Like you, we’ve been wondering whether or not a robot vacuum is a worthwhile investment. These things can cost thousands of dollars, have a questionable number of use cases, and for a very long time, they sucked (not in the good way). However, when an opportunity presented itself to review one of the most feature-packed devices on the market for a few months, we thought it was a great opportunity to shed some light on the experience of “owning” one and answer the question: Is a robot vacuum worth it?
In this buying guide, we’ll examine the pros and cons of owning a robot vacuum, explore the features you need (and don’t need), and highlight some key considerations you should make before buying one.
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How Big’s Your Home and Where Do You Want to Clean?
- Cleaning a large home can take hours, and they’re better suited to large and flat living areas
- Using the app, you can map multiple rooms in the house, but you’ll have to move the unit manually
- Some cheaper and smaller machines have shorter battery life, meaning long wait times for charge
Think about your home size and what rooms you want to clean with the robot vacuum. You can move these devices up and down stairs and from room to room, but cleaning a big house with multiple rooms can take longer with a robot than a simple plug-in stick vacuum. This is because of the small catch bin and modest battery life, especially when vacuuming and mopping. It’s typically enough to clean an 80m2 area in one charge, but if you take your robot upstairs, you must manually return the device to the base to empty.
For example, the new ECOVACS DEEBOT T30 PRO OMNI we’ve been testing takes less than 40 minutes to vacuum and mop a 40m2 area, but it has to empty itself and clean the mop heads at least once. Thankfully, it can return itself to the base and do this automatically, but if it were cleaning a room upstairs, it would need to be returned manually.
Smaller robot vacuums, like the SwitchBot K10+ Mini, are designed for apartments and small townhouses. They are cheaper to buy and fit easily underneath low tables, between chair legs, and through tight gaps. On the other hand, large robot vacuums are better suited to open-plan living rooms and large family homes—they often have more features, e.g. mopping, edge-cleaning, automatic mop cleaning, and automatic water tank refilling. During our testing, we spent most of our time with the ECOVACS DEEBOT T30 PRO OMNI, which is better suited for a large home.
NOTE: The device’s size can also dictate the battery’s size. Generally speaking, the larger the robot, the bigger the battery. Most robot vacuums can comfortably clean an 80m2 area on one charge, but this can vary depending on the cleaning intensity, the amount of mopping needed, and the furniture layout. If you have a larger robot with a bigger battery, you’ll be able to clean a room in one go, which means less time wasted waiting for the vacuum to charge. This is also handy if you’re moving the robot between rooms.
What Type of Floors Do You Have?
- If you have carpets, consider a premium machine with more suction power
- If you have hardwood floors, you might want a hybrid robot vacuum that mops
Most robot vacuums on the market can clean hardwood and carpets. However, the type of floor you own is something to consider if looking at the more affordable devices (typically less than AU$800). That said, if you only want to clean hardwood floors, you can save a lot of money by choosing a hard-surface-only device.
The ECOVACS DEEBOT T30 PRO OMNI, which we tested extensively as a reference point for this article, is a hybrid robot vacuum that can mop and vacuum all floor types. You can adjust the intensity of the vacuum and mop functions, and it did a great job of cleaning recently polished hardwood floorboards without scratching. Like many leading devices, it will automatically lift its mop plates to 9mm to avoid wet carpets and rugs.
NOTE: If you’re predominantly cleaning carpets, you’ll want a robot vacuum with high suction power. The ECOVACS DEEBOT T30 PRO OMNI did a great job cleaning carpets, but its 11,000 Pa suction power is quite high, so that’s almost to be expected. We highly recommend choosing a device with more than 10,000 Pa of power, such as the DEEBOT T30 PRO OMNI mentioned above or Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra.
Do You Have Pets?
- Some cheaper robot vacuums struggle with excessive hair build-up in rollers due to static
- Look for a machine that uses cameras, lasers, and artificial intelligence to spot animal poop
- Make sure the animal poop setting is turned on before use
Most pet owners want to use a robot vacuum to clean up their pet’s hair, which remains one of the most useful applications. Unfortunately, some devices cannot effectively suck up long hair and pet droppings. The roller brush at the front of some devices can get tangled in hair due to static attraction created by the carpet. This causes excessive wear to the brushes, bristles, and vacuum components.
Look for devices such as the ECOVACS DEEBOT T30 PRO OMNI, Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra, and Roomba Combo j5+, which have features like anti-static soft bristles and v-shaped roller brushes to prevent tangling.
Leading devices can also use cameras, lasers, and artificial intelligence to spot animal droppings. This avoids the catastrophic (and hilarious stories, sorry) that we’ve heard of people’s robot vacuums sending projectile poo around their living rooms. Ensure these settings are turned on before sending your robot vacuum on duty, or suffer the consequences!
