Best robot mops: Automated cleaning for hard floors
Ditch your regular mop and bucket for these motorised marvels that will do the hard work for you
Robot vacuum cleaners have been rolling around our homes for a few years now, with robot mops following closely behind. In fact, many robot vacuum cleaners now come with mop functionality built in, delivering just one device that can tackle both jobs. Surprisingly, such two-in-one models aren’t even always the most expensive on the market, with multifunction robots available for as little as £200.
So, if you want to free up some of your time and find a solution to your floor cleaning needs that doesn’t involve you having to trudge around your home with bucket and mop in hand, then check out our top picks of floor-mopping robots, all fully tested by our experts. If you’re yet to figure out exactly what you need, then our buying guide at the bottom of the page reveals more about floor-cleaning robots and the key considerations when making your choice. Each of the short reviews of our recommendations comes complete with links to the full-length reviews available elsewhere on the site. So read on to discover our list of the best robot mops in the shops right now.
Best robot mops: At a glance
| Best for minimal maintenance | Ezviz RS2 | £496 | Check price at Amazon |
| Best at avoiding carpet and obstacles | iRobot Roomba Combo j7+ | £999 | Check price at iRobot |
| Best budget robot mop | Proscenic 850T | £189 | Check price at Amazon |
How we test robot mops
Every robot we test is installed in a typical domestic setting. The charging stations are placed in the same location and the robots are instructed to clean the same area. This enables us to easily compare speed and effectiveness across different surfaces, and how well each robot mop navigates around the same space. It’s a tricky floor plan that can challenge the smartest robots, comprising corners, tight spots, low furniture, various surface types and the occasional nest of cable.
Robot mops are tested on a variety of hard surfaces, both vinyl tiles and textured linoleum. We test the robots on dried-on dirt, muddy paw prints and sticky drink spillages. Where available, we use both spot cleans and whole-room mopping. If the robot has vacuum features then these are tested, too, following our usual set of robot vacuum tests.
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The best robot mops you can buy
1. Ezviz RS2: Best robot mop for minimal maintenance
Price when reviewed: £496 | Check price at Amazon
The Ezviz RS2 offers both mopping and vacuuming in a single unit, along with a base station that stores all the water you’ll need for hours of mopping. Its enormous 5.5-litre clean water tank feeds into the robot as and when it’s needed, keeping the 150ml reservoir in the robot topped up and ready to clean.
Mopping is performed by two spinning pads, which attach to the base of the robot via magnets. These provide a decent level of agitation, rotating in opposite directions as well as being pushed forward by the robot’s own movement.
The pads can also be deployed and removed automatically at the base station, so it’s simple to switch between standard vacuuming jobs (which the robot also handles) and mopping. It can even do this mid-job, so rooms with rugs and mats can be vacuumed first, then the rugs mopped around afterwards, all during one job.
When mopping is complete, the pads are rinsed through, removed from the robot and dried, so they don’t become smelly. Dirty water is pumped through to a dirty water tank, which is easy to remove and clean out; but since it holds 5 litres of water, it won’t need your attention all that often.
Read our full Ezviz RS2 review for details
Key specs – Size: 365 x 365 x 103mm; Weight: 4.6kg; Battery life: 2hrs 40mins; Charge time: 3hrs; Mop type: 2 x rotating pads; Water capacity: 150ml; Base station water capacity: 5.5l
2. iRobot Roomba Combo j7+: Best robot mop at avoiding carpet (and other obstacles)
Price when reviewed: £999 | Check price at iRobot
The iRobot Roomba Combo j7+ is a combination mop and vacuum cleaner with a number of unique features. For starters, the mopping pad sits on the end of a retractable robot arm, which means the robot can deploy its mop as and when it’s needed. This is ideal for cleaning multi-surface areas comprising both hard floor and carpet, as the mop simply lifts out of the way when it encounters carpet.
Carpet isn’t the only item the Combo j7+ is good at avoiding. It uses iRobot’s superb object avoidance algorithms, which can detect an extremely wide range of household objects that might have been accidentally dropped on the floor – whether that’s socks, charging cables or even pet poo.
The mop itself is a drag-and-wipe-style cloth attached to a plate, with water dripped onto it from a tank in the robot. This can hold 210ml of liquid at a time – either water or iRobot’s own cleaning solution, which can help break down more stubborn floor stains.
Read our full iRobot Roomba Combo j7+ review for details
Key specs – Size: 330 x 333 x 84mm; Weight: 0.95kg; Battery life: N/S; Charge time: N/S; Mop type: Plate-mounted cloth; Water capacity: 210ml; Base station water capacity: N/A
3. Proscenic 850T: Best budget robot mop
Price when reviewed: £189 | Check price at Amazon
The Proscenic 850T is at the cheaper end of the scale when it comes to robots with mops. It has both vacuuming and mopping modes, but in order to engage the latter, you’ll have to replace the collection bin with the mopping unit, which holds the water and attaches the cloth to the underside of the robot.
