Last year at CES, Dreame showed off a robot vacuum prototype with a mechanical arm. But while we were able to see the arm extend and retract, we didn’t see the device, which was described as a prototype at the time, actually grab anything, which was a bit disappointing.
This year, though, the company has made its arm-enabled vacuum a reality with the Cyber 10 Ultra. Dreame previewed it recently at IFA in Berlin, but has now confirmed it will be on sale later this year.
The vacuum has an extendable arm that looks pretty similar to the prototype version we saw last year. It extends from the top of the vacuum and has a claw-like device at the end for scooping up objects. According to Dreame, it can pick up items that weigh up to 500 grams (about 1 pound) so it should be able to grab a wider variety of stuff than the Roborock vac we saw last year, which had a 300-gram weight limit for its arm.
The arm can also do more than pick up stuff from the floor. It supports its own cleaning accessories, and can grab vacuum nozzles and brush attachments from its base station. This allows the arm to act as an extension of the vacuum itself so it can be used similarly to how you might use hose attachments to reach hard-to-get areas with a traditional vacuum.
And, like Dreame’s other robot vacuums, the Cyber 10 Ultra also has mopping abilities and can climb up small steps up to 6cm (about 2.4 inches). That’s not quite as impressive as the tank-like stair-climbing Cyber X prototype it also brought to CES, but should help the Cyber 10 reach a few extra places in the house.
The company hasn’t announced an exact release date, but says it’s targeting August of this year and currently expects the Cyber 10 Ultra to cost around €1799 (about $2,100).
Robot vacuums can be a huge help, keeping your floors clean regularly without much extra work on your part. Black Friday deals often include some of our favorite robovacs, and this year is shaping up to be no different. iRobot’s entry-level Roomba 104 Vac robot vacuum is available for 40 percent off right now, bringing it down to a record low of $150. A number of other Roombas are on sale for Black Friday, too.
In iRobot’s lineup of robot vacuums, the Roomba 104 sits on the low end, adept at vacuuming up dust and hair, but without the mopping ability of its more expensive Max, Plus or Combo counterparts. The Roomba 104 Vac makes for a great first robot vacuum all the same, though, because of its four levels of powerful suction, and easy-to-use app. Like iRobot’s other vacuums, the Roomba 104 maps and navigates your home with LiDAR, which helps it avoid obstacles. And using the Roomba Home app, you can schedule it to clean specific rooms, and even spot-clean particularly dirty spots.
iRobot
The Roomba 104 is available for 40 percent off its normal price.
An earlier version of the Roomba Vac is Engadget’s favorite budget robot vacuum, and you’ll get the same great performance out of the newer Roomba 104 Vac. That includes a specialized brush for cleaning the hard-to-reach corners of your home, and also a charging dock that the vacuum can automatically return to once it’s down charging.
This sale on Roomba vacuums comes at an admittedly difficult time for iRobot at large, with the company dealing with a serious financial shortfall as of its last earning statement. Regardless of what happens to iRobot, though, the Roomba 104 Vac’s offline mode should mean that it can clean your home and charge itself without the need of an app or an internet connection.
When technology is at its best and focused on improving our lives, like a great-sounding pair of wireless headphones or a really good computer mouse, it can be indispensable. But when the companies making our gadgets drift away from the user experience and start checking off boxes and publishing bigger numbers, the basics can get lost in the mix.
That’s exactly what’s happening with the Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller, a premium robot vacuum with perhaps too many ideas. Which is not to say the ideas are bad. In fact, the Aqua10 Ultra Roller is gadget-y in ways that I always hoped robots would be when I was a kid in the ‘90s, all whirring motors and parts that pop out of its body to do things. Its mop roller juts out of its side for better edge mopping, the periscope-like sensor array sinks into the body to let it go under things, and little legs let it climb over obstacles and onto slightly higher surfaces. I love that stuff, and it all seems to work just fine.
Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller
The Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller is an expensive disappointment.
Lots of clever robotic features
Solid mopping performance
Self-maintaining mop roller
Tangle-free roller brush
Mediocre vacuuming
Very buggy navigation
Poor battery life
Too expensive
Unintuitive, complicated app
But things haven’t come together for the Aqua10 elsewhere. And unfortunately, it was the robot vacuum basics—navigating my home, sucking up debris, and managing its own charge—where the Aqua10 failed the hardest while I was testing it. I think Dreame could fix these problems with a few software updates, but as things stand, I’d be sorely disappointed if I’d paid $1,600 for a product that has so much trouble with these standard tasks.
The Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller is a big white circle that stands tall, at 3.84 inches, or 4.72 inches with its sensor array extended. Where it differs from a lot of robot vacuums is all those robotic parts serving different purposes. It’s fun watching the sensor array lower until it’s flush with the body to get under my couch, and it’s satisfying to see the mop roller slide out to follow the contours of furniture. Same goes for the side brush, when it pops out to slap dust out of corners its big disc shape would otherwise make difficult to reach.
Tucked into the Aqua10’s side wheel wells is a pair of stubby legs, with wheels on the ends, that unfold and jut downward to shove the robot up at an angle. (In this mode, it sort of resembles the Wheelers from Return to Oz, except not terrifying.) I don’t have any transitions that actually require the Aqua10 to use this feature—though it did decide, twice, that a dining room rug in my home called for it—so I stacked up some shelving wood I had lying around. I couldn’t get to exactly the 1.65 inches that Dreame says it can handle at once, but the robot climbed onto a 1.5-inch-tall stack just fine. It’s no stair climber, but I have no worries about this robot vacuum balking at thicker carpets.
You can adjust how each of the robotic parts behaves if you’re willing to explore the labyrinthine depths of the Dreamehome app. Here, you’ll find pages and pages of menus, toggles, and sliders that seemingly let you tweak everything about the robot. Want to set the mop roller never to extend, or to do so only once a week? You can do that. Want to set the robot to clean every night, but to avoid mopping one specific room on Tuesdays and Thursdays? Also possible. You can set suction power; or decide if you want the robot to vacuum and mop room-by-room or vacuum every room, then mop every room; or set it only to mop in the direction of a hardwood floor’s planks to avoid roughing up the long edges.
Neat stuff, and it’s nice to have options, but wow is it a lot, and not to mention arranged in a way that I think will turn many folks into the Homer Simpson backing into shrubbery meme. That could be mitigated were more power user-oriented features tucked one layer deeper than the more straightforward ones like scheduling and cleaning history, which ought to be right on the Aqua10 landing page and aren’t.
Also, some options just feel like padding. For instance, on one page, you can tell the robot not to mop the carpet. That should just be standard behavior—I shouldn’t need to forbid rug-mopping! Others don’t appear to do anything at all, including many parts of a suite of “Pet Care” features. With Pet Care turned on, the Aqua10 is supposed to do more intense cleaning around things like pet dishes and litter boxes. It was hard to evaluate this around my dogs’ dishes—mainly because they just aren’t messy eaters—but the Aqua10 seemed to do the opposite of intense cleaning around our cat’s litter box, leaving a lot of debris behind. “Pet Moments” identifies your pets and takes pictures of them, although it only captured two images—one still and one GIF—of mine during my time with it. Dreame told Gizmodo it’s possible my pets were just “camera-shy,” which they weren’t; they’re very used to robot vacuum hijinks and seem to almost relish being in the way. Perhaps the Aqua10 looked upon them and found them wanting (in which case, sorry to Dreame’s algorithms, but we are in disagreement).
Other features just aren’t labeled clearly, a common feature of apps made by non-English-speaking developers. Take the toggle for Collision-Avoidance Mode. I would assume that turning this off would have the device barreling into walls and furniture, but that’s not really what it does. It’s more like switching it from a vacuum that’s very cautious not to touch walls to one that isn’t quite as careful.
Finally, there’s not a whiff of support for the universal smart home platform Matter, despite the fact that it’s promised on the Aqua10’s product page. Dreame told Gizmodo that Matter support is coming by the end of November with a software update. That’s all good, but why advertise it as being Matter-compliant if it’s not yet? Until that update, Aqua10 owners will have to make do with Amazon Alexa or Google Home integration, basic automations using the Apple Shortcuts app, or the robot’s built-in voice assistant, which is clunky at best and requires a lot of rote memorization of pre-programmed commands.
It’s possible that Dreame bit off more than it could chew in time for launch. But if these features weren’t ready yet, the least the company could’ve done was mark them “coming soon” or “beta.” Otherwise, it just feels like all these toggles are just there to make the robot seem more featureful than it actually is.
I was deeply annoyed once I actually started using the Aqua10. Before we get to why, let’s start with what this robot does well. Thing number one is all of the robotic stuff. Apart from the robotic legs doing their thing when I tried testing it, the extending mop roller is really good at following the contours of things like furniture while mopping, slipping in and out of the Aqua10’s side as it drives alongside them. And it was cool watching it sink its sensor cluster down into its body to go under furniture, then raise it again as it exited. Its object recognition is very solid—it definitely still tried to vacuum up things like screws and marbles, but the Aqua10 would not be fooled into sucking up socks or towels I placed in its way, nor a pile of coffee grounds I plopped down as a makeshift pet poop simulation.
Mopping performance was solid, although not as good as Dreame’s marketing materials would have you believe (imagine that!). Despite all of its features—a robotic mop roller, which self-rinses during cleans and gets a heated bath of sorts when docked; a software slider in the Dreamhome app to set how wet you want the roller during cleans; options to set higher or lower downward mopping pressure; and the ability to tweak how tightly it overlaps its cleaning passes—the Aqua10 is good for regular maintenance mopping and not much more. It left behind streaks of ketchup when I squirted a patch of my floor with the stuff. It didn’t make a dent in a dried mystery stain in my dining room. In both cases, the roughly $500-cheaper Matic robot I recently reviewed did a better job, totally clearing the ketchup as well as the exact stain the Aqua10 failed to clean. On the plus side, the Aqua10 never mopped any of my rugs—its ability to discern between carpets and hard floors was spot-on, at least in my house.
Before and after mopping runs, the Aqua10 Ultra Roller’s dock—a complicated, mini-fridge-sized piece of machinery—goes to work. Behind a panel in the front are the floor cleaning solutions and dustbag, and beneath the lid on top, two large tubs for clean and dirty water. You’ll hear humming, gurgling, and spitting from the dock as it pumps water to and from the robot in preparation for a clean. During this, the Aqua10 sprays heated water over its mop roller, which turns, scrubbing itself on a recessed, textured plate in the dock. This whole process lasts for several minutes as the Aqua10’s built-in speaker announces, each step of the way, what it’s doing. (If you find that as annoying as I do, you can turn the voice down; all the way to zero, if you want.) All of this isn’t too loud, per se, it’s just an aggressive amount of activity for something that just does an okay job at mopping.
While we’re on the subject of noise: When the Aqua10’s dock auto-empties the robot’s dustbin, it’s about as blaring as the Eufy L35+ Hybrid I own. Which is to say, it’s startling if you’re in the same room and didn’t expect it, and I would definitely restrict when it can do that, using the app’s Do Not Disturb schedule.
As for vacuuming, or what is really job number one of these devices, the Aqua 10 wasn’t a lot better than my almost-three-year-old and poorly maintained Roomba J7. It missed a lot more than I would’ve expected during nightly cleans, leaving behind little scraps of paper or small rocks that had been tracked into my house. The same goes for spot cleans; the Aqua10 would spread bits of dirt with its side brush, flinging them out of range before missing them later.
When I ran the Aqua10 on my basement rugs, which don’t get vacuumed as often as the rest of my home, it did this weird thing where it pooped out balled-up hair and string after they were caught in its anti-tangle brush roller, then left them behind when it finished cleaning. Sure, just about every robot vacuum misses things, and picking balls of hair up by hand is definitely better than having to painstakingly cut them off of a roller like with the Roomba J7, but if I’m paying $1,600 for a robot, I don’t want to do nearly this much cleaning up after it. When I flipped the robot over and looked under its dual rollers after a week of testing, I saw a clog forming where built-up hair and string was partially blocking the area around the suction hole, which I thought could be why the Aqua10 was leaving so much behind on its cleans, but it didn’t do better when I ran it again after clearing the blockage.
