A New Kind of Robot Vacuum and Mop Worth Considering

Robot vacuums with mops have largely evolved into a homogenous product category. The Matic, however, switches things up. It looks, maps, and cleans a bit differently. I found it to be a cleaning assistant that’s just a little more fun and thoughtful in its approach.

Dimensions

9.4 x 15.1 x 10.8in

Dustbin Capacity

About 7 days of daily cleaning

Battery Life

2.5h vacuuming or 3h mopping

Color

White

The Matic Robot Vacuum is an AI-powered cleaning assistant that maps your home in real time and adapts to your cleaning needs without needing an app. With built-in voice recognition and obstacle avoidance, it delivers a hands-free, intelligent cleaning experience.

Pros & Cons

• No big base station
• Cute, functional design
• Excellent cleaning performance

• Can’t get under (most) couches
• Doesn’t reach under kitchen cabinets (yet)
• Some quirks in sound pitch and disposable bags

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Price and Availability

The Matic is available to buy now and retails for $1,095. It comes with four disposable dust bags and one extra roller mop.

The disposable bags are sold by the company and cost $10 for four. If you want to buy in bulk, you can get 12 for $25.

A New Kind of Robot Vacuum and Mop

Most premium-priced robot vacuums have evolved to include a large docking station. It collects dust, cleans the mopping pads, and refills the water. The problem with this solution is that these stations are big and ugly. The Matic is fully self-contained with only a small charging dock that can be tucked away, completely out of sight.

Inside the Matic is a water container for mopping and a disposable bag that collects the debris and dirty water. When the bag is full, you toss it and insert a new one. No loud suction noises are required each time the vacuum finishes cleaning.

Beyond a rethinking of the basic functionality, the Matic looks different. It’s built differently to accommodate the internal water and debris bag. While I found the Matic generally more agile, it is taller than other cleaning robots, which limits where it can reach.

It might not be immediately obvious, but the front screen serves as a giant battery indicator. It’s colored, which is nice, and fills in from left to right as the battery is recharged.

The other big difference with this robot is how the company handles data. The Matic processes its mapping, navigation, and information locally, so it can’t share your private home data because it’s not sending it out in the first place. I like the idea of this, but I’m not sure how much thought most people give to this area.

A Mobile App Fit for a Vacuum

A new kind of robot should have a new interface and a mobile app. The Matic robot gets that. Available for iPhone now and Android in Q3 2025, the mobile app’s biggest difference is in how it shows the mapping data, and then how it lets you interact with it.

Instead of a flat, boring map, the Matic vacuum uses its onboard cameras to capture the color and texture of your floors. The end result is a more blended, yet still accurate, representation of your house. If you don’t want that you can switch to a less photo-realistic overlay.

I was pretty impressed by the map it captured. It gets close to capturing your exact flooring, even though it’s not perfect. For one thing, it’s helpful to make spot cleaning easier. I can see the borders of a rug and it’s much easier to get a sense of space.

Not only is the map easier to manipulate with photo-like colors, but spot cleaning happens by using your finger to draw on the spot you want taken care of. Once you do that, the Matic springs to life to clean the area. Drawing an area with your finger is the same way you create no-go zones, too. It’s very intuitive.

Since the robot is processing its data locally and determining its path in real time, you can actually see some of its decision-making in the app. This aspect is more of a curiosity than anything, but there’s a line in front of the robot that indicates where it’s going next.

The Cleaning Performance Is Excellent, With a Caveat

As you might expect, the physical size of the Matic robot limits its cleaning abilities in some regards. It can’t navigate through the chairs to get under my kitchen table. If I want it to reach this area, I need to pull the chairs out before the scheduled cleaning time.

Right now, early in the product’s life, it also doesn’t get under kitchen cabinets, right up against the toe-kick. This detail has less to do with the robot’s size and more to do with the software development from the company. App updates in the time I’ve been testing the robot have already begun to address some of these limitations. But for now, they’re a consideration.

