CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset and you’re listening to The Wirecutter Show.
CHRISTINE: Hey there, it’s Christine.
We cover a lot of cleaning advice on this show, probably because we have a ton of great advice and recommendations on our site, and our listeners also seem to have lots of questions about cleaning. Today I’m talking with Wirecutter writer Evan Dent about one of the most iconic cleaning tools of the past few decades: the robot vacuum. Picture it, the disc-shaped bot that can roll around your home vacuuming up pet hair and Cheerios and dust while you’re running errands or at work. If you have a robot vacuum, maybe you love it, maybe you hate it, maybe you’re somewhere in between. And if you don’t have a robot vac, maybe you’ve considered getting one. Wherever you land, the robot vacuum as we know it is probably going away, or at least evolving into a new type of bot that combines vacuuming and mopping.
I thought it would be a good time to talk with Evan now because one of the best times to buy a vacuum is during a big deals event like Black Friday, Memorial Day or Prime Day, which is coming up next week from June 23rd to 26th. Evan recently wrote a piece about how robot vacuums are changing and he’s going to walk us through what to know if you already own one and you want to extend its life and which models are worth looking for deals on next week and beyond.
I’m here with Evan Dent, who tests all types of vacuums and floor care tools for Wirecutter. Evan, welcome to the show.
EVAN: Thanks for having me.
CHRISTINE: It’s great to have you here. You have tested a lot of vacuums, including dozens of robot vacuums. Many people love or at least appreciate their robot vacuums because they clean automatically if not always perfectly. I’ve seen plenty of these in the office bump into furniture nonstop. So I know that they have their errors, but robot vacuums as we know them are really changing. Tell me what is shifting and how is it shifting?
EVAN: So in the last couple years, all these companies that are making robot vacuums have really shifted to these combination robot vac mops. There’s no good way to say those, but robo combo vac mop, something like that.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, it’s a little clunky sounding. Yeah.
EVAN: Yeah. They vacuum and they mop. So it looks kind of like your typical robot vacuum, but there’s a pad or these spinning things on the back of them or a roller mop underneath it and they will go and sort of vacuum and mop at the same time. You can set them to do different things, but a vacuum-only robot is a rarity now. I think one or two companies still make them.
CHRISTINE: So if you’re going out to buy a new robot vacuum at this point, it’s most likely that you’re going to get one of these combos. Those are the ones that are the most available right now.
EVAN: Yes. Even the base level thing is going to have some sort of mopping on it.
CHRISTINE: Why are manufacturers phasing out this category that just does the vacuuming and adding this mop feature?
EVAN: Part of it is if you have one, you’re probably not going to get another one until it breaks. And then if it breaks, you might just say, “I’m done with these entirely.” The bottom of that market dropped out so much that a good one is around $200, so there’s not a ton of profit incentive for them to keep making better vacuums so they can advertise advancements more easily with the mopping and say like, “This has the newest self-washing mop system that we can charge you a thousand bucks for or $1,500 for,” whereas just a vacuum, they’re kind of topped out for around 200.
CHRISTINE: Is this manufacturers basically phasing out something that they’re not making a lot of money on anymore and trying to add features to these mop vacs so that they can make more money and get people to buy new ones? Why? Because surely there are people that still just want the vacuum.
EVAN: They would say that they’re making a better product. They’re adding functionality so that, “Oh, this is better at mopping now and now can do two things in your home.” But it is probably trying to make more money off the product and getting people to buy things more frequently.
CHRISTINE: Because these are pretty expensive at this point. Our recommendation right now is around $600.
EVAN: Yes, and that’s totally middle of the pack. On the highest end, like the newest of the new things that come out, I’ve seen as high as $1,700.
CHRISTINE: Whoa, that’s so expensive. You can buy a really, really nice canister vac or upright vac that cleans incredibly well for-
EVAN: You could buy two.
CHRISTINE: You could buy two. Yeah.
Okay. So these have been out for a few years. I remember us first reviewing them, and our first take on the robot mop vacs was we didn’t like them. We thought they were kind of bad, but clearly things have been developing over the last few years. I got to know, what do you think about them now? Are they decent? Do you think that they’re doing a decent job of vacuuming and mopping?
EVAN: Decent is the exactly right word for it. They’re good enough. It stalls bigger cleans. If you like having a shiny-looking floor, that’s sort of what the mop is going to give you. It’s not going to get deeper set stains or even grimy kitchen areas. I’ll go over after one’s done and sort of put my own elbow grease into it and find that I’m still picking up stuff. So it’s not perfect. It’s more of a maintenance cleaner. That’s the same for vacuuming and mopping. And actually the mopping makes them worse at vacuuming because they’re slightly higher off the ground to fit that mop. So maintenance cleans in between things, or if you’re just super busy.
I’ve talked to plenty of parents who are just like, “I don’t have time to do X, Y, Z,” or quite literally, one of my colleagues is like, “My kid spilled an entire bowl of milk and cereal and it was like, we had to go. So I just set the robot off and eventually it picks it up.” If you sat by and watched it, you’d be frustrated because it’s going around the whole room and not getting everything. But if you don’t have the time and you’re going, it’s fine to just leave it and then you come back and it’s pretty much gone.
