Dyson - Spot+Scrub Ai Wet and Dry Robot Vacuum - Matched Black/Blue

1. Takes hours to vacuum and wash a one bedroom house 2. Drops dirt on floor when moving from hard floor to carpeted room 3. Leaves center of floor dirty while covering corners 4. Becomes offline any time 5. Dirt drops at charging station

I'm a long time user of robot vacuums. My experience goes back over a decade to the early Neato units. I upgraded the Neatos a few times before they went under and I changed to Roombas about 3 years ago. I've seen some really good vacuums and more than a few really bad ones. Now that iRobot was bought out by China's Picea and my Roombas are beginning to fail, it was time to change companies again. Enter the Dyson Spot+Scrub. I have always been a big Dyson fan- I love their fans and vacuums. They tend to be more expensive than other brands but the performance makes it worth it. While their first two attempts at robot vacuums kind of bombed, I had big hopes for the Spot+Scrub. I really, really wanted it to be my solution going forward for my robot vacuum needs. Unfortunately, I came away pretty disappointed and frustrated. My house is 3 floors each about 1500 sqft each. The top and bottom floors are 100% carpet, so the Spot+Scrub would have nothing to mop. The main floor is about 50% hardwood flooring and 50% carpets, so that is where the Dyson was used. The vacuum comes very well packaged and upon removal, you can see how LARGE the system is. I mean, it's big. The vacuum itself is much taller and wider than any I've owned before and the base station dwarfs my Roomba base. Setup was easy enough. Place the base station, remove protective packaging around the vacuum, place it on the charger, and fire up the app (I used an iphone). The app is pretty well made. Setup was simple and the app found the unit quickly. There were a few tutorial videos, some configuration setting, and the system was ready to go. I set it off to map my main floor. This took a number of tries and a few hours with my Roomba J7. The Dyson came up with a decent map in about 30 minutes. Naming rooms and dividing large areas up in the app was simple. I basically split my floor into 5 areas and gave them all names. I ran the unit in vacuum only mode in a carpeted room and it ran well. I filled up the mop reservoir and tried the mopping in my entryway. It did OK. Open areas were mopped, but anything bordering an area rug wasn't touched. I set up the schedule to run two rooms (vacuum and mop) on MWF and the rest TTh. The good things encountered included solid vacuum performance (when it ran properly), quiet operation, it mopped fairly well but stayed away from carpets, and returned to the dock correct. It emptied the dirty water well and the cyclone sytem for debris worked great. The app gave good info on what it was doing during operations too. But that was about it. On the downside, the list was really long. The dock was set up on carpet (best placment for it in my house) and the unit struggled getting on/off the dock. It would get held up trying to turn off the dock before it had completely left it and got struck about half the time. I had it set to clean two rooms each day but it failed 80% of the time. Sometimes it would get into the middle of the room and just stop to think for 10 minutes. Sometimes it would be in the middle of an empty room and declare it was stuck or it's (clean)_ sensors was blocked. More often than not when it did run, it went around the edges of one of the two rooms then went back to the dock and declared the job complete. It wouldn't clean the middle of the room nor ever enter the second room (an upside was it respected boundaries between rooms really well). I tried for days to fix this but never could. That included changing rooms, deleting maps and remapping, deleting schedules and starting a new one. It just kept going around the edges and finishing in 10 minutes. If I ran it manually selecting the same two rooms, it ran fine. When it came to running the next day in the other rooms, it did the same thing. When it came to running the next day in the other rooms, it did the same thing about half the time. I never was able to fix it. The app has a nice feature where you can pull up it's recent activity so you can see what area was covered, but even that had a bug in that to get the most recent run, you had to kill the app and reopen it. Frustrating. The vacuum was also too tall to get under my furniture and cabinets. The other big issue I had was the two spinning side brushes are horrible. They are made of a soft plastic or rubber. I have medium pile carpet with a soft pad under it. My other robot vacuums had no problem with it. The Dyson brushes would get caught on the carpet, bend at weird angles, and actually lift the front end of the vacuum up. Instead of sweeping out to the sides, they were mangled and sweeping just underneath the vacuum (see picture). The unit also got stuck because one of these mangled brushes got it's bristles caught in the wheel mechanism. It's a really poor design. In the end, the Dyson is not going to be my cleaning solution. While the vacuum power is excellent and the app has potential, there is just too many problems with it. The unit is a week old and the side brushes already look like they need to be replaced. You can't trust it to properly clean when scheduled. The mopping is meh and won't go near carpet edges. And the unit is so large, my wife doesn't want it in our living room. I really wanted to like this, but I'll have to keep looking