Still, despite those setbacks, I was pleased with the vacuuming and mopping performance of the Matic. I taped off sections on my carpet and on hardwood floors and sprinkled food items to measure how well it actually cleaned, instead of just trying to guess.

Across the carpet, it picked up around 98% of coffee grounds, around 95% of spilled flour powder, and 100% of crushed-up cereal pieces. These results outperform most other robot vacuums I’ve tested. Most have problems sucking up the flour and tiny coffee bits, no matter how powerful the suction capabilities are listed as.

On the hardwood floor, the Matic picked up nearly all of the different food items. Its cleaning performance is excellent, as long as it goes over the desired area.

Cleaning navigation is currently the Matic’s biggest weakness. I noticed it was missing small areas, mostly in its turns, whether it was its turning radius or moving around corners. From my constant observations, if the robot ran over an area, it did a fantastic job of grabbing the debris. But I also saw it not overlapping each turn and leaving little bits of surface untouched.

Again, this is an area where future software updates can improve performance. But, as a general rule of thumb, I don’t recommend buying a product with hopes of it improving.

In terms of battery life, the Matic is rated for about 2.5 hours of vacuuming or 3 hours of mopping. I found it to have plenty of juice to clean 400 square feet (three rooms) of hardwood and carpet. To vacuum and mop two-thirds of that space, it took the Matic about an hour. In all the times I ran it, I couldn’t drain the battery with my floorplan before it was finished cleaning.

There Are a Few Other Things to Consider

After several weeks with the Matic, I found a few minor annoyances with it. The company advertises Matic to have a quiet, 55dB volume level while vacuuming. That’s true. It’s not silent by any means, but it’s not more obtrusive than any other vacuum. I didn’t have a problem with the volume, but sometimes it gave off a high-pitched whine. It wasn’t constant, and less noticeable while in the same room, but as you moved away from it, only the high-pitched ringing remained. My wife and I both noticed it from time to time. Some people might not hear it or care, but it’s worth noting.

There’s also a constant fan noise from the robot when it’s docked and waiting to be called into action. That noise is noticeable if the room is dead silent, but fades from awareness if anything else is going on.

The bigger consideration, for most people, will be the disposable bags. I’ve read that some users have complained about a smell after a week or two. I didn’t experience that. This is an area where your mileage may vary depending on the spills and kind of dirt being picked up. I cleaned up bits of cheese after a pizza night and still couldn’t smell anything the next day, for what it’s worth.

All robots with self-emptying stations have dust bags that need to be replaced. Those typically will last for two or three months, however, depending on the volume of debris. The Matic’s bags don’t last as long and collect dirty water, too. The cost will add up quickly.

Should You Buy the Matic Robot Vacuum?

The thing that makes the Matic vacuum and mop great is also the thing that makes me hesitant to fully recommend it. Its newness lets it break traditional conventions and find better ways of cleaning your house. But it’s still really early for a startup company in a volatile technology industry. One small example is that pressing the play/pause button on the top of the unit won’t start a cleaning session. I couldn’t find a place in the app to customize the button. It mostly doesn’t do anything right now, whether on or off the dock.

So, be aware that this is part of an early-adopter lifestyle, the possibility that this $1,000-plus cleaner runs into more software glitches than normal or other support issues. If that doesn’t scare you, then definitely feel free to take the plunge. However, if you’re searching for a robot cleaner that’s more proven over the years, then I would recommend you stick with a brand like Roborock and find one of its products that fits your budget.

Dimensions

9.4 x 15.1 x 10.8in

Dustbin Capacity

About 7 days of daily cleaning

Battery Life

2.5h vacuuming or 3h mopping

Color

White

The Matic Robot Vacuum is an AI-powered cleaning assistant that maps your home in real time and adapts to your cleaning needs without needing an app. With built-in voice recognition and obstacle avoidance, it delivers a hands-free, intelligent cleaning experience.