Pros & Cons
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- Excellent obstacle avoidance
- Strong pickup performance on hardwood
- No dust bags
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- Missed some spots in testing
- Dropped dirt on bumps
- Unimpressive battery life
Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai Specs
| Battery Life (Tested) | 81 minutes |
| Dimensions | 14.57 by 14.69 by 4.33 inches |
| Mop/Vacuum Hybrid | |
| Phone Control | |
| Scheduling | |
| Virtual Walls |
The $1,199.99 Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai marks the company's first foray into hybrid robot floor cleaners, combining vacuuming and mopping with a self-emptying base station that washes and dries the mop between runs. With strong suction, a wide roller mop, and advanced navigation that deftly avoids obstacles, it competes with other high-end hybrids like the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni ($1,099.99). That said, the X8 Pro Omni earned better overall cleaning scores in testing, and you can usually find it on sale for much less than its list price, so it remains our Editors' Choice winner.
Features: Comprehensive and Competitive
The Spot+Scrub launches with a much more competitive feature set than the vacuum-only Dyson 360 Vis Nav from 2024.
The robot navigates using LiDAR, a camera, and AI to process spatial information. It also shines a green light in front of it to help detect stains. The roller mop has 12 hydration points to keep it covered in fresh, heated water as it works. On the vacuum side, it uses 18,000 Pascals of suction to collect dirt.
Instead of traditional dust bags, the base station features a giant canister with 10 cyclones to pull debris from the vacuum and hold up to 100 days of dirt.
Design: Sleek and Ergonomic
I quite like the elegant design of the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai, which is sleek and well put together without being ostentatious.
(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)The mostly black robot is a circular disc measuring 14.57 by 14.69 by 4.33 inches (LWH) and weighing a sturdy 14.5 pounds. The clean water reservoir is visible toward the back of the top, and the filter and dustbin sit in the middle compartment. Press down on the top of the robot where it says filter, and it pops up and pulls free.
The front bumper houses the navigation modules. The back holds the clean and dirty water reservoirs and has a simple red release lever. The bottom has a caster wheel front and center, with side brushes in each front corner. Large, retractable wheels flank the main brush roll, which features V-shaped bristles to eliminate tangles. The roller mop spans nearly the entire width of the robot, with openings to each side so it can extend to clean along walls. Edge sensors line the perimeter.
The base measures 20 by 17.32 by 19.91 inches (LWH), weighs 19.8 pounds, and has three prominent, cylindrical containers jutting from the front for dirt, dirty water, and clean water. The reservoir for cleaning solution sits under a blue plastic lid beneath the clean water reservoir and has a small vertical window to check its level. A big red button on the base releases the dirt canister, which has a clear plastic front so you can monitor debris levels.
When the canister is full, you can empty it using a lever on the handle. If you've used Dyson's cordless stick vacuums, the bin-emptying process is similar. Hold the canister over a trash can, pull the lever, and the bottom swings open as the plastic casing juts downward to knock loose any dirt that might be stuck along the canister’s sides. It’s a more ergonomic process than dumping dirt from the Deebot X11 canister. When I tested the that model, pet hair and detritus got wedged between the filter and the sides of the canister.
The Spot+Scrub’s base station has an indicator light on top that shines white when the machine is operational and blinks red if your attention is required. The robot itself has two physical buttons with gentle illumination shining through their symbols. The power button starts or pauses a cleaning run, while the home button tells the robot to return to its base.
Setup and App Controls: Straightforward, With a Minor Learning Curve
Dyson includes a quick-start guide, a ramp that attaches to the front of the dock, and a power cord and side brushes that must be attached during setup.
(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)To get started, find a spot for the base with at least 1.5 feet of clearance on each side and five feet of clearance in front for the robot to come and go. Plug in the base, fill the clean water bin, and, if you have any, add Dyson’s cleaning solution to the detergent reservoir. A 16.9-ounce bottle of Dyson 02 Probiotic hard floor cleaning solution costs $23.99. The company sent me a bottle, which I used for testing.