The worst part of the whole experience was that I couldn’t count on the Aqua10 Ultra Roller to finish a clean without babysitting it. It needed to recharge itself after cleaning between 190 sq. ft. and 300 sq. ft. of my house every night—battery life is definitely an issue—and so would stop working and go look for the dock. More than half the time it didn’t make it there. Most of those times, it found the dock but just didn’t manage to park in it—why it didn’t was unclear, and it would dock just fine when I found it in the morning and pressed the Aqua10’s physical home button. Once, it drove around to the hallway behind where the dock is and sat there until it ran out of battery. Every robot vacuum I’ve ever owned or tried has similar problems, but usually only occasionally; this was almost every night, even after remapping the floor and taking care to move the chairs in my dining room, where the dock lived, so it had plenty of runway.
On one of the final nights of testing, I sat and watched the Aqua10 clean, then timed it as it spun around and around in front of its dock at the end, pausing to move a bit here and there before spinning in more circles. It took more than six minutes for it to settle on an approach vector and park to recharge. It was like watching a bugged-out Skyrim NPC. This was after it not only drove over several bits of dirt and paper throughout my home without collecting them, but also spit out new pieces of garbage in my dining room that it got from who-knows-where.
Privacy is a concern
Robot vacuums have an unusually personal kind of access to us that other products do not. If their manufacturers want, they can gather details about the layout of your home, your habits throughout the day, how your space changes as time goes on, how many people live in or visit your home, and even how much dirt and dust you generate. Their cameras are pointed at you and your home from all kinds of angles, and some, like the Aqua10, even have microphones to power voice assistants. I’m not saying Dreame is abusing this access, but I am saying that when products like this require an internet connection to work, they also require a massive level of trust. Robot vacuum companies probably can’t glean as detailed a picture of your life as a smartphone manufacturer can, but the data points could still be valuable as marketers (or government agencies) seek to build a more comprehensive picture of who you are and what you like to do. It’s not something we all want to think too deeply about, and many of us are resigned to it at this point. But it’s still worth looking at what your robot vacuum and its associated software might be doing behind the scenes.
And just so you know, there is a lot of extra chatter coming from the Dreamhome app, especially the first few days after I set up the Aqua10. My iOS App Privacy Report indicated that Dreamehome had, at one point, contacted 185 different domains in the seven days prior. Many were Dreame’s own domains, but others belonged to companies like Facebook, Baidu, and Google, and some—one of which the app had contacted more than 500 times in just a few days—are completely unnamed. (When I looked up the one in question, it appeared to be Alibaba’s cloud compute service.) The next most-active platform, YouTube, had pinged 173 mostly Google-owned domains, one of which it reached nearly 400 times. For a more direct comparison, the iRobot app had reached out to 37 domains, including a handful of what looked like trackers, and the Matic app had contacted exactly one web address: the local IP address of the Matic robot.
Like a lot of people, I’ve come to accept that there is a data privacy trade-off when it comes to using certain devices. I don’t like it, but it’s nearly impossible to use modern technology without accepting it. And as a gadget reviewer, I give my data to a lot of different apps in the course of my work. But I am highly suspicious of any app that’s contacting that many domains. Dreame’s spokesperson told me some of the app’s features are “the result of collaboration with external partners,” who provide it with “a ready-made system that includes a variety of embedded third-party tools,” like statistical code and video players. These tools, they said, “make calls to their own respective servers, which accounts for the high volume of network connections that you have observed.”
That’s all well and good, and the app seemed to settle down after the first few days of testing to just contacting 53 domains in the previous 7 days as of this writing. And yet, even if that’s mostly just to support the app’s features, it’s still a lot of opaque outgoing communication from a single smart home appliance’s app.
So busy, now!
In the movie The Fifth Element, Gary Oldman’s character (“Jean-Baptiste. Emmanuel. Zorg.”) pushes a drinking glass off his desk to illustrate his villainous view that by destroying things, he gives life the opportunity to flourish. As the glass shatters, several robots parade out from a hidden wall compartment to clean up the mess. His idea is that these robots were created by hundreds of people who are able to keep feeding their families and prosper through this sort of continuous destruction.
It’s a scene I kept thinking about while testing this product, and it’s not Zorg’s bullshit ethical posturing that’s been on my mind. It’s something else he says: “Look at all these little things. So busy, now! Notice how each one is useful.” As he’s saying this, two robots with flashing lights cordon off the area, one sweeps up the mess, another sprays liquid onto the ground, and a final one spins about, mopping.
I don’t just bring this up in hopes that someone will validate my taste in movies. It also helps me make a point: for whatever reason, the filmmakers assumed that the best approach to floor-cleaning robots is to make them narrow-purpose devices. I don’t think you have to go as far as to have an individual robot for spraying floor cleaner, but as I wrote this review, I kept thinking about how my favorite gadgets are often the ones focused on being really good at a small number of things. Maybe it’s because if something is made to accomplish one or two tasks, it’s unforgivable if it sucks at those. If it’s made to do a whole bunch of things, it can get away with doing some of them poorly. It feels like Dreame is almost counting on that possibility.
If there’s a bright side, it’s that most of the Aqua10 Ultra Roller’s problems seem like the sort that can, and hopefully will, be fixed with software updates the way a few good patches can turn an unfinished, bad video game good. But it’s one thing to spend between $60 and $70 (or, sigh, $80) on a glitchy, unfinished game. It’s another entirely to drop several hundreds or more on a robot vacuum that can’t appreciably out-vacuum my dusty old Roomba J7, is missing advertised features like Matter support, and has so much trouble finishing a clean. At the end of the day, the only thing the Aqua10 does reasonably well right now is mopping. And, uh, who wants to pay $1,600 for that? Until and unless its issues are fixed, it doesn’t seem worth it. Just buy a mop.
Early Black Friday deals are starting to pop up across the web, and a great one to check out is at Dyson. While we still think you have the best shot to get the steepest discounts the closer to Black Friday we get, some of the discounts on Dyson’s site right now are some of the best we’ve seen. One of those is $290 off the Dyson V8 Absolute cordless vacuum, bringing it down to $300.
Dyson devices are all over our list of the best cordless vacuums, and for good reason. The company makes effective products. The V8 Absolute has been designed to clean all floor types, in addition to upholstery. It’s also been engineered to squeeze into tight spots, which is great for hitting those oft-neglected parts of the home.
Dyson
The suction power is on point and the battery lasts for 40 minutes before requiring a charge. That’s just enough time to vacuum a standard-sized home if you don’t stop for too many breaks. This model also comes with a HEPA filter.
The V8 is getting a bit long-in-the-tooth. If you want a newer model, the V11 Extra is on sale for $400, which is a discount of $260. This one boosts the suction power and increases the battery life to 60 minutes.
The early Black Friday sale isn’t just for cordless vacuums. The 360 Vis Nav robot vacuum is on sale right now for $500, which is a massive discount of $500. This is one of our favorite robot vacuums, primarily because of its incredible suction power.
You know what sucks? Not Neato vacuums. According to an email sent to users that was obtained by The Verge, the popular robot vacuum from the now-defunct Neato Robotics will permanently go offline following a decision by its parent company to shut down cloud services, rendering the app no longer functional and, by extension, the robots significantly less useful.
Owners of Neato vacuums won’t have to go entirely without the support of their robo floor sweeper, but functionality will revert entirely to Manual mode. That means users will no longer be able to activate or control the robovac remotely via the MyNeato app. It also means that they won’t be able to set custom routines or schedule regular cleanings. The only way to set the vacuum to run is by manually pressing the physical power button on the machine, so the device can mindlessly bounce around between rooms for a bit.
This day was going to come eventually for Neato vacuums, which had its doors closed in 2023 by German parent company Vorwerk Group after its “failure to meet economic goals.” At the time, Vorwerk promised it would keep the cloud online for no less than five years, ensuring owners of a Neato vac could continue to keep their floors clean for half a decade.
Turns out that was not a firm promise.
In the email sent to Neato robot vacuum owners, Vorwerk explained the decision: “Since Neato ceased operations in 2023, Vorwerk has continued maintaining the Neato cloud platform to honor the original five-year service promise. However, cybersecurity standards, compliance obligations, and regulations have advanced in ways that make it no longer possible to safely and sustainably operate these legacy systems.”
The vacuums will still technically work, at least, so they aren’t entirely useless, but this has just been the way of the internet-connected appliance trend. Earlier this year, Google announced that it would drop support for the earliest generations of its Nest smart thermostat, cutting off cloud support and rendering it a standard, manually-operated one. Belkin, too, got in on the fun of bricking functionality, saying that it would cut off support for most of its Wemo products, including smart light switches, plugs, cameras, and other devices.
Whatever additional value internet connectivity provides to devices, it also ties consumers even tighter to a company’s whims. If they decide the cost of continuing to keep a product online outweighs whatever they are getting from said device, they can just shut it down. After all, they already got your money.
Do you remember the first time you used a robot vacuum? I remember mine. It was one of iRobot’s early Roombas. I was transfixed, watching this chunky black disc whiz noisily around, bashing into walls and furniture before zipping off in seemingly random directions like a hockey puck slapped haphazardly across the ice. It wasn’t good at its job, but in a way, its clumsy sort of chaos made it charming.
Nothing is charming about most robot vacuums, now. In fact, most of them are boring as hell. Don’t get me wrong, they can be nice to have. But it feels like manufacturers have made a collective decision to ignore the R2-D2 of it all in their quest to turn their products into Very Serious Appliances. Why that might be is anyone’s guess, but I suspect either it hasn’t occurred to them to make a robot vacuum fun or they want people to see their products as sophisticated, advanced technology. Or maybe it’s just very hard to nail fun.
Whatever the reason, it has led us to this place where robot vacuums all look about the same: the friendly, rounded curves of the early models have been replaced with harder edges and sheer, flat design. Many have sensor clusters jutting out of the top so they actually know where they’re going, unlike my freewheeling Roomba of old. They’re also smarter and less likely to get trapped under your couch, and they’ve got robotic parts that let them get to more places. (See the independently lifting wheels from the Roborock Saros 10R or the periscope-like sensor cluster of the new Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller.) And in recent years, their docks have become much more than a place to recharge and maybe empty dustbins—now, they can swap out mopping solutions and even cleaning parts of the robots themselves.
The problem is: Too many of them still suck (pun intended) at basic cleaning tasks. Some are better than others, but generally speaking, they’re still prone to being disabled by misplaced trinkets, leaving obvious trash behind on carpets, or creating a moat of dirt around the edge of a rug. Their automated docks are impressive, but they’re also a constant source of noise. To many of these companies, “better” seems to be synonymous with “busier and more complicated.”
Enter Matic, founded by former Nest engineers who set out to create a robot vacuum, also called the Matic, that can “mimic human perception and self-learning through cameras and Neural Networks” to clean more like a human being—and that does its job locally, no cloud connection needed. The home robotics company has since put out a device that both looks and works better than the vast majority of its competition, albeit for a high price. But it does so with an irresistible charm that I haven’t seen in a gadget in years.
Matic Robot Vacuum
It’s disarmingly charming robot vacuum with great performance and very few minor quibbles.
Stellar vacuum performance
Solid mopping
Immensely charming
Quiet operation
Detailed map
No internet connection required
It ain’t cheap
Ongoing costs can rack up
Form factor limits where it can go
The Matic is a spectacle right from the get-go. It starts with the shipping box: Instead of slicing through packing tape and lifting out a device hugged by styrofoam and wrapped in plastic, you release four tabs on the bottom of the packaging and lift the top to reveal the Matic sitting on a little cardboard platform with a ramp that flops down. It’s not zip-tied or secured in any way, and when you long-press the start button on top, it drives itself off the platform. A display near the button lights up with a message, festooned with digital balloons and ticker tape, that reads (in my case), “Hello, Davis Family.” It feels like a fake robot made for some early-2010s TV show about the near future.
