iRobot has unveiled its new $275 Roomba Combo Essential This price is shocking for a 2-in-1 robot that can both vacuum and mop, with iRobot's premium smart features

The new model's iRobotOS Intelligence can automatically clean when you leave the house, create detailed visual cleaning reports, and suggest cleaning at a fraction of the cost of the best Roombas we've tested

The Roomba Combo Essential is an upgraded version of the Roomba 600 series that is specifically designed for low budgets It is small enough to fit under furniture, covers a larger area, and cleans more cleanly It also has a longer battery life of 120 minutesCompared to the 600 series, the new Roomba Combo Essential has 20 times more suction power and 25% better pickup of debris on hard floors

The iRobot OS navigates in a column pattern for thorough cleaning This wet-dry vacuum cleaner records its work using the Smart Clean Map reporting feature This creates a report in the iRobot app that shows how long it took to clean and where it cleaned Sometimes the app will even suggest cleaning times, as in the $1400 Roomba J9+ combo we recently reviewed

The Roomba Combo Essential's low-profile design packs a lot of equipment under the hood: a four-stage cleaning system consists of a V-shaped multi-surface brush, an edge sweeper brush, and a pump-action microfiber mop pad that makes one pass through hard floor vacuuming and mopping

Unfortunately, this does not really come with an automatic empty dock like the Cheap Shark IQ for hands-free set-and-forget operation The mop pad cannot be automatically equipped or cleaned, but the mop pad can be removed and the Essential can be run in vacuum-only mode There are three levels of suction power and three levels of water volume to choose from

The Roomba Combo Essential ($27499, iRobot) is available in the US at iRobotcom and will be available at select retailers beginning April 7 In Canada, it is available directly from iRobot and will be available at select retailers beginning April 12