Roomba that I decided to go with their top-of-the-line model, the J9+ combo.So, the good:- Room mapping is pretty decent, and being able to dictate which rooms to go to and clean, avoid, plus how to clean (mop and vacuum, or just vacuum), is nice.- It does a good job vacuuming, better than the Roomba 980, and more accurately.- Battery life is very good.- Obstacle detection is pretty decent.- The docking station is nice looking and convenient because it has storage.The bad:- It docks correctly only about 30% of the time. If the Roomba does not detect the docking station, it doesn’t empty the contents from the vacuum, and you can't refill its water tank. The solution to this is to take out the Roomba and manually send it home again.- Of the 30% that it does detect the docking station, 40% of the time it fails to vacuum due to a "sealing problem," requiring me to try it again or remove Roomba from the docking station and send it home.- Mopping is mediocre. It does not seem to saturate the washing pad enough, or it's not spraying enough, but you can notice lines of what's wet and what's not as Roomba drives around. It's frustrating.- The home mapping system seems to fall apart if a landmark has moved. For example, I moved a speaker, and it threw Roomba off every run since, and I had to run a map of my home again to fix it.- The dirt gets caked on the suction port where the rollers are because I assume the dirt's wet when it's sucked. It's quite difficult to clean off and seems like a huge design flaw.- Constantly erroring. The final straw was it stopping a job because there was an issue with the floor sensors. The floor sensors are clean; they should be fine.- This thing gets DIRTY. I have had this for a month, and compared to my Roomba 980, which I've had since 2018, there are hardly any scuffs or anything on it. The J9+ combo looks like it's run a marathon and fell on its face each time.- You cannot have it only mop; it must vacuum and mop or just vacuum.I don't know if my product is defective, or if this is just how it is. However, as of right now, I can't recommend this to anyone. At $1,799, this is a rip-off, and even at a highly discounted price of $1,399, it's not good.

Have owned a J7+ and Braava before and given the good experience with them wanted an all in one combo which refills the cleaning liquid and had a better suction. Based on the hype went with Roborock S8. BIG mistake (well that’s for another review) and after having sunk my money in a place where the sun never shines, went for what I should have gone with in the first place. Enter the J9 combo and it delighted right out of the box. Suction is much higher and the mopping is top notch. Scrubbing the mop pad feature was never a priority as it leaves residue in the machine and creates a hygiene issue. Moreover the dirty water eventually lets off a smell. It’s easier to swap the mop pad. Cons: The navigation is still the same as in S7 and could have been upgraded to a LIDAR instead but as long as it does the job, it’s fine. Would have been great if there was just a mop only mode and hopefully it can be addressed with a software update.

I couldn't be happier with my purchase of the iRobot Roomba Combo j9+! This multi-functional robot vacuum and mop have truly revolutionized my cleaning routine. The self-emptying and auto-fill features make it incredibly convenient – I no longer have to worry about constantly monitoring the robot. It does a fantastic job cleaning both carpets and hard floors, and the mapping technology ensures that it covers every corner of my home. It's been a time and energy saver, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to simplify their cleaning chores!

With the reputation that they have, I would have expected much more from their latest flagship product. We end up running into errors weekly with the robot. Some weeks it’s about it not being able to empty the trash bin (too much pet hair stuck in the rollers) but most times it’s not connecting to wifi - an inconvenience but still difficult to deal with. An expensive toy at best and not a very good one.Why didn’t I return it? Too many other things going on that have had to take priority but one thing for sure, I will not be trusting the brand again.