Bravo Braava...
As children, we were
all assured that by the time we were grown up and had our own homes,
household chores and cleaning duties would be carried out by robots.
So imagine our disappointment when, having all grown up, we're still
taking out the trash bags and mopping our own floors. Come on!
Fortunately iRobot are getting us closer to that Jetsons-inspired
future, and the iRobot Braava Jet Mopping Robot is one giant leap in
the right direction.
We're no strangers to
iRobot, having previously reviewed two of their robotic vacuum
cleaners, the Roomba 880 and the Roomba 700 (which was also our first ever
review), so we know they 'give good robot'. However, the iRobot
Braava Jet is quite different in appearance, being boxy in design and
a lot smaller and lighter. There is a convenient carry handle on
top... and not much else.
To get the plucky wee
chap working on mopping your floors, you simply insert one of the
three choices of cleaning pad. You can pick either a wet mop, a damp
sweep, or a dry sweep, with the robot following a pre-programmed
clean from then on. So if your kitchen floor needs a wet mop, stick
on the appropriate pad, set it down, and it will start.
The iRobot Braava Jet
Mopping Robot features a neat little spray nozzle on the front, so as
it moves around, carefully avoiding furniture and ensuring the whole
floor area is covered, it squirts a mist of water in front of the mop
pad. The pad itself vibrates gently (on the wet and damp settings) to
dislodge dirt and grime on the floor. It's pretty nifty to watch.
It will make its way
around the room quite slowly and carefully, and also very quietly
(well, quieter than the robot vacuum cleaners, that is). We need to
be honest here, though; right now no robot can do the job of an elbow
grease-powered mop on dried-on dirt. We first set it going on a floor
that hadn't been mopped for over a month (don't judge us!) and it
couldn't handle the worse of the muck. However, just like it's bigger
sucking brothers, the iRobot Braava Jet was extremely effective on a
daily basis, to keep the level hygiene high. So don't expect too much
if you haven't already brought the floor in question up to a fairly
decent standard.
There is no clever
self-charging dock with this, as there often is with other iRobot
gadgets. Instead you have to manually plug it in to charge, which is
no real bother. We used ours every couple of days on the kitchen
floor, and found we needed to charge it up after two goes, but it all
depends on how much floor it needs to cover (and which setting you
favour - the wet mop mode uses more juice).
Our favourite setting
was to let it go with the dry sweep pad on. No water is used, and the
pad doesn't vibrate; it simply gives the whole room a single pass,
collecting dirt and stray hairs as it goes. Once finished you simply
eject the pad with the press of a button, so you don't even have to
touch it. Which was nice. It was really quite shocking how much grime
it managed to pick up, even on days immediately after the floor had
been swept and mopped. Humans are gross.
So it might not be
quite capable of doing the mopping while making us a coffee, but we
feel that the iRobot Braava Jet Mopping Robot is one step closer to
that reality. If you hate cleaning your hardwood, tiled, or stone
floors, but love keeping your gaff constantly clean and tidy, this
could be the robot you're looking for.
£249.99
Visit
www.irobot.co.uk
