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.
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.
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At a glance
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
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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.
How I tested
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.
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The best robot vacuums for 2026
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<em>Best robot vacuum cleaner overall:</em> Eufy X10 Pro Omni
- What we love:Superb, hassle-free vacuuming and mopping
- What we don’t love:Big and noisy, especially when mop cleaning
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.
The app provides plenty of control, allowing you to set up cleaning scenarios to focus on different areas. You can also tweak cleaning options such as suction power if, say, you’ve got a deep-pile carpet to clean and you don’t think it’s making an impact. The brush and roller seem particularly resistant to getting clogged with hair.
It’s a shame that … mopping isn’t so effective on the low water setting – switching up to medium gets better results. It’s also bigger and louder than rivals, struggling to fit under low furniture and hitting 68dB on max power. Cleaning and drying the mop can be a long and noisy process.
Suction power: 8,000Pa
Robot dimensions: 327 x 353 x 114mm (WDH)
Dock dimensions: 365 x 480 x 360mm (WDH)
Maximum noise level: 68dBA
Battery life: 3hrs
Power consumption (charging): 26.4W
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<em>Best budget robot vacuum for small homes:</em>Roborock Q7 L5+
- What we love:Compact and affordable cleaning
- What we don’t love:Hates changes of elevation and annoying rugs
Just 32.5cm in diameter, this compact robot vacuum is one of the smallest we’ve tested, and its self-emptying charging dock is tiny compared with the Samsung and Dreame behemoths. Yet it’s surprisingly powerful, with 8,000Pa of suction, and it even crams in a simple mop pad, fed by a 280ml water tank. Both the main brush and the side brush feature anti-tangle tech to stop long hair from clogging up the mechanisms.
Why we love it
It’s a great, affordable option for flats and smaller homes. It doesn’t take up much space but it’s beefy enough to brush and suck any dust or grime from your carpets – and it really is less prone to getting tangled up than most of the cheaper robot vacuums. It moves at a decent lick, but slows down when it needs to give an area some serious cleaning. While its mopping talents are basic, it does a solid job in small kitchens and bathrooms, plus its app offers useful tools and settings for customising maps and adjusting cleans mid-process.
It’s a shame that … for all its can-do enthusiasm, the little tyke really struggles with rugs or minor changes in elevation, constantly getting caught on my tasselled rug and failing to climb on to the tiles surrounding my fireplace. It’s good at avoiding obstacles, and sometimes recognises no-go zones, but it’s not immune to leaving small patches uncleaned, often in the centre of an area.
Suction power: 8,000Pa
Robot dimensions: 325 x 325 x 99mm (WDH)
Dock dimensions: 210 x 178 x 259mm (WDH)
Maximum noise level: 57dBA
Battery life: 2hrs 30mins
Power consumption (charging): 26W
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<em>Best robot vacuum for power cleaning:</em>Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+
- What we love:Brilliant at navigation; strong and speedy cleaning
- What we don’t love:Huge base station; struggles with rugs
It’s hard to miss Samsung’s robot mop and vacuum cleaner, not least because its white base station stands over half a metre tall. It’s also unnervingly speedy, and plays jingles when it starts or finishes, or on any event in between.
It uses a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) scanner and two 3D cameras for navigation, and it features twin rotating mop heads, which attach magnetically to the bottom of the unit. These are steam-cleaned and dried when the robot returns home.
Why we love it
It’s a strong all-rounder. It might not be top of the tree for suction, but it makes up for it by hunting hair, dust and debris relentlessly until it’s gone. The rotating mop heads do a fantastic job of removing stains from kitchen floors, and they lift up when not in use to avoid rubbing on the carpet.
It’s also great at navigation, even identifying potential obstacles before carefully manoeuvring around them. Even my troublesome suspended egg chair didn’t cause this machine any issues. With the dock’s integrated dust bin and water tanks, it’s also no great effort to maintain.
It’s a shame that … the base station is enormous, and this model is among the most expensive on test. It also struggles with rugs more so than the other top vacuums, regularly pulling up the edges and creating a rumpled mess that it subsequently had trouble traversing.
