The best robot mops in 2024, tested by editors

Editor’s Note: Since our initial round of testing, the iRobot Braava Jet 240 — our former pick for best robot mop — has been discontinued. After a new round of testing, the new Roborock S8 Max V Ultra Robot Mop and Vacuum emerges as our new best robot mop. The Bissell SpinWave 2-in-1 Robotic Mop and Vacuum moves into our best affordable robot mop top spot.

Gone are the days of manually pushing a mop around your home’s dirty floors to clean them; now a robot mop can do the job for you. A robot mop is much like a robot vacuum but is instead armed with a water tank and microfiber cloths or mop pads that wipe your floor for you. They can do it in place of or, in the case of mop and vacuum combos, in addition to a dustbin. These robot mops can be an incredibly useful part of your regular cleaning schedule.

Throughout two rounds of testing, we used 18 robot mops on wood floors, low-pile rugs and carpeting and tile to find the most effective and efficient automated assistants to help keep your floors clean.

Best robot mop: Roborock S8 Max V Ultra Mop and Vacuum

If you’re looking for a top-of-the-line, autonomous robot floor cleaner that mops and vacuums, the impressive high-end features of the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra make it the best robot mop available.

We tested many of the latest robot mop and vacuum combos, mopping tile and wood floors, vacuuming pet hair and cat litter from carpeting and creating obstacle courses. After all our testing, we found the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra has every feature you’d want in a robot mop.

The Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra has a whopping 10,000 pascals (Pa) of suction power, stronger than any other model on this list. The other models average roughly 8,000 Pa or less. The improved cleaning power combined with the streamlined self-cleaning dock delivers as close to autonomous cleaning as we’ve seen.

Yes, its $1,800 price tag is steep, but much of the category has a premium price tag these days. The Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra costs just slightly more than the $1,700 DreameBot X30 Ultra, which has a complicated app, and a few hundred dollars more than the $1,400 Narwal Freo X Ultra, which doesn’t have a self-emptying dustbin. Even with its $1,800 price tag, the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra is well worth it in our opinion.

Let’s start with its cleaning performance. Roborock amped up the suction power on the S8 MaxV Ultra, which now boasts 10,000 Pa of suction, up from 6,000 Pa on the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra. The company also improved the VibraRise mop lifting system, so it now raises the mop head to 20 millimeters, up from 5 millimeters. That means the robot mop can now go over low- and mid-pile carpeting without getting it wet or dirty. That’s a big deal, as this was one of the major issues we had with its predecessor, the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra.

And while we still think dual spinning mop pads, like the ones found on the DreameBot X30 Ultra and Narwal Freo X Ultra robot mops, excel at mopping, we found the Roborock S8 Max V Ultra’s single mopping pad did an impressive job, cleaning up sticky residue and spilled mustard. The mop pad isn’t just gliding over a spill; it vibrates 4,000 times per minute to add some oomph to the scrubbing.

The innovative features that made the Roborock S8 Max V Ultra stand out for us are its FlexiArm Design side brush, which extends out from the side of the robot mop to grab the dirt from baseboards, surfaces and corners, and the new spinning mini mop pad, which extends out and runs across baseboards, getting as close to edges as possible. We were impressed with the way these features worked and cleaned, especially after seeing the clumps of dust bunnies it pulled out from under the fridge.

The streamlined dock (available in white or black) is where all the maintenance takes place and, luckily, there’s not much you have to do except fill the clean water tank and empty the dirty water tank — and that doesn’t happen very often.

Like other flagship self-cleaning robot mops, after the robot mop returns to its dock, it gets washed with water, while the mop’s onboard water bin gets refilled with clean water from the water tank. Dirt is extracted from the robot mop into the dust bag and the mop pad then gets dried with warm air to prevent mold and nasty smells.

The standout features here are the addition of hot water to wash the mop pads and hotter air (hotter than other robot mops) used to dry them. We were pleased with how well it cleaned the mop pad, and pleasantly surprised that it now also cleans the bottom tray the mop pads sit on. The dirty water is then sent to a tank in the dock for you to empty.

