iRobot Braava Jet M6 Review (Are Robot mops Worth It?)

I’m a huge fan of our iRobot Roomba i4 Vacuum and felt it had really increase our quality of life. Weekly we put up all the dining table chairs to make sure that our robot vacuum, whom we call Bobby, is able to vacuum uninterrupted. I dislike mopping more than I dislike vacuuming. I do get down on my hands and knees to wipe spaghetti sauce on the floor all the time, but it’s the weekly or every two week general mopping that I really dislike. Here’s my iRobot Braava Jet M6 review.

Pulling out the mop and bucket is so tedious to me that frankly, I don’t do it. It also feels kind of unclean when you dunk that mop back in dirty water to wipe on your floors again. I got by with some Swiffer-type wet mop style mopping pads I got from Dollarama, but you’ll have to use a lot of them if you have a larger square footage, and they take some elbow grease to get rid of stains.

And so we got a partner for our robot vacuum, the Braava Jet M6. The idea that you can pair the robot vacuum and the mop to “tag team” clean your floors really appealed to me.

Braava Jet M6 Review

Of course, we got the Braava Jet from Costco because they have such a great return policy.

In the iRobot Braava Jet box includes:

• 1 sachet of Bona hardwood floor cleaner (a concentrated version)
• 1 sachet of Bona general floor cleaner (for tiles)
• 2 reusable wet mopping pads
• 1 reusable dry sweeping pads
• 2 disposable wet mopping pads
• 2 disposable dry sweeping pads

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Here is what the Braava jet box contents look like:

In addition to the resuable sweeping pads or reusable wet mopping pads, the box also provided two sets of disposable wet mopping and two sets of dry sweeping pads.

I bought some additional 7 pack of disposable wet mopping pads as they were on sale on Amazon because I was worried that cleaning the resusable wet mopping pads would be disgusting, but so far, it’s not been an issue. It’s good to have some back up wet mopping pads in case I need them, anyway.

How Does The Braava Jet Work?

It’s pretty straight forward to use.

You decide whether you want to dry sweep or wet mop and click in the attachment accordingly (there are sensors so you can’t just attach any old thing).

Then you decide whether you want to “mop everywhere” or whether you want it to clean in a specific location. You can click “mop everywhere” and run it a few times, it will create a map.

After you get that map you can create dividers and label the rooms and then it will clean that specific area in the future.

If you move it from it’s specific location however, it will lose track of the original map and can’t localize itself in the future.

Alternatively, if you want to mop in a specific location, you could just press “clean” on the robot mop itself.

Braava Jet M6 on Hardwood Floors

At first I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to use the wet mopping setting on the hardwood floors. However, the Braava Jet M6 is safe to use on hardwood floors or engineered hardwood floors.

There are no scratches and it doesn’t leave any streaks after cleaning. The amount it sprays is small on the medium to low setting and it is wiped up quickly. The iRobot doesn’t leave any large puddles that would wreck havoc on your floors.

Braava Jet M6 Cleaning Solution

The Braava Jet M6 came with two cleaning solutions from Bona (single use), one was Bona floor cleaner (for tile) and the other was Bona hardwood floor cleaner.

Most of the Bona floor cleaner is available in Canada not from concentrate, but I was able to find Bona floor cleaner from United States Amazon that IS from concentrate and you add water (1 parts floor cleaner to 7 parts water) instead of going through a lot of floor cleaning solution. I picked it up across the border.

Braava Jet M6 Pros

It’s smart enough to avoid carpet and stairs. The Braava Jet knows to avoid your carpet as it recognizes it. Like the i4 Robot vaccum, it also knows when to avoid stairs.

Very quiet when running. Unlike the Robot Vacuum, the Braava Jet is much quieter when it runs.

Can pair it with an iRobot vacuum. One of the coolest parts about this robot mop is that you can pair it with certain iRobot vacuums. When you create a task for your vacuum you can click “mop after” to add your robot vacuum to the mix. This way they are working like a tag team to clean your floors.

You can map it. After it runs a few times in your home (you have to keep it at the current location it is in otherwise it will get confused) you will be able to create a map with rooms. You can then tell your robot mop which area you want cleaned.

The M6 is very methodical. It is almost soothing to watch it. It goes forward by about 3 feet, then goes backwards, sprays some floor cleaner and then goes forward and mops the floor. It is not very large probably less than a foot wide, so it will take a long time to clean 1400 square feet or all the rooms on your floor (probably a few hours between battery charges).

It takes a long time to clean (think 5 hours). Because it’s so small, it takes a long time to clean a large area. If you have larger square footage, the mopping is better for specific heavy traffic areas like a kitchen or bathroom.

The Braava Jet M6 does not leave streaks. It didn’t find that it left streaks on hardwood floor- initially it does but after it dries within a minute or two there are no streaks. The floor feels clean after it is done mopping. The “tank” lasts about 1400 square feet before needing to refill the cleaning solution.

Braava Jet M6 Cons

Needs light to work. The Braava Jet needs bright light or at least dim light to work. I like to run our robot vacuum in the evening right before we put our kids to sleep. Usually our robot vacuum is done after 2 hours in between charges, and this means it’s well into the evening. I tried running the robot mop after the vacuum is done and it only worked for about 5 minutes and stopped because of localization problems. If you like to run things overnight like I do, you’ll have to keep some lights on.

Can only use a specific floor cleaner for the Braava Jet. You can’t just put in any cleaning solution into the Braava jet, you can’t put vinegar, you can’t put Pine-Sol, you can’t put soapy water or Mr. Clean. It has to be the Bona floor cleaner or preferably distilled water. If you use anything other than the Bona floor cleaner, you could clog the spray nozzle and wear down the materials inside the robot.

Gets stuck easily. The Braava Jet M6 definitely seems to get stuck more easily than our Robot Vacuum. There’s definitely more rescuing. Sometimes it doesn’t even look like it is stuck but it just stopped moving.

Can’t move it around like the robot vacuum. I’ve moved my robot vacuum around from the main floor to upstairs without issues, but the robot mop is more finicky and stops after 5 minutes of mopping if it can’t localize itself.

Seems to light up a lot. Like when I walk by and the Braava Jet is on the dock, I see the white ring light on. However, thankfully, you can disable this function easily by pressing the “clean” button and holding it for two seconds. Here’s a link to what the other light patterns mean (the blue light and red light).

Bulky to have two robots. Although they look very cute together (we call our robot couple Betty and Bobby) it can take up a lot of room to have two robots docked. It’s hard to find an inconspicuous area of the home that is also sort of central to have the robots do their job more easily.

The solution to this, I just found out recently, is that iRobot released a combo vacuum and mop unit, called the j7+. It’s cheaper than the competitor, the Narwal vacuum and mop.

That’s my Braava Jet M6 review. Although there are some downsides to it, like having it stop abruptly after 4 minutes because there isn’t enough light to mop, or having to rescue it from time to time, it still beats using the bucket and mop. The ability to locate and clean a specific area is fantastic (once you get the map down on your iRobot app).

If I were to pick between the two (if I were to pick just one iRobot), I think the robot vacuum is a better bang for your buck than the robot mop.

I’m not as big of a fan of the iRobot Braava Jet M6 compared to the vacuum, it’s still pretty decent but there’s definitely room for improvement with this technology.

What is your iRobot Braava Jet M6 review?