Dyson’s new robot excels, but vacuum performance lags

I’ve spent years reviewing smart home tech, and I have to admit: the Dyson Spot + Scrub Ai robot vacuum and mop leaves me genuinely torn. On one hand, it represents Dyson’s most polished robotic floor cleaner yet, boasting impressive mopping, solid navigation, and a multifunction dock that handles most of the dirty work for you. On the other, this is the company’s first vacuum-and-mop hybrid, and it’s a weaker vacuum than its predecessors. The reason? There’s no Dyson motor inside.

Yes, you read that correctly. For $1,200, the Spot + Scrub doesn’t actually include a Dyson vacuum motor. Instead, it relies on a third-party motor and brush system. “It’s not one of our V10 motors, it’s one of our partner technologies,” Nathan Lawson McLean, Dyson’s senior design manager, confirmed to me. He explained that the robot “merges new and already existing Dyson technologies with other platforms.” The Dyson tech lives primarily in the cyclonic auto-empty dock, the Dyson-designed roller mop, and the AI-powered stain-detection feature that gives the device its name. So here’s my dilemma: how do you evaluate a Dyson robot vacuum when the vacuum part isn’t actually a Dyson?

The Spot + Scrub is a robot that vacuums and mops your floors. It uses a large, self-cleaning roller mop that dispenses 140-degree Fahrenheit heated water as it moves, and sensors automatically raise the mop when it detects carpet. Its vacuum claims 18,000Pa of suction and employs a single rubber-and-bristle roller brush plus two spider-like side sweepers to gather debris. A camera handles AI-powered obstacle detection and stain spotting, while lidar manages navigation.

The included dock is Dyson’s first multifunction model. It charges the bot, empties its onboard dustbin, cleans the mop, and drains and refills the water tanks. Yes, the dock is enormous and not exactly a design triumph, but it works well and is a welcome upgrade. The previous Dyson robot, the 360 Vis Nav, lacked a self-empty feature entirely, which was a major shortcoming.

Dyson has also abandoned the D-shape of the Vis Nav in favor of a more conventional round design. It has swapped purely camera-based navigation for lidar paired with camera-based AI obstacle recognition. iRobot made similar changes last year when it started working with a third-party manufacturer to keep pace with rapidly evolving competition, just months before filing for bankruptcy.

While Dyson is unlikely to follow Roomba’s financial trajectory, this new model clearly aims to compete with the flood of Chinese manufacturers dominating the robot vacuum space. The Spot + Scrub has some signature Dyson touches, but it feels much closer to offerings from Roborock or Ecovacs than to any previous Dyson bot. Right down to the motor.

Dyson won’t name the “partner” (original design manufacturer, or ODM) it collaborated with, but mounting evidence suggests the company built its flagship robot on the Shenzhen Picea Robotics R2 ODM platform. The Spot + Scrub shares a great deal of DNA with robots known to be manufactured by Picea. Under the hood, it resembles Anker’s Eufy Omni line and iRobot’s 705 Combo Max, with similar wheels, side brushes, and mop design.

That said, there are plenty of distinct Dyson touches. A large air filter dominates the robot’s interior, much bigger than competitors’ filters. The signature green laser from Dyson stick vacs is present for detecting dirt (the latest Shark robot vacuum I reviewed also has this; Shark is a Picea customer). The huge, clear “Cyclonic” dust canister in the dock is pure Dyson, complete with the familiar blurple plastic. This is actually the dock’s best feature: no disposable bags, and the transparent exterior lets you see exactly how well the vacuum is performing.

Lawson McLean also highlights the bot’s 12-point hydration system, which self-cleans the microfiber roller during mopping, as a Dyson innovation. It’s the same system found on Dyson’s other wet floor cleaners, the Clean + Wash and Pencilwash. But self-cleaning roller mops are hardly unique to Dyson; Eufy, Ecovacs, Roborock, Dreame, and 3i (Picea’s in-house brand) all offer similar designs.

A Dyson by any other name

Arguably, Dyson needed to work with an ODM that knows how to build a robot vacuum that doesn’t get lost and navigates well. Its previous robovacs were excellent vacuums but terrible navigators. Switching from vSLAM camera-based navigation to lidar was a smart improvement. Buying proven technology rather than developing it from scratch was also the right call, especially if Dyson wanted to launch a new robot this decade. Partnering with ODMs is standard practice in the industry. But putting a less powerful, third-party vacuum motor into a flagship robot floor cleaner feels like the wrong trade-off.