The tanks are located at the top of the dock and are clearly labeled and fastened shut, so if you forget to empty the dirty water after a few washes, it won’t get smelly. A handle on top of each tank makes it easy to carry to the sink, and a panel pulls off the front of the dock to reveal the dust bag, which holds up to seven weeks of dirt before needing to be changed. Roborock offers a version of this model that connects directly to your plumbing line so it can fill and empty the water automatically. It’s only $100 more if you have the space for it.

The S8 MaxV Ultra’s navigation and mapping are excellent. It uses PreciSense Lidar Navigation technology to map and navigate the house and has an onboard camera to help it steer clear of anything accidentally left out. The camera also helps it identify various floor and room types and shows images of obstacles.

The artificial intelligence-powered avoidance system is trained to avoid obstacles such as cables, cords, sneakers and pet waste. It performed well in testing, going around most objects while it cleaned, but it did get stuck on a cord once and had to be rescued.

As intelligent voice assistants go, Roborock’s voice assistant, Rocky, proved to be among the most useful. Third-party voice assistants like Google Home and Alexa smart speakers are limited to commands like “Clean the kitchen” and “Return to the dock.” However, onboard voice assistants like Rocky understand more targeted commands such as setting the robot mop in a specific area and saying, “Clean here” or “Skip this area.” To wake it, you say, “Hello Rocky,” and it responds, “I’m here,” ready to do what you ask.

Despite how good this robot mop is, there’s no getting around its most obvious drawback: its price. Yes, $1,800 is a lot of money for a vacuum mop combo that won’t truly replace your trusty cordless stick vacuum. As brands like Roborock, Ecovacs and Dreame continue to innovate, the price of that autonomous luxury gets higher and higher. If you’re willing to give up some of that luxury and empty your own dustbin or clean your own mop pads, then you can find a capable robot mop for under $1,000 (like the Bissell SpinWave 2-in-1 Robotic Mop and Vacuum, our best affordable pick). But if you want the total package of a hands-free experience coupled with excellent cleaning performance, invest in the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra.

With excellent cleaning performance, premium auto-cleaning and maintenance features, and an intuitive app that makes it simple to use, the $1,800 Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra earns our top pick as the best robot mop vacuum combo.

Best budget robot mop: Bissell SpinWave 2-in-1 Robotic Mop and Vacuum

The Bissell SpinWave 2-in-1 Robotic Mop and Vacuum is the only robot mop we tested in this category that uses dual spinning pads, which were far more effective than the standard flat mop pads employed on the other models. The Bissell SpinWave 2-in-1 Robotic Mop and Vacuum did a great job mopping dirt and splatter spots from our tile kitchen floor and didn’t leave streaks on the hardwood floors. It was the only model that didn’t make us feel like our kitchen had just been lightly Swiffered with a damp cloth.

While all the other robots we tested call for using only plain water in the water tank, the SpinWave can use cleaning products, and Bissell includes a trial-size bottle of multisurface floor cleaner in the box (you can buy other floor- and task-specific formulations through the Bissell app or online, like pet multisurface with Febreze, wood floor cleaner and one for tough messes and odors).

The Bissell SpinWave 2-in-1 Robotic Mop and Vacuum has sensors to help it automatically detect and avoid carpeting when it’s mopping. This wasn’t perfect — it did end up mopping onto the edge of a dining room carpet — so if you’re using it in an open-floor-plan home with a mix of hardwood or tile surfaces and carpeting, we recommend keeping an eye on it if you’re running it through the whole house (we carried it from kitchen to bathroom for mopping sessions).

You’ll need to swap tanks (the robot comes with a dry tank for vacuuming and a wet tank for mopping) to use the Bissell SpinWave 2-in-1 Robotic Mop and Vacuum as a vacuum and a mop. You can’t do both at the same time as you can with some of the more expensive models (though it does pick up some solid debris while mopping). The circular mop pads attach to the bottom of the water tank and are easily removable for washing.

In vacuum mode, the Bissell SpinWave 2-in-1 Robotic Mop and Vacuum uses a rotating brush roll and dual spinning edge brushes on the bottom to help pick up debris and pet hair in vacuum mode. We found it did a pretty good job on low-pile carpet and hardwood floors. Three suction power levels — low, mid and max — are available.

