Some have base stations that clean out the compartment. guess it depends if you view that as part of the robot.
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2026
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We have that, and it is a good point. The vacuum still has a lot of dust on top though.
We could make it go underneath some brushes, maybe? 🤔
My brother has a self cleaning one. It doesn't just vacuum, it also has builtin water and cleaning solution to mop the floors. It goes into a base station and gets it's dirty water cleaned out and is rinsed out as well as charged.
He had it for a couple of weeks and showed it to me. I asked how often do you need to clean the base station. Like replace the water, add new cleaning solution, clean it out etc. He said he didn't know and hadn't done that once.
So we checked the manual, yeah you were supposed to replace the water and cleaning solution daily and clean the inside of the tank. You also should manually clean the robot at least once every three days, preferably every day. So who knows what was growing inside that machine, getting spread out across the floors every day.
I think I'll stick to manually cleaning for at least the foreseeable future.
I use cleaning time as excuse to drink and listen to podcasts
Mine has two containers. The one is for the dirty water that does not go to the vacuum again.
I have one like that. It’s brilliant. It has a vacuum in the base station so it sucks out the water/rubbish in the actual vacuum. I love it. Makes cleaning so much easier
Mine cleans itself like 85%>
Base station empties the contents into a small bag, emptying the vacuum.
Base has a hair cutter for anything stuck on the rollers, runs before emptying.
I just maintain it, change brushes periodically, change bags and filters.
Even have dog gates high enough that it can still bass by and clean the room.
But there are limitations
Is that one connected to some server somewhere or is it "dumb" and self reliant?
It's eufy, has lidar cameras. So it's connected somewhere unfortunately.
I have their cameras and everything is local (or at least that's what they claim). I wonder if it's truly different with their vacuums. Outside of that, do you like it?
Love the vacuum, app could use some work. If you e got a pet that sheds, this is amazing. It does probably 95% of the work, then once a month or so we do a deeper clean. It literally picks up pounds of hair and debris.
It's the Eufy L60 SES version. There are better versions available, this fits this household well.
It can't clean entire apartments. Only suitable floors. You could also teach it to fall into water.
To be fair my mop doesn't clean the carpet, neither does the broom really
I have one and i have not used it in a while I found the prep to be just as much work as cleaning the apartment myself.
this was my experience. I got it when my wife had surgery and for my use case. needing to get multiple things done at once. It did work but in a normal situation its honestly more bother than its worth. Now that was before you could get a model with a base station that would clean it out. I could see having one if it did not use a brush and was just a wet/dry vac type thing and the base station cleared it out. It would not do as good a job but what it did do would be useful given the hands off nature at that point.
For me, one of the primary benefits was the fact that I need to keep the floor in a tidy enough state to be able to effectively run the robot vacuum.
Day to day, there's not really any prep needed - just push the button as I leave the apartment, then empty the bin once I get home.
Newer models are even more sophisticated about this, being able to handle mopping without supervision, and emptying the bin into the base station post-clean, allowing for even less hands-on time during operation.
I've also ran my robot vacuum for close to 1000 hours at this point since I bought it, so there's significant time savings there
It makes you clean your apartment every day then.
It prevents me from letting the mess accumulate, really. If you count not putting crap on the floor and putting them back in their place/in trashcans as cleaning, then sure, I clean my apartment every day.
Modern top tier models are more expensive but they take care of all these issues. I'm on my third Robot vacuum and I know exactly the prep and work you're taking about.
New models can identify obstacles like shoes, cords, socks, and pet waste to avoid them entirely. So no need to clear obstacles before running it.
They also can mop, refill the mop water, and clean and dry their own mop pads. You can even get docks that are fully plumbed in that don't have tanks to be refilled or emptied at all.
They really have come a long way, as long as you're willing to spend the money.
We have ours set to run in all the main rooms of the apartment every day, including a deep clean in the kitchen. We just have to empty and fill the tanks on the dock about every day to day and a half. The dock portion that cleans the mop pads needs cleaning about once a month.
We have a dog so that little bit of maintenance is more than worth it.
As long as you keep on top of the prep then it cleans all by itself?
Yeah, we just have to keep the dirty and clean tanks in the dock empty/full.
Robot vacums are the best technology to have come out of the past decade
Can't clean anything over 1/8" tall, including itself.