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Modern home cleaning robots are stuffed with cutting edge technology. They can see, communicate with apps, charge themselves and, of course, do the cleaning for you.

The best of them are also almost $1,000. So it's reassuring to see a new, relatively smart cleaning mop and broom arrive at what the late Steve Jobs once called a magical price for consumer technology: $199.

When iRobot introduced its first Roomba robot vacuum in 2002, it met that price point. Now, the cheapest Roomba you can find starts at $374.99. Its Scooba scrubbing mop starts at more than $500.

Fortunately, there is now a new, affordable and, in my experience, effective robotic alternative for mopping and sweeping hard floors: the new iRobot Braava Jet.

Different is good

The Braava Jet is a departure for iRobot, both on the design and intelligence front. Where most of iRobot's floor-cleaning bots are pie-shaped, this is a tiny, square, mostly plastic white device with tasteful aqua blue accents. It doesn't look like a mop, nor like a robot.

The cleaning strategy is also different. Braava jet relies on tap water and specially-designed cleaning pads that you slide into the bottom of the robot and pop off with the pull of a lever when you're done.

The robot mops by spraying water out of the front and then running over it with a solution-impregnated pad. It's a very Swiffer-like approach, except the pads have special coding on the bottom that the robot reads to know what type of cleaning job you want done: wet mop, damp mop or dry sweep (which uses no water).

Time to clean

iRobot Braava Jet arrives fully assembled. You just have to charge the removable battery, pop that into the body, open the rubber tank cap, which is hidden under the handle, slowly add water, and then choose a pad to slide in.

You can install the iRobot app to control the Braava jet, but you really don't need to. In fact, in my experience it added little-to-no-utility to the robot. The app will tell you things you already know, like which pad you just placed in the robot mop. It also displays battery life and there's even a big virtual Clean button that you can hit. You can also choose to do a quick spot clean through the app -- something you can't do directly on the hardware.

However, since you only connect to the robot via Bluetooth (instead of Wi-Fi), you lose the connection as soon as you walk out of range (in my experience, 25 feet did it). In addition, the app doesn't really tell you anything about the Braava jet's cleaning activities. I would like to know, for instance, when the robot needs more water.

None of this really bothered me because the best way to use the iRobot Braava Jet is to place it near the edge of the left corner of the room you want to clean, hit the physical clean button on the device and walk away. I did this in three of the rooms in my home (all on one charge; it's rated to cover 200 square feet per charge), only pausing to refill the water tank and swap out the cleaning pads.

The pads, by the way, do not just change the cleaning solution or scrubbing power off the mop, they change how it cleans. With either the damp or wet mops on, the Braava Jet will mop as you might, moving back and forth, writing small "V's" on the floor as it slowly moves forward. The cleaning path is not random, though; the robot basically follows a path that might be familiar to anyone who's waited in line for a ride at Disney World.

If you swap in the dry cleaning pad, the robot moves in straight lines.

Attention to detail

I was also impressed with how the Braava Jet handled furniture, corners and where the wall met the floor. I watched in fascination as the Braava Jet identified these spots and then moved in tight, hugging the wall, corners and chair legs so it wouldn't miss a spot. The Braava Jet has no camera, but it uses odometry to know where it started, where it is relative to that starting point and when it's returned to that spot and finished the room. I do wish the app could show me the path the robot took in each room.

iRobot's Braava jet did a good job on tile and my hardwood floors, it never ran over a rug or got tripped up or caught under furniture. It's a real set-it-and-forget-it device. At $199, it has an excellent price, but before you think you're getting a total bargain, remember that you will have to pay for those pads. iRobot is charging $7.99 for a box of ten. I used one per room (some rooms were very large), but you might be able to reuse any of them one or two more times (at most), though I don't think this is recommended.

iRobot Braava Jet

The Good

• Effective robot mop and broom

• Great design -- love the handle

• Just intelligent enough

The Bad

• You'll pay for pads

• App is not all that useful

The Bottom Line

This may be the best smart mop $199 can buy.

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