The Best $300–$600 Robot Vacuums – They Beat the Flagships!

What are you really missing out on going with a mid-tier robotic vacuum instead of a flagship? In this video I’ve got seven robotic vacuums priced between $300-600 from eufy, Roomba, SwitchBot, 3i, Dreame, Mova, and Roborock. I’m going to compare their performance with the best flagship options I’ve tested in each area including carpet and hard floor vacuuming performance, hair pickup and tangle avoidance, hard floor mopping, and object recognition to see how they compare. As always there are no sponsored reviews on this channel.

Carpet Vacuuming

Starting with vacuuming performance, flagship vacuums usually advertise their suction power in pascals. Compared with my current top-of-the-line recommendation, the Roborock Saros 10R’s 22,000 pascals, these mid-tier vacuums range from 7000-19,000 pascals.

But in my experience, carpet vacuuming performance isn’t directly correlated with suction. To test that, I mix 10 g each of flour, salt, flax seeds, and rice to simulate dust and debris of different sizes, sprinkle that mixture onto my high pile carpet and send the vacuums on a 2-pass, single room cleaning on their highest suction setting. I weigh their dust bins before and after the run, and then again after the auto empty process. In between each test, I vacuum with a corded upright.

Starting with the least expensive vacuum, the eufy Omni C20 typically sells for around $349 and has a single traditional brush roller with rubber and soft bristles, a fixed side brush and 7000 pascals of suction. The eufy cleaned for 31 minutes and used 24% of its battery to pick up 55.5% of the flour, salt, flax, and rice mixture. After the auto-empty process, it had 1.2 g left in its dustbin, which was mostly flour stuck in its mesh pre-filter and caked into the main filter pleats.

After that for $398 is the Roomba Plus 405, which is part of Roomba’s new lineup that has adopted a more traditional robotic vacuum design, abandoning Roomba’s patented dual brush roller in favor of a single soft rubber roller brush, a fixed side brush, and 7000 pascals of suction. The Roomba cleaned for 11 minutes less than the eufy at 20 minutes total but used 2% more battery to clean up just 50% of the debris mixture. After the auto-empty process, the Roomba had 3.2 g left in its dustbin which included some flour caked into the filter, but also a significant amount of loose debris in the bin.

Then for $399 is the SwitchBot S20, which uses a traditional single rubber main brush and fixed side brush with 10,000 pascals of suction. The SwitchBot cleaned for just 16 minutes but used 28% of its battery to pick up 53.8% of the flour, salt, flax, and rice. After the auto emptying, the SwitchBot had 1.3 g left in its bin and the auto-empty process did a great job clearing the fine flour out of the extra-large air filter.

Next for $474 is the 3i P10 Ultra, which has a traditional single roller brush with rubber and soft bristles, a fixed side brush, and 18,000 pascals of suction. The 3i had the longest cleaning time yet at 35 minutes but only used 24% of its battery and picked up 59.8% of the mixture, moving it into first place so far. After the auto-empty process, the 3i had 1.5 g of debris left in its bin which was almost all flour caked into the air filter.

After that for a typical price of $499 is the Dreame L40S Ultra CE, part of Dreame’s very confusing L40 lineup which all have similar names, but completely different features. The L40S Ultra CE that I’m testing in this video includes Dreame’s TriCut brush to help avoid hair tangles, a fixed side brush, and 13,000 pascals of suction. The Dreame cleaned for 23 minutes and used 25% of its battery to clean up an impressive 76% of the debris mixture, easily moving it into first place. But after the auto-empty process, the Dreame had 3.7 g left in its dust bin, which was all just debris caked into its air filter that lacks a pre-filter mesh.

Also for $499 is the MOVA P50 Ultra, and to make everything even a bit more confusing, MOVA is a sister brand of Dreame and shares a lot of the same designs and technology. The Mova P50 Ultra has a traditional single rubber roller brush, a lifting and extending side brush, and 19,000 pascals of suction. After cleaning for 28 minutes and using 26% of its battery the Mova P50 Ultra picked up 77% of the flour, salt, flax, and rice, putting it in first place ahead of the Dreame by 1%. But the Mova also had 5.3 g of debris left in its dustbin, which shares the exact same design as the Dreame and would really benefit from a mesh pre-filter.

Last, for $549 is the Roborock QREVO S5V, which typically sells for $549 and has Roborock’s DuoDivide brush roller system, a fixed side brush, and 12,000 pascals of suction. The Roborock cleaned for 16 minutes and used just 17% of its battery to pick up 64.5% of the debris mixture, putting it in 3^rd place overall. But it had 5.3 g of dust left in its bin after the auto-empty process, which was all flax and flour caked into its air filter.

