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When I graduated from college a decade ago, my boyfriend at the time gave me the gift of my dreams: a robot vacuum. As a lover of clean floors and the cohabitant of two constantly shedding cats, I was convinced this little disc was going to change my life and, perhaps, my relationship.
And I did love it. That vacuum traveled with me through several moves (and, alas, beyond that companion). But early technology in the category required a surprising amount of human assistance for something supposedly doing the work for you. I was forever helping the little guy over a threshold, untangling it from a cord, or rescuing it after a rogue sock sent it into a tizzy.
Over the years, I’ve tried newer iterations and had variations on the same experience. So when I heard about Matic, a boxy robot vacuum and mop that uses cameras to navigate your home, I was intrigued. It didn’t hurt that the thing is extremely adorable (there’s serious WALL-E energy happening here) and that it just won a Domino Good Design Award. After three months of it buzzing around the house, here’s what my testing has uncovered.
Setting It Up Is Almost Suspiciously Easy
Matic looks more like a tiny rover than a traditional robot vacuum, with tall wheels and five cameras that help it see what surrounds it. Instead of blindly bumping its way around furniture, it creates a 3D map of your home and distinguishes between things like rugs, hard flooring, cords, shoes, and pet toys.
Setting it up was remarkably painless. After connecting Matic to Wi-Fi and downloading the app, I sent it out to map my apartment, then labeled the rooms in the app. From there, I could schedule certain spaces for certain days or send it directly to a particular room.
A big plus: It doesn’t need the amount of pre-cleaning and preparation that my previous robot vacuums did. I don’t have to wander around picking every cord, sock, and cat toy off the floor before Matic gets to work. And its taller wheels mean the transitions between the different floors and thresholds in my apartment don’t turn into an obstacle course.
It also automatically recognizes the difference between rugs and hard floors, switching between vacuuming and mopping accordingly. When it mops, a built-in wringer removes dirty water from the roller as it goes rather than repeatedly dragging the same grimy suds across the floor.
My Favorite Feature Is Very…Pointed
Sometimes I don’t need to clean the entire apartment—I just need the area around the kitchen island dealt with before someone comes over. Matic’s spot-cleaning feature lets me mark a specific mess in the app and send it there, but its newer Cues feature makes the whole thing considerably more futuristic. I can say “Hey Matic” and tell it what to clean or even have it follow me to the offending crumbs and point them out.
Is commanding a little robot to follow me and dispose of my mess slightly absurd? Yes. Is it also kind of incredible to witness? Also yes. The feature is especially useful because it removes the phone from the equation. I don’t have to open an app, find the correct room, and start a cleaning cycle just because I spilled something.
It Moves More Like a Person Than a Robot
The novelty of watching a robot vacuum clean usually wears off pretty quickly, but I still find myself observing Matic as it moves around my apartment. There’s a smoothness and precision to it that feels noticeably different from others I’ve owned. Instead of bumping into a chair leg, reversing, trying again, and eventually finding its way around, Matic generally sees the obstacle and adjusts its route before getting there. Its cameras can identify objects as small as a half-inch, including cords, toys, and the aforementioned rogue socks.
It also doesn’t just carve one enormous back-and-forth path across a room. Matic cleans in rounds, tackling interiors, edges, and the recessed toe-kicks and adjusting its approach depending on the floor type. It seems to consider one little zone, thoroughly deal with it, and then move on to the next.
There are trade-offs to its taller, boxy shape. The body can’t disappear completely beneath every piece of furniture the way a very slim disc vacuum can. But its cleaning head is only about 3 inches high and sticks out in front of the taller body, allowing it to sneak beneath some low overhangs even when the whole robot can’t fit. I’ll happily make that exchange for how much better it can see where it’s going.
The cleaning hardware has some similarly thoughtful details. Its bristle-free brush roll is designed to keep hair from tightly winding around it, which is very helpful in a home where my very long hair and my cat’s hair always need to be dealt with. I like how the cleaning head opens from the top, so you don’t have to flip the entire robot over to get inside. A side brush tackles edges and corners, while the flat front allows the main brush and suction path to get closer to walls than a round robot can.
I also appreciate the sealed HEPA-12 bag system. Rather than kicking captured dust, pollen, and pet dander back into the room, outgoing air is filtered through the bag; replacing the bag essentially gives the vacuum a fresh filter at the same time. The robot will even tell you when the bag is full, the water tank needs refilling, or another bit of maintenance is due. As someone whose primary debris is an endless supply of cat hair, these feel like meaningful details rather than flashy tech features.
It Made Me a Believer in Mopping
Where Matic really wins me over is the mopping. Unlike vacuuming, mopping is a task I find myself trying to ignore indefinitely. Matic vacuums and mops in the same pass, automatically recognizing rugs and hard flooring; a built-in wringer removes dirty water from the roller as it cleans, rather than repeatedly dragging the same grimy suds across the floor. That’s ultimately where I think a robot like this earns its keep: not necessarily by replacing a chore I hate, but by taking something off my list altogether.
About All Those Cameras
I’ll admit that inviting a camera-covered robot that can also hear me say “Hey Matic” into my home initially made me uneasy. I even waited a few weeks to try the Cues features because it freaked me out a little. The company’s privacy approach, however, is one of Matic’s more compelling features. Its maps, camera feeds, and cleaning history are processed locally on the robot by default rather than uploaded to a cloud. The “Hey Matic” phrase is also detected on-device; once you activate it, the request itself is processed anonymously and isn’t stored. That is frankly more consideration than I expect from most of the devices already in my home.
The One Claim I Don’t Agree With
Matic says its 55-decibel vacuuming is quiet enough for a work call, nap, or nighttime cleaning. I’ll give it the work call—with headphones. But I personally would not want this little guy sweeping up next to my bed while I slept. It’s quieter and considerably less grating than an upright version, but it is still a vacuum. You know it’s cleaning.
Is Matic Worth It?
At $1,495 normally, Matic is unquestionably expensive, and I think whether it’s worth that price depends on how much you need to outsource your floor cleaning. I work from home and, strangely, kind of love vacuuming. If anything, I find it very soothing. So I’m not necessarily the person who needs to buy back those 20 minutes.
But if I commuted to an office every day, had kids, worked extra long hours, or simply had very little free time, I could see Matic feeling much more like a household necessity than a helpful robot roommate. You can schedule it to clean while you’re out and come home to one less chore waiting for you.
Nearly 10 years after receiving my first robot vacuum, I still want exactly what I wanted then: clean floors without having to think very much about them. Matic is the closest I’ve gotten. And, unlike its ancestors, it has yet to require me rescuing it from a fight with a sock.