Dyson helped pioneer the cordless vacuum space, and now it’s testing the waters of the robot vacuum arena. The Dyson 360 Vis Nav has been available in other parts of the world for a little while, but it recently came stateside to the tune of $1,200. The company claims a 360-degree vision system, complete with cameras and LED lights, along with suction power akin to that of its stick vacuums sets the 360 Vis Nav apart from competitors. But even if that’s true, Dyson is undeniably late to the party. Robot vacuums have gotten a lot better in the past three to five years, and there are dozens on the market — including some that offer much more in the way of features for a similarly exorbitant price. That said, did Dyson pull an Apple and shake up a product category despite its late entry to the stage? I spent some time with the 360 Vis Nav to find out.

Setup and design

Unboxing and setting up the 360 Vis Nav is similar to any other robot vacuum. In addition to the device, the box contains a charging cable and the vacuum’s base, a rectangular, purple unit with two black-and-white checkered spots at either corner. While it’s refreshing to see a gadget that doesn’t wear the typical black or gray uniform, the 360 Vis Nav and its dock stick out like sore thumbs among the other items and furniture in my home. There’s no semblance of “blending into the decor” with this robo-vac.

Once docked for the first time, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav’s small onboard display prompts you to choose a preferred language and get connected via the mobile app. The screen doubles as a button, too, so you can press fully down on it to select options and move forward in the setup process. As I learned while using the machine, the display also shows helpful maintenance tips and accompanying graphics when you need to clean the robot’s sensors. The My Dyson app (on iOS and Android) provides all of the same information and more, and will guide you to connect the machine to your home’s Wi-Fi network, update the firmware if necessary and finish the prerequisites before you get to cleaning. Aside from waiting a few minutes for my review unit to update its firmware, the entire process took me only about 15 minutes.

To get the lay of the land, let’s revisit the few things Dyson claims set the 360 Vis Nav apart from other robot vacuums. The D-shaped design isn’t one of them, but it certainly helps the machine’s side-edge actuator when cleaning room corners. Dyson claims the actuator only opens up when cleaning corners like this, and it uses suction (rather than sweepers like other robo-vacs do) to capture debris from these hard-to-reach places. Along with that, the machine has a 360-degree vision system that helps it map our your home and clean around furniture and other objects, plus a sensor that detects the amount of dust present so it can kick up the suction when necessary and create a heat map of the dirtiest parts of your home. Those are the main differentiators, along with the claim that the 360 Vis Nav essentially has a similar level of suction power as one of Dyson’s cordless stick vacuums.

Performance

So how did all of that come together in practice? Pretty well, as it turns out. For the initial go-around, I had the Dyson 360 Vis Nav clean the main floor of my home, rather than map it out first. I did this mainly because I like chaos, but also because I wanted to see how the machine would navigate around coffee tables, couches and other furniture, plus small things like cat toys left in its path. Dyson states very clearly in the setup process that you should remove all small obstacles out of the way of the 360 Vis Nav before it cleans — I picked up a couple of reusable bags languishing from our last grocery run and the smaller cat toys, but I left some charging cables snaking on the ground because, let’s be real, most people aren’t going to clean before sending the robot they bought to clean for them out to do its job.

I was quickly struck by how many times the Dyson 360 Vis Nav came to a complete stop, “looked” around and kept moving during the first cleaning. It did a decent job avoiding large pieces of furniture like chairs and couches because — when it did get close to pieces like that — it seemed to sense it a few inches before hitting it, so it could then stop and redirect itself. It was most confused by a coffee table with a supporting beam that runs on the floor in between two legs. The 360 Vis Nav has adjustable wheels that allow it to “climb” on top of things like thicker rugs when it’s cleaning, and I think it confused this roughly 0.5-inch supporting beam for a piece of decor. The robo-vac tried so hard to climb over it; it was borderline concerning, but I was rooting for it the whole way. It actually did manage to climb over the beam, get back down onto the floor and keep cleaning, so kudos to the little guy for never giving up.