CHRISTINE: So this is like a something is better than nothing situation-
EVAN: Exactly.
CHRISTINE: … which I’ve been there with young kids. It’s definitely a reality. So what kind of homes are these vac mops good for? If you have a lot of carpeting, is it going to work in your home, or do you need to have all hardwood floors?
EVAN: Mostly hardwood floors and I would say not a lot of level changes on your floors because you’re going to have to sort of pick that thing up and move it along. But they’ve gotten better at recognizing where a carpet is and not mopping it. I won’t say it’s perfect. I have a little thin thing in my kitchen that nine out of ten of them don’t recognize and it just mops it. It’s not the end of the world, but if you had a nicer rug or carpet, you might be annoyed by that.
CHRISTINE: I was reading one of your pieces about these machines and you had mentioned that they are kind of designed for homes in Asia and Europe. Tell me more about that, because I thought that was pretty fascinating.
EVAN: So all the manufacturers now are based in China, and the United States is sort of far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of carpets and rugs as opposed to more Asian and European homes, which don’t have those as much. So it’s definitely designed for those Asian and European homes. And then when they port it over to the States, it’s kind of fitting a square peg into a round hole. That’s probably part of why the carpet detection took so long. It just wasn’t something that they were focused on. But.
CHRISTINE: And when you say that the US is far ahead in terms of carpet. What does that mean?
EVAN: Just like more. We have way more carpets in homes than the rest of the world.
CHRISTINE: All right. You mentioned these don’t handle stairs very well. Tell me more.
EVAN: The companies are trying these kind of increasingly silly ways to make it so that you don’t have to pick up your robot and bring it up the stairs. So three companies have put out these sort of modules that your robot vacuum will go into and then tank tread up the stairs very slowly, not cleaning the stairs, just going up them, and then that thing will wait at the top of your stairs while it cleans upstairs and then go back down. I saw one company that had a drone for it, which extremely loud. I could hear it from across the convention and not work well there, so I don’t think it will work well in homes, but they are thinking of ways to do it.
CHRISTINE: So it sounds like at this point, if you want to get one of these, just think about it for one floor, right?
EVAN: One floor.
CHRISTINE: Or you’re going to need multiple for many floors, but probably the floor that gets the most traction.
EVAN: Yeah. I mean, they have capability to save multiple maps, so if you wanted to take the effort to carry it upstairs and let it go, it’ll do that, but then you’re just going to have to keep doing that or get two, which is kind of ridiculous.
CHRISTINE: So can you explain how they can map the different rooms and the different areas that they should be going on in a floor?
EVAN: They can take hints from what they run into in rooms and figure out what those rooms are. So like if it goes into a bed, it’ll say bedroom. If it runs into like a dishwasher, it’ll say kitchen. So it’ll map your home, mark off the different rooms, and then you can set different cleaning schedules or different modes for each of those rooms. So if you have a high traffic entryway, you could say, “Double mop this.” If you have a room with a really nice carpet in it, you could just say, “Skip this entirely.” But they’re fairly good at that now.
CHRISTINE: I think that these robot mop vacs have some kind of large sort of housing that they return to, right?
EVAN: Yeah. So the old Roomba used to have this teeny old dock that you could even put under your couch or your table and it would just hide under there when it was done. But now it’s this sort of takes up at least a corner of your room. It’s a big dock that washes the mops and then dries them and then it has a clean water tank, a dirty water tank, and most of them now also have a dust bag in them. So it’s nice because you don’t have to empty them all that often, maybe like once a month depending on how often you’re using them, but it’s not something you can hide away. If it wasn’t my job, I wouldn’t really love having one in my home just because it takes up such a big portion of the room it’s in.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, that’s been what’s held me back because I have a relatively small apartment. If I had a bigger house, I wouldn’t think twice, I would just do it. But yeah, that’s definitely something to keep in mind. Okay, Evan, we’re going to take a quick break, and when we’re back, we’re going to talk about the robo vacs and mops that you recommend and what you don’t recommend. Stay tuned.
CHRISTINE: Welcome back. We’re talking about robo vacs with Wirecutter staff writer, Evan Dent. Evan, if someone wants to buy a robot vac either for the first time or to replace an older model, what do you recommend getting?
EVAN: So for a new, simple vacuum-only robot, there’s the Roborock Q7 M5+. That is a bit of a mouthful. It does technically have a mop on it, but it’s completely optional. It’s an excellent, excellent robot vacuum. It does as well as thousand dollar plus machines just at vacuuming.
CHRISTINE: And that one’s about 300?
EVAN: 300 full price, and it often goes on sale. If you have a robot vacuum that you like now, I would just buy extra parts for it while you can. These companies talk a big game about keeping those parts in production, but at any moment, they could sort of go off their website and be harder to find. So stock up on extra filters, brushes, that sort of thing, and you can prolong the life of the current robot vacuum you have. And then if you’re interested in kind of dipping your toe in a robot vac mop and you want something kind of close to the cutting edge, so the biggest thing of the past couple years has been this roller mop that is self-cleaning so it goes down, hits the floor, picks up something dirty and then cleans itself before it goes back down. So you are technically always cleaning with clean water, which I think is a lot of people’s worry about traditional mopping.