That means that compared to all the other vacuums I’ve tested, the Mova P50 Ultra and Dreame L40S Ultra CE are going to move into first and second place overall, overtaking the Ecovacs X8 Pro OMNI which previously held the lead with a carpet pickup score of 75.5%. This means there are absolutely no compromises choosing a mid-tier vacuum when it comes to carpet vacuuming performance.

Hard Floor Vacuuming

I also tested hard floor vacuuming performance using that same 40-gram mixture of flour, salt, flax seed, and rice. Historically all robotic vacuums perform pretty well on this test, and this batch was no different, with all of the vacuums picking up between 99 and 100% of the debris.

Combining the two scores, the Mova P50 Ultra and Dreame L40S Ultra also take first and second place, overtaking the previous combined vacuuming leader, the Roborock Saros 10R, by over 3%.

Hair Pickup and Tangles

But to me that’s not super surprising. I’ve always thought that traditional single brush roller designs were the best for raw vacuuming performance, but recent flagships are equally focused on hair pickup and tangle avoidance. To test that, I first started with a reasonable task of picking up 30 individual 12-inch strands of real human hair from my bathroom’s hard flooring. After each vacuuming run I carefully inspected both the floor and the robot for any hairs that didn’t make it into the dustbin.

Most flagships have no problem with this test and end up with either zero tangled hairs or just one random stray hair but out of these vacuums, only the Dreame L40S Ultra CE and Roborock QREVO S5V performed at that level thanks to the TriCut brush on the Dreame and the DuoDivide roller system on the Roborock.

I also perform a less reasonable test using one gram of synthetic 16” blue hair and two cotton balls separated into tufts to simulate pet fluff. After a one pass, vacuum only run, I collect any hair and fluff left on the carpet and closely inspect the robots for tangles.

In this test, the best overall pick-up performance came from the Dreame L40S Ultra CE which picked up the majority of the fluff and hair. Its TriCut brush was moderately effective at cutting the synthetic hair into smaller pieces to be sucked into the dustbin, but it did have a fairly significant amount of hair stuck in its wheels. The Roborock was next best and did an okay job with pet fluff but left the majority of the synthetic hair matted into the carpet. However, the reason it finished in second is because it had almost zero hair tangled on the robot itself thanks to the DuoDivide brush roller. The 3i did a great job with the synthetic hair on the carpet. However, even though the 3i’s base station has a hair cutting blade that is supposed to cut any tangled hair around the brush before the auto-empty process, the bristles of the brush were completely matted with hair after this test, and those matted bristles made it unable to pick up a lot of the pet fluff.

Similarly, the eufy did a decent job picking up hair and debris, but the traditional soft bristle brush was completely tangled.

The Roomba, Mova, and SwitchBot’s rubber brush rollers functioned exactly as they’re designed to and funneled all the hair to the side and then ultimately inside the brush, which will need to be cleaned out from time to time. Of the three, the Roomba’s overall carpet pickup seemed the best, but it also expectedly had the most hair stuck inside its roller.

Comparing these vacuums to current flagships, the Narwal Flow is the king of resisting hair tangles and not only managed to pick up 100% of the synthetic hair and fluff, but it also completely resisted hair tangles on the brush roller itself thanks to its conical design and only had a single blue hair stuck on its wheel.

Corner and Edge Vacuuming

Last, to finish out vacuuming I tested their ability to clean in corners and close to furniture using their side brushes by putting a pile of breadcrumbs in four hard to reach spots in my kitchen and gave the vacuums 1 point for partially cleaning a pile of crumbs and 2 points for a complete cleaning.

In this test, we would expect the Mova P50 Ultra to do the best since it’s the only robot with an extending side brush to reach into corners. But in practice, the fixed brush on the Roborock that they call their FlexiArm Arc side brush combined with better navigation led to the best score of 7 out of 8, completely cleaning all of the piles except under the refrigerator, which it only partially cleaned.

The 3i P10 Ultra also performed very well, scoring 6 out of 8, completely cleaning three of the piles with its slightly elongated side brush design, but missing under the refrigerator completely probably due to the fact that none of its navigation methods would be able to detect a gap that low to the ground.

The eufy Omni C20 also did very well and leveraged its very compact size to wedge itself under the cabinets and into corners while rotating the entire body of the robot. I really thought it was going to clean under the refrigerator also for a perfect score, but at the last minute it decided to change cleaning strategies and skipped right over it.

As I mentioned, the Mova P50 Ultra has an extending side brush that should theoretically allow it to clean deeper into corners than other robots, but because it used that extending side brush it didn’t do the same stop and rotate motion that helped the other robots fit into the corners and it ended up with a corner brush score of 5 out of a possible 8 points.

