It seems like robots are everywhere these days, including in our homes. Our contacts in the industry tell us one out of every four vacuums sold this year will be a robotic one, and these figures will only continue to rise. We’ve had the pleasure of reviewing dozens in the last year, and close to a dozen of them have been from iRobot, the company that brought the world the Roomba. While robotic vacuums won’t fully replace full-sized vacuums any time soon, a hands-free vacuum like the Roomba 690 or 652 does reduce how often you need to drag out the upright or canister from the closet.
It’s a similar story with robotic mops; while you’ll still want to keep your regular mop, a good robo-mop should mean you use your hand mop less. We recently reviewed the iRobot Braava 380t, and today we’re going to compare it to the iRobot Braava Jet 240 Robot Mop to see which offers the better value as an automatic mopping machine. If we had to summarize our thoughts in ten seconds, we’d suggest buying the 380t if you want more runtime and brainpower and the 240 if you want a smaller unit and prefer to keep things as simple as possible. We fully review it below, and you can buy the Braava Jet 240 here.
Pros, Cons, and Key Features of the iRobot Braava Jet 240 Robot Mop
The iRobot Braava Jet 240 is one of dozens of robotic mops zigzagging their way to the US and Canada from China as you read this review. Considering how quickly North Americans have taken to robotic vacuums, it’s no surprise that robo-mops have quickly followed on their heels. An iRobot creation, it’s a lower-end version of the closely related Braava 380t.
The Jet 240’s key features include one-button operation (there’s literally one button available to start it cleaning), three cleaning modes (dry, damp, and mop), 20 minutes of battery life, and 2 hours of recharging time via the wall charger. The Jet 240 can clean with disposable pads or reusable and washable cleaning cloths, depending on your preference. The Jet 240 is 3.3 inches tall, allowing it to pass beneath the majority of furniture, beds, and cabinetry pieces in the average home. Its cleaning path is 7 inches wide and it weighs 3 pounds.
Unboxing the Jet 240, you’ll find the robot mop, a wall charger, and 6 disposable cleaning pads–2 dry sweeping pads, 2 damp sweeping pads, and 2 wet mopping pads. You’ll also find an owner’s guide as well as the same meager one year warranty found throughout the domestic robot industry. This isn’t a feature unique to iRobot, but as they’ve led the market in developing the technology, we wish they’d lead the industry toward more substantive warranties.
What’s the difference between the Braava Jet 240 and the 380t?
The primary differences between the Braava Jet 240 and the 380t involve battery life, navigational systems, cleaning modes, and size. The most significant of these differences is undoubtedly battery runtime. While the Jet 240 offers a decent 20 minutes, the 380t will clean for up to 90 minutes before its Lithium-ion battery needs a recharge. While both robots will be fully recharged after 2 hours thanks to their rapid-charge batteries, having an additional hour of working time with the 380t makes it by far the more useful of the two for people in houses or large apartments, as it can easily clean multiple rooms on a charge. The 240, in contrast, will typically limit you to a single room’s worth of cleaning unless your rooms are particularly small.
Beyond runtime differences, the 380t has a more sophisticated navigational system that helps it clean more efficiently than the Jet 240. The Jet 240 uses dead reckoning to navigate, and will sometimes miss areas or repeatedly clean others. That said, the Jet 240 will eventually make its way through a room if given enough time; it just won’t do so as systematically as the 380t, which can be frustrating to watch if you’re particular about order. The 380t uses an infrared guidance system through navigation cubes that bounce signals off your ceilings. If they aren’t present, it won’t navigate any better than the Jet 240.
Aside from battery life and navigation differences, the Jet 240 has one additional cleaning mode compared to the 380t; the 240 offers dry, damp, and wet modes while the 380t offers dry and damp modes. The Jet 240’s wet mode is functionally equivalent to the 380t’s wet mode, but you do technically get a bit more finesse in cleaning power with the 240. The Jet 240 is also smaller than the 380t, which allows it to fit beneath and between more tightly spaced bathroom fixtures like sinks and toilets. However, the smaller size does mean that you can’t use the Jet 240 with Swiffer pads, unlike the 380t.
How effective is the Braava Jet 240 mop compared to a regular hand mop?
When you buy a robot mop, you need to know what it will and won’t be able to do to be happy with its performance. It isn’t a full-sized mop, and it’s not going to give you as much power as one, since you can push much harder with your body than a 3 pound battery-powered robot ever will. The bottom line is that you’re going to need to keep a manual mop somewhere in your home, unless of course you never owned one to begin with–in which case, you’ll unquestionably have cleaner floors. But if you already had a habit of mopping, you need to know that the Jet 240 will at best supplement a manual mop, rather than allowing you to throw it in the garbage once the 240 arrives.
That said, the Jet 240 will do a perfectly fine job of dusting and lightly cleaning a range of bare floors, including hardwood floors, and it will do so reliably and effectively. The main drawback is the rather short battery life; at 20 minutes, it’ll let you clean a room, but you probably won’t be able to get any more done unless you plug it into its wall charger and wait for a couple of hours. And it’s not going to steer back to its charger on its own the way a Roomba 690 or even 652 or 650 would; nor will you be able to program cleaning schedules. The technology is much simpler than that in robotic vacuums, so keeping realistic expectations is essential.
Why buy the Braava Jet 240?
In conclusion, while you’re probably not going to be able to give away your hand mop any time soon, buying the Braava Jet 240 should result in spending far less time manually mopping than you otherwise would. And if you don’t mop now, the 240 will ensure that at least something is cleaning your floors with some degree of frequency. It’s about as simple to use as a robotic cleaning tool gets, it’s compact, and while it has a short battery life, it lasts long enough to clean a full room before running out of charge. That said, for a huge upgrade in runtime, we’d recommend upgrading to the Braava 380t if possible.
You can buy the iRobot Braava 380t here on Amazon or skip the upgraded features for the simpler Braava Jet 240 here instead.
Canadians can buy the iRobot Braava 380t here on Amazon or spend a bit less for the Braava Jet 240 here.
If you find our research on PMC helpful, you can follow our efforts to keep maniacally reviewing home cleaning tools by shopping through our links above. We promise to keep fighting the good fight against every horror children, animals, and grown, yet messy humans can inflict upon a clean home.