Inside the box’s upper portion, you’ll find replacement parts, like dust bags and an extra mop roller. But Matic also love-bombs you with a tiny 3D-printed Matic robot vacuum key chain, a sticker sheet full of things like dog ears and a name tag (my child took the liberty of naming it “Martie”), a pair of googly eyes, and a set of friggin’ Legos with instructions to build a miniature Matic. The Lego kit doesn’t come with every Matic delivered—Matic CEO Mehul Nariyawala told me in an interview that the company had included them with early orders, but that it’s hard to get the individual pieces at scale, as it had to special order some. I think the company should try, though, because this was a delightful little build:
The Matic itself beguiles you the moment you look at it. Instead of being a giant, squat hockey puck, the Matic’s curvy, blocky cuboid body stands 7.8 inches tall. The easy comparison is Pixar’s Wall-E, although I kept thinking it looked more like M-O, a black-and-white floor-cleaning robot that, driven by an obsession with cleaning Wall-E’s filth, defies its programming by leaving its predefined course.
To that end, the Matic has a clear cartoonish face, made up of two RGB cameras up top and a broomy mustache-looking cleaning head—the part with the brush and mop rollers—below. When it’s in mopping mode, it drives backwards, and there’s a face there, too, in the form of two more cameras above an air vent that gives it a Wallace and Gromit-esque smile. The Matic uses those four cameras, along with a fifth mounted on top and several infrared sensors hidden around its body, to navigate and map its world, as well as to identify and avoid obstacles.
The Matic’s charming cartoonishness continues when you send it off on an initial mapping run that I can only describe as delightful. It doesn’t just creep around your house, slowly taking stock of boundaries and building a virtual layout, as most vacuums would. Instead, it seems to dash excitedly from place to place, pausing here and there for whimsical pirouettes. It’s collecting data like any other robot vacuum would, but it feels like a Pixar character awash in wonder at every detail of its new home. It’s a marvelous bit of design excess that’s it’s really hard not to get swept up in.
When the mapping is done, you’re treated to what may be the best robot vacuum map in the business. Rather than expressing your home’s layout as a cluster of generic rectangles, the Matic app creates a full-color image from stitched-together pictures of your flooring. It’s almost what it would look like if a giant lifted my roof and snapped a picture of my house (which, again, just makes me think of cartoons), minus the tops of the furniture the robot is too short to see. You can rotate and tilt the map or drive the robot around with an onscreen joystick as if you’re playing a mobile game, and because the details you see in real life are represented so well on the map, it’s always easy to tell where the Matic is and direct it precisely where you want it to go.
This is all extremely handy when the Matic gets stuck—which this robot is definitely wont to do, if perhaps less so than other robot vacuums. In cases where it just can’t get out of a tight spot, you can go into remote control mode to drive it out of trouble. There’s a little latency between your action and the robot’s, but I found that I could still drive it around and be reasonably sure I wouldn’t run it into walls, even if I couldn’t physically see it.
Is this map’s detailed rendering of my home a bit of a creepy reminder that I’m letting a little mobile camera drive around your house? Absolutely, yes. But Matic has uniquely positioned itself to get away with that by being almost entirely self-contained, only requiring an internet connection for software updates. Other robot vacuum companies, like iRobot, might ask you to submit pictures from inside your home so they can train the models that drive their object avoidance features. Whereas the Matic is equipped with an Nvidia Orin Jetson Nano, a miniature computer made for AI and robotics, to handle object identification and navigation on-device.
Connecting the Matic to your home Wi-Fi network does make the act of controlling it easier, but the company doesn’t punish you for using Bluetooth instead. Apart from not getting software updates, you might never know the difference unless some robot-killing software bug rears its head. The app works exactly the same over Bluetooth; it’s just a bit slower, and the connection gets iffy from one room over and nonexistent any farther than that—at least, in my very old house, which has wireless signal-crushing plaster-and-lathe walls. Or, if youlike the way the robot works as-is and don’t mind never getting software updates, you could easily set the Matic to a schedule, disconnect it from Wi-Fi, and then delete the app forever.
The top-mounted display also gives you enough information that you almost always know what it’s up to or why it might be stuck. And, as a bonus, you’ll never have to worry about the Matic collecting and phoning home with pictures of you on a toilet that then end up on Facebook. Matic, the company, could go belly up, and this robot could potentially run and be useful for as long as its parts allow—which, to be fair, wouldn’t be long if you can’t buy the vacuum bags anymore, but we’ll get to that soon.
Okay, okay, so it’s an adorable little Wall-E with good maps. That doesn’t matter, even a little, if the Matic is just as mediocre at cleaning as so many other robot vacuums. Thankfully, it’s actually very good; I run my Roomba J7 nightly, and even then, the Matic was able to gather enough dust and hair in one day of testing to fill its dust bag, which Nariyawala told me has a 1-liter capacity. After that first day, I went through roughly a bag a week over two weeks of nightly runs and one or two spot cleans a day. My carpets and hard floors looked cleaner and felt nicer to walk on than they ever do with my Roomba J7 or Eufy L35 Hybrid.
The Matic accomplishes this with little suction—it only pulls air at 3,200 Pa, about a tenth of the 30,000 Pa promised by the Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller or the 19,500Pa of the Ecovacs Deebot X11, some of its most expensive recent competitors. Part of that is thanks to its roller brush, which has chunkier fins that dig deeper into your carpet and are angled in such a way that hair and string are shunted to the side instead of wrapping around the roller. It might also be down to how it cleans; rather than just sort of dumbly driving back and forth across a room in rows, navigating around furniture as needed, like my Roomba J7 or Eufy L35 Hybrid, it seems to detect when it has missed something, and it often goes back to try again from different angles. (Here, I thought again of Wall-E’s M-O leaving its prescribed route.)
The Matic even docks well, gliding smoothly over its metal charging contacts, although it can hesitate if there are objects too close to either side. (Matic recommends a foot of clearance beside and above the dock.) Also, it’s quiet—Matic puts it at 55 decibels when vacuuming, or around the volume of normal human speech—although it’s definitely still noisy if something too big to easily get sucked into the vacuum tube finds its way into the cleaning head and bangs around inside until it’s finally sucked up or ejected.
The Matic’s vision-based object avoidance is excellent; it never bumps into walls or furniture, sometimes turning with such tight clearance that I often thought, “Ah ha! This time it will smack that wall,” and was proven wrong. It does a good job ignoring things it shouldn’t suck up—I never once caught it dragging a dangling USB-C cable or a blanket around. You can still get it to run into you if you jam your foot right in front of it while it’s rolling, but otherwise, it’s almost gentle when it comes to living things, slowing if it sees a dog or a person in its path and either going around them or just stopping and waiting patiently for the path to clear.
Its object avoidance isn’t perfect, though; the Matic will still grab things like hair ties, Lego bricks, and other small objects while going around larger bits of paper. And it got stuck once when the handle of a foldable cloth laundry basket that had been left flat on our living room floor got jammed in the cleaning head. But those sorts of jam were rare, and I wasn’t being especially careful to keep them from happening.
When it comes to mopping, the Matic is better than a lot of older mop-bots that just smear plain water across your floor. It actually uses a floor-cleaning solution, though Matic only endorses those made by Aunt Fannie’s. My floors feel and look better after a few scheduled cleans. The Matic has a spot-cleaning feature that lets you give special attention to dried stains or fresh spills, driving slower over them and taking multiple passes. It did a fine job cleaning ketchup I squirted all over the ground and took care of a crusty stain I found under my kitchen trash can. But don’t expect miracles: it didn’t make a dent in a mysterious substance stuck to my dining room floor. In the Matic’s defense, I’m pretty sure the substance was gum mixed with a bit of paint—did I mention I have a child?—and I couldn’t get it up with my manual mop, either.
Matic says one water tank refill is good for about 1,300 square feet of floor. I don’t have nearly that much moppable surface in my home—I’ve got maybe 100–200 square feet—but I’d say it managed close to that across several scheduled and one-off mopping runs during my testing period. You can configure the Matic to go wait by your kitchen sink (or anywhere, really) when it runs out of water, which I find both adorable and convenient. If it takes longer than 15 minutes for someone to help out, the device docks itself, and the app lets you know the thing’s thirsty.
Nariyawala told me the company wanted to design something that, if sent back to the 1960s, would be recognizable as a robot designed to vacuum. It’s a nice idea and the right instinct. In particular, its height enables those big ol’ wheels that make high rugs or the chunky transition between my dining room and kitchen a nonissue. The taller vantage point of its sensors both keeps them clean longer and gives the robot more information about the stuff it sees on the ground. Those are all intentional parts of its design, Nariyawala said.
But those unorthodox design choices do have their shortcomings. Primarily, the Matic’s height means it may not go under furniture that’s less than 12 inches off the ground, a big limitation compared to most puck-shaped robots. Mostly, that means it’s not cleaning under my couches and chairs as most others can. (Although, it did start going under one of my dining room chairs that’s only slightly higher its top following a software update near the end of this review.) I actually think that’s a fine trade-off, considering how well it cleans everywhere else. The other thing is that without that tried-and-true circular shape, its boxy body can’t spin freely to pick up dirt in very tight spaces. For instance, the Matic won’t even attempt to clean a small nook next to my fridge that my circular robot vacuums handle just fine. It fits, but barely—I suspect its reticence to even try is part of its aversion to touching walls and furniture.
As much as I like the Matic app, its cleaning history section could also give a bit more information than it does. The device stopped mid-clean on a couple of occasions, and I didn’t see specific reasons why. In one of those cases, my partner found a blob of yarn sitting just in front of the Matic, keeping it from leaving its dock, where it had presumably stopped to recharge mid-clean before continuing. The app’s cleaning history said it hadn’t cleaned all of the rooms but didn’t clarify the reason; my Roomba J7’s cleaning history might’ve informed me that the device had stopped cleaning because it was stuck. Another time, I found the Matic sitting still in the middle of my dining room, its display reading “Paused.” I knew I hadn’t paused it, and everyone besides my cat had been asleep when it started cleaning, so a few more details about the proceedings up to that point would’ve helped me figure out if I needed to report a software bug (or just scold my cat.)
The Matic also lacks any sort of smart home integration. Nariyawala told me that the company is looking into implementing that down the road, but admitted that doing so is “at the bottom of the list.” That mainly means no voice control and no access to automations that could incorporate your other smart home devices like, say, turning the lights off when the Matic finishes its job (although it does a fine job cleaning in the dark). Still, the Matic robot vacuum and its app are so good—and Matter’s vacuum support so limited besides—that it doesn’t feel like smart home integration would add much anyway.
The biggest caveat, to me, is the Matic’s ongoing costs, particularly those of its disposable dust bags. I do like the convenience of its 1-liter onboard one, which holds both wet and dry material and has a built-in HEPA filter. That’s more than twice the capacity of my Roomba’s plastic dustbin. But a four-pack of these also costs $12 (and a 12-pack is $36). The company says one bag should last about a week, depending on your usage, which was roughly what I got out of it while cleaning around 900 square feet of my main floor every night. Going through a four-pack every month costs basically as much as an ad-supported streaming plan, and comes on top of the less-frequent replacement of other wearable parts, like the mop, dust rollers and side brush. That’s to say nothing of how much it costs just to buy the thing.
By comparison, a three-pack of 3-liter dustbags for the Eufy Omni E28 costs just $16.99. That’s an expensive robot when bought at its street price of $1,399.99, but as I write this, Eufy is discounting it by $649.99, making it more affordable than the $1,095 Matic.
Whether the Matic is a better buy may come down, at that point, to vibes. The Omni E28 might clean just as well as the Matic; I haven’t tested it, so I can’t say. But thanks to its heavily automated multipurpose dock, it takes up a lot more space and is likely to be a much noisier presence in your home. The Matic, on the other hand, is easy to place, works very well, and is quiet enough that I’m hardly aware it’s even working if we’re not in the same room.
The Matic is the best robot vacuum I’ve ever used. Its friendly-looking chassis and vibe are enough of a hit in my house that my kid now keeps a clean bedroom floor just so the Matic can come in and vacuum it every night before bedtime. To me, that alone is almost worth the $1,095 price tag.
For others who are willing to fork over that amount of money, the Matic offers top-tier carpet cleaning, solid mopping performance, and an uncommonly well-thought-out app. I’m willing to clean up under low furniture myself if I have a robot that does such a great job everywhere else.
There’s also the fact that, at least according to Nariyawala, when we spoke, the Matic is engineered for longevity and privacy. Build quality is solid, and the fact that it doesn’t need an internet connection to do its job is a huge asset. One of my biggest criticisms of robot vacuums has always been that most of them require the internet to get the full experience, and Matic has shown that’s not necessary: your robot can work great without Wi-Fi if you’re okay with the range and speed limits of a Bluetooth connection.