Suction power: 6,000Pa
Robot dimensions: 359 x 364 x 100mm (WDH)
Dock dimensions: 444 x 510 x 547mm (WDH)
Maximum noise level: 68dBA
Battery life: 3hrs
Power consumption (charging): 45.8W
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<em>Best robot vacuum for obstacle avoidance:</em>iRobot Roomba Plus 505 Combo
- What we love:Great mapping and cleaning; ace obstacle avoidance
- What we don’t love:Its dock-separation anxiety
This mid-range Roomba offers features you’d usually see in high-end models, including two spinning mop pads, LiDAR mapping, obstacle avoidance, and a self-emptying, mop-pad cleaning dock. What’s more, both the dock and vacuum are smaller than rivals, making it an easier fit if you don’t have an open-plan living space or palatial rooms.
Why we love it
It’s a smart and effective cleaner, mapping out rooms and even recognising and placing furniture accurately. It’s nimble, navigating rugs and avoiding getting stuck behind the sofa, while happily dodging stray socks, books, batteries and game controllers abandoned on the floor.
The mopping isn’t quite up to the standard of the Eufy, Samsung or Dreame cleaners, but it gets rid of marks and spills, leaving a nice sheen. Vacuuming is excellent, even on edges and in corners. Plus, Roomba’s new app is easy to use and comprehensive, making it simple to set up automated cleaning routines or designate no-go areas. Bonus points for the top-loading water and waste tanks, which are speedy to remove and fill or empty.
It’s a shame that … it’s a little slow to do a thorough clean and needs almost constant access to the dock when mopping, which is a pain if you have changes of elevation or multiple floors in your home. Expect a lot of moaning notifications and voice alerts, while the whole mop-washing business is extremely noisy. You might also want to empty the waste tank regularly, as the grey water gets smelly if left for more than a week or two.
Suction power: 7,000Pa
Robot dimensions: 351 x 357 x 106mm (WDH)
Dock dimensions: 344 x 450 x 470mm (WDH)
Maximum noise level: 65dBA
Battery life: 3hrs
Power consumption (charging): 33W
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<em>Best for hard floors and open-plan homes:</em>Dreame Matrix 10 Ultra
- What we love:Awesome mopping, self-emptying and cleaning
- What we don’t love:Prefers open-plan layouts, hates awkward furniture
The Matrix 10 Ultra rivals the Samsung for the skyscraper size of its base station, but here the bulk serves a purpose. As well as the dust collector and tanks for clean and dirty water, it packs in three different sets of mop heads and reservoirs for three different detergents. The idea is that it can tell wooden floors from kitchen floors or bathroom floors and apply the right combo of mop and detergent for the job. Plus, when it encounters deep-pile carpets, it can leave all the mops behind and focus on its vacuuming.
Why we love it
Dreame’s robot vacuum is a master of mopping. Parquet floors get a light touch; tiles and vinyl get a serious scrubbing – and every hard surface is left gleaming, minus any soggy rugs or puddles anywhere. It’s also a dab hand at vacuuming, with one brush on an articulated arm to sweep hair and debris from the edges of the room into the Dreame’s hungry rollers. There’s enough suction power here to deal with long hair or pet hair, even when it’s worked its way into your carpet.
You’ll need to keep the clean water tank topped up and the dirty tank emptied, but the Matrix 10 Ultra otherwise takes care of itself. It empties the internal dust box into a waiting bag on returning to the base for charging, where it will also clean and switch mop heads if it needs to. The heat treatment seems extremely effective at keeping everything grime- and odour-free.
Dreame’s app is extremely comprehensive, giving you plenty of control over its maps, so you can separate them into zones and apply different rules for cleaning. It’s also pretty nimble traversing rugs, thresholds and minor changes of elevation, although it still can’t handle proper steps.
It’s a shame that … it’s better at navigating single-floor, open-plan spaces than multiple floors. You can move it to a different floor and set it to work, but it often needs to return to the base station for emptying or cleaning, and it can get confused and do nothing if it can’t locate its home. While it’s thorough, it also struggled to work its way around the low or awkward furniture in my living room.
