The newest Roomba can wash its own mop and will work with Matter

The Roomba Combo 10 Max is simply a caller robot vacuum and mop from iRobot that tin lavation its mop, bare its bin, and refill its mopping vessel — meaning little manual labour connected your part. The company’s caller flagship robot vacuum volition besides beryllium its archetypal to enactment the astute location modular Matter. The vacuum is disposable for preorder starting contiguous astatine irobot.com for $1,399. Shipping starts successful August, erstwhile it volition besides travel to different retailers.

Building connected the Roomba Combo j9 Plus’ retractable mopping strategy that picks itself up erstwhile it vacuums carpet, the Roomba Combo 10 Max robot and Auto Wash Dock is the company’s archetypal robot vac with a multifunction charging dock. In summation to emptying the robot’s bin and filling its h2o tank, the caller dock tin cleanable and adust the mop and lavation itself, truthful you don’t person to.

The dock besides has a caller look, to incorporated the mop cleaning, and is present made with antimicrobial plastics to assistance inhibit the bacterial maturation and atrocious smells that are communal connected docks similar these. “While determination volition inactive request to beryllium an constituent of quality cleaning [of the dock], this should assistance combat the build-up of ‘ick’ implicit time,” iRobot’s Warren Fernandez said successful an interrogation with The Verge.

These multifunctional docks are becoming progressively fashionable with models disposable from Roborock, Dreame, Eufy, and others. They let the robot vacuum to enactment mostly independently for a week oregon truthful — until you request to capable the dock’s h2o vessel (some destruct adjacent that request by hooking straight into plumbing). Most rival docks necessitate entree to the apical to get to those tanks, but the 10 Max’s dock keeps the beforehand opening benignant of the Combo j9 Plus. This is simply a bully feature, arsenic you tin usage the apical arsenic a array area.

Unlike galore of its competitors, the 10 Max’s dock doesn’t usage blistery h2o oregon blistery aerial to adust the mop — Fernandez explained that due to the fact that it’s a top-mounted mop, it volition get a batch of airflow, truthful it volition adust quickly. He added that vigor adds complexity and moving costs to the dock.

According to Fernandez, the 10 Max’s dock automatically cleans and dries the mop pad aft each tally and tin beryllium acceptable to lavation aft cleaning circumstantial rooms — the bathroom, for example. The dock besides cleans itself aft it has washed the pad.

On the bundle side, Fernandez said the main betterment to the 10 Max is Enhanced Dirt Detect, an upgrade to a diagnostic connected the j9 that identifies soiled areas and takes aggregate passes to cleanable them. The 10 Max tin present usage its onboard camera to spot soiled areas.

Most different features of the 10 Max are the aforesaid arsenic the Combo j9 Plus, including the aforesaid suction powerfulness — which iRobot claims is 100 times much almighty than its one bid (the institution doesn’t merchandise suction powerfulness specs) — and the beingness of a camera for navigating and enabling AI-powered obstacle avoidance. This allows the robot to spot and place communal household objects, specified arsenic shoes, cables, favored bowls, and different pet-related clutter, and intelligently find what to do. For example, it volition cleanable a heap of popcorn but debar favored poop. iRobot promises if its robot does rotation into a “pet accident,” the institution volition replace it for escaped for the archetypal year.

The institution — whose concern has faced accrued contention successful caller years, compounded by a failed effort to merchantability to Amazon — has launched respective caller robots successful the past 12 months, offering customers much options crossed a broader scope of prices.

iRobot present had six antithetic operation mopping and vacuum models: the Combo Essential ($275) and the Combo i5 (from $350) with swappable mopping bins; the Combo j5 (from $529) adding a camera for obstacle avoidance; the Combo j7 (from $600) bringing a retractable mop; the Combo j9 Plus with an auto-empty/refill dock for $1,000; and present the Combo 10 Max adding mop washing for $1,400.

It’s clip to Matter

According to iRobot, Matter enactment volition travel via an over-the-air firmware update successful Q4 2024; this whitethorn coincide with the accomplishment of iOS 18, which Apple has said volition bring enactment for Matter to Apple Home. The institution has besides said it expects to adhd Matter crossed much of its products successful 2025, but didn’t specify if this would travel arsenic an upgrade to existing products oregon conscionable beryllium built into caller models.