The Ultenic D10 robot vacuum and mop is a super-affordable robot vacuum ideal for everyday maintenance cleaning. I had high hopes that it could be one of the best robot vacuum cleaners. After taking it home over a month ago, I’m pretty set on my verdict.
It’s only £189, whereas other robot vacuum cleaners I’ve seen tend to start at the £250 mark. Considering the budget price, the D10 is a fantastic choice for its low expense. A few features have been sacrificed to keep the price low — like a long battery life, auto recognition of maps, and a robust work ethic, but these are easily forgivable, as I discovered in testing.
While the D10 is prone to an occasional pause — announcing ‘recharging’ when the floor is still half-finished and its battery is 84% — if you watch over it like an omnipotent god who doesn’t cut anyone slack, it’ll see the job through to completion. It’s incredibly easy to put the D10 to work, as you literally just tap ‘resume’ on the app to make it go again.
At only £189, this is one of the cheapest robot vacuums I’ve ever seen. But are its cost-saving sacrifices worth the overall price? For the most part, yes. Find out the whole story in this Ultenic D10 robot vacuum with mop review.
Ultenic D10 robot vacuum: Cheat sheet
- What is it? An affordable robot vacuum and mop
- Who is it for? People who need to stay on top of their cleaning throughout the working week and will make up for the robot vacuum’s oversights manually
- What does it do well? It keeps downstairs relatively clean in between manual deep cleaning
- What are its weaknesses? It can’t clean under furniture or get tight to sideboards and counters
Ultenic D10 robot vacuum: Specs
Ultenic D10 robot vacuum review: Price & availability
The D10 robot vacuum and mop from Ultenic is only available in the U.K. at the time of writing, due to stock issues in the United States. It retails at just $245 / £189 at Amazon., which is miles cheaper than other robo-vacs I’ve seen. iLife’s V3S Pro is $219 but the suction power taps out at 3,000pa. Eufy’s Omni C20 is $599 but boasts a 7,000pA suction power and is an inch slimmer. However, for the price, the D10 is a great option.
Ultenic D10 robot vacuum review: Design & setup
Setup is extremely easy. You simply download the Ultenic app, plug in the charging station, and let the vacuum charge. A full charge takes up to 5 hours from empty, which isn’t ideal if you need to clean in a pinch. However, for everyday maintenance, I never had an issue with this prolonged charging time. My D10 simply started up at 9 a.m. every day, did its rounds, and put itself to bed without needing to recharge.
In terms of design, the D10 is pretty good-looking for such a budget device. It’s got a removable water tank, dust bin, and removable mop cloth. The water tank holds about 20 ounces of water — I recommend only putting water or a specially-made robot vacuum floor cleaner in the water tank, as chemicals in normal floor cleaners can damage the robot vacuums. The dust bin’s large opening makes it easy to empty. The mop cloth is quite small and thin, but you get a spare to swap out while the first cloth dries — I tap more on that in the storage & maintenance section.
Ultenic D10 robot vacuum review: App & smart home capabilities
The D10 links up with the Ultenic app. I’ve used this app for other Ultenic products and found it a little irritating to use — but with the D10, Ultenic seems to have fine-tuned the little annoyances I experienced last time. Seeing as the vacuum is almost entirely controlled by the app, you’d hope this was the case, too.
The first time you use the D10, it zooms around your house making a map. You can see the map in the app, and you can create multiple maps for various floors. Whether or not these multiple maps work is another question.
If you have Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, you should be able to control the D10 using voice commands like “Alexa, turn on D10”. With my iPhone 11, I was able to set up Siri and the Ultenic app. You have to set up the commands manually but you can choose from a massive selection: you can do everything from starting mopping to changing suction power just with Siri. I kept it simple with “Hey Siri, start auto-cleaning” and “Hey Siri, pause cleaning”. These commands worked really well, so I’d recommend this for its smart home capabilities.