Suction power: 30,000Pa
Robot dimensions: 351 x 350 x 89mm (WDH)
Dock dimensions: 457 x 416 x 589mm (WDH)
Maximum noise level: 70dBA
Battery life: 4hrs 20mins
Power consumption (charging): 38W
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The best of the rest
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Shark PowerDetect NeverTouch Pro 2-in-1 RV2800ZEUK
- What we love:Self-cleaning and emptying; powerful mopping
- What we don’t love:Slow; best for single-floor homes
Best for: convenience
Shark’s beefy bot came so close to making the grade. It has the same self-cleaning and self-emptying features as the Samsung and Eufy models, and it empties into a larger dust bin rather than a bag. It can detect carpets and hard floors and will mop and/or vacuum accordingly, and it has smart features to spot and tackle hidden dirt or stubborn stains.
It gets extra points for its app, which takes you through setup and cleaning, and even suggests amusing names for your robot friend. We’ll remember you, Colonel Dustard.
It didn’t make the final cut because … it’s effective but slow to clean, and sometimes had issues making its way back to its base station. And while the app is helpful, it doesn’t give you much control. It can map only one floor, which is fine if you live in a flat or an open-plan bungalow, but otherwise limiting.
Suction power: not stated; robot dimensions: 365 x 338 x 106mm (WDH); dock dimensions: 364 x 478 x 446mm (WDH); maximum noise level: 60dBA; battery life: 1hr 40mins; power consumption (charging): 23.4W
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Ezviz RE5 Plus
- What we love:Quiet vacuuming; good features for the money
- What we don’t love:Awkward app; low suction
Best for: big features at a low price
The RE5 Plus gives you a lot for a budget model, handling the vacuuming and mopping with the aid of a self-emptying base station. It’s smaller than similarly equipped models, although you’ll have to wash the mop pads and refill the water tank yourself.
With LiDAR navigation, it’s good at threading its way under your furniture, and it’s quiet, never putting out more than 61dBA. It’s a talkative little robot, with notifications and error messages delivered in a crisp English accent and optional Google and Alexa voice commands.
It didn’t make the final cut because … Ezviz isn’t particularly well known for its cleaning products, and the app isn’t all that intuitive, even if there is plenty of control over settings available. The RE5 Plus also had issues getting over rugs, and in the spot-vacuuming tests, it left a little too much flour and debris on the carpet.
Suction power: 4,000Pa; robot dimensions: 345 x 345 x 95mm (WDH); dock dimensions: 220 x 180 x 380mm (WDH); maximum noise level: 61dBA; battery life: 3hrs; power consumption (charging): 19.3W
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Eureka E20 Plus
- What we love:Bagless dust collector; good for pet hair
- What we don’t love:Patchy vacuuming and soggy mopping
Best for: hassle-free emptying
This small but mighty model has a lot going for it. While it’s relatively cheap, it has a strong set of features, including two side brushes, an anti-tangle roller brush for handling pet hair, a mop that rises when it encounters carpet, and one of the most compact base stations for charging and emptying we’ve seen. This is all the more impressive when you realise it incorporates a bagless cyclone dust collector that drags out all the hair and dust from the unit, ready to be deposited neatly into the nearest bin.
It does a decent job of vacuuming and copes well with obstacles. The app offers plenty of control over areas and cleaning, with the ability to set up virtual walls or no-go zones. It’s also smart enough to do some ad hoc cleaning if you drop it in a room it hasn’t seen before.
It didn’t make the final cut because … while we loved the bagless convenience – and it did almost make the cut – vacuuming was patchy in places, and its mopping capabilities are basic. Some of our floors got quite a soaking without shifting all the stains and marks. It’s great value and good for homes with moulting mogs and dogs, but not quite up there with our robot vacuum heroes.
Suction power: 8,000Pa; robot dimensions: 350 x 350 x 97mm (WDH); dock dimensions: 251 x 180 x 443mm (WDH); maximum noise level: 83dBA; battery life: 3hrs; power consumption (charging): 55W
What you need to know
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Robot vacuums fit into two categories: those that vacuum and those that mop as well. My advice is to prioritise the vacuuming capabilities, since this makes the most difference to everyday cleaning. However, the best mopping robot vacuums can be very effective at clearing surface grot and superficial marks, even if you’ll still need a steam cleaner or manual mop for a really deep clean. In tests, we’ve found the models with rotating pads work best, and watch for cleaners that drag the mop pad across the floor when vacuuming – it can leave you with soggy rugs and carpets.
Cleaning power
Suction power counts, and most manufacturers will specify the maximum suction force in pascals (Pa). However, it’s not the whole story. Different cleaners will use different combinations of rollers and rotating brushes to whisk dirt and dust off the ground and into the vacuum’s path.
