Best robot vacuums for 2025, tried and tested in real homes

Eufy’s X10 robot vacuum is the company’s latest high-end model, and it’s the most hands-off machine I’ve tested yet. Not only does it vacuum and mop, but it’s clever enough to refill itself with water, as well as wash and dry its own mops. The only thing you need to do is change the water in the base station every seven days and swap out the dust bag every couple of months. Other than that, it cleans and mops for you.

The mopping function is excellent. It doesn’t just swish a mop pad around on the floor; it actually scrubs the floorboards, helping get rid of dried coffee stains. Plus, the X10 features Eufy’s best-in-class object avoidance tech, which has been trained like a self-driving car, dodging over 100 different objects, including cables, slippers and socks.

While I’m not the biggest fan of Eufy’s app, it’s smart enough to map your home automatically, and you can customise how hard it mops, how deep it cleans and the level of suction power it exerts. It’s a really smart little vacuum that needs almost no human input to work.

Read our full Eufy X10 pro omni review

The Roborock Q7 M5 (previously called the Max) hits the sweet spot between premium features and a more accessible price, making it one of the best value-for-money robot vacuums you can buy. It brings core high-end features like simultaneous vacuuming and mopping, precise LiDAR navigation and an optional self-emptying dock down to around £200.

Powered by a robust 4,200Pa of suction, the Q7 M5 has no trouble lifting dust, debris and pet hair from both hard floors and carpets. The mopping system uses consistent pressure for an effective wipe-down that’s great for daily sprucing. The laser-based navigation is fast and accurate, creating detailed 3D maps of your home and navigating around furniture with ease. Once you’ve built your map, the Roborock app lets you set no-go zones or choose specific rooms to clean.

As a cheaper model, the Q7 M5 forgoes some of the fancier tech found on top-tier models. While it will clean around furniture and table legs, it will get tangled on any shoelaces and cables you’ve left lying around, and its mopping pad is the basic sort, with no scrubbing action. You’ll need to prep your floors before sending it around, but these are smart compromises for a budget robovac.

My brother-in-law, who is an ex-Apple employee, called this vacuum “the best piece of tech” that he’d used since Apple vision pro, which is a rather impressive claim. Putting it to work in a house where four dogs are often running around, shedding every day, was no small job, and it’s worked miracles in terms of the hair that it can pick up. Getting it set up was relatively easy, but it did come with a lot of unnecessary packaging.

I made sure to test the vacuum on everyday incidents – vacuuming up hair following a cut on the living room floor, spills from a cup of tea, and mopping up muddy paw prints. There was no issue in sweeping up dirt and mopping the floor after that, thanks to a figure-of-eight technique. Better still, it found particular areas of the room with ease when I sent it to corners and patches to clean.

One irk was that there is no option to map two floors, unlike the Eufy 25, and so whenever sending it upstairs to clean, I needed to reprogram the ground floor upon return. But, it’s a small price to pay for a fantastic piece of equipment that sits mid-range in the robot vacuum price bracket, but operates in line with some of the higher-end models.

The Dreame X50 Ultra is a high-end robot vacuum cleaner and mop that’s crammed with some cutting-edge technology, most notably its extendable legs, which can clear steps of up to 6cm. It won’t climb a staircase – robovacs still have their limits – but if you have an awkward step in your home, the Dreame X50 Ultra will be able to clamber over it and continue cleaning.

The innovations don't stop there. The Dreame X50 Ultra uses a small robotic arm that swings the spinning mop pad out from the robot’s body to clean right up to the edge of skirting boards and around furniture legs. It’s a simple but effective solution, reliably reaching corners that other robovacs miss.

The all-in-one base station not only empties the dustbin and refills the water tank, but it also washes the mop pads with hot water, helping to dissolve greasy stains and keep things hygienic. It even has a built-in hair-cutting roller that automatically shreds any tangled hair from the main brush, saving you from one of the grubbiest robot vacuum maintenance jobs.