After that thrilling show, I left the 360 Vis Nav to its own devices. It proceeded to clean the main floor of my home for almost an hour, audibly notching up the suction when it detected a messier area. Notably, it seemed better at avoiding furniture than other robot vacuum cleaners I’ved tried. Yes, it did knock into a few things, but the number of times that happened was slim to none. The first run I did was in Auto mode, the default cleaning setting and one of four you have to choose from, and while the machine was a tad loud, it’s nothing that will drive pets or young children from a room. It’s loudest when the machine automatically kicks the motor into high gear upon detecting a high-dust area, which it did a few times in the highest trafficked areas of my kitchen and on top of a few area rugs. Like any other robot vacuum worth its salt, the 360 Vis Nav automatically returned to its dock to recharge when the battery got low.

I deemed that first cleaning job a success, and the case was the same when I did the first mapping run. The 360 Vis Nav is much quieter when it’s puttering around your home not sucking up dirt, but rather just using its vision system to create a map of your home and all its furniture and obstacles. The map it created of my main floor was accurate, and the Dyson app makes it simple to add boundaries and create rooms that you can label. Once you do this, you can create no-go zones and other restrictions like cleaning without the brush bar. And like most other vacuums with smart mapping, you can tell the 360 Vis Nav to only clean certain rooms with each job if you please.

Like most other robot vacuums, the companion app experience focuses on home maps, schedules and basic on-off controls. Dyson lets you choose from Auto, Quick, Quiet and Boost cleaning modes before you start a job, and if you have rooms designated on your map, you can customize cleaning modes for each room every time. For example, I could tell the machine to clean my kitchen in Auto mode and then the den in Quiet mode. The app presents a heat map of your home after every job that highlights the areas with the most dust, which is interesting to look at but didn’t provide me with a ton of groundbreaking information. I was not surprised that the dirtiest spots on my main floor were almost always next to the front door and my deck door.

Ultimately, the two things that impressed me the most about the Dyson 360 Vis Nav were its suction power and its obstacle avoidance capabilities. I live in a one-cat household, but if you saw how much cat hair my cordless stick vacuum sucks up every time I use it, you’d think I live with a few more felines. There’s always more fur in the bin after I clean the upper floor of my home, since it’s carpeted. After leaving the 360 Vis Nav on my upper floor to clean for almost an hour, I was surprised to see that the contents of its bin looked nearly identical to that of my cordless stick vac after cleaning up there. Even the best robot vacuum cleaners I’ve used in the past never sucked up this much pet fur in one go-around on carpeted floors — it’s impressive.

As for obstacle avoidance, I didn’t expect much from the 360 Vis Nav in this department because the instructions tell you, more than once, to clear your floors of any obstructions before cleaning. Most of the time, I had at least a few pairs of shoes, a couple of charging cables and other small objects on the floor while the machine was cleaning, but I never once got an alert that it was stuck. Some robot vacuums I’ve tested have sent me close to a half dozen alerts during a cleaning job, and I’d have to remove an object they were choking on before they could start up again. That never happened with Dyson’s machine.

The competition

With the Dyson 360 Vis Nav coming in at an eye-watering $1,200, the competition squarely within that price range is pretty slim. The $1,400 iRobot Roomba Combo j9+ is arguably its most direct competitor and it offers quite a bit more for that extra $200. (We’ve seen the Combo j9+ drop to as low as $1,000 in the past, so you might be able to pick it up for even less than Dyon’s machine.) As a “combo” device, the j9+ vacuums and mops without the help of a human (mostly) and it’s smart enough to know when it needs to switch from sucking up dirt to mopping floors using its built-in scrubbing pad and water reservoir. It also comes with a self-emptying base that can hold up to 60 days worth of dry debris and refill the water reservoir with clean supply. While auto-mopping is more of a nice-to-have than a requirement on a robot vacuum, it’s painful that Dyon’s $1,000+ machine doesn’t come with a clean base — a piece of hardware included in some models half of its price.