While the Bissell SpinWave 2-in-1 Robotic Mop and Vacuum may lack the more advanced features found on pricier models, like mapping and the ability to set virtual keep-out zones, the Bissell app gives you access to some connected features like remote controls, a selection of cleaning modes and power levels and scheduled cleaning. You can also set the SpinWave to mop in auto mode, and the robot will run straight rows, or you can use spot mode for concentrated messes and spills.

If mopping the floors is something you do regularly, and you’re looking for a hybrid model that doesn’t cost a fortune, then the Bissell SpinWave 2-in-1 Robotic Mop and Vacuum is the right robot mop for you. It delivers one of the best mopping experiences — and certainly the best experience for the money — we found in a robot mop vacuum combo.

How we tested

We tested 18 robot mops with a wide variety of price points and features, including mop-only models and full-featured, next-generation robot mop vacuum combos that can often do it all: mop, vacuum, empty the dustbin, refill the water tank and wash the mop for you.

Is a robot mop worth your money?

If you’re looking to save the effort of regular manual mopping and have a lot of hard floors, a robot mop can help you keep things clean similar to a robot vacuum. Like a robot vacuum, a robot mop is best thought of as a way to make weekly or monthly cleanings easier rather than as a full-on floor care solution. Like their single-purpose vacuuming cousins, even the most high-tech robot mop can’t reach every corner of your home and won’t replace your cordless stick vacuum, full-size canister vacuum or upright vacuum.

And no robot mop will get your floors as clean as a handheld mop or sponge and a little elbow grease. There’s not much scrubbing taking place, for one thing (think Swiffer more than mop), and the majority won’t pick up sticky, greasy messes since they only use water to clean. They do help, but you have to be realistic about your expectations.

Hybrid robot mop vacuums are worth it if you lack the space for both devices. All work as typical robot vacuum cleaners, picking up pet hair from the floors and low-pile carpeting, even under furniture. They can mop your hard floors as well, keeping the house tidy. All of the models we tested except for the most expensive occasionally mopped our carpets (if we wanted to wet-clean those, we’d rather have a carpet cleaner), so they require supervision if this is a concern — and you might want to plan on carrying them to locations where they are needed.

Now that the next generation of home cleaning robots has entered the field, we wouldn’t recommend spending more unless you can afford one of the next-generation models, with more complete base stations and more elaborate automation, mapping and location features.

Mapping technology is a pain point for many of the last-generation high-end robots (like the Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo T8+ and Roborock S7+), and you can’t use the high-end features you’re paying for until the mapping is done. The good news is that the next-gen robots are superb at mapping, so if you want all those features and obstacle avoidance as well as the ability to avoid carpeting while mopping, splurge on the newer Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni or Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra. Otherwise, stick with the far less expensive iRobot Braava Jet 240 — or, if you want something that also vacuums, get the Bissell SpinWave 2-in-1 Robotic Mop and Vacuum.

These more advanced mop vacuums combos — like the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni and Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra — really do perform as advertised, offering hands-off autonomous house cleaning once you set them up (though, as with the cheaper models, you’ll still have to take care of periodic deep cleaning the old-fashioned way). But if hands-off cleaning is what you’re looking for, these might be worth the splurge. You just need to figure out which of their features are more important to you.

If you’re interested in the most effective robot mop — say you have more hard floors than carpets and don’t mind attaching the mopping pads when you want to mop — then the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni has more useful features, like the ability to self-dry the mopping pads and an onboard voice assistant for robot control.

If you have lots of low-pile carpeting and want a robot that’s a good vacuum and can take care of a smaller amount of mopping on a single pass through your house without having to swap out tools, then get the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra, which can lift its mop when it goes over carpets.

Other robot mops we tested

The Eufy X10 Pro Omni is a huge improvement over Eufy’s Robovac X8 Hybrid model we previously reviewed, with its dual rotating mop pads that lift 12 millimeters to avoid carpeting; a self-emptying, auto-washing and -drying dock; and AI obstacle avoidance that really works. Thanks to a Lidar sensor and onboard camera, the AI now recognizes and avoids over 100 obstacles like toys, cables and, yes, even pet poop. We were surprised how many times it erred on the side of caution and mistakenly called cat toys poop and avoided it altogether.

