(Credit: Tyler Hayes)
BERLIN—Although it didn't have an official presence here at IFA 2025, Dyson still used the trade show as an opportunity to showcase a slew of new products at its Berlin store, spanning haircare, fans, purification, and home cleaning.
The PencilVac is genuinely eye-catching and sure to be popular when it gets a proper release in 2026, but the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai robot vacuum and mop seemed to get the most attention.
Prior to a DysonUnveiled stage presentation, in which founder James Dyson showed off all the products, I got to see various demos, ask questions, and have some brief hands-on time. Here are my initial impressions of the new robot and what it might mean for the company.
Eyes On the Spot+Scrub Ai
(Credit: Tyler Hayes)Dyson's Spot+Scrub Ai is its second run at a cleaning robot after the 360 Vis Nav, which had its strengths but lacked a self-emptying dustbin and sometimes struggled with navigation. I was curious to see what type of feedback the company had heard from consumers about the 360, and James Dyson confirmed that it informed the development of the Spot+Scrub Ai.
"Washing floors as well as vacuuming, that's an obvious one,” he told me. “But then, when you wash a floor, you get some of the dirt up, but not all of the dirt. So if you've got a particularly difficult stain, at the moment, robots just go over it and that's it, and the difficult stain is left there. So our big thing with this Spot+Scrub is that we know if we haven't cleared a stain. We go back and we go over it until we've cleared it.”
(Credit: Tyler Hayes)Still, for all its flaws, the 360 Vis Nav seemed authentically Dyson. It did things differently from rivals, including not having that self-emptying base station, and doubled down on incorporating a recognizable bagless dustbin and other visual hallmarks of the brand, like a purple hue.
The new Spot+Scrub Ai is the complete opposite and comparatively bland, thanks to its all-black exterior. The underside has colorful elements, but you shouldn't see that most of the time. This product, unlike the first, has LiDAR but no sensor on the top. Still, the robot appears bulky in height and width, though I didn’t measure it.
Underneath, the purple roller brush for mopping provides continuity with other Dyson cleaners. Beyond that, however, nothing stood out as original or unique. The primary difference seems to be reserved for the "spot and scrub AI" portion of the unit.
(Credit: Tyler Hayes)Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to see the device identify a stain with its AI tech and continue cleaning it until it was completely gone. Dyson says the robot can identify 200 objects and clean around them. I didn’t see this in person either. The machine did seem to roam around the demo area more smoothly than the 360 Vis Nav.
The base station has three distinct bins: one for clean water, one for dirty water, and a bagless container that can potentially hold 100 days' worth of debris. The station has room for detergent to be added and can also wash and dry the mopping brush. The docking station looked substantial in person but also came off as pretty generic, save for its clear dirt container.
I got a sneak peek at the redesigned MyDyson app, which will incorporate all the robot’s functions, add 3D maps, and show the product cleaning in real-time. This should be a welcome change from the old app experience.
The Spot+Scrub Ai is not expected to launch in the US until 2026. Price was not announced, but the 360 Vis Nav was $1,199.99 at launch.
Move Fast and Abandon Originality?
Maybe my expectations were too high, but my gut reaction to the Spot+Scrub Ai was disappointment. That's primarily because it falls in line with a sea of other combo units, both in features and appearance. See the iRobot Roomba Max 705 Combo for further evidence of conformity. Of course, we'll need to wait to see how the Spot+Scrub Ai actually cleans to pass any real judgment. If that passes muster, then some of these other details will fade away. Still, I had been hoping for something truly innovative.
A Dyson engineer told me that work on the Spot+Scrub Ai only began about 18 months ago, which seems fast for bringing a radically redesigned product to market. Sleuths on Reddit argue that a collaboration with Picea Robotics may have made that possible. Roomba’s parent company, iRobot, seems to have done the same thing earlier in 2025.
The similarities might not have stuck out quite as much, but James Dyson’s words about copycats rang in my mind. “I obviously don't like people who go around copying people,” he said. “I think it's not only bad for me, but it's bad for the customer because the customer doesn't get a choice. Do your own motors. Do your own designs. Don't copy ours. Give the consumer a choice.”