Repairability and Future of Robot Vacuums

I'm Christine Sier Classet And you're listening to the wirecutter show 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 your running errands are 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 back, 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 great 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 twenty third to the twenty sixth. Evan recently wrote a piece about how robot vacuums are changing, and he's gonna 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 Evan Dent who tests all types of vacuums and floor care tools for wire cutter. Evan, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. 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 vacuum as we know them are really changing. Tell me what is shifting and how is it shifting So in the last couple of 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 somethingy sounding. 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 them mop at the same time. You can set them to do different things but a vacuumly robot is a rarity now. I think One or two companies still make them. So if you're going out to buy a new robot vacuum at this point, it's most likely that you're gonna to get one of these combos. Those are the ones that are like the most available right now. Yes, Even the base level thing is going to have some sort of mopping on it. Why are manufacturers phasing out this category that just does the vacuuming and adding this mop feature Part of it is if you have one, you're probably not gonna 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 two hundred dollars, 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 moop system that We can charge you a thousand bucks for or fifteen hundred dollars for. Whas just a vacuum They're kind of topped out at around two hundred. is this manufacturer's 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? Be surely there are people that still just want the vacuum. They would say that they're making a better product. They're adding functionality so that, oh, this is better I'mopping now and now I 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. 'acauseuse these are pretty expensive at this point. Our recommendation right now is around six hundred dollars. Yes, and that's totally in the middle of the pack. On the highest end, like the newest of the new things that come out, I've seen as high as seven hundred dollars. Whoa, that's so expensive. You can buy a really, really nice canister vac or upright vac that cleans incredibly well. You could buy two. 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 vax 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 gott 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? Dence is the exactly right word for it. They're good enough. It forestalls bigger cleans. If you like having a shiny looking floor, that's sort of what the mop is going give you It's not going to get deeper set stains or even grimy kitchen areas I'll go over afterone's done and sort of put my own elbow grease into it and find that I'm still picking up stuff. 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. Like I've talked to plenty of parents who are just like, I don't have time to do X,YZ or, you know ler of my colleagues was like my kids build an entire bowl of milk and cereal and it's like, we had to go. So I just set the robot off and Eventually it picks it up. Like 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. So this is like a something is better than nothing situation which' been there with young kids. It's definitely a reality. So what kind of homes are these vC mops good for Like if you have a lot of carpeting is going to work in your home, or do you need to have all hardwood floors? 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 you know, if you had a nicer rug or carpet, you might be annoyed by that. 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 So all the manufacturers now are based in China. the United States is sort of far ahead of the rest the world in terms of carpets and rug as opposed to more Asian 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. And when you say that the US is far ahead in terms of carpet, what does that mean? Like justust like more we have way more carpets and homes than the rest of the world. Yeah. All right, you mentioned, these don't handle stairs very well. tellell me more. 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. 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 up stairs and then go back down I saw one company that had a drone for it, which Extremely loud. like 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. So it sounds like at this point, if you want to get one of these, just think about it for one floor, right? O you're going need multiple for many floors, but it probably like the floor that gets the most traction. 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 gonna have to keep doing that or get to, which it's kind of ridiculous, but so Can you explain how they can map the different rooms and the different areas that they should be going on in a floor. 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 a 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 you know, if you have a high traffic entryway, you could say double mop this. If you have a room with like a really nice carpet in it, you could just say skip this entirely, but they're fairly good at that now. I think that these robot mop vacs have some kind of large sort of like housing that they return to, right? Yeah, so the old room, it used to have this teen 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 It 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 him 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. 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 Evan, we're gonna take a quick break and when we're back, we're gonna talk about the Robo vacs and mops that you recommend and what you don't recommend. Stay tuned Welcome back We're talking about Robo Vax with Wirecutter staff writer Evan Dent Evan, if someone wants to buy a robot vAac either for the first time or to replace an older model, what do you recommend getting? So for a new simimple. vacuum only robot. There's the Roborock Q seven M five plus 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. does as well as a thousand dollars plus machines just at vacuuming And that one's about three hundred. three hundred 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 vacmop and you want something kind of close to the cutting edge. so The biggest thing of the past couple of years has been this roller moop. 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 UFy Robot Vacuum Omni E twenty five. Is it going to change your life now Can you set it out and then look at your shiny fourores after and sort of contentedly sigh? Yes and it's not going totally break the bank If you were going to go with the first category, let's say you're gonna go with that Robo Rock Q seven, M five plus, would you also recommend going ahead and buying extra parts at this point 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 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 vAac, What do you think is a good price point to be looking for around a deals event Yeah, so for specific models, I would say The Robo Rock U seven M five plus, our deals team says two hundred and twenty dollars 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 Uthy Robot vacuum on the E twenty five, six hundred dollars or below. Again, that's very expensive As new models come out, they sort of push these ones further down. So I anticipate that that will keep dropping that six hundred below is going to be a good deal for that Ufy robot vacuum. If somebody, let's say they are cur They arere thinking about buying one of these. Maybe they're not ready to buy it right now. When are like other good times to buy? 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. They are really expensive. You know, you mentioned earlier that the top of the line ones are seventeen hundred, Even our main pick is six hundred and that's just sort of the middle of the road, middle of the pack. Why are they so expensive 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 I could find it for you, but also just in terms of being able to navigate around messes that it can't clean up or like 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 signaling a very high level of tech When you see the actual things that are being introduced, they're not that impmpressive, 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 sixteen hundred was sort of high and then We're going up to seventeen so General inflation and tariffs and also sort of a signal that These are advanced And probably like a lot of tech the prices will eventually come down Yes, you can sort of see it trickle down The stuff that was, you know, the bigiggest advance in your eventually comes down to a model that's defeinitely less than a thousand dollars and further and further down. So that Ufi I was talking about is sort of the lowest you could get for the roller map, and it's still coming down from there with a bunch of different companies Evan, with these new robot Mop vacs, are there any issues or concerns around repairability That's the other problem with Introducing all this moppping, introduces so many more parts that can fail. So the warranties on these things are typically one to two years Eespecially when you buy something so expensive, it's disappointing 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 pass that warranty But in general, between the computer parts, the mopping parts, plus the vacuum, there's just a lot that can fail. 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 It will depend on the problem you're having, if it's a robotics or electricity Prom 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 Ufy or Robot actually. usually it is simple enough to open up the robot and sort of switch out apart. 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 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. Thanks so much for having me 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 Garin and produced by Abigail Keel, Engineering support from Matdie Maziello and Nick Pittman Today's episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson Original Music by Dan Powell Marion Lazano, Rowan Nimisto, Katherine Anderson, and Diane Wang. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter's deputy publisher and general manager. Ben Frreeman is Wirecutter's editor in chief. I'm Christine Sier Classette. Thanks for listening