Image: iRobot
In the beginning there was a sweeper, and dust on the face of the house. Then the corded vacuum cleaners, the wireless vacuum cleaners and of course the robotic vacuum cleaners were created. But precisely iRobot, which made the word Roomba synonymous with a vacuum cleaner, was unable to withstand the competition set for it by the Chinese competitors that popped up like mushrooms after the rain, and was left behind while they presented a variety of robots that know not only how to vacuum, but also how to mop, combine cameras, docking stations and more. Now, unfashionably late, AirRobot is finally launching a robot that can do both, and it comes with a pretty cool concept.
Is there a carpet? No problems
The Roomba Combo j7+ (it sounds more Chinese than the Chinese robots, but ok) looks like the other vacuuming-mopping robots we’ve come to know in the last 5 years: it’s designed in a round shape (and not half-square as we saw in the Roomba s9), it has It has a classic side brush, two silicone brushes for the suction system and, of course, a cloth and an electronic water tank await you at the back which ensures that the cloth stays wet all the time. It even connects to the Clean Base that will empty the dust container automatically, which means that you will only have to change a bag once every two months, without having to empty the robot itself like farmers. In addition, AirRobot’s cameras and sensors help the Combo j7+ to avoid obstacles and not suck your shoes – and also knows how to avoid surprises that your pets left in the center of the house (those who don’t know what this is, have never known a mess). So far everything is quite standard and a catchy game with the basic features even of Chinese robots that are sold at a third of the price.
Most of the mopping robots have an interesting problem with the cloth: they wipe your floor, but it may be that your house has not only floors, but also carpets, and when a wet cloth full of all the good things in your house goes over your carpet – it’s not fun. So at AirRobot we’ve given your twist to the problem, and once your robot decides it’s going to step on a carpet, the cloth doesn’t just lift up a little, it actually physically rises to the top of the robot, so at least on paper, your carpet should stay dry and clean without any nasty water residue and dirt that sticks to the cloth.
In recent years, we have seen other manufacturers deal with the problem, and the Chinese Roborock, for example, uses a small lever that slightly lifts the cloth when it detects that it is stepping on a carpet. From our tests it works well on relatively flat carpets, but if you have a thicker carpet, there is a good chance that the cloth will still touch it. Thus, it seems that Aerobot may be the first to present a real and not partial solution to this small but annoying problem. However, unlike the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra (you can always bring more Chinese there, as you can see) which knows how to clean and fill the robot with water so that you hardly mess with it, with Airrobot it seems that you will have to manually fill the robot’s water tank and also clean the cloth.
Aerobot has attached a price tag of $1,099 to the Roomba Combo j7+, when it will arrive with the self-emptying stand starting on October 4. For a very strange reason, AirRobot also introduced a bundle that also includes the Braava jet m6, its mopping robot (that doesn’t know how to vacuum) for $1,124. AirRobot is more expensive than its equivalent Roborock S7 which sold for $650 at its launch over a year ago, so AirRobot seems to be continuing its price line despite being very unfashionably late to the market.
Not necessarily the aerobot you knew
The new buyers of the new Roomba should take one more thing into consideration. This time they are not necessarily purchasing their Roomba from the classic iRobot, because just last month Amazon announced that it had purchased iRobot for $1.7 billion. According to our estimates, Amazon is making this purchase in order to get iRobot OS, the holistic operating system that iRobot built, and access to millions of cameras that roam inside homes around the world and know how to analyze your rooms, and perhaps in this way give you recommendations for complementary products that you will of course buy through Amazon.