Next, put the robot on the base to wake it up, and download the MyDyson app (for Android or iOS) if you don't already have it on your phone. You’ll need to create an account in the app, then agree to the privacy policy and various app permissions, including location data and nearby device detection.
Tap the button in the app to add a device, and it’ll instruct you to hold your phone close to the machine and press both physical buttons on the robot. It’ll then pair to your phone and walk you through connecting the robot to your Wi-Fi, before downloading updates. The app will prompt you to enable a robot voice, and you can select your language and the audio volume.
Once updates are complete, you can send the robot on a mapping run to get to know your place. The app will instruct you to open doors, turn on lights, and pick up objects, as usual for robot vacuums.
The Spot+Scrub Ai took just 5 minutes, 47 seconds to map my 1,500-square-foot apartment, an incredibly speedy time that undercut the Deebot X8, which took 7 minutes and 46 seconds. Sometimes a mapping run that's too fast spells trouble for accuracy, but the Spot+Scrub found every room and divided most of them correctly. I then used the app to make some adjustments to the map. You can name your map, change the boundaries and names of rooms, set rules for cleaning, such as areas to wash, avoid washing, or avoid entirely, and add furniture to fill out the details.
I stumbled a bit when first adjusting room boundaries, as you don’t drag and drop them as I expected. Instead, tap where you want them, then tap again to turn them in either direction. The system worked fluidly once I understood the controls. I set up a keep-out zone and had the map configured to my liking within about 10 minutes of tinkering.
(Credit: Dyson/PCMag)With the map set, the device page is organized into the following tabs: Overview, Manage Maps, How To, Discover, and Product Settings. Head to Product Settings to link the robot with Alexa or Google Assistant, and configure robot and dock preferences, including the frequency of self-maintenance pit stops during cleaning runs, the duration of the mop-drying process, and whether you want it to use hot water and/or cleaning solution for mopping.
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Starting a cleaning run via the Overview tab is slightly unintuitive, as there is no button to send it out for a whole-home run and let it automatically adjust settings on the fly as it sees fit. Instead, you tap an arrow to go to a Set Up Clean page, then select the rooms you want cleaned, or set a target area using an adjustable box. The robot will clean each room in the order you tap them.
You need to go to the Edit Clean Settings menu at the bottom to indicate which rooms need a mop. In this menu, you can select your preferred cleaning mode from the following options: vacuum and wash, vacuum, wash, or vacuum then wash. You can set the vacuum mode to Quick, Quiet, Boost, or Auto. Finally, you can pick from three hydration levels and one or two wash repetitions for mopped areas.
Navigation: Exceptional Obstacle Avoidance
I mostly used the default settings when testing the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai, though I didn't initially realize it defaults to vacuum-only mode. After you select your rooms, it shows the estimated cleaning time and whether the robot will need to stop to charge mid-run. The Spot+Scrub completed its first, vacuum-only run in 57 minutes, exceeding the app's 49-minute estimate.
After the first run, I configured the Spot+Scrub to vacuum and wash my rooms with hard floors. I otherwise stuck to having it vacuum on Auto mode and mop once at hydration level 1. It completed its first whole home hybrid run in 81 minutes, after predicting it would only take 30. Its estimates never really proved all that accurate, but its coverage looked thorough.
The Spot+Scrub cleaned along every wall and into the nooks and crannies of my place. It sufficiently cleaned up after my two cats, with no noticeable hairballs or tangles in the brush roll. However, it sometimes missed a few crumbs near my cats’ food bowls and also dropped some litter as it crossed the metal threshold between my kitchen and living room.
(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)Over the course of my two weeks of testing, the Spot+Scrub never got stuck or needed my help out of a jam, a rarity for robot floor cleaners. It would occasionally get slightly lost when returning to its dock, and once skipped cleaning my office because the room was dark, and it thought the path was blocked. But for the most part, it thoroughly covered my floor plan and always eventually found its way back to its base station.