The Dreame L40S Ultra had the same sort of lazy approach to getting into corners as the Mova, but without the extending side brush it had a lot more partially cleaned piles for a score of 4 out of 8.

The SwitchBot was too big to fit under the stool, and its brush wasn’t long enough to get all the way into the inside corner, leaving it with a score of 4 out of 8.

The Roomba was big and clumsy and randomly decided to just skip over the majority of the cleaning area, not even attempting to clean 2 of the piles, for a total score of 2 out of 8.

Compared to flagships you can see that the Roborock QREVO S5V tied the best score ever recorded in this test, which was from the Roborock Saros Z70 that also has a FlexiArm Arc design that includes a motorized arm extension, but still wasn’t able to reach completely under the refrigerator to clean up that pile.

Vacuuming Recap

In terms of traditional vacuuming performance, you actually get better performance in this $300-600 price range than you do with a flagship, with the Mova P50 Ultra and Dreame L40S Ultra CE coming out on top.

For hair pickup and tangle avoidance the Dreame L40S Ultra had a good combination of pickup efficiency and tangle avoidance, the Roborock QREVO S5V’s DuoDivide brush roller performed similarly to the flagship Roborock Saros 10R and was the best at avoiding tangles but didn’t do as well with hair pickup. Neither of those two are close to matching the nearly perfect hair pickup and tangle avoidance score of the Narwal Flow.

For corner brush performance, the Roborock QREVO S5V matched the corner performance of the flagship Saros Z70, even without an extending arm.

Mopping Performance

Next, moving on to mopping performance, I try to simulate a realistic test in my house which is when wet mud gets tracked in on shoes and feet and then dries on the floor. To do that, I spread 10 mL of Florida mud over a 2 ft by 2 ft square and dry it with a hair dryer.

Each vacuum then gets set to maximum water flow and two passes on a combined mopping and vacuuming run. After each run, I spray the area with two sprays of water and wipe it clean with a paper towel, then set the paper towel aside to air dry and in between each test I mop the floor with a traditional wet mop and hand dry with a towel.

To say I was surprised by the results of this test would be a massive understatement because both the Mova P50 Ultra and Dreame L40S Ultra CE ended up with almost completely clean paper towels, which is something that I’d previously only seen in the much more expensive Narwal Flow that uses the typically superior roller style mop design.

Corner Mopping

I also tested each robot’s corner mopping ability by putting a smear of hot sauce in five separate locations in my kitchen and scoring each robot’s mopping performance by awarding 1 point for a partially cleaned spot and 2 points for a completely clean one. In this test we would expect the Mova P50 Ultra, 3i P10 Ultra, and Roborock QREVO S5V to finish on top since those robots have extending mop pads, but only the Roborock was able to combine its extending pad with effective navigation to clean all the stains, while the Dreame L40S Ultra CE managed to score 9 out of a possible 10 points through careful edge rotation to push its mopping pad along the edge of the floor.

The 3i and Mova also performed fairly well, scoring 8 out of a possible 10 points, but the Roomba, SwitchBot and eufy did extremely poorly, and mostly just ran over the stains with their side brush creating a huge sticky mess on the rest of my kitchen floor.

Mop Pad Lifting

Last for mopping, I tested each robot’s ability to lift their mopping pads enough to prevent them from dragging dirty wet mop pads on the carpet. All of the vacuums got at least some water on the carpet when I forced a mopping session before vacuuming, but the Roborock QREVO S5V and 3i P10 Ultra both have options to vacuum the carpets before getting their mop pads wet, and as a result they were able to keep the carpets completely dry on a combined vacuum and mopping run. The Dreame and Mova also have a similar option in their apps but still clean their mopping pads at the base station before starting the cleaning, resulting in wet carpets. The Roomba was by far the worst vacuum I’ve ever tested in terms of mop lifting and absolutely soaked my carpets during its combined vacuum and mopping run.

Comparing these results to flagships, a pretty common feature that all of these vacuums are missing is the ability to leave their mopping pads at the base station while cleaning carpets, which is the only sure way to completely avoid getting your carpets wet.

Mopping Recap

For a mopping recap, the Mova P50 Ultra and Dreame L40S Ultra CE have flagship level performance in terms of mopping quality and are actually the two best spinning mopping pad robots I’ve ever tested.

For corner mopping ability the Roborock QREVO S5V performed just as well as any flagship that I’ve ever tested and joins the Roborock Saros 10R as the only robotic mop to score a perfect 10/10 score.

For mop lifting, none of these mid-tier robots have the ability to leave their pads at the base, but the Roborock and 3i have cleaning algorithms that keep the mop pads dry until all of the carpets are cleaned.