Wrap-up

When you understand the lay of the robot-vacuum landscape, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav seems almost quaint — and a bit confusing. Robot vacuums aren’t new, they’ve been around for a long time — long enough where you can get a pretty decent one for less than $300. For Dyson’s machine, spending $1,200 gets you a damn good robot vacuum with possibly the best suction power I’ve experienced on one, impressive obstacle avoidance, good home mapping and a clean app experience. But none of those features are unique to the 360 Vis Nav. Its suction power and obstacle avoidance may be superior, but is that enough to justify the cost? If you’re already willing to spend $1,000 or more on a robot vacuum, you have other options that will give you similar features and more, including mopping and self-emptying capabilities. That said, there are two groups of people who I’d recommend the 360 Vis Nav to: those who are willing to give up advanced features in exchange for the most suction power possible (and have cash to burn), and Dyson diehards.

If you’ve been craving some help with cleaning, this Memorial Day Roomba sale may be up your alley. Wellbots has the iRobot Roomba Combo J9+, Engadget’s favorite vacuum-mop combo, for $425 off. The machine not only cleans floors and carpets; its redesigned dock can automatically empty debris and refill it with mopping liquid. Use the exclusive code ENG425 to get iRobot’s top-of-the-line combo cleaner for $974.

Although that’s still a hefty price for a cleaning robot, you’re getting a premium product in return. The Roomba Combo J9+ has an upgraded motor and a four-stage cleaning system that takes multiple passes across your floors and carpets. This latest model, which arrived only last fall, has dual rubber brushes for optimal suction and pressurized scrubbing.

The robot has an updated Clean Base that automatically refills its water tank while looking more like a nice home appliance than a gadget’s charging dock. It automates as much of the setup process as possible, leaving you only to attach its mop pad and add water and cleaning solution. As for upkeep, you merely swap out its mop pads when needed and clean the Roomba’s bristles and bin.

Wellbots also offers the standard Roomba J9+ — the mop-less variant — for $325 off with the code ENG325. This model has all the vacuuming features from the more expensive Combo version. That includes stronger suction, multi-surface rubber brushes and a three-stage cleaning system. Usually $899, the coupon brings its price down to $574.

If you’re looking for a vacuum-mop combination robot for cheaper, the previous-generation Roomba Combo J7+ is $225 off with the code ENG225 (usually $999). This model skips out on some of the high-end features in the J9+ but still offers obstacle avoidance and a four-stage cleaning system. It can return to its base when it’s full and empty itself for up to 60 days before you have to empty its bin.

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The Shark AI robot vacuum and mop combo unit has dropped to a record low of $230 at Amazon. This is a massive discount of 52 percent, which knocks nearly $250 off the price. It does look to be one of those deals that ends when the stock runs out, so you might want to act quickly instead of popping it on your wishlist.

This is a version of our very favorite robot vacuum. The only difference between this robovac and the one that took the top spot is that this edition doesn’t come with a self-emptying base. That model, however, is also currently on sale for $370.

If you can get over the absence of the base, the Shark AI vacuum is a fantastic cleaning partner. It ticks all of the boxes. The suction power is fantastic, the obstacle avoidance is on point and it works with voice assistants like Alexa. It’s also a great mop, cleaning hard surfaces with 100 scrubs per minute.

We also enjoyed using the mobile app, which easily creates accurate maps of your space. The app can also be used to operate the vacuum when not at home, so you can return from work to find a freshly-cleaned living area. You can even set “no-go” zones for the robot to avoid, so it won’t mop carpet. The best robot vacuums are the ones that do their job without requiring constant surveillance, and this lil robovac consistently manages to get itself out of tight spots to continue cleaning. The AI in the name refers to obstacle avoidance. 

There’s only one major downside, besides the lack of a base. This robovac/mop hybrid can get pretty loud when vacuuming, so you may want to schedule the book club meeting for somewhere else. Other than that, this is pretty much the perfect mid-range robot vacuum. 