Its navigation technology fared equally well at obstacle avoidance. I test this by spreading cat toys of various shapes and sizes throughout my living room. The Spot+Scrub never once touched the small white plastic mouse that I consider a stress test. It also avoided a larger, more colorful mouse entirely. It did bump into a plastic spring and a colorful, crinkly ball, but it didn’t run over anything and avoided those toys on subsequent passes.
The Spot+Scrub performed similarly to the Deebot X8, which also knocked toys on occasion without running over anything. The $899.99 Roomba j9+ and the $1,399.99 Roomba Combo 10 Max still sit at the top of the pack for obstacle avoidance, as they never touched any of the toys. Most models don’t perform as well. The Deebot X11 ran over the plastic mouse. On this test, the Spot+Scrub holds its own against the best-in-class models.
Navigation is vastly improved compared with its predecessor. The Dyson 360 Vis Nav ran over the white plastic mouse during my obstacle testing and regularly needed rescuing during cleaning runs. The older model would often get lost under my bed and in other dark areas of my home, derailing its cleaning routine.
Battery Life: Not Class-Leading
In terms of battery life, the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai significantly outperformed the Vis Nav in testing. It lasted 81 minutes, thoroughly completing a single hybrid run in my place before returning to the base to recharge with 12% battery remaining. That’s still less than the 90 minutes that we consider sufficient for most homes, but well over the Vis Nav’s paltry 58-minute battery life.
Most other high-end models can clean for longer on a charge. The Deebot X8 lasted 134 minutes, completing 1.5 cleaning runs in that time. The Deebot X11 is the current leader in this category; it supports fast charging and tops off its battery during mid-run pit stops for mop washing, allowing it to continuously clean for three hours in testing and cover my floor plan twice.
Cleaning Performance: Excellent on Hard Floors, Mixed on Carpet
While the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai excels at avoiding obstacles, it doesn't seem to spot dirt as reliably. To test its vacuum performance, I spread a specific amount of debris on the floor and weighed the bin before and after each run to determine how much it picked up. I run this test in two different enclosed rooms, one with hardwood and the other with carpet, using two types of debris: rice (representing everyday debris particles) and sand (representing stubborn debris).
On carpet, the Spot+Scrub snagged 97.25% of rice. While a fine result, this is the easiest of my four measured tests. The Spot+Scrub appeared to miss some grains between its cleaning rows. Moreover, when vacuuming sand on carpet, it didn’t automatically increase its suction power, resulting in a meager 22.68% pickup score, the lowest among high-end models I’ve tested. The otherwise excellent Deebot X11 suffered a similar issue in my testing, picking up only 23.35% of the sand on carpet.
The Spot+Scrub turned the tables on hardwood, picking up more dirt than other recent high-end hybrids. It captured 98.5% of rice and 85.5% of sand, both excellent results. This test shows that the green light works well under the right conditions, just not when tiny debris particles blend into carpet fibers. The side brushes never flung dirt across the room, unlike some other vacuums I've tested.
On both carpet and hardwood, the Spot+Scrub cleaned efficiently. It finished all carpet tests in an average of 8 minutes and 26 seconds, and hardwood tests in 12 minutes and 52 seconds, outpacing other recent high-end hybrids.
For mop testing, I spread 0.25 ounces of raspberry jelly on a single spot on my kitchen floor to see how much the robot cleaned and whether it spread any to other areas. The Spot+Scrub is one of the rare models that missed the smear in this test. It clearly detected the jelly stain but would not go over it; it just slightly touched the edges. It appeared to clean up what it touched, and didn’t spread jelly to other parts of the floor. The base didn't fully wash the roller after this test, leaving some seeds along the sides of the mop.
The Ecovacs Deebot X8 and X11 have a similar roller mop design and performed much better than the Spot+Scrub on this test, wiping up all the jelly without spreading much, though the X8 also missed some seeds along the spindle when washing itself afterward.