View image in fullscreen The Filter Technology Review The best robot vacuums in the UK to keep your home clean and dust free, tested Looking for hands-free cleaning? We trialled the most powerful robot vacuums – some of which even mop your floors – to find the best
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Robot vacuum cleaners take the drudge work out of cleaning your floors and carpets. No more tiresome weekly stints of vacuuming, and no more last-minute panic when you have visitors on the way. Instead, your compact robot chum regularly trundles out from its dock, sucking up dust, hair and debris to leave your floors looking spick and span.
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Over the past few years, robot vacuums have become much more affordable, with basic units starting at about £150. They’re also doing more than they used to: mopping hard floors and charging in sophisticated cleaning stations that empty their dust collectors and clean their mop pads for you.
In fact, the biggest effort is deciding which one to buy. That’s where I can help. I’ve tested 11 of the most popular models to help you find the best robot vacuum for your space.
Best robot vacuum cleaner overall: Eufy X10 Pro Omni
Best budget robot vacuum for small homes: Roborock Q7 L5+
Best robot vacuum for power cleaning: Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+
Best robot vacuum for obstacle avoidance: iRobot Roomba Plus 505 Combo
Best for hard floors and open-plan homes: Dreame Matrix 10 Ultra
Why you should trust me I’ve spent almost three decades reviewing technology, home and garden products, covering everything from PCs, printers and tablets to lawnmowers, coffee machines, steam cleaners and fans. I’ve tested a wide range of smart-home appliances and devices, and I know the features that make them more effective and easier to use, and those that don’t add any real value.
View image in fullscreen ‘I spilled flour and crunched cereal on a mat to up the challenge’: the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ takes on the mess. Photograph: Stuart Andrews/The Guardian Our team scoured stores and spoke to manufacturers to pull in the leading robot vacuum cleaners – which I put to the test in my three-bedroom, two-floor home. Over three weeks I had them clean every room, switching vacuums and docks around to give each a shot at the upstairs and downstairs spaces.
The house has a mix of wooden and composite hard flooring, rugs and carpets, with various awkward, dusty corners and two cats shedding inconceivable amounts of hair. What’s more, the living room is a fiendish obstacle course – even with some lighter furnishing removed, these robot vacuums had their work cut out.
I used a smartphone sound meter to measure noise levels, and a plug-in power meter to gauge the energy use of the docks or chargers when idle and charging. I also spilled flour and crushed cereal on to a barrier mat to check the suction and cleaning power of each model, treading in the crumbled shredded wheat to up the challenge. I used the apps to check the vacuums’ mapping and scheduling capabilities and to add rooms, zones and no-go areas.
After testing, the cleaners were either returned to their sources or donated to the British Heart Foundation .
View image in fullscreen ‘The absolute master of mopping’: the Dreame Matrix10 Ultra. Photograph: Stuart Andrews/The Guardian Best robot vacuum cleaner overall: Eufy X10 Pro Omni Eufy X10 Pro Omni from £599 £599 at Eufy £599 at Amazon What we love Superb, hassle-free vacuuming and mopping What we don’t love Big and noisy, especially when mop cleaning £599 at Eufy £599 at Amazon The X10 Pro Omni isn’t a bad price for a self-emptying, self-cleaning robot mop and vacuum. The base station washes and dries the heads between uses, refilling the internal water tank and emptying the dust collector. It uses a front-facing camera and laser technology to sense its way around your floors, spotting and identifying items – such as socks or cables – that it can then avoid. It’s powerful, with 8,000Pa of suction force, and its twin rotating mop heads can apply 1kg of downwards pressure to give hard floors a serious scrubbing.
Why we love it This Eufy machine does almost everything for you, as long as you periodically empty the base station’s dust bag and dirty-water tank and refill the clean-water tank. Like the Samsung, reviewed further down, it’s great at mapping out your home and dodging potential obstacles, but it’s also better than the Samsung at cleaning on the first pass. The side brush and vacuum can shift dust and hair in seconds, while the mop left my hard floors sparkling.