Consider a More Expensive Device With Self-Emptying and Cleaning
- Prices continue to fall, features trickle down, and value for money gets better every few months
- High suction power remains the most important feature, but self-emptying is second
- Storing a self-cleaning and self-emptying robot vacuum requires a large cavity
The price of self-emptying and self-cleaning robot vacuums continues to fall as the technology becomes more affordable and widespread. One can be purchased for as low as $600, so it’s an easy recommendation.
You’ll want to look for vacuums with the highest suction power for the money and also those that self-clean the mop cloths to avoid scratching on hardwood floors. The crowd-favourite Dreame D10 Plus offers up to a max of 4,000Pa and can be found for around AU$699. Meanwhile, the DEEBOT T30 PRO OMNI we’ve been testing for a few months is a premium unit with more than twice the suction power (11,000Pa) and features self-cleaning mop cloths. It comes in at a higher price of AU$1,799.
NOTE: If you’re storing your robot vacuum in a small cubby, the self-emptying and self-cleaning units take up much more space. They often come with two water reservoirs (clean and dirty), a large dust bin, and a base that cleans the mop cloths. Ultimately, these units are better suited to large homes.
How Much Should You Spend On a Robot Vacuum?
The prices of robot vacuums continue to fall every 12 months. You can now find features on $600 machines that were previously only seen on $2,000 units a year ago. Generally speaking, this is what you’ll get for the money:
- Less than $300: We can’t recommend spending less than $300 on a robot vacuum because they typically miss out on features that we deem essential to the ownership experience. These devices can ping-pong from wall to wall as they don’t usually have cameras, they don’t self-empty, they don’t self-clean, they don’t connect to wifi, so they can’t be operated remotely, and they can have a short battery life. Of course, some unproven brands are an exception to the rules, but they won’t let us review them, so we can’t recommend them.
- Less than $600: Robot vacuums like the eufy Clean Robovac L60 SES are priced around the $600 mark and offer great suction power for the money. More importantly, they provide an entry point into the self-emptying world, which can be a game-changer for most users. Unless you’re in a very small apartment, this is the minimum amount we’d spend on a robot vacuum. These devices also use cameras to navigate the floor to avoid ping-ponging from wall to wall.
- Less than $1,000: Most features available on $1,000 robot vacuums were previously only available on devices that cost nearly twice this amount. Robot vacuums like the Dreame D10 Plus and Roomba i5+ offer medium-to-high suction levels, self-cleaning and self-emptying, Wi-Fi and smart home controls, and more.
- Less than $2,000: You can pick up a device like the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra and ECOVACS DEEBOT T30 PRO OMNI for less than $2,000. We’ve tested many of these units, and they tick every box but offer higher suction levels and more advanced mopping techniques than $1,000 units. They’re better for large households, they pick up pet hair without tangling, and you can often find them on sale to sweeten the deal. This is the sweet spot in robot vacuums, especially if you have a large house.
- More than $2,000: Unless you have money to burn and want the absolute best, we don’t recommend spending more than $2,000 on a robot vacuum. So far, we’ve tested a handful of these devices, such as the Roomba s9+ Robot Vacuum, and they’re excellent, but you can find similar features in less expensive devices. If you simply want to vacuum and mop, you don’t need to spend this much.
What Robot Vacuum Did We Test as a Reference Point?
Finally, I must add the disclaimer that ECOVACS let us borrow their new DEEBOT T30 PRO OMNI for three months to bring this explainer to life. However, we could have chosen almost any robot vacuum on the market, from Dreame to Roborock, Eufy, iLife, and more. When you’re willing to use and write about a product and share your honest experiences, a company rarely will not want complimentary coverage.
We primarily chose the DEEBOT T30 PRO OMNI because it’s one of the newest devices on the market. It also brings ten key pieces of robot vacuum tech to the table, all things we wanted to test:
- It’s ECOVACS’ strongest ever robot vacuum, 11,000pa suction
- TruEdge Adaptive Edge Mopping
- ZeroTangle Anti-Tangle Technology
- Mini OMNI Station, 30% smaller than before
- One-touch Spot Cleaning
- Foot Touch Control
- Intelligent Mopping
- 9mm Auto-Lift Mopping
- Phone Widgets & Apple Watch Support
- Bluetooth Quick Pairing
It seems a new robot vacuum is released every other week, and this device comes to market 10 months after its predecessor. That’s impressive unless you paid nearly two grand for the old model, and it becomes old tech within a year. The device I’m testing here, the DEEBOT T30 PRO OMNI, is priced at AU$1,699. However, like most pieces of tech, you can find it on sale, so we recommend shopping around. There will also very likely be another update to the model line-up before the end of this year.
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