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When Boston Dynamics announced on Tuesday it was retiring the hydraulic version of Atlas, there were a few hints that the company wasn't done with humanoid robots entirely. Sure enough, one day later, Boston Dynamics has unveiled an all-electric model.

Atlas was originally envisioned as a search-and-rescue robot and Boston Dynamics claims the latest model is designed for real-world applications. It calls Atlas "the world’s most dynamic humanoid robot" and it certainly looks limber. 

A video shows Atlas lying prostrate and flipping its feet over to push itself up into a standing position. The robot then turns its head 180 degrees, followed by its torso. The rotations of the legs and the rest of the body are a little unnerving, but it's an impressive display of balance and flexibility. 

The electric Atlas appears sleeker than its predecessor, which looked slightly like a person wearing an exosuit. Rather than having a face with human features, Atlas' featureless head looks a bit like a ring light.

Boston Dynamics says parent company Hyundai's next generation of automotive manufacturing tech is the "perfect testing ground for new Atlas applications." It plans to show off what the robot can really do over the coming months and years, and to put Atlas through its paces with a small group of partners at first.

The company is looking into new gripper systems to make sure Atlas is suitable for a range of commercial needs while building on the previous parkour-capable model's ability to lift and move a variety of heavy and irregular objects. It claims that the new Atlas will be stronger than before and it's confident that it can commercialize a humanoid robot.

"Atlas may resemble a human form factor, but we are equipping the robot to move in the most efficient way possible to complete a task, rather than being constrained by a human range of motion. Atlas will move in ways that exceed human capabilities," Boston Dynamics wrote in a blog post. "Combining decades of practical experience with first principles thinking, we are confident in our ability to deliver a robot uniquely capable of tackling dull, dirty and dangerous tasks in real applications."

Boston Dynamics is hardly the only company working on a humanoid robot. Tesla, of course, has one in the pipeline, while Menteebot, which can be controlled using natural-language voice commands emerged just this morning. 

However, Boston Dynamics has been working on robots with this form factor for well over a decade, far longer than most. As things stand, it may be best positioned to get a humanoid robot into workplaces and even homes. Before that though, you might expect to see some videos in which the electric Atlas shows off some slick dance moves.

Over the past two-and-a-half years, a group of students from ETH Zurich have been developing a robot with three spindly legs that was designed to be able to hop like an insect in microgravity. That's right — the curious little machine was built for space, specifically for the exploration of small celestial bodies like asteroids and moons. SpaceHopper, as the robot is called, could thus provide us more information to advance our understanding of life's origin, of the origin of water on our planet and of asteroids as potential providers of valuable resources. 

It has no preferred orientation, so it can go in any direction, and it has nine motors that give it the capability to jump long distances in low-gravity environments. The robot can even self-right after landing, ensuring the safety of any scientific payload it may carry. Since SpaceHopper was made for use on asteroids and moons, which have very little gravity compared to Earth, it has to be tested under conditions similar to those environments first. To see if it will actually work as intended, the students and the European Space Agency have recently taken the robot on a parabolic flight that creates a zero gravity environment when the aircraft freefalls. Apparently, they had no idea if SpaceHopper would be able to move as they intended in zero gravity scenarios and seeing that it actually worked was a "massive weight off [their] shoulders."

You can watch SpaceHopper flail about in the test flight below:

The whole world is ragging on a barely functional $700 AI pin at the moment, but what if similar tech was squeezed into a gigantic robot that lives in your home? That’s a worst case scenario for the recently-introduced Menteebot, a human-sized robot that’s stuffed to the brim with AI-adjacent bells and whistles.

It’s being advertised as the “personalized AI-based robot you can mentor.” It can run, walk sideways and even turn, all “with the same balance and control as a human.” Manufacturer Mentee Robotics also says it’ll adjust its gait when lifting heavy objects. It should be able to lift these heavy objects with ease due to the fact that it’s, well, absolutely gigantic. Many of the models also have no head, which certainly doesn’t recall any old-time myths about a scary demon on a horse.

