UPDATE: May. 1, 2025, 5:00 a.m. EDT Multiple new mopping Roombas were announced in March 2025. I’m in the process of getting my hands on them for at-home testing and will update this guide with any standouts.
Despite the enthusiasm of actors in Swiffer commercials, few people are smiling at the workout that is manually mopping their floors.
If you experience similar dread when faced with vacuuming, the best robot vacuum and mop combos will cross those two chores off your list (three, if you count digging your old mop out of the closet as a chore in itself).
Are robot vacuums good at mopping?
I’m not saying you can expect a hybrid robot vacuum to scrub your kitchen grout with the same tenacity you would get with a toothbrush, but robot vacuums have gotten much better at mopping over the past few years.
Since 2020-ish, most robot vacuum companies have added at least one (several, in most cases) hybrid model to their lineup, with prices ranging from $200 to well over $1,000. You can generally expect the mopping technique to get a little more meticulous as the price goes up, so the type of mess that your 2-in-1 model will need to conquer becomes a big deciding factor. Are you mostly concerned with wiping up spur-of-the-moment spills, or will you be a stickler about dried-on stains that call for more heavy-duty scrubbing?
As a Dyson stan, I wouldn’t tell anyone to buy the Dyson 360 Vis Nav robot vacuum
Fortunately, both ends of the pricing spectrum provide way more bang for their buck in 2025 than they did in the early 2020s. The mere presence of a cloth and a water tank is far from good enough at this point — now, the best robot vacuums and mops are armed with more mechanics attempting to mimic the elbow grease that a human with a mop or Swiffer would provide, like pressurized and/or spinning mopping pads (rather than lackadaisical, stationary ones). Most modern 2-in-1 robot vacuums can also mop with real germ-fighting cleaning solution rather than just water — key in upping my own personal confidence in walking around barefoot.
iRobot just completely overhauled its lineup with 8 new Roombas for 2025
But arguably, the most pivotal shift 2-in-1 robot vacuums saw in the past year isn’t on the robot vacuums themselves but in their docks. Past automatically emptying the dust bin, the best robot mop combos also cross post-mopping maintenance off of your list by automatically washing and drying their mopping pads, then refilling themselves with clean water from the dock. With one of these fancy self-cleaning stations, your robovac will be ready to mop again almost immediately — a clutch change from an older, more basic design that had us all choosing between manually washing a smelly mopping pad after each use, letting it mop with a dirty pad, or just avoiding the mopping feature altogether.
Not sure how fancy of a hybrid robot vacuum you even need at home? I’ve tested 15+ of the most popular robot vacuum and mop combos at a range of prices on my own floors at home, narrowing down your options to the top four robot vacuums that also wash your floors so far in 2025.
(Note that each vacuum’s retail price is listed by default, but I’ve also noted the most common sale price each vacuum frequently drops to in “The Good” section. And yes, robot vacuum deals are common all throughout the year — not just during a shopping holiday like Black Friday.)
Other robot vacuums I’m testing
I’m currently testing the Roborock Saros 10 — the obvious foil to the Roborock Saros 10R. The Saros 10 is nearly just as strong a contender, but does a few main things differently than the 10R. (Some better, some worse.) It was announced at CES 2025 along with the Saros 10R and has the same retail price of $1,599. I ultimately think the Saros 10R has a slight edge over the Saros 10 because of its superior edge mopping.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable
First things first: Larger homes with 10 or more rooms would fare much better with the Saros 10 than the 10R. For some reason, Roborock put a cap on the number of rooms that the Saros 10R’s app can hold in a floorplan, which has been maxed out in my three-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment when the back corridor, kitchen, and living room are also included. (I wanted to split the kitchen into two to designate the dining room, but I got a “room limit reached” notice.) The room limit is doubled with the Saros 10.
The main differences between the Saros 10R and Saros 10 are related to cleaning mechanisms and navigation. The Saros 10 has slightly more powerful suction, cleaning at 22,000 Pa of suction power compared to the Saros 10R’s 20,000 Pa. The 2,000 Pa disparity isn’t anything drastic when you’ve already hit the 20,000 Pa mark, and I haven’t noticed the Saros 10 necessarily doing a better job on cat hair, fine kitty litter dust, protein powder, or large debris like kibble.
Upon flipping the Saros 10 over, you’ll see that it trades the spinning mopping pad setup of the 10R for a D-shaped mopping pad. That singular pad scrubs by vibrating and exerting downward pressure. While the active mopping area is apparently 26 percent larger than that of the S8 MaxV Ultra, I still don’t think this sliver of a pad provides the varietal scrub that two spinning pads do. For dried-on stains, especially, the extra physical agitation that comes with spinning is more thorough than a straightforward wipe.
On top of the Saros 10, you’ll notice a small, retractable LiDAR tower that the Saros 10R doesn’t have. Roborock carried its Reactive AI small obstacle avoidance over from most of the 2024 Roborocks to the Saros 10, while the Saros 10R ditches the laser turret completely for what Roborock calls StarSight navigation. Both are more accurate than most other robot vacuums you could buy, but the Saros 10R’s StarSight has a better track record with cords and pet toys in my home.
The Saros 10R is also not available in white like the Saros 10 is. That feels like an odd design choice considering white blends in with many walls, and I think that the white Saros 10 looks so much more sophisticated in my living room than the Saros 10R does.
I also recently tested the $1,699.99 Dreame X50 Ultra. It grabbed attention during its CES 2025 debut for its ability to “climb,” though the fine print is that it can’t scale thresholds taller than 6 milimeters (about 2.36 inches). The Roborock Saros 10 and 10R were able to hoist over the few thick doorway thresholds in my apartment just as well as the X50 Ultra. Its mopping and vacuuming capabilities are better than most mid-range robot vacuums, of course, but they weren’t impressive enough for me to suggest the X50 Ultra in this list over either Saros model.