It has higher-end features like a detangling comb that loosens and removes hair wrapped around the roller brush (great for homes with pets), and the ability to set “do not disturb” times in the app to turn off self-emptying. We look for this in every robot mop, as the emptying noise is loud enough to wake a sleeping baby or scare a pet.

There’s an impressive 8,000 Pa of suction (similar in power to the Narwal Freo X Ultra), customized in-app cleaning schedules and good mopping ability.

Sure, there are some disappointments, like the mop pads can’t be removed, it got stuck a few times and needed rescue, and it’s only available in black. But for half the price of our top pick, the Eufy X10 Pro Omni packs plenty of desirable features, making it a great value.

This robot mop combo from Narwal is impressive, with 8,200 Pa of suction power for vacuuming up dirt and debris (it did great on cat litter in our home), Lidar and tri-laser navigation, superior obstacle avoidance, and a unique roller brush that keeps hair from getting tangled up.

While these standout features worked well, before you spend $1,400 on it, be aware that the self-cleaning base doesn’t automatically empty the dirt from the robot’s onboard dustbin, like other similarly priced robots. Instead, it compresses it to hold a few weeks’ worth of dirt in the bin before you need to manually empty it.

If that’s not a deal breaker for you, then the Narwal Freo X Ultra is a powerful and effective robot floor cleaner with excellent mopping abilities. It has two vibrating mop heads that scrub and remove dirt from tile and wood floors and are adept at getting close to the edges and under cabinets. The mop heads lift 12 millimeters when going over carpeting to avoid dragging dirt or water over the carpets.

It has Lidar-enabled 3D mapping (it stores up to four floors), excellent obstacle avoidance and a child lock and Do Not Disturb feature, which not all robots have. If effective cleaning and good looks matter more to you than an auto-emptying dustbin, then the Narwal Freo X Ultra is a solid choice.

High-end robot mops that vacuum, mop and clean up after themselves, like the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra and the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni, come with an equally high-end price tag. If you’re looking for a model that does most of the heavy lifting for you and is more affordable than the others, check out the Ultenic MC1.

Like the more feature-rich models, the Ultenic MC1 has a self-emptying, self-cleaning dock with a tank for clean water, one for wastewater and a dust bag that can hold about eight weeks’ worth of debris before needing to be emptied. It also has a hot air drier to ensure the mop heads dry thoroughly without getting smelly. We like the circular rotating motion of the mop pads. It mops the floor enough to get stains up, which is significantly better than lower-end models that drag a Swiffer across the floor to mop.

However, the mop pads caused some issues in our testing. They don’t lift inside the robot mop when traveling over carpeting like more expensive models do, so there’s a risk of getting your carpets damp or dirty if you’re running a vacuum/mopping clean at the same time. To avoid our carpets, we removed the mop pads and ran it in vacuum-only mode, and with 5,000 Pa of suction, it vacuumed almost as well as the other models, picking up pet fur, cat litter and food debris.

The Ultenic MC1 mop pads also got tripped up on electrical cords and cat toys on the floor, causing the robot to need rescue a few times.

Lidar navigation assists the Ultenic MC1 in mapping your home and creating smart maps, and the intuitive app lets you create multi-floor maps and no-go zones to keep the robot out of trouble.

If you’re willing to overlook the mop pad issues, at $700, the Ultenic MC1 is an autonomous robot floor cleaner at a more affordable price.

Like its more expensive competition, including the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni, the Yeedi Cube vacuums and mops your floors, then returns to the base to empty the debris, extract the dirty water and clean the mop pad.

However, we discovered in our initial round of testing that you’ll have to give up some of the hands-free cleaning experience you can get on the higher-end models we tested. The Yeedi Cube’s bristle roller brush often got tangled with hair and needed to be cleaned more often, and instead of housing the clean water tank in the docking base alongside the dirty water tank, Yeedi added a transparent removable water bin to the top of the robot. While this allows for a smaller, less obtrusive base station (14.75 inches tall, about 6 inches shorter than the Ecovacs X2 Omni), it also means you can’t just tote the bin to the sink to fill it up. Instead, you have to undo the toggle that holds it securely in place, remove the bin, remove the water tank plug, then bring it to the sink and fill it.

