Are Budget Robot Vacuums Worth Buying?

Not everyone can afford a premium robovac, but there’s an argument you shouldn’t bother with cheap ones.

I bought my first robot vacuum early in the pandemic because I couldn’t stand to look at my floors anymore, but I was trapped at home, where I had no choice but to look at my floors. The dog hair, the dirt, the mud, the detritus- where did it come from?

I convinced myself that a robot vacuum would keep the floors clean. Perhaps, with all the time saved, I would clean the ceilings, re-caulk the sink or learn to make charcuterie. So I spent way more money than I had business spending and bought a Roomba i7, with a matching Braava robot mop.

When I gave away the i7 and Braava less than three years later, I had run the mop less than 30 times. I had to go searching for the robot vacuum under my couch, I’d eventually grown so tired of needing to rescue it, I let it die under the couch. By then, I was testing robot vacuums routinely, and understood three things that I didn’t when I first went shopping for a robot.

1. While Roomba has the most name recognition, the name doesn’t translate to quality.
2. Unless you’ve tried multiple robovacs, you have nothing to compare the robovac you buy against. You have no idea if it’s better or worse, it just is.
3. Not all robots are going to make your life easier. Louder for the people in the back: not all robots are going to make your life easier.

The cost of clean floors

Cleaning your floor has a cost, broken into three parts. First, there’s the actual financial cost of supplies. A broom costs something, a mop has a price, so does the bucket and dustpan, maybe a stick vacuum. Then there’s the time it takes to get up, get the broom and dustpan and sweep the floor, empty the dustpan, go back and mop, etc. Finally, there’s the labor- a physical toll on your body that hauling a bucket of water or leaning over to use the dustpan incurs. To be effective, a robot must best the manual process in some way, but hopefully in all.

Think about it. Honestly, how much time and effort does it take to clean your floors if there’s a spill of cereal? A few minutes, at best, with minimal effort and little hardware needed. What about a major catastrophe, like mud tracked in through the house- a harder task physically, with more time involved, but still relatively doable for most people?

Do Cheap Robot Vacuums Work?

So now, let’s introduce the budget robovac (something under $500, a number some people might still find exorbitant). I’ve generally tested premium vacuums, but each time I test a budget robovac, I am disappointed. They often don’t come with auto-emptying towers, for starters. What is the point of a robot if it’s not autonomous? If I have to get up, open the robot, pull the canister and then empty it over the trash can, then reassemble the robot, how much labor and time have I really removed?

Budget vacuums do not get up large debris well at all (sometimes, small debris, neither). So you’re going to need to pre-clean your floors before you unleash the robot. That’s more time and labor.

Budget vacuums get stuck more often, and lack premium features like remote control in the app. If I have to get down on my stomach and fish for the robot under furniture, that is an unacceptable amount of physical labor, no matter how long it takes, timewise.

In short, I’ve now spent $500, which is the same as fifty brooms and dustpans, and I’m not spending less time or less labor. Who’s the robot in the equation, you or the robovac?

How much do you have to spend to get a good robot vacuum?

Around $700, you hit a number of mid-range robots. And amongst them are ones that work well enough to feel premium, and those that function the same as budget robots. If you can find the ones that work well (and they exist, the Eureka J15 Ultra is a good example), then you can beat the equation.

A good mid-range will almost assuredly come with a self-emptying tower, which means you occasionally change out a vacuum bag, perhaps a few times a year. It will likely have a competent mop. Without expecting too much, it can handle most spills and do a light mop on the whole floor. Mostly, it can maintain a clean floor, rather than clean the floor to begin with. Mid-range robots are likely to have decent navigation, meaning they get more of the floor debris, fit into more spaces, and even have extending arms on the side to get up close to objects, toe kicks and cords.

You’ll likely have to occasionally empty a clogged roller, and the robot may occasionally get stuck. The first is a time suck, though it will happen less than with a budget robot. The second might be fixable by employing the remote control in the app. In either case, it’s still less physical work, and you’ve saved a decent amount of time. You’ve spent more money, but that’s the tradeoff.

Are premium robot vacuums worth the price?

Around $1200-1300 you hit premium robot territory. These robots should have advanced navigation, with LiDAR and AI assisted cameras. These robovacs will be made of better components, less likely to fail, with more metal and less plastic. Towers will not only empty the debris from the vacuum and refill the mop, they’ll likely dispense detergent on their own, and clean the mop for you. A lot more attention is paid to roller design, sweep design, and how much suction the robot offers.

But there’s more. You’ll have access to better features in the app that will make your life easier. The robot will tell you where it is, and might allow you to send it to a specific location, or divide up rooms in a new way or order, enable multiple maps, have a voice assistant, and it will almost assuredly have highly capable object avoidance.

As a result, your robot should almost never need you to rescue it, and if it gets stuck, you will likely be able to easily find it using voice assistant, and even retrieve it by sending it home or using remote control.

These robovacs are capable of getting up small, medium and large debris, and rollers get stuck much less often, in some cases, rarely. You don’t have to do much pre cleaning for them at all, and in some rare cases like the Saros Z70 (a very imperfect robot, that wasn’t a recommendation), they can clean up for you.

And this will blow your mind- some models don’t even require you to change the water. A few models like the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra or Switchbot S10 have R&D (rinse and drain) options, so you can connect the robot right to your water source. (If your reaction to this is, “oh, great, more to consider” let me make it easy. The Roborock worked, and the Switchbot, to my disappointment, didn’t). My current favorite robovac, the 3i S10 Ultra recycles water, so it never needs you to change it. The water is sterilized and reused, and then the tower works as a dehumidifier, pulling water from the air when the robot needs a top up.

OK, I’m done fawning. The point is, at this price point, almost all labor can be removed, and there’s almost no time required of you. The robot acts autonomously. It’ll cost you a pretty penny, but the trade off has value.

So, should you buy a budget robovac?

Robots, particularly robovacs, are tremendous tools. They shouldn’t be treated as tools of convenience, they’re real accessibility tools. The trouble is the price point makes them unreachable for the people who need them the most. But when you consider getting a $200 robovac (for someone else or yourself), has accessibility been gained? By my calculations, they haven’t. You’re spending more time, with arguably harder labor (picking up a robot is harder than picking up a broom), and you’ve spent more money.

My viewpoint on cheap vacuums isn’t classist, it’s pragmatic. Cheap vacuums are usually a waste of money. You’d do better to continue manually cleaning for a year, saving, and splurging on a mid-range during a big sale weekend.