Now, we’ve had humanoid robots for a while. There was Honda’s Asimo, which has been sadly discontinued, and the army of nightmare creatures that Boston Dynamics is busy cooking up. Agility Robotics has been building out its robot assistant Digit and Elon Musk, who never makes false promises ever swear to God, says that Tesla is working on a humanoid robot called Optimus.

There’s one major difference between the aforementioned bots and Mentee’s creation. Menteebot is stuffed with AI algorithms, natural language processing models and software that unlocks “advanced training techniques.” The company says that this means the robot is “not bound to a limited set of commands” and that it can even hold conversations with humans. As a matter of fact, users issue commands to the robot via natural language. 

It’s a robot with two arms and two legs that can, in theory, do many of the same things we do. The company says that we can train it to do these things. This seems to sort of work like another controversial piece of AI tech, the Rabbit R1. To teach Menteebot a new task, you run a simulated version of the bot through a digital version of the task. The software completes the task over and over until it figures it out. Then the robot should be able to complete the task in the real world. This seems like an extremely lofty promise, but we’ll wait to see the final result. Here’s hoping it doesn't hallucinate and do whatever the heck it wants like other bits of AI tech. 

Menteebot does look quite agile. There are tons of videos of the robot being put through its paces. It can run and the arms and hands “present a full range of motion and enough accuracy to perform delicate tasks.” To that end, there’s a video of it gently handing a piece of dinnerware to a person.

While it’s highly unlikely this robot will live up to the initial promotional materials when it arrives in 2025 (just look at the initial promises Humane made for the AI pin), it still seems pretty darned cool. There’s no announced price, but it’s certainly going to be a whole lot more than the aforementioned $700 pin. This is an agile humanoid robot that weighs over 150 pounds. 

Menteebot will be available in two flavors. There’s the residential bot, which is forced to do household chores, and the commercial bot, which is forced to do manual labor. No matter which you choose, for heaven’s sake, be extra nice to the thing. Don’t boss it around. Let it sit at the dinner table. Keep it away from the vast majority of sci-fi. It can watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, maybe, as Data seems like a decent enough role model.

Nearly 11 years after it first showed off its current humanoid robot, Boston Dynamics is retiring Atlas. The DARPA-funded robot was designed with search and rescue missions in mind, with the idea that it would be able to enter areas that were unsafe for humans to carry out a range of tasks. However, Atlas became a bit of a star thanks to videos showing off its slick dance moves and impressive feats of strength, agility and balance. Fittingly, Atlas is trotting off into the sunset with one final YouTube video.

"For almost a decade, Atlas has sparked our imagination, inspired the next generations of roboticists, and leapt over technical barriers in the field," the YouTube description reads. "Now it’s time for our hydraulic Atlas robot to kick back and relax."

Boston Dynamics' farewell to Atlas doesn't just show some of the cool things the robot can do. It's a bit of a blooper reel as well. Along with hurling a toolbag and leaping between platforms, Atlas slips, trips and falls a bunch of times in the clip — oddly enough, that makes it seem more human.

Boston Dynamics of course has more commercially successful robots in its lineup, including Spot. It's likely not the end of the line for the company's humanoid robots entirely, though. "Take a look back at everything we’ve accomplished with the Atlas platform to date," reads the description on the farewell video. Those last two words suggest Boston Dynamics isn't quite done with that side of robotics yet.

Engadget has contacted the company for details about its future humanoid robot development plans. For now, it seems Atlas could be looking for a Wednesday afternoon dance partner at a robot retirement home.

Robot vacuums are handy little devices that can help folks save a ton of time and energy. However, some of the more well-known options are often a bit pricey, especially when a mopping function comes into the mix. As it happens, iRobot has revealed a relatively budget-friendly 2-in-1 robot vacuum and mop. It says the $275 Roomba Combo Essential actually outperforms the Roomba 600 Series thanks to 20 times more suction power, and the addition of a mop and smart navigation.

