It’s the ultimate in home convenience; a robot vacuum that will pick up after you, ticking one big household chore off your list.
No more having to coax the ones you live with to vacuum when it’s their turn on the cleaning rota, no need to hurriedly run a device over your area rugs and carpets when unexpected visitors call.
If you haven’t yet had the pleasure, a robot vacuum can be programmed to get on with cleaning your floors when you’re at work or busy doing other things, even taking itself back to its charging dock when batteries start to run low.
Of course, clearing the floors of debris is one thing but to feel like your home has had a thorough clean, mopping is necessary too - especially in those hard floor areas.
Places like the kitchen and bathroom are the home’s high-traffic areas; it doesn’t take long for mud, hair and grime to collect on the floors here, particularly in busy households with pets and children in the fray.
This is why if you’re considering investing in a robot vacuum to help ease your domestic burden, getting one with a mop function will tick off doing another job too.
The good news is that there are plenty of robot vacuums that will not only sweep floors but lightly wash them too. Typically an on-board water tank will moisten a sponge at the top of your robot vacuum so it can perform dual cleaning when you need it. It’s important to note that it’s not a total replacement for a deep clean (yet), but more of a general upkeep to use between proper cleaning sessions to prevent floors from becoming excessively grotty.
We’ve rounded up the best smart vacuums that come with a mopping function to help you on your shopping journey.
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Shark Matrix Plus 2-in-1 Self-Empty Robot Vacuum & Mop
The Shark Matrix 2-in-1 has changed my life. When it comes to day-to-day cleaning, it keeps my entire flat fresher than before for considerably less effort. It’s a game-changer whenever I have guests, too – I simply send it out to clean while I’m at work so everything’s clean the moment I step in the door.
Not that it’s replaced my old vacuum, which will be waiting in the wings for deep cleans and hard-to-reach spots, but it’s solved the tedious task of vacuuming on the daily which saves me a great deal of time and stress throughout the week. When I clean, I move small furniture around (like the bin or a coffee table) to make sure I’ve covered the floor in its entirety. There are some nooks where it simply won’t fit – next to the bathroom sink, for example.
Once you’ve unpacked the auto-empty dock, two side brushes, two washable mopping pads, the mop reservoir, the instructions and the vacuum itself, which all comes packaged in one neat box, it’s time for the hard part – choosing where your new cleaning companion is going to live. Shark recommends you plug in the dock against a wall where there’s a metre of clear space on either side and in front – and the dock itself is roughly the width of a loaf of bread.
Before embarking on its first vacuuming task, it needs to ‘explore’ to map your home – a process which I quite enjoyed. For me, it took roughly 45 minutes before hearing Bruce’s cry of delight when he completed the assignment and made his way back to his docking station. Then, you receive a detailed floor plan of your house which you can access via your app.
The app will then prompt you to create rooms and no-go zones – which will usually be carpets or rugs you’d like to be avoided when mopping. It’s a powerful mop too. As it slowly but surely makes its way around the map, it scrubs hard floors 100 times per minute – which Shark describes as ‘sonic mopping’. You can actually see the pad moving from side to side throughout the clean. It doesn’t leave your floors too wet either
I’d hoovered the day before and believed my floors to be relatively clean. On its first run, though, it had to empty halfway through before continuing the clean. All in all, he collected roughly a grapefruit-sized ball of dust from a flat that already seemed dirt-free.
Since the robot moves extremely slowly and methodically throughout your home, it spends much more time collecting dust and debris than you would on a day-to-day spruce. I was mainly impressed by the way it collects from the sides and corners. It detects the edges, before emitting puffs of air which blow any dust in its path before collecting it. Better yet, it’s quieter than any hoover I’ve ever owned – bar the cute jingles on starting and finishing a shift as well as when it empties in the docking station (which sounds more like a traditional vacuum).
Buy now £499.99, Shark
eufy X10 Pro Omni Robot Vacuum Cleaner with Mop
eufy X10 Pro Omni Robot Vacuum Cleaner with Mop is great at getting under furniture and navigating various terrain as well as cleaning nooks and crannies. The mop is also helpful, giving my kitchen and bathroom a speedy wash.
Using the mop function is fairly simple. It’s just a case of wetting an included cloth and sliding it along the bracket on top of the water tank. Fill the tank with tap water and close it, then slide the unit into the RoboVac - it will click and the bot will announce that the tank is attached when fitted properly.
Then just turn it on and let it get to work. Rather than drenching your hard floors, it leaves behind a thin film which dries quickly. Once finished, empty the tank thoroughly to stop smells from developing.
It’s good for getting cooking or light shampoo spills off floors, but a deeper weekly clean will still be required for most homes.
Buy now £599.00, Amazon
Roborock S8 Robot Vacuum Cleaner with Dual Brush
The robot offers superior levels of suction and can detect different types of terrain, moving from hard floors to rugs and carpets seamlessly. It's an excellent choice for homes with pets, able to collect dust, bacteria and hair without tangling thanks to a movable solid rubber brush.
Laser detection and cameras stop it from bumping into furniture, even if you schedule a clean in low light conditions. Like all robot vacuums, it can be controlled via an app but also by voice command too, offering the ultimate convenience. And it comes with a removable and washable mop too!