But it’s the elements of surprise and delight that really push the Matic robot vacuum over the top. I haven’t found a gadget this endearing in a long time. Matic approaches home robotics in a way that others have recognized is necessary—see Samsung’s Ballie, or that Apple Pixar-style robotic lamp research project—but which I’m not convinced anyone has really nailed. I went into this review curious, above all else, how an all-on-device robot vacuum with a funny design would work, and I was surprised to find something legitimately and unabashedly fun. More of that, please.
Robot vacuums have gone from novelty gadgets to everyday helpers. The best robot vacuum keeps your floors tidy without you needing to drag out a bulky upright or spend time sweeping. Today’s models map your space, avoid obstacles and even empty themselves, making them a solid addition to any home. If you’ve got pets, kids or just a busy schedule, a robot vacuum takes care of the little messes that build up fast.
Not every option costs a fortune either. While high-end models pack in powerful suction and advanced navigation, the best budget robot vacuums still do a great job with everyday cleaning. They might skip extras like self-emptying docks, but they’ll keep dust and crumbs from piling up without much effort from you.
In this guide, we’ve tested and compared the top models so you don’t have to. From premium devices packed with smart features to affordable picks that get the basics right, we’ll help you find the best robot vacuum for your needs and budget.
Table of contents
Best robot vacuums 2025
Shark
Wi-Fi connectivity: Yes | Floor type: All floor types | Features: Obstacle avoidance, home mapping, LiDAR navigation | Assistant support: Alexa/Google Assistant | Mopping capabilities: No | Self-empty: Yes | Good for pet hair: Yes
Shark’s AI robot vacuum — of which there are many models with small differences between them — ticks all of the boxes that a mid-range machine should. It offers reliable cleaning performance, its mobile app is easy to use and it produces accurate home maps. On top of that, its auto-empty base is bagless, which means you won’t have to spend money on extra bags every few months.
Setting up the Shark is as simple as taking it and its base out of the box, plugging the base in and downloading the companion mobile app to finish things up. The machine connects to Wi-Fi, allowing you to control it via the app when you’re not at home, or using Google Assistant and Alexa voice control. The first journey the Shark makes is an “Explore Run,” during which it produces a map of your home that you can then edit from the mobile app.
The Shark produced a pretty accurate floorplan of my home, and I was happy to see a “re-explore” option that I could use if the map wasn’t up to my standards. With a completed map, you’re then asked to label rooms in your home. That way, you can send the Shark to only the bedroom for more direct cleaning jobs, select “no-go” zones and more.
The first few times I ran the Shark robot, I had it clean my whole home. It boasts a respectable run time of up to 120 minutes, which will be handy for bigger homes. I was impressed by how quiet it was – or rather, how much quieter it was compared to other robo-vacs I’ve tried. You’ll have to turn up the volume on your TV if it’s cleaning in the same room, but it’ll be hard to hear when it’s sucking up debris down the hallway.
It also did a decent job maneuvering its way around the cat toys I left out on the floor. The device’s object detection feature claims it can avoid things as small as four inches, but I found that it was much better at sensing and moving around the three-foot-long cat tunnel on my floor than the many tiny mouse toys.
But even if Mr. Mouse caught the edge of the Shark’s wheels now and then, the robo-vac took it all in stride. One thing I look for when testing robot vacuums is how much attention they need from me during cleanings. The best ones are hands-free and require no extra attention at all – once they start a job, they’re smart enough to putter around your home, move around objects and return to their base when they’re finished. With Shark’s robo-vac, I never had to tend to it when it was cleaning.
Now, I did my due diligence and picked up pieces of clothing and charging cables off the ground before running the Shark (ditto for every other robot vacuum I tested), so those things were never in the way. Most companion apps will actually remind you to do this before starting a cleaning job.
This Shark machine comes with an auto-empty station, so it will dump out the contents of its dustbin after every cleaning run – and also during a job if its bin gets full before it’s done. In the latter situation, the Shark will go back to cleaning automatically after it’s freed up its bin. That’s a great feature, but I found the best thing about the base to be its bagless design. Shark’s device is unlike most other robot vacuum clean bases because you don’t have to keep buying proprietary garbage bags to outfit the interior of the base. When you want to empty the base, part of it snaps off and opens to eject debris, and it easily locks back in place when you return it. Not only is this convenient, but it also brings the lifetime cost of ownership down since you won’t be buying special bags every few months.
It’s worth noting that Shark has a couple of models that are similar to this one that just have a different color scheme, a 30- versus 60-day self-cleaning base capacity and other minor differences. The biggest feature that would impact how you use the machine is the clean base capacity: we recommend springing for the 60-day models if you want to interact as little as possible with your robo-vac.
The Roomba Combo j9+ has everything we want in a combination robotic vacuum and mop. It offers incredibly powerful suction, deep floor scrubbing and a slew of smarts to avoid obstacles (including cat and dog poop!). It’s a better vacuum than its predecessor, the Roomba Combo j7+, and it also features a new Clean Base that can automatically refill its liquid tank. More than any Roomba before it, the Combo j9+ can make your floors sparkly clean with very little intervention on your part.
While it’s expensive, the Roomba Combo j9+ certainly beats paying for a professional cleaning service. It’s also an excellent accessory for busy parents who just want to keep their floors looking tidy. It’s one of the best robotic vacuums and mops for pet owners, especially for its ability to avoid pet waste. In fact, if the j9+ ends up making a poopy mess due to cat or dog droppings, iRobot will send you a replacement unit for free. (That offer only works for the first year, and it only applies to solid waste from cats and dogs, but it’s still a helpful guarantee for pet owners afraid of the havoc that a robo-vac might wreak.)
The Roomba Combo j9+ features home mapping and can accurately map your home far faster than any previous Roomba, and you can also use the iRobot app to specify room borders. You can also create cleaning routines and label objects to help it clean exactly where you’d like. The j9+ works with smart assistants from Amazon and Google as well, so you can just shout out cleaning requests to your smart speaker. While it’s not a completely magical cleaning robot – you’ll still need to clear up your floors to help it run well – it’s certainly the closest we’ve seen yet to the ideal robotic vacuum and mop for whole-home deep cleaning. — Devindra Hardawar, Senior Reporter
Wi-Fi connectivity: Yes | Floor type: All floor types | Features: Auto mopping, obstacle avoidance, home mapping, self-emptying and self-refilling base | Assistant support: Alexa/Google Assistant | Mopping capabilities: Yes | Self-empty: Yes | Good for pet hair: Yes
It didn’t take long for Shark to make stiff competition for iRobot’s Roomba Combo j9+. The PowerDetect 2-in-1 robot vacuum and mop works slightly differently to vacuum and wash your floors, but the outcome is quite similar. Instead of lowering a mop pad when scooting over hard flooring, Shark’s machine has a mop pad that lives on its underside and will deploy it when cleaning tile, wood and other similar floors. You as the user, during the initial setup process, will indicate in your home map where you have hard floors and when you have carpet. In that sense, it’s not as automated as iRobot’s device, but it’s just one additional step that you should only have to do one time.
When I tested the PowerDetect, I found that it had a very easy setup process (just like all of the other Shark robot vacuums I’ve tried) and it took very little time to putter around the main floor of my house to get an initial home map reading. After that, you can choose if you want the machine to vacuum, mop or do both, in which case it will first vacuum the floors and then mop those freshly cleaned surfaces.
Aside from the fact that it took the robo-vac a long time to fill up its tank before mopping (a minute or two longer than I expected), it did a nice job cleaning my mix of hardwood and tile floors. I also never had to untangle it from a messy situation, be it rogue charging cables on the floor or a steep lip on the legs of my coffee table. While I spent most of my time manually dictating cleaning jobs for the PowerDetect, you can set regular cleaning schedules using the modes you prefer, or tell the machine to only clean certain rooms at specific times.
Shark didn’t pull the NeverTouch Pro Base’s name out of thin air, either. After initial setup, you really don’t have to touch the base until you need to empty or refill it in some way — empty its debris container or refill its reservoir with water and cleaning solution. Shark claims the base can hold up to 60 days worth of vacuumed debris, which is pretty standard for a machine like this, and it can hold 30 days worth of liquid refill. That means you should be able to run the PowerDetect for at least a month before you have to interact with its base — great for those who hate floor chores, or just don’t have the time to baby a new gadget in their home.
Pros
Good suction and mopping capabilities
Auto-empty and auto-refilling base for vacuum and mopping, respectively
Wi-Fi connectivity: Yes | Floor type: All floor types | Features: Obstacle avoidance, home mapping | Assistant support: Alexa/Google Assistant | Mopping capabilities: No | Self-empty: No | Good for pet hair: Yes
Dyson may have been late to the robo-vac party, but it made a remarkable machine with the 360 Vis Nav. Let’s get this out of the way at the top: this is a $1,000 robot vacuum cleaner that doesn’t have mopping abilities or a self-emptying base. Those factors alone make it less versatile (and more cost prohibitive) than our other top picks, but two of its features make it worth a shout here: its suction power and obstacle avoidance capabilities.
The Dyson 360 Vis Nav has the strongest suction power of any robot vacuum I’ve tested; it’s certainly the closest you’ll get to using one of the company’s cordless stick vacs. It sucked up an impressive amount of pet hair from my carpeted floors, and I didn’t even get a “bin full” alert after the fact. Dog hair can be really tricky to pull up from carpets, but it appears this hands-free cleaning machine can handle it all.
Obstacle avoidance is impressive as well, thanks in part to the machine’s 360-degree vision system that uses a camera and LED lights to navigate around things like furniture, and map out your home. No robo-vac I’ve used has been able to fully avoid crashing into a chair leg now and again, and the 360 Vis Nav is no exception — but it did so only a couple of times. More importantly, I never got an alert that the robot was stuck or got tangled up with a rogue charging cord and needed human assistance to get it back on track.
In many ways, the Dyson 360 Vis NAv distills a robot vacuum down to its essence: it’s really good at sucking up dirt and debris on its own, with little to no interaction with humans needed (after initial setup, of course). Some people will be willing to spend a pretty penny on that — but in a saturated market like that of robot vacuums, you can get a lot more for your money.
A self-emptying base and mopping capabilities are all but standard on most robot vacuums priced at $700 or more (and you can increasingly find one, or both of those features on cheaper machines). Personally, I think it’s particularly painful to pay $1,000 and not get a self-emptying base, at minimum. But if you’re willing to spend more on a machine that gets the basics almost perfect, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav is the machine to get.
Wi-Fi connectivity: Yes | Floor type: All floor types | Features: Obstacle avoidance | Assistant support: Alexa/Google Assistant | Mopping capabilities: No | Self-empty: No | Good for pet hair: Yes
The iRobot Roomba Vac Robot Vacuum is a good affordable option for most people thanks to its good cleaning power and easy-to-use mobile app. We won’t get too deep into it here since we have a whole guide to cheap robot vacuums with additional recommendations. But suffice to say, the Roomba Vac gives you all the essentials you’d expect from a robot vacuum, along with all of the convenience that comes with iRobot’s mobile app.
Wi-Fi connectivity: Yes | Floor type: All floor types | Features: Obstacle avoidance, home mapping, stick and hand vac accessories (included) | Assistant support: Alexa/Google Assistant | Mopping capabilities: No | Self-empty: Yes | Good for pet hair: Yes
Anker’s Eufy home brand made a first-of-its-kind machine with the E20 robot vacuum that, surprisingly, doesn’t succumb to too many of the pitfalls that a first-gen device typically does. The E20 comes as a robot vacuum with a self-emptying base, and also included in the box are the attachments to turn it into a cordless stick vacuum and a handheld vac. Just pop out the cleaning module from the robovac, snap in your attachments and get all of the conveniences of a cordless vacuum without spending (potentially) double to buy a second device.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the E20 excels as a robot vacuum. Eufy has made a number of solid robovacs over the years, and the E20 is no exception, dutifully sucking up dirt, debris and pet hair as it putters around your home. In my testing, it rarely got stuck on household objects like door mats and it has good obstacle avoidance. I also appreciate that it’s smart enough to know when its built-in dustbin is getting full, and it will return to its base to empty it periodically as it cleans.