According to iRobot, this model offers 25 percent better performance at picking up dirt from hard floors than the Roomba 600 Series. It's also said to have a longer battery life at up to 120 minutes, the ability to clean in neat rows, customizable suction and liquid settings, Clean Map reports and intelligent settings such as suggested cleaning schedules.

Although you can set up cleanings in advance, you can start one at any time with an Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant voice command. Alternatively, you can press the Clean button or tap a button in the iRobot Home app to put the device to work right away.

iRobot

The device has a four-stage cleaning system that includes adjustable suction and liquid settings, a v-shaped multi-surface brush, an edge-sweeping brush and a pump-fed microfiber mop pad. For vacuum-only operation (i.e if you're looking to remove dirt from a rug), you'll need to remove the mop pad first. That adds a little bit of friction to using this model. There's another trade-off in that this isn't a self-emptying Roomba — you'll need to empty out the dirt storage bin manually more often.

Still, this seems like a solid Roomba at an eye-catching price. It's available in Europe, the Middle East and Africa now, and iRobot will start selling it in the US on April 7 and Canada on April 12. The Roomba Combo Essential will reach Asia Pacific markets later this month. Folks in the US can trade in a Roomba 600 Series for a $50 credit toward a Roomba Combo Essential

In addition, iRobot is rolling out a model called the Roomba Vac Essential in North America. It has the same smart functions and other similar features as the Combo Essential, but there's no mop. That robot vacuum will cost $250 and it'll land in the US on April 7 and Canada on April 12.

Meanwhile, iRobot says it has reached a new milestone. Since debuting the Roomba in 2002, the company has sold more than 50 million robots.

Apple is still on the hunt for the next revolutionary product to help it remain dominant in the market and to serve as new sources of revenue after abandoning its plans to develop an electric vehicle of its own. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, one of the areas the company is exploring is personal robotics. It reportedly started looking into robots and electric vehicles at the same time, with the hopes of developing a machine that doesn't need human intervention. 

While Apple's robotics projects are still in the very early stages, Bloomberg said it had already started working on a mobile robot that can follow users around their home and had already developed a table-top device that uses a robot to move a screen around. The idea behind the latter is to have a machine that can mimic head movements and can lock on to a single person in a group, presumably for a better video call experience. Since these robots are supposed to be able to move on their own, the company is also looking into the use of algorithms for navigation. Based on the report, Apple's home devices group is in charge of their development, and at least one engineer who worked on its scrapped EV initiative has joined the team. 

Robots, however, aren't like phones in the sense that people these days need them in their lives. Apple is apparently worried about whether people would pay "top dollar" for the robots it has in mind, and executives still can't get to an agreement on whether the company should keep working on these projects. Gurman previously reported that Apple may have sold its EV for $100,000 — if that's true, it had a bigger potential to grow the company's revenue. But the Apple Car is now out of the picture, and the company is reportedly putting all of its focus on the Vision Pro and new products for the home, which also includes a home hub device with a display that resembles an iPad. Of course, Apple could still scrap these projects, and it could find other classes of products to invest in if it discovers that they could bring in bigger money in the future. 

It's spring cleaning season, but that doesn't mean you need to get on the floor and scrub. Robot vacuums are a great way to keep your home clean while doing little to nothing, and a few robovacs from Shark are currently on sale. One of the best deals comes courtesy of a 44 percent discount on Shark's AI Robot Vacuum and Mop. The device is down to $270 from $480 — only $20 more than its all-time low price.

Shark's AI Robot Vacuum and Mop is a great option for anyone looking to try a robot vacuum or upgrade their entry-level model. It's nearly identical to Shark's much pricier Ultra 2-in-1 Robot Vacuum and Mop, which appears on our list of the best robot vacuums for 2024 — it just doesn't have a self-emptying base. 

The AI Robot Vacuum and Mop does have quite a few gadgets, including home mapping and AI laser navigation for detecting row-by-row precision and detecting objects four inches or taller. The mop executes 100 scrubs per minute and follows no-mop zones. You can use UltraClean mode on specific, busier rooms, with Shark claiming vacuum work 30 percent better at cleaning carpets in the setting. 

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