Object Avoidance

Traditionally, one of the biggest differences between flagship and mid-level vacuums is their ability to recognize and avoid objects that would potentially cause problems. To test this, I set up my living room with a pair of untied shoes, some rubber dog poop, and a loose extension cord and sent each vacuum on a one pass vacuum only run.

To score their object avoidance, I gave them 2 points for avoiding an object completely and 1 point for moving it with no catastrophic outcomes like getting stuck or running over dog poop.

For these vacuums, the only two decent scores were from the 3i P10 Ultra which avoided the dog poop and shoes, but ran over the extension cord, and the SwitchBot which completely avoided the dog poop and only gently nudged the shoes and extension cord while cleaning around them. Every other vacuum ran directly over the dog poop and moved both the extension cord and shoes. The eufy even managed to get stuck on the extension cord, scoring 1 out of a possible 6 points. Again, compared to flagship vacuums, these are not strong scores and several vacuums including the Mova V50 Ultra, Dreame X50 Ultra, and Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra have scored a perfect 6/6 in these tests.

Noise Levels

If you’re planning on running these vacuums while you’re home, the noise level may be important to you. Here they are from loudest to quietest. 

Apps and Smart Home

Last, looking at their apps and smart home features, all of the vacuums except the Roomba have very similar apps with a lot of great options for mapping, spot cleaning, and cleaning customization. However, while the Roomba app that works with their newest generation of robots is better than their old app, it’s still significantly worse than every other app on the market. It is both oversimplified and overcomplicated at the same time and gives random messages about needing to wait after each cleaning before you can see the results.

However, one app feature that’s pretty common on flagship vacuums is the ability to drive the robot around using its front facing camera, but in this group the only vacuum that has that option is the 3i P10, despite most of the vacuums having a front facing RGB camera that could be used for this feature.

Smart home integrations are pretty hit-or-miss right now, but all the brands have at least some form of Amazon Echo support, with the majority supporting room specific cleaning. But I think the Dreame and Mova service was experiencing issues when I was testing because I couldn’t get them to clean even though they’ve worked in the past.

Google Home support is also hit-or-miss with some of the vacuums supporting room specific cleaning while others only work with basic on/off commands. But the biggest issue I’ve had with Google Home is the need to occasionally delete and re-add vacuums that become unresponsive after a month or two.

Last, I know Home Assistant integration is important to a lot of you. I was able to confirm that Roborock definitely works and is full featured, SwitchBot works via Matter, and Dreame vacuum support requires you to use the Xiaomi Home app instead of the Dreamehome app, and none of the other brands work at all with Home Assistant.

If local control is on your must-have list, the SwitchBot and Roborock via their Matter integrations are the only completely local options, but the Roborock Home Assistant app does use local polling even though it still needs to be connected to the cloud.

Conclusions

Conclusion time, is it a good idea to buy a mid-level vacuum instead of a flagship?

First, if you’re looking for a robotic vacuum and mop that actually vacuums and mops well, look no further than the Dreame L40S Ultra CE and Mova P50 Ultra. They currently sit at ranks 1 and 2 among all vacuums from the last three years in terms of vacuuming performance and are tied for first place with the Narwal Flow for mopping performance. That’s without any mopping detergent since both vacuums have their dispensers sold separately. Between them I think the Dreame functions better right now, but I think the Mova has the potential to be better in the future since it has both an extending side brush and an extending mop, but it just needs its movement algorithm updated to make better use of them.

If we extend the ranking criteria to include other things like battery life, hair tangle avoidance, carpet mopping behavior, and smart home integrations, the Roborock QREVO S5V takes the clear lead and is a very capable vacuum and mop for $550.

However, there are three specific cases where you should probably still spring for a flagship.

First, if you need state-of-the-art object avoidance because you constantly have things on the ground that would typically get run over by a vacuum, you should look at the Dreame X50 Ultra, Mova V50 Ultra, or Roborock Saros 10R.

Second, if you have a ton of pet hair, the Narwal Flow had the best hair pickup and tangle avoidance score of any vacuum I’ve ever reviewed and has the added benefit of being a fantastic mop.

Third, if your house has large thresholds between rooms, the Dreame X50 Ultra and Mova V50 Ultra are the best at traversing unreasonably large transitions between flooring. I did test the threshold clearance abilities of the robots in this video and none of them made it over the 30 mm threshold, let alone the 50 mm threshold that the Dreame and Mova can clear.

As a reminder, there are no sponsored reviews on this channel but I do have links below for all of the vacuums I tested as well as my most recommended flagships, and as always, I appreciate when you use those links since as an Amazon Affiliate I do earn a small commission on the sale at no cost to you.

I’d also like to thank all of my awesome patrons over at Patreon for their continued support of my channel, and if you’re interested in supporting my channel please check out the links below. If you enjoyed this video, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel and as always, thanks for watching The Hook Up.