As a cordless stick vacuum, it’s just ok. You’ll need to keep it on the highest suction mode to get the deepest clean and the build quality feels a little cheap. But its small profile will make it easy for anyone to use (and to take it out to your car for a quick clean up) and it doesn’t choke at the first sign of pet hair. A device like this could be exactly what some have been hoping for: a solid robot vacuum that can clean for you most of the time, but also lets you manually clean hard-to-reach spots when necessary.
Pros
Quickly turns into a cordless stick vacuum and a handheld vacuum
Strong performance as a robot vacuum
Self-emptying base holds a lot for its compact size
We recommend thinking first about the floors in your home: Do you have carpet throughout, or tile and hardwood floors, or a mix? Robots with stronger suction power will do a better job picking up dirt on carpets as they can get into the nooks and crannies more easily. Some machines have “max” modes as well, which ups suction power but also typically eats battery life faster than the “normal” floor cleaning mode.
Vacuum suction
Suction power is an important factor to consider. Unfortunately, there isn’t a standard power scale that all robo-vacs adhere to, so it’s difficult to compare among a bunch of devices. Some companies provide Pascal (Pa) levels and generally the higher the Pa, the stronger the vacuum cleaner will be. But other companies don’t rely on Pa and simply say their robots have X-times more suction than other robots. If you’re looking for the best vacuum for your needs, it’s helpful to pay attention to real-world testing and how well the vac can pick up fine dust, crumbs and pet hair in an environment similar to that of your home.
Wi-Fi connectivity
As we explained in our budget guide, Wi-Fi connectivity is a key feature for most robot vacuums. Some of the affordable devices aren’t Wi-Fi connected, though, so it’s best to double check before you buy cheap. Wi-Fi lets a robot vacuum cleaner do things like communicate with a mobile app, which then allows you to control the device from your phone.
Mapping features and object detection
Past a certain price threshold, you’ll find advanced perks like home mapping features, improved object detection and automatic dustbin disposal. Home mapping is exactly what it sounds like: The vacuum uses sensors to map your home’s layout as it cleans, allowing you to send it to particular rooms or avoid no-go zones where you don’t want it to roam.
Most robo-vacs have object detection, but some will be better than others at actually avoiding things like chair legs and children’s toys. High-end models even go so far as to promise obstacle avoidance to steer clear of things like pet poop that can potentially ruin your machine.
Self-empty station
Finally, for peak convenience, consider a self-empty robot vacuum that comes with a self-empty station. These are basically garbage bins attached to the machine’s docking station. At the end of each job, the robo-vac automatically empties its small dustbin into the large clean base – that means you won’t have to empty the dustbin yourself and you’ll only have to tend to the base once every few weeks.
Just keep in mind that most self-emptying bins require proprietary garbage bags – another long-term expense you’ll have to factor in. Also, any vac-and-mop robot with a water tank will not dump its dirty water into the clean base, so you’ll still have to clean up that yourself.
Robot vacuums with mopping capabilities
Mopping capabilities are much more common now in robot vacuums than they were just five years ago. Machines with this feature have a water tank either built into the robot’s chassis, the auto-empty bin or as a separate piece that you swap in for the dustbin when you want to mop your floors. It makes the robo-vac more useful if you have hard floors in your home that you like to keep squeaky clean, but it does require more work on your part.
Filling and emptying the reservoir remains a human’s job for the most part (except on the most expensive machines), as does adding cleaning solutions if the mopping robot comes with this feature to ensure it uses clean water for every cycle.
Robot vacuum maintenance tips
First and foremost, always empty your robot vacuum’s dustbin after every cleaning job. If you have a model with a self-emptying base, there’s less work for you to do yourself. If not, simply detach and empty the dustbin as soon as the robot is done cleaning. It’s also a good idea to take a dry cloth to the inside of the dustbin every once in a while to remove any small dust and dirt particles clinging to its insides.
In addition, you’ll want to regularly examine the machine’s brush roll to see if any hair has wrapped around them, or if any large debris is preventing them from working properly. Some brushes are better than others at not succumbing to tangled hair, but it’s a good idea to check your robot’s brushes regardless — both their main brush and any smaller roller brushes or corner brushes they have. These parts are often easy to pop off of the machine (because they do require replacements eventually) so we recommend removing each brush entirely, getting rid of any tangled hair or other debris attached to them and reinstalling them afterwards.
Robot vacuums also have filters that need replacing every couple of months. Check your machine’s user manual or the manufacturer’s website to see how long they recommend going in between filter replacements. Most of the time, these filters cannot be washed, so you will need to buy new ones either directly from the manufacturer or from other retailers like Amazon or Walmart.
How we test robot vacuums
We primarily test robot vacuums by using them as they are intended to be used: in a home, across different types of flooring and in the face of all sorts of messes including pet hair, spilt coffee grounds and other food debris, dust bunnies and more. We set up all robot vacuums according to their provided instructions and run multiple cleaning jobs during a testing period of at least one to two weeks per machine.
If the robot has mopping capabilities, we also test those as well on hardwood and tile flooring. For models with self-emptying bases, we rely on those built-in trash cans for all post-job cleaning, and we make sure to test the robot vacuum’s mobile app for usability and convenience. As we’re testing, we make note of things like how loud the robot and its components are, how much human attention the robot needs on a regular basis, how the robot handles large messes and big dust bunnies, if the robot gets stuck on rugs, doormats or other furniture and more.
Robot vacuum FAQs
Are robot vacuums worth it?
We tackled this question when we reviewed budget robot vacuums and the answer is yes, especially if vacuuming is one of your least favorite chores. Robots take the hard work out of cleaning your floors – just turn the thing on and watch it go. Any robot vacuum cleaner worth buying is semi-autonomous in that it will suck up dirt around your home until its battery is low and then make its way back to its charging dock. Unlike a regular vacuum, you should only have to interact with it to turn it on, empty its dustbin and untangle it if it were to get stuck somewhere.
That’s not to say robot vacuums are perfect. They’re almost always less powerful and less flexible than traditional vacuums. Since most robo-vacs are much smaller than traditional models, they often don’t have the same level of suction you’ll get in an upright machine. Plus, their dustbins are smaller, so they will need to be emptied more frequently. While Wi-Fi-connected robot vacuums give you the flexibility to start a cleaning job from anywhere using an app, targeting a small area of your home can be more complicated. Some robo-vacs have spot-cleaning features that focus the machine’s attention on a specific area, which almost – but not quite – mimics the spot-cleaning you’d be able to do yourself with a regular or cordless vacuum.
How long do robot vacuums last?
Robot vacuums can last many years, if you take care of them properly. Check out our recommendations for robot vacuum maintenance above, but in a nutshell, you should make sure that you’re emptying the machine’s bin after every job and periodically cleaning the interior of the bin and the brushes. It’s also a good idea to check the user manual to see how often your robot vacuum’s filter needs changing.
Do robot vacuums work better than handheld vacuums?
There’s no straight answer to this question. Robot vacuums offer more convenience than handheld vacuums, so for those who are looking to automate a chore, that could mean one of these devices works better for them than a standard vacuum. However, handheld vacuum cleaners often have stronger suction power, and they give the user a bit more control. It ultimately depends on how you intend to use your main vacuum cleaner and what you want to prioritize most.
How often do you have to clean a robot vacuum?
Cleaning a robot vacuum isn’t too much of a chore, but you’ll want to give it a little TLC every few weeks or so, depending on how often you’re running it and how much dirt it’s picking up. The dustbin usually needs to be emptied after each cleaning run, especially if you have pets or lots of carpet where dirt can hide. Many newer models have self-emptying docks, which means you won’t have to empty the dustbin yourself after every use, but the main bin will still need a good clean once a month or so. Also, it’s a good idea to check the side brushes and main brush for any hair tangles or debris every couple of weeks to keep things running smoothly.
What are the negatives of robot vacuums?
Robot vacuums won’t work for everyone. One of the biggest drawbacks is that they usually don’t have the same suction power as a full-sized upright vacuum or even a cordless stick vacuum, so they might struggle with deep-cleaning thick carpets. They’re also designed for floors only, so if you’re looking to clean furniture, stairs or other tricky spots, you’ll still need a traditional vacuum to do that. Plus, they can sometimes get stuck or miss spots, especially if you’ve got a lot of furniture or obstacles in the way. While their sensors help, they might still bump into things or need a little help getting out of tight spots. And while most have decent dirt detection features, they’re best for keeping things tidy rather than doing heavy-duty cleaning.
Robot vacuums are more than just a gimmick. Sure, we all enjoy anthropomorphizing a Roomba from time to time, but they’re not gadgets for the sake of gadgetry — keeping your living space clean is an incredibly rewarding task to automate. The only problem is that robot vacuums, and frankly all decent vacuums, are expensive. Fortunately, the steep discounts offered on Amazon this October Prime Day make the purchase a lot more justifiable, whether you want a robot buddy or a traditional vacuum cleaner. In this article, we’re sharing a constantly updated list of Prime Day vacuum deals worth taking advantage of.
Best Prime Day robot vacuum deals
Amazon
Shark has a lot of similar-looking robot vacuums, but the AV2501S stands out from the pack with its long battery life, user-friendly app and highly accurate home mapping. It’s also just an excellent vacuum, with a great record of cutting in-home allergens to near zero. If you’re ready to put AI to work cleaning your floors, this is an awesome place to start.
Dyson V15 Detect Plus for $570 (33 percent off): Our top pick for the best cordless vacuum on the market right now, the V15 Detect has some of the strongest suction power you’ll find in a stick vacuum, plus a lightweight design and a dustbin that can hold more dirt and debris than it might seem. This model comes with five cleaning attachments, including the Fluffy Optic cleaner head that has LEDs to illuminate the floor as you’re vacuuming so you can better see where all the dust bunnies are.
Dyson Ball Animal Total Clean Upright Vacuum for $410 (38 percent off): Dyson is still the king of reinventing vacuums, and the bagless, hyper-maneuverable Ball Animal is a blast to use. The Ball design is based on ease of steering, but the hidden MVP is the sealing — from the head to the canister, not a hair is getting out of this one once it’s in.
Shark AV2501AE AI Robot Vacuum for $459 (29 percent off): If you like the look of the AV2501S but have even more space to clean, the AV2501AE is also on sale. Its self-empty base can go a full 60 days before you have to dump it out, so it’s ideal for large spaces, complex homes or areas that see heavy use. It’s got the same features otherwise, including LiDAR mapping and two hours of autonomous work.
Shark PowerDetect NeverTouch for $450 (55 percent off): This robotic mop/vacuum combo is engineering so you’ll almost never need to revisit it after you set it up. It can clean its own mop, refill its own water tank and empty its own dustbin for up to 30 days at a time. It’s also equipped with air jets that blast dirt out of corners the vacuum can’t fit into.
Shark Matrix Plus 2-in-1 for $300 (57 percent off, Prime exclusive): The Shark Matrix Plus takes the robot vacuum concept even further by working a mop into the design for hands-off wet cleaning. This model is self-cleaning, self-emptying, self-charging and capable of tackling ground-in stains on hard floors.
Shark Navigator Lift-Away Deluxe for $160 (27 percent off): Moving into manual vacuums, let’s start with one of the best. The Shark Navigator Lift-Away is a champion at getting deeply ingrained crud out of carpets, but it’s also capable of squaring away bare floors. You can switch between the two settings quickly, and the lift-away canister makes it easy to empty.
iRobot Roomba 104 Vac for $150 (40 percent off, Prime exclusive): This entry-level Roomba is a good pick for anyone who’s new to owning a robot vacuum. It features a multi-surface brush and an edge-sweeping brush to clean all types of flooring, and it uses LiDAR navigation to avoid obstacles as it goes. The iRobot mobile app lets you control the robot, set cleaning schedules and more.
iRobot Roomba Plus 504 for $380 (36 percent off): For those looking to upgrade to a more advanced robot vacuum, the Roomba Plus 504 is a great next step. It can clean almost anything that might land on a home floor, and if it can’t clean it, it can steer around it. Two brushes and strong suction get at tougher stains, and it even includes an app you can use to set cleaning zones and change suction force remotely.