So there’s a cheaper version of that called the Eufy Robot Vacuum Omni E25. Is it going to change your life? No. Can you set it out and then look at your shiny floors after and sort of contentedly sigh? Yes, and it’s not going to totally break the bank.
CHRISTINE: And if you were going to go with the first category, let’s say you were going to go with that RoboRock Q7 M5+, would you also recommend going ahead and buying extra parts at this point?
EVAN: I think it’s always good to get extra parts right at the outset, but I wouldn’t worry about it too much with that particular model.
CHRISTINE: Okay. So I want to talk about a personal obsession, how to get a deal on something. So part of the reason we’re covering this right now is that Prime Day is coming up. These Amazon sales events and other sales events are oftentimes a good time to buy vacuums in general. So I’m curious, if somebody is in the market for a mop vac or just a vac, what do you think is a good price point to be looking for around a deals event?
EVAN: Yeah. So for specific models, I would say the RoboRock Q7 M5+, our deals team says $220 or under is going to be sort of the best price you’re going to get on that, and that is a wonderful value. The Eufy Robot Vacuum on the E25, $600 or below. Again, that’s very expensive, but as new models come out, they sort of push these ones further down. So I anticipate that that will keep dropping, but 600 or below is going to be a good deal for that Eufy Robot Vacuum.
CHRISTINE: If somebody, let’s say they are curious, they’re thinking about buying one of these, maybe they’re not ready to buy it right now. When are other good times to buy?
EVAN: Black Friday is a good one. And then I would also say when new products release. So it’s almost like a car dealership where last year’s model immediately becomes cheaper when the new one comes out, but it’s the most accelerated timeline that I’ve ever seen. I was told once that they come out every three months and I kind of scoffed at that, and then three months later I went to a trade show and I saw all new robots.
CHRISTINE: They are really expensive. You mentioned earlier that the top of the line ones are $1,700, even our main pick is $600 and that’s just sort of the middle of the road, middle of the pack. Why are they so expensive?
EVAN: That’s a good question. It is very advanced tech at the highest level in terms of object recognition. So sort of the newest, most expensive ones will go around and it can see what’s on your floor, tell you about it. If you lost an object, maybe it could find it for you. But also just in terms of being able to navigate around messes that it can’t clean up or deciding to take on a second pass or a third pass because it can’t handle that stain in one pass. So just the sort of knowledge on the machines and then the robotic parts that go on it. And I would say it’s almost Apple-like in terms of signaling a very high level of tech. When you see the actual things that are being introduced, they’re not that impressive, like UV lights under the robot that detect hidden stains and they’re trying to signal that this is the best of the best and they set that price even higher. So I would say even a year ago, it seemed like 1,600 was sort of the high and then we’re going up to 17. So general inflation and tariffs, and also sort of a signal that these are advanced.
CHRISTINE: And probably, like a lot of tech, the prices will eventually come down.
EVAN: Yes. You can sort of see it trickle down. The stuff that was the biggest advance in years eventually comes down to a model that’s definitely less than $1,000 and further and further down. So that Eufy I was talking about is sort of the lowest you could get for the roller mop and it’s still coming down from there with a bunch of different companies.
CHRISTINE: Evan, with these new robot mop vacs, are there any issues or concerns around repairability?
EVAN: That’s the other problem with introducing all this mopping. It introduces so many more parts that can fail. So the warranties on these things are typically one to two years, especially when you buy something so expensive, it’s disappointing. So I would say if you are proactive about cleaning your sensors, changing your filters, like taking care of it, you can expect it to last a few years past that warranty, but in general between the computer parts, the mopping parts, plus the vacuum, there’s just a lot that can fail.
CHRISTINE: So if someone’s mop vac fails, let’s say after the warranty, can you fix it or is it so complicated there’s not much you can do and it might be more expensive to fix it than to just buy something new?
EVAN: It will depend on the problem you’re having. If it’s a robotics or electricity problem, I don’t think you’ll be able to fix it yourself. If it’s just a simple part, you can usually find a replacement and sort of some brands are better than others in terms of repairability at home. So something like Eufy or iRobot actually, usually it is simple enough to open up the robot and sort of switch out a part. But again, there’s so much more complicated stuff with these higher end robots that the chances of having a problem that you can’t fix or that is more expensive to fix than just getting a new one are higher.
CHRISTINE: All right, Evan, thanks for joining us today. We want to have you back to do more of a vacuum deep dive, so we’ll look forward to that.
EVAN: Thanks so much for having me.
CHRISTINE: We’ll drop a link in the show notes to Evan’s reporting on robo mops and of course to all the products we talked about today. You can also find out more on our website. That’s it for this week. Thanks so much for listening.
The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Today’s episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Rowan Niemisto, Catherine Anderson, and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter’s deputy publisher and general manager. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter’s editor-in-chief. I’m Christine Cyr Clisset. Thanks for listening.