What’s lacking from this robot is mapping and intelligent navigation. A map is created as the robot does its work, but it’s only to show you where it’s been, plus it isn’t saved from one clean to the next. The best way to keep it to certain areas is to shut it in the rooms you want it to clean by closing doors.
If price is more important than having the absolute best mop, then this model certainly has its merits. Its tank can hold a lot of water and, with manual intervention for navigation, it can do a fair job of keeping your floor dust-free and wiped clean.
Read our full Proscenic 850T review for details
Key specs – Size: 325 x 325 x 73mm; Weight: 2.5kg; Battery life: 2hrs; Charge time: 3-5hrs; Mop type: Plate-mounted cloth; Water capacity: 300ml; Base station water capacity: N/A
How to choose the best robot mop for you
Which robot mops deliver the best mopping performance?
Perhaps the most important thing to consider in a robot mop is how well it actually mops. That may be stating the obvious, but our experience testing such a vast array of models has shown a dramatic difference in abilities between the best and worst mops around. Often, many cheap robot vacuum cleaners have mopping functions tacked on; they aren’t necessarily well configured to deliver the best mopping results.
If all you want is a quick, regular wipe down, then almost any robot mop will do. At the most basic end of the scale, there are robot vacuum cleaners that come with a cloth attachment that hooks over a base plate, which is dragged around behind the vacuum as it cleans. They usually also have a water reservoir, which you fill with clean water from the tap. The clean water then drips onto the cloth through tiny holes, ensuring the cloth remains moist and has a supply of clean water. Some robots have this reservoir built into their vacuum collection bins, while in others it might be a separate unit, or require the bin to be swapped out for a water tank.
There are a few downsides to this mopping method. For starters, it can take a while for the tank to have dripped enough water to get the mop cloth sufficiently damp, so you may have to start out by wetting the mopping pad yourself.
It also tends to be one of the weaker mopping systems if the robot treats mopping much like vacuum cleaning, where one pass is usually sufficient. With dried-on dirt, this is rarely the case.
Better systems add a bit of agitation. This might involve the robot moving over the same spot multiple times, or via adding additional movement to the cloth. Some of the best mops we’ve seen use two rotating discs with mop pads affixed, which rotate in opposite directions. Add that to the forward motion of the robot and you have significantly more wiping action than you get with a fixed cloth.
How well do robot mops avoid carpet and other household obstacles?
This varies from robot to robot, but most decent robot mops can detect the type of surface they’re approaching and keep their damp cloths and pads away from carpet. Some robots may be able to lift their pads off the ground or even remove their mopping pads completely if they’re near a carpet; others may avoid the area completely. Robots that create maps can usually be instructed not to mop specific areas, which may be useful if you have a delicate hard floor that isn’t recognised by the robot.
Most robots do a good job of navigating around rooms and furniture. They may make light contact with chair and table legs, and bop into walls and skirting boards, but most have spring bumpers that make this a reasonably gentle collision. If you have particularly delicate furniture, we suggest reading the full review of any robot you’re considering, since we always take note of how gentle they are around delicate furniture during testing.
A few robots will also avoid typically dropped obstacles, such as socks, phone chargers and even pet poo. However, even with these features, if you want your whole floor cleaned then it’s still worth tidying up before you set the robot off.
What else should I consider?
Aside from general performance, there are a few other considerations that are likely to impact the speed and efficiency with which any model can clean hard floors.
- Water capacity – Robot mops aren’t particularly large and so aren’t capable of holding much water, especially if the water reservoir and a vacuum collection bin are combined into a single unit. Some of the more expensive robot mops come with a much larger water tank in the base station and can fill themselves up from it. This reduces the amount of time you’ll spend filling your robot’s reservoir.
- Water delivery – Most combi mops drip water from their reservoir onto the mopping pads. This can mean the pads don’t get properly wet until they’re well into cleaning their first room. In this case, you can often set the robot to mop a room twice, to ensure it goes over any areas it’s missed. More expensive mops have systems for dampening their pads or cloths before they set out.
- Storage – Standard robot vacuum cleaners can have charging stations that sit on the floor to which the robot will return to dock. As soon as water is involved, the charging blocks tend to come with full base plates that cover the floor where the robot sits. This stops your floor from becoming wet from any residual dampness. If there isn’t a base plate, you may need to be prepared to empty your mop’s reservoir as soon as it’s finished cleaning.
- Self cleaning – If your robot has a base station with a larger water tank, it may also use this to rinse its cleaning pads when returning to its base to charge. The dirty water is usually then extracted into a second dirty water tank. This reduces the regularity with which you will need to clean your mop manually.