Roborock Q10 S5+ Robot Vacuum and Mop for $300 (25 percent off): The Roborock Q10 S5+ is another great option for a vacuum-mop combo. It’s skilled at knowing what type of floor it’s on and deploying or retracting the mop appropriately, and comes with precision LiDAR mapping. You can change its settings remotely from a paired app.
Best Prime Day vacuum deals
Amazon
Moving into manual vacuums, let’s start with one of the best. The Shark Navigator Lift-Away is a champion at getting deeply ingrained crud out of carpets, but it’s also capable of squaring away bare floors. You can switch between the two settings quickly, and the lift-away canister makes it easy to empty.
Levoit LVAC-300 cordless vacuum for $250 (29 percent off, Prime exclusive): One of our favorite cordless vacuums, this Levoit machine has great handling, strong suction power for its price and a premium-feeling design. Its bin isn’t too small, it has HEPA filtration and its battery life should be more than enough for you to clean your whole home many times over before it needs a recharge.
Shark CarpetXpert HairPro for $280 (24 percent off): Not all vacuums need to reinvent the wheel. The Shark CarpetXpert HairPro is the perfect midrange option, with a large brushroll for getting pet hair and other allergens out of your carpets. It’s designed internally to suction and store hair without clogging, making it an even better fit for homes with pets.
Amazon Basics Upright Bagless Vacuum Cleaner for $55 (21 percent off): All right, nobody goes to Amazon Basics to be impressed, but we have to admit this vacuum exceeds expectations. It’s light, it has a big dust reservoir and it comes with all the attachments you’ll need for a reasonably sized apartment. The filter is also simple to remove and clean.
Black+Decker QuickClean Cordless Handheld Vacuum for $27 (33 percent off): Rounding out the list, we’ve got this small-but-mighty hand vacuum, perfect for crevices, shelves or cleaning out your car. It weighs about 1.4 pounds and hoovers up small messes in the blink of an eye. The lithium-ion battery stays charged for up to 10 hours.
Robot vacuums are great items to look for during events like October Prime Day. They’re usually hundreds of dollars off, so you can save a ton if you’re buying one as a gift or you want to upgrade an aging robovac you have at home already. One of the best deals this time around is on the iRobot Roomba 104, which is 40 percent off and on sale for only $150.
This is a newer version of the unit that topped our list of the best budget robot vacuums. It’s an entry-level robovac that gets the job done. The cleaning motor is fairly powerful and it ships with a multi-surface brush and an edge-sweeping brush. The vacuum uses LiDAR to map a home and to help it avoid obstacles when cleaning.
iRobot
It’s also been equipped with specialized sensors to prevent falling down stairs. Steps are the natural enemy of all robot vacuums, except maybe this one. The Roomba 104 integrates with the company’s proprietary app, which allows for custom cleaning schedules and the like. The robot can also be controlled via voice assistant and boasts compatibility with Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant.
The vacuum will automatically head to the charger for some juice when running low, which is nice. The battery lasts around 200 minutes per charge, which is a decent enough metric for a budget-friendly robovac. The only downside here? This is just a vacuum. It doesn’t mop and it doesn’t come with a dedicated debris canister.
For the Amazon Big Deal Days event (aka October Prime Day), a tasty deal on a Shark robot vacuum has popped up. You’ll need to be a Prime member to take advantage of the offer on the Shark AV2501S AI Ultra robot vacuum, but if you are, you can get the device for over half off. The discount drops the price from $550 to $230.
That means you can snap up the robot vacuum for $320 below list price. The discount marks a record low for this model.
Shark
If you’re a Prime subscriber. you can snap up this robot vacuum for a record-low price.
Shark offers several variations of its AI Ultra robot vacuums. There are small variations between them, and a different model is our pick for the best robot vacuum for most people. In general, you can expect solid cleaning performance from these devices, along with accurate home mapping and an easy-to-use app.
The model that’s on sale here is said to run for up to 120 minutes on a single charge, which should be enough to clean an entire floor in a typical home. The self-emptying, bagless vacuum can store up to 30 days worth of dirt and debris in its base. Shark says it can capture 99.97 percent of dust and allergens with the help of HEPA filtration.
If you’d rather plump for a model that’s able to mop your floors too, you’re in luck: a Shark Matrix Plus 2-in-1 vacuum is on sale as well. At $300 for Prime members, this vacuum is available for $400 (or 57 percent) off the list price. Its mopping function can scrub hard floors 100 times per minute. You can also trigger the Matrix Mop function in the app for a deeper clean. This delivers 50 percent better stain cleaning in targeted zones, according to Shark.
Robot vacuums are more than just a gimmick. Sure, we all enjoy anthropomorphizing a Roomba from time to time, but they’re not gadgets for the sake of gadgetry — keeping your living space clean is an incredibly rewarding task to automate. The only problem is that robot vacuums, and frankly all decent vacuums, are expensive. Fortunately, the steep discounts offered on Amazon this October Prime Day make the purchase a lot more justifiable, whether you want a robot buddy or a traditional vacuum cleaner. In this article, we’re sharing a constantly updated list of vacuum discounts worth taking advantage of.
Best Prime Day vacuum deals
Amazon
Shark has a lot of similar-looking robot vacuums, but the AV2501S stands out from the pack with its long battery life, user-friendly app and highly accurate home mapping. It’s also just an excellent vacuum, with a great record of cutting in-home allergens to near zero. If you’re ready to put AI to work cleaning your floors, this is an awesome place to start.
Dyson V15 Detect Plus for $570 (33 percent off): Our top pick for the best cordless vacuum on the market right now, the V15 Detect has some of the strongest suction power you’ll find in a stick vacuum, plus a lightweight design and a dustbin that can hold more dirt and debris than it might seem. This model comes with five cleaning attachments, including the Fluffy Optic cleaner head that has LEDs to illuminate the floor as you’re vacuuming so you can better see where all the dust bunnies are.
Dyson Ball Animal Total Clean Upright Vacuum for $410 (38 percent off): Dyson is still the king of reinventing vacuums, and the bagless, hyper-maneuverable Ball Animal is a blast to use. The Ball design is based on ease of steering, but the hidden MVP is the sealing — from the head to the canister, not a hair is getting out of this one once it’s in.
Shark AV2501AE AI Robot Vacuum for $459 (29 percent off): If you like the look of the AV2501S but have even more space to clean, the AV2501AE is also on sale. Its self-empty base can go a full 60 days before you have to dump it out, so it’s ideal for large spaces, complex homes or areas that see heavy use. It’s got the same features otherwise, including LiDAR mapping and two hours of autonomous work.
Shark PowerDetect NeverTouch for $450 (55 percent off): This robotic mop/vacuum combo is engineering so you’ll almost never need to revisit it after you set it up. It can clean its own mop, refill its own water tank and empty its own dustbin for up to 30 days at a time. It’s also equipped with air jets that blast dirt out of corners the vacuum can’t fit into.
Shark Matrix Plus 2-in-1 for $300 (57 percent off, Prime exclusive): The Shark Matrix Plus takes the robot vacuum concept even further by working a mop into the design for hands-off wet cleaning. This model is self-cleaning, self-emptying, self-charging and capable of tackling ground-in stains on hard floors.
Shark Navigator Lift-Away Deluxe for $160 (27 percent off): Moving into manual vacuums, let’s start with one of the best. The Shark Navigator Lift-Away is a champion at getting deeply ingrained crud out of carpets, but it’s also capable of squaring away bare floors. You can switch between the two settings quickly, and the lift-away canister makes it easy to empty.
iRobot Roomba 104 Vac for $150 (40 percent off, Prime exclusive): This entry-level Roomba is a good pick for anyone who’s new to owning a robot vacuum. It features a multi-surface brush and an edge-sweeping brush to clean all types of flooring, and it uses LiDAR navigation to avoid obstacles as it goes. The iRobot mobile app lets you control the robot, set cleaning schedules and more.
iRobot Roomba Plus 504 for $380 (36 percent off): For those looking to upgrade to a more advanced robot vacuum, the Roomba Plus 504 is a great next step. It can clean almost anything that might land on a home floor, and if it can’t clean it, it can steer around it. Two brushes and strong suction get at tougher stains, and it even includes an app you can use to set cleaning zones and change suction force remotely.
Levoit LVAC-300 cordless vacuum for $250 (29 percent off, Prime exclusive): One of our favorite cordless vacuums, this Levoit machine has great handling, strong suction power for its price and a premium-feeling design. Its bin isn’t too small, it has HEPA filtration and its battery life should be more than enough for you to clean your whole home many times over before it needs a recharge.
Amazon Basics Upright Bagless Vacuum Cleaner for $55 (21 percent off): All right, nobody goes to Amazon Basics to be impressed, but we have to admit this vacuum exceeds expectations. It’s light, it has a big dust reservoir and it comes with all the attachments you’ll need for a reasonably sized apartment. The filter is also simple to remove and clean.
Black+Decker QuickClean Cordless Handheld Vacuum for $27 (33 percent off): Rounding out the list, we’ve got this small-but-mighty hand vacuum, perfect for crevices, shelves or cleaning out your car. It weighs about 1.4 pounds and hoovers up small messes in the blink of an eye. The lithium-ion battery stays charged for up to 10 hours.
This October Prime Day, we’ve collected a list of the best Amazon discounts on both traditional and robotic vacuums. We’re hoping this article can do more than just save you money — it’s also designed to help you with the fiddliest vacuum-related decisions. Should you go corded, cordless or robotic? Dyson, Tineco or Shark? Are there any decent robot vacuums that aren’t Roombas? (Yes.) As the event goes on, we’ll search for discounts as tirelessly as an automated vacuum scours your floors for dirt, and post all the best deals here.
Best Prime Day vacuum deals
Amazon
Shark has a lot of similar-looking robot vacuums, but the AV2501S stands out from the pack with its long battery life, user-friendly app and highly accurate home mapping. It’s also just an excellent vacuum, with a great record of cutting in-home allergens to near zero. If you’re ready to put AI to work cleaning your floors, this is an awesome place to start.
Shark AV2501AE AI Robot Vacuum for $449 (31 percent off): If you like the look of the AV2501S but have even more space to clean, the AV2501AE is also on sale. Its self-empty base can go a full 60 days before you have to dump it out, so it’s ideal for large spaces, complex homes or areas that see heavy use. It’s got the same features otherwise, including LiDAR mapping and two hours of autonomous work.
Shark PowerDetect NeverTouch for $450 (55 percent off): This robotic mop/vacuum combo is engineering so you’ll almost never need to revisit it after you set it up. It can clean its own mop, refill its own water tank and empty its own dustbin for up to 30 days at a time. It’s also equipped with air jets that blast dirt out of corners the vacuum can’t fit into.
Shark Matrix Plus 2-in-1 for $300 (57 percent off, Prime exclusive): The Shark Matrix Plus takes the robot vacuum concept even further by working a mop into the design for hands-off wet cleaning. This model is self-cleaning, self-emptying, self-charging and capable of tackling ground-in stains on hard floors.
Shark Navigator Lift-Away Deluxe for $160 (27 percent off): Moving into manual vacuums, let’s start with one of the best. The Shark Navigator Lift-Away is a champion at getting deeply ingrained crud out of carpets, but it’s also capable of squaring away bare floors. You can switch between the two settings quickly, and the lift-away canister makes it easy to empty.
iRobot Roomba 104 Vac for $150 (40 percent off, Prime exclusive): This entry-level Roomba is a good pick for anyone who’s new to owning a robot vacuum. It features a multi-surface brush and an edge-sweeping brush to clean all types of flooring, and it uses LiDAR navigation to avoid obstacles as it goes. The iRobot mobile app lets you control the robot, set cleaning schedules and more.
iRobot Roomba Plus 504 for $380 (36 percent off): For those looking to upgrade to a more advanced robot vacuum, the Roomba Plus 504 is a great next step. It can clean almost anything that might land on a home floor, and if it can’t clean it, it can steer around it. Two brushes and strong suction get at tougher stains, and it even includes an app you can use to set cleaning zones and change suction force remotely.