However, the tank holds more water than the ones fitted inside the robot, and Yeedi added a convenient handle to the top of the tank, which made it a lot easier to pick up and carry the entire device to another location in the house when needed. We were also happy the robot wasn’t too tall to fit under couches and furniture.

The Yeedi Cube cleans well, using ultrasonic vibration when mopping to scrub floors, and has 4,300 Pa suction power with three different levels. Laser-aided navigation made it quick and easy to map the house, but the robot failed to detect some objects in its path.

If you’re willing to give up some of the hands-free convenience of the Roborock, the Yeedi Cube, with its innovative water tank and design, is a capable robot floor cleaner with a more affordable price tag.

The Ecovcacs Deebot X2 Omni has a dual laser Lidar navigation system that relocates the sensors from the top to the side of the robot. While this reduces the need for the dome on top of the robot (the X2 Omni is now 3.7 inches tall compared to 4.1 inches on the X1 Omni), we can’t help but wonder if this also affected its precise navigation abilities.

The square design allows for a wider roller brush, but we think the new lifting DuoRoller brushes on the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra give it a slight edge in vacuuming over the similarly priced Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni.

Beyond that, the two powerhouse robot floor cleaners are evenly matched in almost every other way, including increased suction power on the X2 (8,000 Pa), a streamlined auto-empty and -clean dock that washes and dries the mop heads and retractable mops so it can vacuum and mop in one cleaning run without getting carpets wet.

While the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni’s pads lift higher inside the robot (15 millimeters versus 5 millimeters), neither of them did a great job keeping our carpets from getting damp, so if you have high-pile carpeting or rugs, keep this in mind.

It’s an expensive luxury floor cleaner, and if you don’t mind getting your hands wet or dirty cleaning the mop pads and emptying dirty water from the robot, you can save some money getting an older model without the auto-empty clean base. If you like the idea of automated cleaning and a hands-off experience, and you can afford the luxury price tag, the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni is a close second to the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra.

In our initial round of testing, we found that iRobot’s more advanced Braava Jet m6 adds Wi-Fi and some smart features that might make sense if you also have an advanced Roomba vacuum. From a mopping perspective, it performs identically to the cheaper iRobot Braava Jet 240, which is now discontinued.

The iRobot Braava Jet m6 has a larger water tank, so you don’t have to fill it as often, and the see-through tank means you always know when it needs to be refilled. But we recommend saving some money and buying an I-series, S-series or 900-series Roomba and using the Imprint Link feature to coordinate vacuuming and mopping between the two devices.

More advanced smarts let the iRobot Braava Jet m6 map your house, understand keep-out zones, respond to voice commands and navigate obstacles and stairs. It will dry sweep or wet mop floors, and you can adjust how much water or cleaning solution it sprays as it goes. It cleans the room in efficient, neat rows and covers every inch of the floor, including edges, without ever going on carpeting. It can also target specific areas within a room and head back to the dock to recharge when necessary.

We tested the Roborock S7 MaxV in our initial round of testing. It has many of the same features as the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni, such as advanced AI-based object and obstacle detection using a combination of Lidar and optical cameras; a live streaming camera that lets the robot do double duty as a mobile security camera; and fast and accurate home mapping. It is a big jump in technology and features from the Roborock S7+.

While on the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni, you need to swap out tools when you want to mop, you can leave the mopping pads on the Roborock S7 MaxV and it can transition from vacuuming mode to mop mode automatically during a single run, so long as your carpet isn’t too deep. This feature (called VibraRise) was introduced on the last-generation high-end Roborock units like the Roborock S7+, and it lifts the mop brushes by 5 millimeters when it senses low-pile carpeting so it doesn’t mop the carpet as it vacuums. If the carpet is taller than that and the mop heads are still attached, the Roborock S7 MaxV avoids it, much as the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni would during a mopping run. The mop pad is also lifted off the floor as the robot charges so it air-dries (the Ultra dock doesn’t have a forced air-dry function like the Ecovacs Deebot X2’s Omni dock).