Some are also noticeably better than others at cleaning the edges of a room and adjusting the suction power according to the levels of dust they need to pick up. Most robot vacuums can do multiple passes if they need to, but this obviously adds to the cleaning time.
Navigation and emptying
The second key factor is navigation. Robot vacuums use a mix of optical and laser sensors and physical bumpers to cover the area they’re cleaning, while avoiding any obstacles. Advanced models feature 3D cameras that map the room, giving them a clearer idea of the geography and their exact position within it. Either way, navigation skills vary dramatically, with some cleaners prone to getting lost or confused under your furniture.
Vertical navigation skills are just as important, as robot vacuums will probably have to make their way over rugs and low-lying thresholds. Some of the more limber models can push, flip and clamber over any impediments, while others just get tangled up.
Robot vacuums have small onboard dust collectors, so need emptying more often than the average cordless vacuum. Pricier models solve this with a large dust bag in the base station or dock, which automatically empties the robot when it returns to recharge; and may also clean the mop head and refill the water tank.
Battery life and apps
Most modern robot vacuums will easily make it around one floor or more of an average-sized home without a recharge, and automatically return to base if they’re caught short. However, a larger battery and a more efficient motor can be helpful if you have a bigger space to keep in shape.
Onboard controls can be useful for setting it off on a quick clean, but you’ll mostly manage your robot vacuum from a smartphone app. At the very least, these should include features to customise room maps, add zones that need more thorough cleaning, and no-go areas.
Scheduling features to set particular times for cleaning and accessible controls, to change settings or run quieter at night, are also useful.
Can robot vacuums clean multiple rooms at a time?
They can, although the way this works can vary from model to model. Most robot vacuums navigate and map a whole floor at a time. You can use the app to label different rooms and then send your robot to a given location.
Many let you map multiple floors, and you don’t usually need to move the charging station between floors – just carry the unit upstairs or downstairs. If you have any steps between rooms (like I do in my living room), this often needs to be mapped as a separate floor.
Even where mapping isn’t supported, you can usually work around it by carrying the robot vacuum into the other space and setting it to clean. It may not clean as efficiently or effectively, but it will navigate the space and get the job done.
How do robot vacuums compare to regular vacuum cleaners?
As with cordless vacuums, robot vacuums come with a trade-off between size, battery life and suction force. Because they have to trundle around under their own steam for long enough to cover a decent-sized area, this inevitably limits the power of the vacuum motor.
Even powerful robot vacuums top out at 65AW (or 6,000 to 8,000Pa), and that’s often in their battery-draining turbo modes. By comparison, some cordless cleaners offer suction levels up to 250AW, and mains-powered vacuums can go even higher.
Confusingly, most manufacturers don’t offer the same suction power across their whole range. Irrespective of the model you buy, though, you may still need a manual vacuum cleaner to purge your carpets of pet hair and really stubborn grime.
How long do robot vacuums last?
This is tricky to answer, because there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of independent research. From anecdotal evidence and manufacturer figures, the average lifespan appears to fall somewhere between four and seven years, with budget models failing earlier and batteries losing charging capacity over time. Replacement batteries are available for some models, which should extend their working life.
What to do with your old robot vacuum?
You should be able to recycle your old robot vacuum at your local household waste recycling centre, while some stores, such as Currys, Appliances Direct and AO, will take your old model when you buy a new one. If it’s still working, you could donate it to a local charity shop. Just remember to factory reset the robot vacuum before you pass it on.
For more, read the best cordless vacuum cleaners for a spotless home, the best vacuum cleaners for hard floors and carpets and the Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones vacuum review
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Stuart Andrews is a journalist with more than three decades of experience in computing and consumer tech. When he’s not messing around with PCs, laptops and projectors, he’s trying to tame his post-apocalyptic garden with the latest cordless gadgets. Likes arty movies, walking and devices that just work; hates things that won’t connect to his home network
• This article was originally published on 26 November 2024. Reviews published in the Filter may be periodically updated to reflect new products and at the editor’s discretion. The date of an article’s most recent update can be found in the timestamp at the top of the page. This article was amended on 11 June 2026; the Roborock Q7 L5+ and iRobot Roomba Plus 505 Combo were added after testing, and prices were updated throughout.
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