iRobot Braava Jet m6 review: a smarter robot mop

Robot mops can seem like a big indulgence, particularly if you’ve already spent a few hundred dollars on a robot vacuum. But there are times they make a lot of sense, such as when you have primarily hard flooring in your home. iRobot’s Braava Jet m6 is the best we’ve seen for that scenario.

It performs both dry sweeping and wet mopping, covering up to 1,000 square feet in a single cleaning session. It maps your floor plan for targeted zone cleaning. It can even clean in sequence with compatible Roomba vacuums.

This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best robot mops. Click that link to read reviews of competing products, along with a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping.

Design

Though larger than the iRobot Braava Jet 240 I reviewed earlier this year, the Braava Jet m6 is still relatively compact, measuring, 10 x 10.6 x 3.5 inches and weighing 4.4 pounds. There’s a camera and a sensor on top for navigation, along with a retractable carrying handle. The silver disc in the center is a lid covering the water tank. Adjacent to that are Home, Clean, and Spot Clean buttons.

A “precision spray” nozzle on the front of the Braava Jet m6 wets the floor for mopping. On the underside are a pad reader, driving wheels, cliff sensors, and charging contacts.

iRobot

The Braava Jet m6 comes with a charging dock, attachable drip tray, a selection of disposable mopping pads (three wet, three dry), and a small sample bottle of Braava Jet Hard Floor Cleaner. You can purchase additional pads for $8 for a seven-pad pack, or a pair of washable pads (one wet, one dry) for $25. A 16-ounce bottle of cleaning solution costs $8.

Setup and performance

Setting up the Braava Jet m6 is similar to setting up any of iRobot’s Roomba vacuums. You plug the dock into a wall outlet and set the robot on it to charge. The main difference here is this dock includes a drip tray that you snap into place before setting down the robot mop. This added accessory will keep residual water from pooling under the bot when it returns from mopping jobs.

With the Braava Jet m6 docked, download and sign into the iRobot app. When you add the Braava Jet m6 from the list of iRobot products, the app prompts you through a few steps to connect to your Wi-Fi. The process took just a couple of minutes for me.

Michael Ansaldo/IDG

Roomba users will be familiar with the iRobot app interface, as it mirrors the one used for those products. First-timers should be able to find their way around intuitively. A large Clean button in the center of the screen starts and stops mopping jobs.

A battery icon above this displays the current charge level. A row of icons across the bottom of the screen provides access to scheduling, cleaning logs, smart maps of your home’s layout, help topics, and various settings.

You can also control the Braava Jet m6 via Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. Using your phone or one of those company’s smart speakers you can use voice commands to start, stop, and pause cleanings and send the Braava Jet m6 back to its dock.

To start a cleaning job, you just slot one of the cleaning pads into the Braava Jet m6’s pad reader and press Clean. I started with a dry sweeping pad to clear the debris off the entryway and kitchen floor in my home’s lower level. The Braava Jet m6 navigated nimbly around corners and obstacles without any hangups.

One of the things I like best about this robot is it recognizes carpet right out of the box, without the user needing to set up physical or virtual barriers. That kept it from tracking dirt—and later, water—into my carpeted living room, which adjoins the entryway. When the Braava Jet m6 was done sweeping, I had a grimy pad to dispose of and a much cleaner floor.

After I removed the dirty dry sweeping pad, which ejects with the push of a button, I inserted a wet mopping pad. Then I removed the water tank and filled it with tap water and half the cleaning solution from the sample bottle, per the instruction manual. (You can use water only, as well.) Finally, I returned the tank to its compartment and hit clean.

In mopping mode, the Braava Jet m6 sprays a stream of water a few inches in front of it, then goes back and forth over the moistened area with the mopping pad a couple of times. As it inches forward, It repeats this cycle until the job is done. Again, the robot did an excellent job navigating and cleaning, leaving plenty of filthy evidence behind on the mopping pad.

Michael Ansaldo/IDG

You can customize your wet mopping preferences in the app’s Settings menu. Three preset mopping modes are offered: Standard mode balances cleaning power and total area covered, and I found it best suited for maintenance mopping. Deep mode boosts the power and reduces the cleaning area to tackle tough messes. Extended Coverage mode mops a larger area more quickly and with less cleaning power. In any of these modes, you can also adjust the amount of water the Braava Jet m6 sprays on the floor, using a simple slider.

If you have a larger home or a complex floor plan, you can have the Braava Jet m6 map it and divide it into rooms. With a map enabled, you can send the Braava Jet m6 directly to specific rooms, set virtual barriers—called Keep Out Zones—and generally gain finer control over the cleaning jobs. Once you activate the mapping feature in the app, it takes the Braava Jet m6 two to five passes over the area to build the map.

Another perk of the mapping function is it allows you to link the Braava Jet m6 with an iRobot Roomba i7, i7+, S9, or s9+ robot vacuum for tandem cleaning. Once the Roomba is done vacuuming a space, it will inform the Braava Jet m6 that the job is complete, so the mop-bot can start dry sweeping or wet mopping. iRobot offers bundle pricing if you purchase one of those robot vacuums with the Braava Jet m6.

Verdict

At $400, the Braava Jet m6 is a significant investment, but its smart features, superb navigation, and customized cleaning modes are worth the money if you have a lot of hard floors in your home. If you live in an apartment or condominium where those surfaces are limited to kitchens and bathrooms, the Braava Jet m6 is probably more mop than you need. The smaller (and less expensive) Braava Jet 240 is better suited to those confined spaces, and t still provides multiple cleaning modes and easy operation. But for everyone else, the Braava Jet m6 should be at the top of your list.