The Dyson Spot+Scrub AI does an excellent job cleaning both hardwood and carpeted areas. Paired with an easy to use app and low maintenance design, this robot vacuum is a great way to keep living spaces clean with little effort. Set up In the box there is basic documentation demonstrating the initial steps to prepare the unit and connect it to the Dyson app. The app contains short videos showing steps on how to clean and maintain everything. It’s relatively straightforward to use and takes just a few minutes to update the firmware - following that is getting the floor mapped. Mapping was pretty quick as the robot briefly scanned each room and moved on. Scheduling Options include different clean types for vacuuming and washing (or a combination of both), vacuum modes (auto, quick, quiet, boost), and hydration level (how much water used when mopping). There is also a setting for wash repetitions - how many times the robot will wash the floor (1 or 2x). One slightly minor inconvenience is that when creating a schedule for a floor with many rooms, the user needs to select the vacuum and wash options separately for each room. Cleaning During the cleaning process, the app will display what the robot is doing at each stage. Further in the settings page there is an option to wash floors with hot water only, and a separate toggle to clean with or without cleaning solution. I made the mistake of putting in regular Pine Sol which made the robot leave suds everywhere, but thankfully I was able to easily pour it out from the dock and use water as the recommended alternative. In my case, the robot will clean about a total of 390ft (takes about 1.5 hrs) or so, and part of that includes a living room area with a low pile rug in which it transitions from mopping to vacuuming without much problem. Unfortunately due to the height of my kitchen cabinets it cannot completely reach into the toe kick area. There were two cases where it did have trouble with obstacles - once was its attempt at climbing out of a small space under the TV console (hardwood floor to the pile rug) but after a few tries it got itself out without assistance. Another instance was when a walking pad/treadmill was moved into the middle of the room during the robot’s cleaning session and it became confused - bumping into the treadmill constantly. Once I was done with my exercise it went back and cleaned the area though. Other notes The overall sound it makes while cleaning is not as loud as I had expected (I left the vacuum mode on ‘auto’). Although it can be heard from another room, it’s still quieter than the typical vacuum noise. When the vacuum mop roll is being heated and dried on its dock it does make a whirring sound every few minutes, presumably coming from the mop roll being rotated over time. There is also a slight heat that the dock gives off - not a lot, but it’s noticeable as it takes a few hours for the drying to complete. One other thing is that so far after 3 cleanings I'll need to refill the water tank - not a big deal in my opinion as I take the dirty water bin out and give both a rinse at the same time. Overall, it did a great job cleaning and mopping - my floor feels less ‘gritty’ and smoother for sure. I was surprised by how much dust was collected in the dock after the first cleaning. Coupled with its low maintenance design, the Dyson Spot+Scrub AI is a robot vacuum worth considering for anyone looking for a vacuum robot.