Levoit LVAC-300 cordless vacuum for $250 ($100 off, Prime exclusive): One of our favorite cordless vacuums, this Levoit machine has great handling, strong suction power for its price and a premium-feeling design. Its bin isn’t too small, it has HEPA filtration and its battery life should be more than enough for you to clean your whole home many times over before it needs a recharge.
Dyson Ball Animal Total Clean Upright Vacuum for $500 (24 percent off): Dyson is still the king of reinventing vacuums, and the bagless, hyper-maneuverable Ball Animal is a blast to use. The Ball design is based on ease of steering, but the hidden MVP is the sealing — from the head to the canister, not a hair is getting out of this one once it’s in.
Amazon Basics Upright Bagless Vacuum Cleaner for $55 (21 percent off): All right, nobody goes to Amazon Basics to be impressed, but we have to admit this vacuum exceeds expectations. It’s light, it has a big dust reservoir and it comes with all the attachments you’ll need for a reasonably sized apartment. The filter is also simple to remove and clean.
Black+Decker QuickClean Cordless Handheld Vacuum for $27 (33 percent off): Rounding out the list, we’ve got this small-but-mighty hand vacuum, perfect for crevices, shelves or cleaning out your car. It weighs about 1.4 pounds and hoovers up small messes in the blink of an eye. The lithium-ion battery stays charged for up to 10 hours.
The iRobot Roomba 104 robot vacuum just ahead of . That’s a nice little discount of 40 percent, which represents a savings of $100.
This is a newer version of the unit that topped our list of the . It’s an entry-level robovac that gets the job done. The cleaning motor is fairly powerful and it ships with a multi-surface brush and an edge-sweeping brush. The vacuum uses LiDAR to map a home and to help it avoid obstacles when cleaning.
iRobot
It’s also been equipped with specialized sensors to prevent falling down stairs. Steps are the natural enemy of all robot vacuums, . The Roomba 104 integrates with the company’s proprietary app, which allows for custom cleaning schedules and the like. The robot can also be controlled via voice assistant and boasts compatibility with Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant.
The vacuum will automatically head to the charger for some juice when running low, which is nice. The battery lasts around 200 minutes per charge, which is a decent enough metric for a budget-friendly robovac. The only downside here? This is just a vacuum. It doesn’t mop and it doesn’t come with a dedicated debris canister.
With fall Prime Day around the corner, we’re already starting to see solid deals on tech we love. Case in point: Shark robot vacuums. Shark makes some of our favorite robovacs and a few of them are already discounted for Prime members ahead of the sale. The Shark AV2501S AI Ultra robot vacuum is one of them, with a whopping 58-percent discount that brings it down to $230. This discount marks a record low for this model.
Shark
If you’re a Prime subscriber. you can snap up this robot vacuum for a record-low price.
Shark offers several variations of its AI Ultra robot vacuums. There are small variations between them, and a different model is our pick for the best robot vacuum for most people. In general, you can expect solid cleaning performance from these devices, along with accurate home mapping and an easy-to-use app.
The model that’s on sale here is said to run for up to 120 minutes on a single charge, which should be enough to clean an entire floor in a typical home. The self-emptying, bagless vacuum can store up to 30 days worth of dirt and debris in its base. Shark says it can capture 99.97 percent of dust and allergens with the help of HEPA filtration.
If you’d rather plump for a model that’s able to mop your floors too, you’re in luck: a Shark Matrix Plus 2-in-1 vacuum is on sale as well. At $300 for Prime members, this vacuum is available for $400 (or 57 percent) off the list price. Its mopping function can scrub hard floors 100 times per minute. You can also trigger the Matrix Mop function in the app for a deeper clean. This delivers 50 percent better stain cleaning in targeted zones, according to Shark.
During a presentation at IFA 2025, Deebot parent company Ecovacs (full disclosure: travel and lodging were paid by Ecovacs, but Gizmodo did not guarantee any coverage as a condition of accepting the trip) said repeatedly that its new X11 OmniCyclone robot vacuum‘s AI smarts are all on-device. Or the bulk of them are, anyway. I returned to the booth later and spoke with a couple of the company’s representatives to try to figure out exactly how divorced from the cloud the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone truly is—is it an all-on-device experience, like the Matic robot vacuum, or does it still need an internet connection to keep its best functionality?
The Deebot X11 OmniCyclone’s promise is that it can use local AI smarts to do things like identify spills and messes on the floor and decide how best to clean them, and if mopping is required, what kind of mopping solution to use (the X11’s charging dock holds a couple of options). It can also learn from your routine, shifting and morphing its cleaning schedule and approach over time to suit your behavior.
You, the owner, can talk to the AI Agent Yika—the company’s name for its refreshed, generative AI-powered vacuum assistant—and give it some pretty broad, natural-language requests, at least according to Ecovacs. I didn’t get to test this out. I wanted to know how broad. Can you say, “Hey Yika, only clean the bedroom on Fridays,” and it works? Ecovacs’s folks said yes. What about, “Hey Yika, please clean up around my dining room table at 7 p.m. every night.” Yep, that’s apparently possible, too, although the rep told me you might need to name that table in the Ecovacs Home app and call it by that specific name when you speak your request. Again, I didn’t get to test any of this.
Not that it would matter if your internet went down—in that case, you’d lose a lot of functionality, according to the reps. The app would no longer work because it bounces through Ecovacs’ cloud infrastructure in the U.S. to do that. No more tapping around to tell the robot to clean specific rooms, or remotely controlling it from your smartphone, or seeing cloud-saved videos recorded while you were doing that. It also means no Yika, because the device’s generative AI voice assistant is cloud-dependent, too.
But there’s a way to use the robot vacuum in which that doesn’t matter. There’s an “Agent Hosting” mode in the Ecovacs Home app where you can switch the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone to AI-only control, essentially putting all of your faith in it to clean your house properly. It might be able to do so, at least according to Ecovacs, who says it can recognize over 100 different categories of objects, as small as a grain of sand. If you switch it to that mode and find that it does just fine at cleaning your house, with no input from you, then you may never bother with the app again. And if that’s the case, you might never know when your internet is out or that the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone has lost its connection to your network.
That doesn’t mean the robot would be useless. Ecovacs’s reps told me that without an internet connection, the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone’s onboard AI would still do its thing, sliding its schedule around as needed, identifying messes, and switching up its cleaning approach as it goes along. I asked if the company sees a future where even the AI voice assistant is on-device, and the reps weren’t sure.
It’s not all the way to the world I want to see, where my smart home devices never need an internet connection to bring me their full feature set, or close enough to it for blues. But it is an encouraging move in that direction, assuming it all works the way Ecovacs says it will. And, with AI, that can be a big “if.”
Stair-climbing robot vacuums are actually about to be a reality, sort of. That’s courtesy of a little baby trend at IFA 2025 of robot vacuums slipping into something more climbable—a little caddy that carries them upstairs when it’s time to move floors, then waits to carry them back down when they’re done. The first one we encountered was the Eufy MarsWalker.
Then, it turned out that Dreame had one, too, using almost the exact same approach, only it’s weirdly much scarier-looking. Both have a sort of Half-Life headcrab vibe, but where the MarsWalker really looks like, well, a robot meant to walk on Mars, Dreame’s version, the Cyber X, looks like it would be the nearly identical-to-the-hero villain if the two shared a 1990s Saturday morning cartoon series. Instead of the sleek stalks that the MarsWalker uses to pull itself onto stairs, the Cyber X has what can only be described as chainsaw hands—because Dreame elected to put the tank tread bits on the device’s little legs, not its body.
The two mostly work the same way; robot vacuum meets stair-climbing caddy and climbs in. They roll to the stairs and the caddy probes for the bottom step, then stretches out in front and back to roll up the stairs. There are mild differences in the execution here: while the MarsWalker doesn’t extend its little arms until it reaches the steps, the Dreame robot stands up on all fours to approach them.
Getting back down the stairs seemed a bit more precarious for the Cyber X than for the MarsWalker. In the (very sped-up) GIF above and another video I saw online, it had trouble keeping itself straight, and I worried that it might go tumbling. I didn’t feel that way about the MarsWalker.
I don’t know who actually came up with the idea first, but either way, the approach seems like a winner. But there is another way, as robot vacuum and lawnmower company Mova showed me. The Mova Zeus 60, which looks like a 1980s VCR or vinyl turntable (complimentary), raised itself up on little scissor-lift legs, then slid its little body forward like a robotic tongue, drew its legs up, and slid those forward to join the rest of it on the stairs, then repeated this for each step, and in reverse on the way down.
It took an agonizing six minutes to complete. One of Mova’s engineers, who was at the Mova booth, watching with me, assured me that it can go faster, but that the team decided to run it slower for safety reasons. I’ll accept that, but it would have to go quite a bit faster to catch its competition—Dreame’s robot got down and back up its stair set in close to 2.5 minutes. Eufy’s MarsWalker managed it in just 1 minute and 45 seconds. But Mova might have an advantage—according to that same engineer, it can handle spiral staircases just fine. Then again, as confident as he sounded, it would have been a great power move for the company to set up a little spiral staircase to prove it. Maybe it can do it and Mova chose not to show it off—building a spiral staircase for the show is a little more complicated than the straight up-and-down kind. Or maybe it’s not all that good at spiral staircases.
It’ll be interesting to see how these stair climbers shake out when they make it into reviewers’ grubby hands. Representatives from all three companies confirmed to me that the plan is to release their devices within the next year; none would reveal pricing. Maybe it hasn’t been decided, or they’re each just waiting to see what the other does.
However they do, none of these robots fully solve the problem. But climbing stairs is a huge first step. Or set of steps, I guess. The next task is getting them to actually clean the stairs, something the vaporware-at-this-point Ascender was supposed to do. And frankly, I don’t care. Bring me the stair-climbing robot, please.
Labor Day sales might have just what you’re looking for in the home cleaning department. Dyson is having a big sale for the holiday that discounts vacuums, hair care devices and more by up to $500. One of the best discounts is on the 360 Vis Nav robot vacuum, which is 50 percent off and down to $500. That’s a seriously great deal and the lowest price we’ve seen for this product.
The Vis Nav made our list of the best robot vacuums, primarily based on the unit’s superior suction power. This thing can pull up dirt like a beast. We said it had the strongest suction power of any robovac we’ve tested and easily took out pet fur from a carpeted floor. We also noted in our official review that the power here was on par with Dyson’s stick vacuums.
Dyson
The unit includes a stellar obstacle avoidance system, with cameras and LED lights to help the vacuum navigate around furniture. During our testing we found it to be nearly flawless, as it only crashed into a chair leg a couple of times. Also, we never received any alerts that the robot got stuck somewhere while working.
The bin here is on the larger side, but there’s no self-emptying base. This is also not a hybrid unit. It’s a vacuum and not a mop. This made it tough to recommend the unit at $1,000, despite the fantastic suction, but $500 makes it a whole lot easier.
The Dyson V15s Detect Submarine is also down to $800 as part of this sale, which is a discount of $200. This is one of our favorite cordless stick vacuums and features a HEPA filtration system and advanced wet-cleaning capabilities. It’s a great tool for cleaning both carpets and hard floors.
Labor Day sales might have just what you’re looking for in the home cleaning department. Dyson is having a big sale for the holiday that discounts vacuums, hair care devices and more by up to $500. One of the best discounts is on the 360 Vis Nav robot vacuum, which is 50 percent off and down to $500. That’s a seriously great deal and the lowest price we’ve seen for this product.
The Vis Nav made our list of the best robot vacuums, primarily based on the unit’s superior suction power. This thing can pull up dirt like a beast. We said it had the strongest suction power of any robovac we’ve tested and easily took out pet fur from a carpeted floor. We also noted in our official review that the power here was on par with Dyson’s stick vacuums.
Dyson
The unit includes a stellar obstacle avoidance system, with cameras and LED lights to help the vacuum navigate around furniture. During our testing we found it to be nearly flawless, as it only crashed into a chair leg a couple of times. Also, we never received any alerts that the robot got stuck somewhere while working.
The bin here is on the larger side, but there’s no self-emptying base. This is also not a hybrid unit. It’s a vacuum and not a mop. This made it tough to recommend the unit at $1,000, despite the fantastic suction, but $500 makes it a whole lot easier.
