I’ve Been Testing Robot Vacuum Cleaners for Years, and Here’s What They Can (and Can’t) Do
When I bought my first robot vacuum, I thought it would leave my floors spotless – endlessly patrolled by security guards 24/7 and require absolutely no work on my part. Today, my small house has at least three robot vacuum cleaners installed at the same time. And yet I definitely don’t do anything to keep my floors clean. While I certainly do less on a daily basis, I wouldn’t say that my floors are spotless or that I’ve been relieved of all the floor-related chores.
Here’s what I’d like to know about what robot vacuums can and can’t do, and how much human effort they require.
You will have to rearrange the furniture
When you hire someone to clean your house, you usually don’t move furniture around to make their job easier. You may need to do this for your robot vacuum cleaner. Although these robots have become much better at navigating, the fewer of them on the floor, the easier it will be for them to clean. Every table leg, chair and floor lamp is another obstacle to get around, and it’s worth knowing that most robots can’t get as close to table legs and floor lamps as you could with a vacuum cleaner. They also cannot move a piece of furniture to the side to get under it. So, you’ll have to make some changes to your floor plan if you want to get the most out of your new robot friend.
More important than rearranging furniture is the trend toward less furniture on the floor overall. If you like to pile up laundry, have potted plants, or a stack of books, you’ll have to move those items around to give your robot better access. Networked items are especially difficult to work with, so the fewer cords on the floor, the better. Over time, I learned to hang the cords from the wall and wrap them as tightly as possible so that nothing would drag on the floor.
I was recently very impressed with the Roborock 10R , which relied solely on AI-enabled cameras. The robot’s navigation skills were excellent, allowing it to penetrate narrow and low places that other robots could not do.
Robot vacuum cleaners can’t clean near their docks
It’s no surprise that robot vacuum cleaners can only clean where they can be reached. Where they can’t reach, you’ll still see dirt and debris. All robot cleaners have some sort of docking station, and many now come with self-emptying towers, which usually do a great job of cleaning robots of dirt so you don’t have to do it manually. With all this automation, it’s a little ironic that the dirtiest spot in your home may very well be right around the tower or dock itself. Since these towers are usually located in a corner or small space, debris can easily accumulate around them, but the robot cannot move around the tower to clean it. When the robot returns to the dock, it sweeps up the dirt with it, and it all ends up at the foot of the tower.
Only the newest robots (like the 3i S10 Ultra ) are generally good at cleaning around the base of furniture and thresholds between rooms. With most robots, you will usually still find a streak of dust and dirt on the wall and around any objects that the robot cannot easily clean. In addition, there are all spaces that are too narrow or too low for the robot to slide into. While some robots, like the Narwal Freo Z , have a fluffy pad that occasionally rubs against the baseboards to remove dust, they don’t do any actual cleaning, so you’ll have to clean your baseboards by hand, too. Again, you can rearrange your space to give the robot more autonomy by ensuring that all areas you want to clean have a clearance of at least 1.5 times the width of the robot and enough vertical height for the robot to reach them.
It’s always going to be a losing game, though, so I still have a vacuum that I use to quickly suck up debris from tight spots the robot can’t reach, corners and edges the robot can get close enough to, and near walls and thresholds.
Robots are best at picking up only certain types of debris.
Just as you might prepare for a cleaning professional’s visit, you’ll sweep your robot ahead of time. While robots are reliable at picking up dust and small debris such as rice or grains, they don’t do a very good job of picking up larger debris—that is, anything larger than a standard cube. Pieces of mulch, pet toy lint, kitchen scraps, bobby pins, and loose change will all get stuck in the robot’s rollers and have to be pulled out. Pre-cleaning is a way to avoid this annoying task by collecting larger trash items and leaving the rest to the bot. (But once again, let me praise the 3i S10 Ultra , which succeeded in cleaning up larger debris than any other robot vacuum I’ve ever tested.)
Even if your robot vacuum cleaner has a mop, you will have to wash it by hand.
Most robot vacuum cleaners are now combination vacuum cleaners and mops. Some models do an excellent job of cleaning floors, and sometimes even better than vacuuming. The docking tower drains the dirty water from the mop, refills it with clean water, and then sanitizes everything. Thanks to the combined functions of a vacuum cleaner and mopping, the floors are sure to be clean, right? Not necessarily.
Robot mops are great at cleaning up spills from surfaces. What they are less good at is scrubbing away stains and stubborn floor messes, such as dirt or spilled food. While most robots can generally leave behind grimy paw prints after a few passes, this requires a lot of water, battery life, and time, and I have yet to find any robot mops that do a good job of removing dirt from tile or wood floors. The robot simply cannot apply enough pressure to the mop to clean the floor.
For these reasons, you’ll need to keep an old-fashioned mop handy, and you should expect to have to mop the floor every few days with a good, sturdy mop and use real elbow grease to remove the dirt. Once the floor is clean, repeated rounds of the robot mop can help prevent new dirt deposits from forming, but they are inevitable, so don’t think your floor-cleaning days are over.
If mopping your floors is your priority, I highly recommend Roborock models with a single vibrating mop pad rather than two rotating mops. The Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra remains one of my top recommendations.
Robot vacuum cleaners are slow.
Since most robot vacuums work with voice assistants like Google, Alexa, or Apple, it’s entirely possible to simply ask the robot to “clean up around the baby’s high chair” after dinner (assuming you’ve set up an area around the baby’s high chair and it’s always in roughly the same place). If you have this routine set up, the robot will begin any pre-deployment activities it performs, be it filling the water tank, orienting, or cleaning the mop head, and will eventually get to the desired location and begin cleaning.
While getting to the spot you pin is still not particularly fast, Roborock’s Pin and Go feature allows you to quickly place a pin on the floor map and the robot will immediately begin cleaning that spot. This feature is available on all premium Roborock models, including the latest Saros 10 and 10R.
If you have free time, great. But if your child spills a cup of orange juice on the floor, you might not want to wait the five to ten minutes it takes for the robot to get there and start cleaning, when you can grab a mop or towel and do it in less than a minute.
For this reason, I’m still happy to have the Narwal S20 , a new model mop that I can quickly pick up, mop as needed, and then put back on the dock, all without having to get my hands dirty.
Robot vacuum cleaners sometimes require human intervention
Robot vacuums can vary greatly in price ($200 to $2,500) and quality, and they’re constantly becoming more intelligent and feature-rich. Robots with artificial intelligence on board can actually learn about your home and learn to clean it better over time. However, despite all this, your robot will need your intervention more than you would like.
Depending on how good your model is, you may need to clean the rollers regularly (the most common maintenance task on a robot vacuum). Your robot gets stuck, too—sometimes a new obstacle it can work around, like a stuck toy or sock, or a loose cord under the couch, causes the robot to get stuck on it. Sometimes he just gets lost. The point is that even the best robots can’t be left alone for weeks at a time. Most will eventually require human presence to return them to the dock, clean the rollers, unclog clogs in the mopping system, and/or change the dock water.
If all of this hasn’t put you off getting one, your goal should be to choose a robot that suits your home and needs , and with enough features that you don’t have to monitor it every day to make sure it gets the job done.