CLEAN MACHINE
Isobel Bryant on the best robot vacuums for spotless rooms
Whether you love them or loathe them, household chores are a necessary part of everyday life. So wouldn’t it be great to have someone or something to pick up the slack? Enter the robot vacuum cleaner, a worthwhile investment for any busy household.
Recently, several new manufacturers have joined the vacuum cleaner market, offering a wide range of features like voice control and room mapping – with some being slightly unnecessary, and some genuinely useful.
Before you invest in a robot vacuum cleaner, it’s important to consider exactly what you’re looking for, whether it’s a dual function cleaner that can vacuum and mop, a low maintenance product which effectively cleans hardwood floors only, or a powerful hoover that will reach every corner of your home, sucking up pet
hair, dust and everything else in between.
Robot vacuums can be very expensive – one product we tested cost almost £1,200 – but the good news is, as the technology develops, these products are becoming more and more affordable, with models now available to suit a wide range of budgets.
To help you make this decision, we’ve tested out a range of robot vacuum cleaners in three different settings: a small bedroom with a hardwood floor and rugs for the robot to navigate over, a large, open-plan kitchen complete with dining table and chairs, as well as a carpeted living room featuring numerous obstacles such as sofas, a coffee table, a desk and a television. Our final pick features the products that performed the best in challenging terrain and we believe are worth investing in.
You can trust our independent reviews. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections, which are formed from real-world testing and expert advice. This revenue helps us to fund journalism across The Independent.
Roborock S5 max: £499.99, Amazon
Available in black and white, this sleek-looking robot vacuum won our best buy. This is actually a dualfunction robot, so it comes with an in-built dustbin and water tank, to vacuum as well as mop floors. As with many other products, this robot can be controlled via the Roborock app, but you can also simply press the “start” button on the top of the robot to begin a quick spot clean.
During testing, we found this product had no problem with navigating rugs and different surfaces at reasonable speed, and most importantly it always corrected its cleaning path so that it wouldn’t fall down any stairs. With an impressive 180 minutes of battery life, this was one of the longest-running robots we tested, and we particularly liked that if it runs out of charge while cleaning a room, it’ll return to the dock to charge just enough battery to then complete the remainder of the room.
The easy to use app allows you to see each room map that the robot has created, which you can then cleverly edit and divide according to your cleaning preferences. The scheduling options for this vacuum cleaner were advanced compared to other products we tested, letting you choose the room, the setting (vacuum or mop), the day and time, as well as the power mode – we were impressed.
This vacuum robot consistently finds its way back to its small charging dock, and you don’t have to completely clear a room of obstacles (as with other models) in order for it to effectively vacuum dirt and dust. Another feature we liked was that the air filter and mop pad were washable, meaning they last longer before needing to be replaced. We also found the dust tray could gently slide out, making it easy to empty
after each clean.
Buy this reasonably priced, versatile robot vacuum cleaner to get more bang for your buck – it will work effectively across all floor types and large and small spaces.
Buy now
Miele scout RX2: £539.00, Amazon
Quick and easy to set up, this robot has a handy mobile app which you can use to control the machine, but you don’t need this in order to actually operate it. We found this effectively cleaned each room, and navigated different surfaces easily (although it did have some trouble getting over the corners of a rug).
The feature we were most impressed with was the nifty swing-out side brushes, which worked really well, capturing dirt from the hard to reach corners of each room and from under furniture. At 67 decibels when on night mode, this was one of the quieter vacuums we tested. It does need around two and half hours charging time to clean for just 60 minutes, so if you have a large floorplan, we wouldn’t recommend it.
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Dyson 360 heurist: £799.99, Dyson
This futuristic-looking robot is the latest release from Dyson. A step up from its previous model, Dyson
claims to have made this vacuum capable of learning as it goes, with 20 per cent more suction than before. This product lived up to these credentials, providing a seriously impressive and methodical clean in all the rooms we tried it out in.
We set up this vacuum through the Dyson Link app, where you can view the robot mapping the zones you want it to clean, which it then remembers via its huge 10GB of memory. You can set a cleaning schedule for your robot, viewing exactly where has been cleaned and how long it took. Moving on tank-style tracks instead of wheels like the other products we tested, it easily moves across the room, and adapts to new surfaces, and you can even create “restricted zones” via the app, so that it knows the areas it must avoid.
Smaller in diameter but thicker than other robot vacuums on the market, an obvious problem with this product is that it can’t get under objects that other models we tested were easily able to clean. We also noted that the efficiency of this robot means that it sometimes moves at quite a speed, barging into objects in its way before understanding and then remembering how to navigate around them.
This robot vacuum cleaner is also compatible with Amazon Alexa, and despite the hefty price tag we would recommend buying if you’re ready to make a serious investment in your cleaning schedule.
Buy now
Coredy R500+: £199.99, Amazon
This three-in-one robot is able to vacuum, sweep and mop floors, however, the mopping attachment is actually sold separately. This was the cheapest robot vacuum cleaner we tested, and also one of the quieter ones.
At 2.7in tall, this is a slim robot which has obvious advantages – it is able to move under most household furniture, removing dust from normally hard to access areas. This is a random navigation robot, so you can’t map areas for it to clean, however we found it provided a reasonably thorough clean in larger rooms, but it struggled a bit more covering the small bedroom space we tested it out in.
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