I tried Dyson’s new robot vacuum – it’s a major upgrade on the old model

Design and setup

The Dyson spot+scrub AI is not a subtle piece of tech. The docking station is huge compared to my current top pick of robovacs, the Eufy X10, dominating the room in a way that suggests it was designed for sprawling Californian mansions rather than pokey British flats.

It looks the part, though. You get a colourful flash of Dyson purple on top of the cyclone dustbin and on the robot itself. The transparent tank even lets you see your mopping water sloshing around inside as it bops around your kitchen – a detail I find weirdly mesmerising.

My little London flat doesn’t have the luxury of a utility room for the robot to call home, so I prefer the subtler and more compact design of the Eufy docking station, which manages to cram the same dustbin and water tanks into a smaller box. The fact that Dyson has chosen to make the dock’s dustbin see-through means it’s not an object you’ll want to position somewhere your guests can see it, either – unless they’re particularly interested in the content of your carpets.

The robot itself is slightly taller and wider than many rivals I’ve tested, which caused an immediate issue in my bathroom: it can’t fit into the gap between the toilet and the wall, a space that slimmer robots just about squeeze into. If you have a lot of low-slung furniture or tight nooks, this chunky boy might struggle to reach them.

Navigation and obstacle avoidance

Whereas the Dyson 360 vis nav required that you pre-tidy your floors before setting it loose, the Dyson spot+scrub AI confidently gives a wide berth to obstacles it spots in its path. It’s not perfect, but it strikes the right balance between caution and bravery. By not being too timid about bumping into stuff, it’s less likely to miss a patch of floor or fail to navigate its way through a tight spot.

Overall, the navigation is up there with the best robot vacuum cleaners. It successfully scooted around a tactically placed shoe without choking on its laces. While it would sometimes gently nudge stray plugs, it manages to avoid getting tangled in loose cables.

Mapping is quick and does a fair job of recognising the outlines and layouts of rooms, even if it can’t physically reach the walls because of furniture and fittings. In my testing, the robot was confused by a mirror, which it seemed to think was a portal into the next room. This meant I had to manually split the room in the MyDyson app, which is straightforward enough to manage.

The app successfully guessed what each room was, automatically labelling the kitchen, living room, bedrooms and hallways. If you find that a bit creepy, Dyson assures us that anything captured by the robot’s camera never leaves the device – images don’t even show up in the app. That’s a far cry from the less privacy-conscious Dreame X50, which lets you remotely pilot the robot from your phone.

Vacuuming performance

Look, when it comes to sucking things up off the floor, Dyson is obviously in its element. Raw suction power was the Dyson 360 vis nav’s saving grace, and the cleaning performance of the spot+scrub AI remains exceptional. In the rice test – where robots like the Roomba 105 tend to fling dry grains across the hard floor with their fast-spinning side brushes – the Dyson managed to guide and brush almost every single grain into its waiting rollers.

It was equally impressive with fine particles. When faced with a spill of cornflour, the suction did a great job of clearing the mess without spreading it around, and crucially, it didn’t leave any white traces deep between the floorboards. If your primary concern is dust pickup, this machine is a beast.

There’s great dirt clearance on deep and low-pile rugs, and the robot is clever enough to know when to deploy its mopping roller and when to lift it. I’ve tested robot vacuum cleaners that physically remove their mopping pads when they’re not needed, like the Dreame X50, but the Dyson isn’t troubled by carrying a wet roller around during its vacuuming phase.

Mopping

The “scrub” in the robot’s name implies a vigorous, back-and-forth action designed to lift stubborn stains. In practice, I didn't see much of this happening. In any case, you can ask the robot to take extra passes in a room or use extra water, but by default, it’s giving floors more of a wipe than a scrub.

This style of mopping is hardly unique to the Dyson. I’ve found that mopping functions on robot vacuum cleaners really aren’t intended to tackle serious messes; instead, they lift stuck-on dirt and clean up spills that dry vacuuming alone will miss. For light duties, it works just fine.

The robot heats clean water to 60C before mopping, which tends to sort out the most common stains without any trouble. A dried-on spot of oat milk vanished in a single pass, but tougher, oilier stains like dried ketchup remained largely intact after the robot passed over it. It’s great for surface-level freshening, but don’t expect it to replace a manual mop for dealing with proper kitchen grime.

The robot cleans its mop roller as it spins to avoid smearing muck up and down the hallway, and when cleaning along walls and skirting boards, it will physically extend the roller to reach edges. After a run, it returns to the dock to empty its bin, giving the absorbent pad a deeper clean and a blow-dry to prevent bacteria and other grot building up. The drying process takes a little while and makes a quiet whooshing sound, but it’s a great feature that makes upkeep a breeze.

Oddly, Dyson doesn’t include any detergent in the box. My guess is that it’s a logistical headache to ship a concentrated chemical cleaner alongside the robot itself – but I would have appreciated at least a voucher code to grab my first £19.99 bottle.