I’ve owned this AI powered Dyson wet and dry robotic vacuum for about 10 days now. Here’s some things I think you might find interesting, broken down into Good, Ok, and Not So Good categories. First, the Good: 1) The vacuum power is impressive, especially when set to “Boost” mode. I honestly think it compares favorably to most cordless stick vacuums on the market. Even “Auto” is sufficient for daily cleanings. 2) Edge cleaning is good. The bristles actually do a good job reaching all the way to the walls. 3) App provides lots of options for cleaning. From easy “set it and forget it” settings, all the way to customizing the vacuum strength and number of mop runs on a per-room basis. For example, I can set the vacuum to run on Auto on all the hard floors, then kick it up to Boost for the carpeted rooms. And the mop function allows adjustment of the amount of fluid used, along with the number of passes it does, all on a per-room basis. The Ok: 1) The original mapping was just so-so. I appreciate that it was really quick—it did my 4,000sqft house in about 1.5 hours. It took my previous robovac over 4 hours, not including the recharge part way through. Additionally, I feel like it did some rooms really well, then really botched others. For example, my entry way is square, not two stacked squares with an odd offset. The AI only does a mediocre job of putting the map together, so be prepared for a lot of map tweaking and adjusting. 2) Mop performance is good when the device has a clear path, but will leave large areas unmopped if something confuses it. I have a rug (runner) in the middle of my home’s main hallway. On either side of the rug is hardwood flooring that needs to be mopped, about 1.5 vacuum sizes in width. The mop does a great job cleaning the wood that borders the walls; however, it completely bypasses the wood closest to the rug (likely because it doesn’t want to wet the carpet). But it seems to me that it could make parallel passes along the rug if it wanted without soaking the rug. It doesn’t want to, at least not yet. Maybe an update will help that. 3) Like most robovacs I’ve experienced, the bristles will knock small and lightweight debris any which direction rather than pick it up. I sat and watched the vacuum bat around a fluff of pocket lint three or four times before I manually picked it up. This was on the Auto setting. The Not So Good: 1) The vacuum is large. Larger than my previous vacuum, especially in height. No big deal if it’s a little taller though, right? Wrong. This thing is tall enough that it doesn’t fit under roughly half of my cabinet ledges. I’ve attached a video showing the vacuum struggle to get underneath my standard height kitchen cabinets to clean up to the kick panels. In my kitchen, most of the daily debris from cooking ends up underneath the cabinet overhang, close to the kick panels…exactly where the vacuum can’t reach. To remedy this, I need to sweep under the cabinets before the vacuum runs. Bummer. 2) The Boost setting on the vacuum is pretty loud. I like to run the vac during the night when my family and I are asleep; however, the boost volume is loud enough to wake us up. Seems like this would be even more bothersome when running the vac during the daytime if you work from home. Just an FYI. I now run the vacuum on the Auto setting and that seems to do a good enough job. Final review: For the money ($1,200 at publish date), I feel like this is simply a “good” option in the robo cleaner realm, but maybe not yet “great”. I realize all robovacs have gotten crazy expensive over the last few years, but I’m not sure the AI and overall cleaning experience the Dyson vac provides are truly standout worthy reasons to purchase this over a cheaper option. However, if you have the money and you’re a fan of Dyson products, you will be well-served by the Spot + Scrub AI robovac. It does an admirable job cleaning (albeit with some caveats), has a really good app that provides plenty of programming options, and will eventually have lots of third-party components that will reduce the cost of maintenance over the years. For that, I give it 4 stars.

Big excitement for me receiving the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai. I’ve been using Dyson products for years but never the robot vacuum. The previews of the Spot+Scrub Ai were amazing and made me want to give it a try. Shipping nowadays is really competitive and still I was surprised at how fast it arrived. It was packed neatly and tight which kept the contents from shifting during transport. Getting the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai setup was a breeze and did not suck up my time. The included quick setup guide was useful to make it dummy-proof. I clicked the few pieces together, added the water, cleaning solution, and did the network connection using my Dyson app. It all took me about 10 minutes including the update. What’s in the box you might ask? User manual, Ai Dyson robot, charging station, and charging cable. I don’t know why they don’t include the cleaning solution. Unfortunately, if you purchased the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai, you cannot effectively run it because you probably didn’t think of buying the cleaning solution. I would have preferred the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai to be sleeker so it could maneuver around narrow spaces. Even when it does do a good job cleaning areas it can fit, the tight spaces are left for me to do manually. This is ideal for homes with minimal furniture and clutter because of the size of the robot vacuum. My Dyson kept getting stuck under the couch because of the height. I ended up making it a no-go zone to avoid the issue. Dyson should update the software to use the Ai technology to know what it can’t fit under so it doesn’t get stuck. I like the cleaning of the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai because you can see what it picks up and you can see the dirty water. I’m still excited about the Dyson robot vacuum and I’m hoping the future updates of software will make it better. I do like that after mopping the floors it dries the roller after the cleaning cycle. I see condensation in the clear window of the vacuum. I think it will eventually grow mold or smell musty. I don’t think it’s drying out the vacuum entirely, which would be the way to go. I’m going to continue using this Dyson until something better comes out or if they improve things with some software updates.