In practice, the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra system was reasonably effective, though neither the Roborock nor the Ecovacs can really clean every floor surface in your whole house in a single pass unless you have the specific mix of low-pile carpet and hard floors that the Roborock is designed for. The Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra did a nice job on hardwood floors, mopping the whole width of the pad and leaving no streaks, something the less expensive robots had difficulty with.

The Ultra Empty Wash Fill Dock is very large and bulky, made of black plastic, and leaves the three tanks exposed rather than hidden away as on the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni dock, and it’s just not as pleasing a design aesthetically. The water tanks are not see-through either, so to check the water levels, you need to pull them out and open them up to see in. The power cord in the back is very thick and long, and there’s not enough space behind the dock to coil it, making it difficult to push it up against a wall. You’ll need a lot of clearance for this massive cleaning system, even given that it has less capacity than the Ecovacs system.

For now, despite the very useful VibraRise system, for most households we’d give the edge in next-generation robot mop vacuuming hybrid technology to the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni.

As a vacuum, the iLife V8s is a good hard-floor pet hair option because of its suction tube design, but the lack of roller brushes means it can’t handle low-pile carpet, cutting into its potential versatility.

In our open-plan test home, the iLife V8s did a good job mopping the kitchen floor. Unfortunately, as it went from kitchen to dining room to living room (transitioning from hardwood floors to low-pile carpeting), it couldn’t detect the low-pile carpeting and went right over it, squirting water along the way.

The iLife V8s uses a suction tube, much like a traditional vacuum cleaner, rather than the roller or bristle brushes used on other robots. This lets it do a better job than some of the other models we tested at cleaning up pet hair, as the debris is sucked up right into the bin without getting tangled up in a roller brush. It does great on hardwood and tile floors, but the downside of having no roller brush is that it doesn’t do a thorough job on low-pile carpeting.

It can’t vacuum and mop in a single pass, so you have to swap out the dustbin and water tank each time you change modes. It also doesn’t come with a floor mat, so if you leave it on the charging base with the water tank attached you might end up with water stains on your floor. We recommend putting in the dust tank and letting the water tank empty and dry between uses.

Ecovacs says the Deebot Ozmo T8+ can automatically detect and avoid carpeting when the mopping pad is on, but it didn’t always detect them in my testing. Since it can’t raise its mop like the Roborock can, it wound up mopping parts of the carpets before we pulled it away.

It automatically boosts the suction power when vacuuming carpeting and does a good job picking up pet hair. It’s quiet and handles door sills better than other models and does a good job maneuvering around furniture.

The Auto-Empty Station is smaller than the Roborock’s, though it will still hold about eight weeks’ worth of debris, depending on usage. It worked well, but we had one instance of cat hair getting stuck in the suction tube and had to clean it by hand.

Like with other connected robots, once you map your home, you can set scheduled cleanings, create boundaries and virtual walls and control the water flow in each room while mopping. And just like other connected robots, mapping was an exercise in frustration. It took multiple tries, going over the same rooms and recharging over and over until it was finally completed.

The feature-rich, 2-in-1 Roborock S8 Pro Ultra is a much-improved version of the company’s previous Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra. It strikes a balance between premium cleaning features, like high suction power and excellent mapping and navigation, and adds in a hot-air mop dryer.

Roborock impressed us with the streamlined look of the self-cleaning docking station, called the Rock Dock. While it’s still large, at 17 inches wide and tall and 20 inches deep, it looks less obtrusive than the S7 version, which we found overwhelming and unattractive. Roborock also offers a white version of the S8 Pro Ultra, which looks much sleeker and will blend into a room better than the black version we tested.

The Rock Dock, where all the automated action takes place, has a similar design to the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni. It houses three plastic tanks: one for auto-emptying the dirt from the robot’s dustbin into a bag, one for auto-emptying the dirty water and one that holds the clean water used to refill the robot for its next cleaning run.