Overall, the vacuum is acceptable but far from great, especially at $1,200. It performs well on hard floors and low-pile carpets, easily handling my dried oatmeal and chocolate powder tests on the first pass. Its 18,000Pa suction is respectable, but combined with the generic brush design I’ve seen on dozens of cheaper robots, it simply doesn’t match the Vis Nav.

This was most obvious on carpet. The Spot + Scrub really struggled on my high-pile living room rug, leaving almost all the dried oatmeal behind. That’s disappointing compared to the Vis Nav, which has significantly more power and ranks among the best robot vacuums I’ve tested for carpet cleaning.

Instead of the long, fluffy brush of the Vis Nav that reaches edges, the Spot + Scrub uses a small, single rubber-and-bristle hybrid brush in the center, with two spider-like side brushes to funnel dirt toward it. This design abandons everything that made the Vis Nav great. When I asked about the change, Lawson McLean said the bristle fibers help agitate dirt for better pickup. That’s somewhat true on hard floors, but in my years of testing, bristle brushes consistently fail on thicker carpets. They’re also much more prone to tangling. After just a few runs, the brush was full of hair.

But the Spot + Scrub is primarily a mopping robot, and its long, blue microfiber roller mop, which extends 1.6 inches beyond the robot to clean edges, does a solid job on hard floors. The robot kept the mop clean during jobs, and the dock washed and dried it reliably, though loudly and slowly. However, after two weeks of testing, I’ve yet to notice any real benefit from the flagship AI stain-detection feature, which is supposed to identify stains and adjust cleaning accordingly.

The Spot + Scrub didn’t treat the stains I placed in its path any differently from the rest of the floor. In a couple of cases with strawberry jam, it actively avoided them. (Lawson McLean said Dyson is working on improving the vacuum’s handling of “paste-like” objects; currently, it avoids them to prevent the side brushes from getting sticky.) Dried milk left for the robot didn’t receive special treatment either. Despite leaving residue after the first pass, the robot didn’t circle back to fully clean the spot as intended. The robot generates a “Clean Map” in the MyDyson app after each session, showing where it spotted stains, but it didn’t “see” the milk. I also tested darker stains like soy sauce, with the same results.

Lawson McLean says improvements are coming: “We have a whole roadmap of over-the-air update improvements, including behavior adjustments that adjust how it cleans,” he said, adding they should arrive this summer.

One area where the Spot + Scrub truly excels is AI-powered navigation and obstacle detection, which are light-years ahead of the Vis Nav. It moved around shoes, socks, and cables nimbly, navigated between table legs, and handled small transitions well. It rarely got stuck, which is impressive for a bot this size.

But its bulk meant it couldn’t reach everywhere I wanted. It fits under semi-low furniture (there’s no lidar tower on top; lidar is built into the front), but it’s too wide to fit between the legs of my kitchen counter stools. It also struggles mightily to cross my thick pile living room rug, making an unbearably loud grunting sound as it tries to heave itself up. To its credit, it eventually succeeds, but the noise is obnoxious.

Another issue: while the mop stayed spotless, the rest of the bot got dirty quickly. The brush area became sticky and gross after a few runs, and the base station was littered with dirt and debris that fell off when the robot docked and undocked, which is itself a loud and laborious process.

The Dyson Spot + Scrub does some things well, but it doesn’t deliver on all its promises. If your home has mostly hard floors and a few low-pile rugs, you’ll likely be satisfied, provided you can hide the bulky dock. But for other configurations, better options exist.

The Matic and Roborock’s Saros 10 are my current top picks in this price range for all-around performance. A more direct competitor as a mopping bot is the Roborock Qrevo Curv 2 Flow. At $1,000 (often on sale for $850), it’s cheaper and features a similar roller mop setup with a superior vacuum and brush system. Its 20,000Pa suction and duo divide brush demolished my carpet oatmeal tests and didn’t tangle.

The Qrevo also has a nicer-looking dock, but the vacuum itself is less nimble than the Spot + Scrub and more prone to getting stuck. If vacuuming is your priority and mopping is secondary, there are good, cheaper options with similar suction and better brushes, including the Roborock Qrevo S Pro and Dreame L40S Ultra, both around $700.

If Dyson had managed to combine the power of the Vis Nav with the intelligence and mopping ability of the Spot + Scrub, this could have been a truly great robot. Dyson’s engineering and motor power are its strengths, and sadly, they’re missing here. Instead, the company outsourced this core component to an ODM, resulting in a middling vacuum with a high-end mop and navigation.