The Dyson V15s Detect Submarine is also down to $800 as part of this sale, which is a discount of $200. This cordless stick vacuum features a HEPA filtration system and advanced wet-cleaning capabilities. It’s a great tool for cleaning both carpets and hard floors.
Robot vacuums help around the house by automating a chore that, let’s face it, many of us don’t like to do. The first robot vacuums had steep price tags, and you can still find high-end robo-vacs today that are worth the money for many reasons. However, their popularity over the past couple of years has led to a surge of new robot vacuum cleaners on the market that cost much less than the firsts in the category. Gone are the days where you had to spend $500 or more just to get one of these machines home. Now, some of the best budget robot vacuums come in at $300 or less. After testing dozens of robot vacuums at all price points, we’ve decided that any machine in this price range is what we’d consider to be cheap. Here’s everything you need to know before purchasing a robot vacuum while sticking to a budget, plus our top picks.
Are robot vacuums worth it?
Since I’ve tested dozens of robot vacuums, I’m often asked if these gadgets are “worth it” and I’d say the answer is yes. The biggest thing they offer is convenience: just turn on a robot vacuum and walk away. The machine will take care of the rest. If vacuuming is one of your least favorite chores, or you just want to spend less time keeping your home tidy, semi-autonomous robotic vacuum is a great investment.
There are plenty of other good things about them, but before we dive in let’s consider the biggest trade-offs: less power, less capacity and less flexibility. Those first two go hand in hand; robot vacuum cleaners are much smaller than upright vacuums, which leads to less powerful suction. They also hold less dirt because their built-in bins are a fraction of the size of a standard vacuum canister or bag. And while robo-vacs are cord-free, that means they are slaves to their batteries and will require docking at a charging base.
When it comes to flexibility, robot vacuums do things differently than standard ones. You can control some with your smartphone, set cleaning schedules and more, but robo-vacs are primarily tasked with cleaning floors. On the flip side, their upright counterparts can come with various attachments that let you clean couches, stairs, light fixtures and other hard-to-reach places.
What to look for in a budget robot vacuum
When looking for the best cheap robot vacuum, one of the first things you should consider is the types of floors you have in your home. Do you have mostly carpet, tile, laminate, hardwood? Carpets demand vacuums with more suction power that can pick up debris pushed down into nooks and crannies. Unfortunately, there isn’t a universal metric by which suction is measured. Some companies provide Pascal (Pa) levels and generally the higher the Pa, the stronger. But other companies don’t rely on Pa levels and simply say their robots have X-times more suction power than other robot vacuums.
So how can you ensure you’re getting the best cheap robot vacuum to clean your floor type? Read the product description. Look for details about its ability to clean hard floors and carpets, and see if it has a “max” mode you can use to increase suction. If you are given a Pa measurement, look for around 2000Pa if you have mostly carpeted floors.
Size is also important for two reasons: clearance and dirt storage. Check the specs for the robot’s height to see if it can get underneath the furniture you have in your home. Most robo-vacs won’t be able to clean under a couch (unless it’s a very tall, very strange couch), but some can get under entryway tables, nightstands and the like. As for dirt storage, look out for the milliliter capacity of the robot’s dustbin — the bigger the capacity, the more dirt the vacuum cleaner can collect before you have to empty it.
You should also double check the Wi-Fi capabilities of the robo-vac you’re eyeing. While you may think that’s a given on all smart home devices, it’s not. Some of the most affordable models don’t have the option to connect to your home Wi-Fi network. If you choose a robot vac like this, you won’t be able to direct it with a smartphone app or with voice controls. Another feature that’s typically reserved for Wi-Fi-connected robots is scheduling because most of them use a mobile app to set cleaning schedules.
But Wi-Fi-incapable vacuums usually come with remote controls that have all the basic functions that companion mobile apps do, including start, stop and return to dock. And if you’re concerned about the possibility of hacking, a robot vac with no access to your Wi-Fi network is the best option.
Obstacle detection and cliff sensors are other key features to look out for. The former helps the robot vacuum navigate around furniture while it cleans, rather than mindlessly pushing its way into it. Meanwhile, cliff sensors prevent robot vacuums from tumbling down the stairs, making them the best vacuum for multi-level homes.
How we test
When we consider which robot vacuums to test, we look at each machine’s specs and feature list, as well as online reviews to get a general idea of its capabilities. With each robot vacuum we review, we set it up as per the instructions and use it for as long as possible — at minimum, we’ll use each for one week, running cleaning cycles daily. We make sure to try out any physical buttons the machine has on it, and any app-power features like scheduling, smart mapping and more.
Since we test robot vacuums in our own homes, there are obstacles already in the machine’s way like tables, chairs and other furniture — this helps us understand how capable the machine is at avoiding obstacles, and we’ll intentionally throw smaller items in their way like shoes, pet toys and more. With robot vacuums that include clean bases, we assess how loud the machine is while emptying contents into the base and roughly how long it takes for us to fill up the bag (or bagless) base with debris.
Best budget robot vacuum overall: iRobot Roomba 694
iRobot
Max mode: No | Wi-Fi capabilities: Yes | Object detection: Yes
Both iRobot and Shark impressed with their affordable robo-vacs. But we think iRobot’s Roomba 694 will be the best cheap robot vacuum cleaner for most people thanks to its good cleaning power and easy-to-use mobile app. The Roomba 694 replaced the Roomba 675 last year but, aside from an updated exterior, it has the same build quality and is fundamentally the same vacuum. It looks much sleeker now with its new all-black design, giving it an aesthetic similar to some of the more expensive Roomba models. It has three physical buttons on it — start, dock and spot — and it connects to Wi-Fi so you can control it via the iRobot app. Unfortunately, your $274 gets you the vacuum and its necessary parts only so you’ll have to pay up immediately when you need a replacement filter or brushes.
Setting up this powerful robot vacuum is straightforward: Open the companion app and follow the instructions. Once it’s connected to your home Wi-Fi network, you’re able to use the app to control the vacuum whenever you don’t feel like using the physical buttons. However, the spot-clean function is only available as a button, which is a bit of a bummer.
iRobot’s app is one of the biggest selling points for any Roomba. It’s so easy to use that even someone with no prior experience will be able to quickly master the robot’s basic functions. iRobot’s app puts most pertinent controls on the homepage, so you rarely (if ever) need to navigate through its menu to do things like set a cleaning schedule.
We recommend setting cleaning schedules to really get the most out of the device. After all, these are semi-autonomous robots, so why not make it so you rarely have to interact with them? Doing so will ensure the Roomba runs through your home on a regular basis, so you’re always left with clean floors. The Roomba 694 in particular did a good job sucking up dirt and debris on my carpets as well as the tile flooring in my kitchen and bathrooms. The only thing I try to do before a cleaning job is get charging cables off of the floor – the Roomba will stop if it sucks something like that up and it’s relatively easy to extract a cable from the machine’s brushes, but I’d rather not have to do so if I can avoid it.
When it comes to battery life, the Roomba 694 ran for around 45 minutes before needing to dock and recharge. iRobot says run times will vary based on floor surfaces, but the 694 is estimated to have a 90-minute battery life when cleaning hardwood floors. While 45 minutes may be enough time for the robot to scuttle around most rooms in my apartment, those with larger homes may have to wait for it to recharge in order to clean everywhere.
iRobot has made a name for itself in the autonomous vacuum market for good reason. Its machines are polished, dead simple to use and the accompanying app is excellent. That ease of use (and the reputation of the iRobot name) comes with a slightly higher asking price, which many will be willing to pay. But there are plenty of solid options now that didn’t exist even just three years ago.
The Shark RV765 is the updated version of the RV761 that we previously recommended. Like the Roomba 694, the Shark RV765 has a slightly different design and a longer run time than the RV761, but otherwise they’re the same vacuum. You can still find the RV761, but it’s a little difficult to do so now that the latest model is available. Although we haven’t tested the RV765, we feel comfortable recommending it since we found the previous version to be a great affordable robot vacuum.
One thing that the RV765 fixes about the previous version is the latter’s ugly bowling-shirt design. The new model nixes that and opts for a sleeker, all-black look with three buttons for docking, cleaning and max mode. You could rely just on the buttons, but it also connects to Wi-Fi so you can use the Shark Clean app. As for the longer run time, that’s just a bonus. The RV761 ran for about 90 minutes before needing to recharge, which was plenty of time for it to clean my two-bedroom apartment. The additional 30 minutes of battery life on the RV765 should allow it to clean larger spaces more efficiently.
Some other things we liked about the RV761 include its spot-clean feature; adjustable wheels, which raise and lower automatically depending on the “terrain” and the obstacles in its path; and its intuitive companion app that allows you to start and stop cleaning jobs, set schedules and more.
Max mode: Yes | Wi-Fi capabilities: No | Object detection: Yes
Anker’s $250 Eufy RoboVac 11S was one of the cheapest vacuums I tested but it also proved to be one of the most versatile. First thing to note: This robot vacuum doesn’t have Wi-Fi, but it does come with a remote that gives you most of the functions and smart features you’d find in an app (including a schedule feature). Eufy also includes additional brushes and filters in the box.
The “S” in this robot’s name stands for slim, and it’s roughly half an inch thinner than all of the other vacuums I tested. Not only does this make the 11S Max lighter, but it was the only one that could clean under my entryway table. This model has a physical on-off toggle on its underside plus one button on its top that you can press to start a cleaning. It always begins in auto mode, which optimizes the cleaning process as it putters around your home, but you can use the remote to select a specific cleaning mode like spot and edge clean.
The 11S Max has three power modes — Standard, BoostIQ and Max — and I kept mine on BoostIQ most of the time. It provided enough suction to adequately clean my carpeted floors, missing only a few crumbs or pieces of debris in corners or tight spaces around furniture. The cleaning session lasted for roughly one hour and 15 minutes when in BoostIQ mode and it has remarkable obstacle avoidance. Sure, it bumped into walls and some large pieces of furniture, but it was the only budget vac I tried that consistently avoided my cat’s play tunnel that lives in the middle of our living room floor.
As far as noise levels go, you can definitely hear the difference between BoostIQ and Max, but none of the three settings is offensively loud. In fact, I could barely hear the 11S Max when it was on the opposite end of my apartment running in BoostIQ mode. Thankfully, error alert beeps were loud enough to let me know when something went awry, like the machine accidentally getting tripped up by a rogue charging cable (which only happened a couple of times and neither robot nor cable were harmed in the process).
Overall, the Eufy RoboVac 11S Max impressed me with its smarts, despite its lack of Wi-Fi. The lack of wireless connectivity is arguably the worst thing about the robot and that’s saying a lot. At this point, though, the 11S Max is a few years old, so you could grab the RoboVac G20 if you want something comparable but a bit newer. We recommend getting the $280 G20 Hybrid if you’re just looking for a Eufy machine with some of the latest technology, but don’t want to spend a ton. It has 2500Pa of suction power, dynamic navigation and Wi-Fi connectivity with support for Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands.
TP-Link came out with the Tapo RV10 Plus vac-and-mop combo earlier this year, and while its standard price is $400, we think it’s worth a mention. It vacuums and mops, which is remarkable in itself since you don’t see many combo devices in this price range, it has a comprehensive yet fairly easy-to-use companion app and it comes with a self-emptying base. Top all of that off with the fact that you can often find this machine on sale for $300 or less and you have a robot vacuum that gives you a ton for your money.
Compared to the other cheap robot vacuums on this list, TP-Link’s did a similarly good job sucking up debris and mopping hardwood and tile floors. It also has a decent battery life as well: after one hour of cleaning, it was only down to 55 percent, so you should be able to get roughly 2-hour cleaning sessions out of this model regularly. The self-emptying base holds up to 70 days worth of debris, but note that it does use a propriety garbage bag that you’ll have to refill.
TP-Link’s companion app provides an impressive amount of control over your robot-vac, too. You can easily change the suction power level, the watering level when you’re mopping and cleaning run times. A dedicated “maintenance” page lets you know how long before you’ll have to replace parts like the main and side brushes, and extra settings like spot clean, child lock and emptying settings let you make this vacuum truly your own. Plus, the companion app is also the home for other TP-Link IoT devices, so you could build onto your ecosystem with more of the brand’s gadgets and control them all from one app.
Pros
Affordable for a robo-vac with a self-emptying base