But the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra shines after it empties the robot’s debris. High-speed cleaning brushes scrub the mop head with clean water from the reservoir tank, while the dirty water is extracted — and clean water is added to the robot for the next run. Then, the new, built-in hot air dryer goes to work drying the mop head so it won’t get smelly or moldy.

In testing, the mop pad got clean enough, but we did take it off the robot and toss it in the wash every week or so. And the dock is not entirely maintenance-free — the bag that holds the dirt and dust holds about seven weeks’ worth of debris. However, changing that is as simple as picking it up and tossing it in the trash and putting in a new one. Same for adding clean water to the tank and emptying the dirty water tank, which you’ll do every two to three cleaning cycles.

The best vacuums can pick up dust and debris from hard floors as well as carpeting, and the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra excelled at this. With a 6,000 Pa rating, it has the most suction power of any robot vacuum we’ve tested. That’s 900 Pa more than the S7 and 1,000 Pa more than the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni. In our testing house, it did a great job picking up fine dust, pet hair and cat litter.

Roborock seriously upped the mopping power of the S8 Pro Ultra as well, increasing the vibration area so the mop pad can now clean a wider area and apply consistent pressure. While other robot mops we tested left us feeling like we were dragging a wet Swiffer across the floor, this model uses firmer, higher-speed scrubbing and easily cleans dried ketchup spots from the tile kitchen floor.

We’ve always liked Roborock’s VibraRise system, which allows the robot to automatically detect carpeting and lift the mop to 5 millimeters off the floor. But this newer system, which happens inside the robot, is even more convenient. While the robot is mopping, the dual brush rollers internally raise 6 millimeters — so nothing from the potentially dirty rollers winds up on the freshly mopped floors. Even better, the mop head and the brushes rise simultaneously when the robot travels back to the dock. This is the first we’ve seen of a feature like this in any robot we’ve tested.

While we still think the iRobot J7+ has the best navigation of all the robot vacuums, the S8 Pro Ultra does an excellent job of avoiding obstacles and furniture. Instead of a camera for obstacle recognition, the S8 Pro Ultra uses 3D light and an infrared imaging camera to help identify and avoid obstacles such as power cords, sneakers and even pet waste. But it did miss just a few things left in its path, making it one area where it didn’t beat the competition.

Of course, the high price tag of this robot mop and vacuum makes this more a luxury than a need, but for those who can afford it, the total package of a streamlined, hands-free docking system; the excellent cleaning performance; and the robot’s ability to lift the mop pads as well as the roller brushes makes the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra an excellent choice.

This robot mop vacuum combo has powerful suction (8,300 Pa) for vacuuming up all kinds of dirt and pet hair plus dual, oscillating mop heads that automatically lift when the robot detects carpeting. It also has an innovative ability to attach and remove its own mop pads while docked at the base station. This way, the robot mop can go over carpets without getting them wet — although, like other full-featured high-end hybrid robot mop vacuums, it can also raise its mop pads when it detects carpeting.

Another unique design feature is its MopExtend Roboswing technology that swings the mop head out to the side so the robot can clean right up against baseboards and kitchen cabinets. In addition, the base can clean the mop pads with hot water — not something you see on many robot mop vacuum combo models.

These features all point to an exciting design and an impressive level of performance. However, during testing, we had so many issues understanding the app. These issues included figuring out how to do simple things like edit or rename rooms, create no-go areas or manually clean one room at a time. Because of this, we can’t justify the high price tag of this model. Until DreameTech fixes and updates its app, the DreameBot X30 Ultra Robot Mop and Vacuum is just too expensive to overlook its drawbacks.

In our initial round of testing, for the price, the iRobot Braava Jet 240 was the best robot mop we had tested. For keeping your hard floors neat without manually mopping every day, the iRobot Braava Jet 240 is a handy, affordable tool to have in your cleaning closet.

It did great on tile and hardwood floors, leaving no streaks as it cleaned up cat-litter-dusted paw prints, though on a tile floor we noticed some water accumulation on some of the grout, as the cleaning pads didn’t apply enough pressure to reach into crevices. It dried quickly, but it was not clear the grout was getting as clean as the floor was. And while it couldn’t handle dried dirt and tougher stains as well, none of the robot mops we tested excelled in that area.