Ultenic D10 robot vacuum review: Cleaning capabilities
Okay, so it looks good, it’s easy to control, but how does it actually clean? In terms of everyday maintenance, the D10 does everything you’d want it to. It keeps on top of daily dust and small spillages. Ionly have hardwood floors in my house and it kept them mostly spick-and-span. Due to its size, it can’t get into crevices around counters, moldings, and sideboards, but that’s not a D10 issue, it’s a robot vacuum issue. You’ll need to go under narrow crevices (like under the fridge and sofa) and tight corners with a handheld vacuum (like the Ultenic U12 which I gave 4 ½ stars) to clean everywhere.
To test the D10’s spot-cleaning ability, I sprinkled a few seeds from a bell pepper on the floor. Then, I set the D10 to spot clean. Here are some before and after shots.
As you can see, there are a few little crumbs left over after the D10’s first pass, but the floor looks a great deal better than it did beforehand. With the built-in hair roller, the D10 sucks up long hair with ease. I live in a house of four long-haired women and there’s not a single hair on the living room floor.
But it’s not all perfect: the D10 is prone to cutting out before it’s done. This doesn’t happen all the time — just a couple of mornings during the month of testing. I caught the cheeky thing sitting still and announcing, “Recharge,” but it wasn’t finished cleaning, and the battery was above 80%. All you need to do to fix this idleness is simply click ‘restart’ on the app, but it’s still annoying, slightly undermining the benefit of having an automatic robot vac in the first place.
Due to its 3.5-inch height, it can’t clean under many sofas (could just be my particularly low-lying sofa — measure yours!) and its extra brush isn’t that adept at cleaning crevices. These, as with its tendency to quit mid-routine, are easy to look past when you consider the price, but they could be a deal-breaker for some.
I’ve not done a deep clean in a while, but the D10 makes it so I can leave longer periods between getting on my hands and knees for detailed cleaning — and who can complain about that? If you’re after something that won’t break the bank and will let you change your deep cleaning schedule from often to occasional, the D10 is a great choice.
Ultenic D10 robot vacuum review: Storage & maintenance
Ultenic provides you with two mop cloths, which is good, because they’re pretty thin, and will become sodden after one use. I clean mine in the sink with some washing up liquid and hang them to dry (or dry with a hairdryer in a pinch) and they’re still fluffy after about four washes. The stitching on the attachment folds isn’t particularly well-done, but it’s not broken yet.
I empty the dustbin about once every two weeks, and that’s with daily auto-cleaning. Emptying the dustbin is really easy as it has a wide opening and no finicky hidden bits. The D10 puts itself to bed (charging station) after each use, so you won’t have to store it yourself manually and there’s no worry of it running out of battery between uses.
Ultenic D10 robot vacuum review: How does it compare?
The D10 doesn’t have premium features like the self-emptying Shark PowerDetect 2-in-1 ($999) or the Ecovac Deebot T3s’ ($1,199) mini-handheld vacuum for hard-to-reach places. It is only $189, though. The Wyze Robot Vacuum ($199) straddles the same sub-$200 pricepoint of the Ultenic D10, but it only has single-map capabilities. The D10 has multiple-map capabilities, but switching between them is a little finicky. You have to keep an eye on the D10 to make sure it’s actually on the secondary map, otherwise it’ll confuse itself.
Ultenic D10 robot vacuum review: Verdict
The D10’s intended purpose is to stay on top of your everyday cleaning. It’s not supposed to be a whizz at deep-cleaning carpets or stain-treating upholstery. What it is great at, though, is maintaining a generally clean home when you don’t have time. I loved how this took the stress out of figuring out when in my busy schedule I’d be able to pencil in time to mop the kitchen floor, or sweep up stray hairs. It sometimes decides to throw its hands up before it’s actually done, so you do have to keep an eye on it like an idle teen, but keeping in mind its price, that’s a sacrifice I’d be willing to make. Anyway, watching the vacuum zoom around my house and occasionally having to tell it off was actually quite entertaining, so for me, maybe that’s even a pro.
