I am in the market for the best robot vacuum for my home and I want to use some advice before pulling the trigger. My main priorities are strong suction, reliable navigation, and the ability to handle both hard floors and carpets. A long battery life and low-maintenance design would also be a big plus.
After reading expert reviews from trusted sources like Consumer Reports, Good Housekeeping, and Wirecutter, two models consistently stand out as top recommendations:
It is known for powerful suction, excellent obstacle avoidance, and impressive mopping performance. I have seen a lot of praise for its smart navigation, self-emptying dock, and overall reliability.
It offers strong cleaning performance, intelligent room mapping, and an effective vacuum-and-mop combination. Many reviewers mention its easy-to-use app and dependable cleaning results, though some say replacement parts and accessories can be a bit more expensive.
I am having trouble deciding which one would best suit my needs. I mostly need it for everyday household cleaning, including pet hair, dust, and keeping high-traffic areas tidy. My budget is flexible, but the quality and durability of the product matter the most.
So which one would you recommend? Any advice or personal experience would be appreciated.
I use the Tapo RV30 Max Plus from TP-Link. The Tapo app is very user-friendly as well. It has LIDAR so you can follow it real-time on the map. You can also select no-go zones and lines that the robot shouldn’t cross. You can send it to a specific room as well, and you can adjust suction power per room. It also has a SES so the robot can empty the dustbin as well, it will automatically do this whenever it’s full (also during cleaning, if the dustbin is full it will return to the dock to empty and then it continues cleaning). The RV30 Max Plus can also mop, but I’ve never used that so I can’t say how well that works.
Integration with Homey is also possible via Google Home. You can create Scenes in the Tapo app and virtual devices in Homey. In Google Home, you can trigger the automation when the virtual device turns on, and then you can start the scene.
Only advice I’d give you is to stick to robot vacuums that support Matter. This way you are not reliant on some manufacturer’s cloud just to start cleaning and you are relatively ecosystem independent for integrations as well. Of course you won’t be editing the map or anything via matter, but basic controls/automations and voice assistants will work.
Personally I have a Saros 20 which I’m very happy with, even though it’s very pricey. The most important thing for me was that it should be as hands off as possible. So automatic emptying the dust collector, cleaning the washpads, tangle free brushes, etc. But most critically that the obstacle detection is superb. So I don’t have to clean up constantly before it will automatically run, which was the reason why my old S6 was almost never used as it would always get stuck on some cables or some dog toys we let lying around.
Is your statement based on your own experiences with Matter devices, or is it based solely on the posts here in the community that report problems with Matter devices?
As far as I know, you’re using an older Homey Pro that doesn’t support Matter, right?
I only have a couple of Matter devices connected via Wi-Fi and a few via Thread, but they work without any notable issues.
Recently, I was even able to integrate a Bosch split-system air con via Matter, even though there isn’t a Homey app for it at all.
My own experience with Matter with other gateways and Google Home. Google Home doesn’t find a single device. eWeLink Cube only finds the WiZ bulb but that drops offline quickly afterwards. Xiaomi (Mijia) Smart Hub does not even have the option to add a device until your phone is on the same network as the hub, after which it finds the device but times out eventually while trying to add it. Tried with Hue, WiZ and Tapo devices.
I don’t know about Homey’s Matter, since I only have a Pro 2019 which doesn’t support it.
Same, I had an issue with the dustbin dock, but Tapo replaced it within a week. It’s a great little hoover and cheap for what you get. I would also recommend this one
I have a SwitchBot S10. It has an auto empty station for the dirt and a auto empty/refill for water that is plumbed in and that also includes a tank for cleaning solution.
It can be sent out to map the house with its LIDAR and then you can select to clean either selected rooms or the whole house (obviously it doesn’t climb the stairs). Object avoidance is good and it hasn’t got stuck anywhere yet, but I mainly use it in the kitchen on the hard floor where it automatically goes round every morning to mop.
Suction is average, but not as good as our Shark cordless.
I have 30+ Matter over Thread and 5 Matter over Wifi devices in my Home. I even DIY’d two of those myself from an ESP32. And while Matter for sure is not yet the solution to all problems that it was promised, it’s still better than being dependent on some unofficial integration using some cloud.
In my opinion, the cloud is way better. I personally don’t like local connections, because I don’t trust my IoT network since there are many cheap devices from unknown manufacturers on it (and I know that some are very insecure and allow pushing any firmware file using just the MAC address). I see that network the same way as f.e. a guest network: completely untrusted and most local connections are blocked anyway (though the Matter tests were done with it temporarily unblocked). It doesn’t add much value since my network also needs internet access to authenticate clients. Clients will stay connected, but when I switch WiFi off to use mobile internet during an outage, I won’t be able to reconnect so there’s not really an advantage to local communications in my case.
I mean I guess you are entitled to your opinion, but this really is quite an insane take. You don’t trust local devices that you can cut of completely from the internet, therefore you just connect to some cloud you have no control over, don’t know what happens to your data and if it goes down your devices become unusable. To each their own I guess.
How are you even going to use the device when Homey is offline? I just use the mobile app from the manufacturer in that case, which will just keep working and run alongside Homey, but that will stop working when you block internet access. If you cut off internet access, many devices enter setup mode as well, meaning anyone nearby can access them via Bluetooth/WiFi. That’s not very secure, so I would recommend to just allow internet to all devices.
I don’t know what “data” you mean here, but I allow Tapo and all other apps to collect (optional) telemetry, I just allow everything. I just really don’t care about TP-Link seeing when I vacuum my home (or any other device usage data), especially since that data doesn’t have any value to me, while the manufacturer might be able to use it to improve their products. To my knowledge, none of the devices I use collect any sensitive personal information.
Yes, that’s true, but I have had very few outages myself. One time a Tado outage, a few short Homewizard outages, the major AWS outage some time ago and maybe a few more that were so short that I don’t even remember them. If my own internet connection has an outage, local devices don’t work anyway since my network requires the cloud to authenticate devices, meaning that if I switch off WiFi to use the mobile internet during the outage, I can’t reconnect so the local network access is also lost. This is because of the high security (WPA3-Enterprise with Nebula Cloud Authentication, some devices also require 2FA via an captive portal, which of course also needs internet access).
Again, this is all just my own opinion and experience. I know others might think differently about server connections.
Anyway, I think this topic should be removed. It’s probably yet another scammer that will edit the start post with (or add) affiliate links to robot vacuums. I think I’ve seen a similar topic before (also with robot vacuums) where they had amazon affiliate links in the first post.
Edit: other scam topic with robot vacuums (don’t click the affiliate links!). As you can see there in the edit history, the affiliate links got added long after the post was created.
When the internet goes down all my automations still run locally. My vacuum will still be able to start, my lights will still turn on if I press some remote or trigger my sensors, my heating will still adjust to the thermostat readings, my blinds will still open and close with the suns position. All of that would be broken if my devices weren’t local and either the manufacturer cloud or my internet went down. The only smart devices that I own that require an internet connection to be controlled are my Daikin ACs and those I can still use with their regular remotes in the worst case.
Also Homey can be controlled fully locally even when their servers are down (and even the normal login should be valid for 14 days before it needs to refresh via the internet) and as long as you have internet you can still even configure your Homey for direct connections from the outside via port forwarding.
And even worse, I couldn’t see in the initial moderators approval, it uses a amzn.to url shortener in the background while the trustfull www.amazon.com link is shown beside the device name.
Links removed/made visible.
Therefore closed pls continue the usefull discussion in topics you create.