Of course, all of these features come at a price, placing the Dreame X50 Ultra firmly in the premium category alongside the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra. The base station is also fairly bulky and requires a dedicated spot, but if you want a robovac that cleans brilliantly and won’t get stuck on a step, the Dreame X50 Ultra is your best choice.

This mopping, self-emptying robot vacuum comes from networking giant TP-Link – probably best known for its internet routers rather than its home appliances. The Tapo RV30 plus has the clean and fuss-free appearance of a wifi hub, but the performance and features of a top-end robot vacuum.

Lidar navigation powers some competent obstacle avoidance. During my tests, the RV30 could navigate without bumping mindlessly into furniture, building a detailed map of the floor plan as it goes, to help it clean more efficiently on future runs.

The mopping function is fairly basic. You need to manually swap in the attachment any time you want to mop, and it will happily try to mop your carpets and rugs given half the chance. That said, the app lets you easily designate rooms, so assigning the vacuum to mop just the kitchen or the bathroom is straightforward.

The app also adds convenient features not seen in other robot vacuums in this guide. You can tell it to only use the self-emptying bin during certain hours of the day (self-emptying is loud), and you can disable the physical button on the vacuum itself, so mischievous kids and dextrous pets can’t set it going.

The Tapo RV30 is also quieter than most, particularly when on the weakest setting. Noise isn’t a concern if you set your vacuum to do its thing while you’re out of the house, but a less cacophonous vacuum should benefit those who spend more time at home.

The Roborock saros 10 is one of the more expensive robot vacuum cleaners on the market, but it’s packed with enough premium features to justify its price. It mops and vacuums, switching modes depending on the surface. It can refill its own water tank and empty its dustbin into its base station, and it uses dual rollers, an edge brush, accurate mapping and powerful suction to deliver impressive all-around cleaning performance.

While an effective helper around the home, the Roborock saros 10’s docking space is larger than expected, measuring around 45cm on every side to house its dual dust and water buckets. The base station isn’t that pretty either, so you’ll need to hide it away. The setup is straightforward, using a slick app that is easily accessed by a QR code.

Cleaning commands can be customised for different rooms, letting you designate your kitchen, lounge, hall and downstairs bathroom separately, for example. Voice commands can then send the robot vacuum to wherever it’s needed. The saros 10’s obstacle-recognition system generally does a good job at avoiding obstacles like chairs and shoes, but it occasionally needs a little intervention.

A multi-map function means it can clean different floors - unlike most robot vacuums on the market. Obviously, the robovac needs to be carried up the stairs, but this is a big improvement on other robot vacuums, which are usually limited to a single floor.

Mapping is fast and accurate, and I was impressed that the floorplans will automatically update whenever doors are left open and the robovac “discovers” a new part of the house it hadn’t seen before.

The mopping mode uses a pad rather than rotating brush heads, so results are more of a light wipe-down than a proper scrub. The saros 10’s 22,000Pa suction power ensures deep cleaning, even reaching tight corners, though this comes with the downside of being rather noisy. Thankfully, it’s easy to schedule the robovac to mop and clean while you’re out of the house.

The £1,499 price tag is steep, but the convenience and saved cleaning time offered by the saros 10 justify the investment.

If you’re after the vacuuming performance and slick software experience of the Roomba brand without the hefty price tag of its premium models, the combo 105 is a great entry point. This no-frills robovac costs just £149 and combines both vacuuming and mopping into one device, making it ideal for maintaining hard floors and low-pile carpets in smaller homes or flats.

Why so cheap? Because you’re missing out on some useful advanced features. The combo 105 lacks the camera-based obstacle avoidance of its pricier siblings, so you’ll need to pre-tidy your floors of cables and stray socks to prevent it from getting into trouble. The mopping system is also as basic as they come, using a damp pad attachment to give surfaces a light wipe-down rather than a proper scrub. And with no self-emptying base on the cheapest model, you’ll need to empty its onboard dustbin every couple of runs.

But if you don’t mind a little floor prep and manual upkeep, the Roomba combo 105 offers a dependable, dual-function clean from a top-tier brand at a very accessible price.

Read the full iRobot Roomba combo 105 review