While the mop is removable, you don't need to manually insert the tank each time you want to mop. Leave it in the machine and it will automatically detect if the surface needs mopping (hard floors) and will hover if it finds carpet and rugs. You can leave it to get on with the task at hand without switching between the mop and vacuum functions.
Phew, consider that all bases well and truly covered.
Buy now £499.00, Amazon
Beko VRR 60314 VW
The mop function on the Beko Robo Vac isn’t quite as effective as the vacuum function, for a few reasons. The first being that the spray nozzle on the device doesn’t evenly disperse the cleaning fluid in a way that the mop attachment is able to wipe effectively, which results in patchy mop work.
Secondly, Beko’s suction power itself isn’t particularly strong. When enabling the mop and vacuum functions to perform at the same time, there were specs of dust and debris in the damp patches on the floor.
While the Beko Robo Vac hoover function saves time and keeps floors relatively dust-free, we found that it was still necessary to go over the ‘clean’ with a cordless vacuum cleaner and separate mop.
Buy now £199.00, Amazon
Honiture Robot Vacuum Cleaner with Mop
Emptying the vacuum is one of the worst jobs on the cleaning rota with dust flying around everywhere and the messy job of snipping caught hair off the rollers. It's a job you'll have to do far less often with Honiture's robot vacuum cleaner, which comes with a 2.5L container that it will automatically tip debris into once it's finished its shift.
The smart vacuum comes with 24 sensors to detect obstacles and offers multi-floor mapping. It can also be controlled via the app or by voice commands, handy if a particular area of the house needs special attention.
The four-in-one system sweeps, rolls, vacuums and mops, making it a sound addition to your home appliance line-up. With a 250ml water tank, the mop feature is water and suction adjustable, allowing users to tailor cleaning for different rooms of the house.
Buy now £389.00, Amazon
Bagotte Robot Vacuum Cleaner
With excellent suction across different types of floors, this robot vacuum cleaner is the home helper you'll wonder how you ever did without. While the first voyage involves mapping out the floors of your home using advanced gyro navigation technology, it will get on with cleaning tasks when you need it. A mop is included, but it doesn't run in tandem with vacuuming. It's a case of vacuuming first, mopping after.
That said, by concentrating on one job at a time, it performs both jobs very well, and ensures dust, dirt and hair won't get stuck to a damp floor. On a full charge, you can expect a 120min run-time, which should be enough to get most homes squeaky clean.
Buy now £179.99, Amazon
Lefant N3 Robot Vacuum Cleaner with Mop
Don't want to mention the Lefant in the room? Good luck: once you've welcomed this vacuum into your home, you won't stop singing its praises.
Fitted with anti-collision tech and LiDAR navigation, the disc-shaped robot maps and plans cleaning routes to ensure a thorough job each and every time. The mop's water tank is slightly smaller than others on our list at 160ml, but there are three levels of water flow so unless it's on the highest all the time, that should be plenty to give your hard floors a good wash.
It's on the smaller side at just 32cm wide, making it nimble enough to get through tight spots and doorways. With a 5200mAh lithium iron phosphate battery, it promises to go with distance with 150min of cleaning time when it's on full juice.
Buy now £254.99, Amazon
Kärcher RCV 5
While you’ll need to fiddle around with this device to connect it to the internet, and set up maps and program schedules, once it’s up and running, it will make the chore of cleaning a breeze. It charges up in 230 minutes and then has two hours of run time. Not content with just scooping up dirt and grime, there’s a 240ml water tank tool for the mop function to take elbow crease out of your regular clean-up jobs.
One thing to note is that the charging base needs to be plugged into a socket that has 50cm on either side and 1.5m in front of it that is completely clear - but other than this potential issue with space and the need for WiFi connection and downloading the app, it’s intuitive with a dual laser system that prevents it bumping into obstacles. It can navigate around and sense where there are stairs or items as small and flat as cables.
The slimline design makes it ideal for reaching under furniture like sofas and beds.
Buy now £449.00, Currys
Proscenic 850T Robot Vacuum Cleaner
Not all robot vacuums are up to scratch when it comes to handling pet hair but this makes the grade. This had a hefty 3000pa of suction power so managed to suck up everything in its path, automatically increasing the suction to max mode as soon as a carpet was detected and pulling out even deeply-embedded hair.
It has a clever laser navigation system to plan the best cleaning path and can be controlled by remote control, app or Amazon Alexa. On the app, it’s possible to establish no-go areas, and room-specific cleaning and schedule cleaning jobs so you can set it to work when you’re walking the dog. The battery is excellent too and it was a good two hours before ours returned to the charging station, though we needed the most powerful mode to deal with the worst pet hair and this drains the power quicker.
Better still, the Proscenic mops too and we felt particularly smug seeing our clean kitchen floor once it had worked its magic. It only has a teeny 300ml water tank so sadly won’t replace a good mopping from a real human but is great for in-between cleans. Our only complaint is the automatic dust collector is sold separately, so you’ll need to empty it by hand after every clean unless you spend extra.
Buy now £189.00, Amazon
