Review: Eureka E10s

This is not the best robot vacuum I have tested.

The Eureka E10s is fairly affordable in the face of other robot mop-vacs; our recommendation for an affordable option is $800, while the E10s is $600. You might think to yourself, why buy a more expensive model then? Why spend more if I don't have to?

The Eureka is a little dumb. It bumps into so many things you'd think it's wearing a blindfold, and if I move the vacuum around too much–like flipping it over to cut the hair on the brush, or my toddler gets curious and pushes it around–it will forget where it is and wipe my home map from its memory. It's adorably dumb when it can't figure out how to get around my husband's office chair, and infuriatingly dumb when it gets itself stuck on the same patch of rug-to-carpet transition five times in a row.

It's not a bad vacuum. If you can find it on sale and mostly want it for carpet cleaning, you'll likely be satisfied. I was plenty happy with how it vacuumed my carpet. But the mopping and built-in smarts left something to be desired.

B-Level Cleaning

The E10s is just a B student trying to survive out here in the world, at least when it comes to vacuuming my carpet.

I was pretty happy with the E10's vacuuming. It left the satisfying vacuum lines and fluffy carpet behind that screamed “freshly cleaned!” But it wasn't great at getting all the cat litter off the floor, and it tended to pool a little bit of litter underneath itself when it returned to base. Still, the vacuuming experience wasn't much different than I got with the much more expensive Dreame X30 Ultra (7/10, WIRED Review), and the E10s was much, much quieter than the Dreame while it zipped around my home.

The difference is in the mopping job. Most robot vacuum-mops today have rotating scrubbers or refillable water tanks or self-cleaning tools. Not the E10s, which has the same system as robot mops of yore where you pour water into a canteen in the vacuum that's above the single mop pad. Then the vacuum drags the lightly damp pad around your house to mop your home.

It claims it can rise up, but it was such a minimal rise that the damp mop pad dragged on my rug. It didn't feel soaking wet, but my husband said he could tell it was a little damp. My linoleum floor didn't feel freshly mopped after the damp mop pad swiped over it, either.

The little robot also struggled with floor transitions. The spot where my kitchen linoleum turns into the dining room carpet is my least favorite feature in my current apartment. It's now full of cat food and dried rice that the vacuum pushed there instead of cleaning up. It also got stuck five times in a row on the edge of my rug and carpet where there was an awkward space before the bookshelf began. I finally blocked it off with my toddler's chair.

Adorably Dumb

I test a lot of smart things. Some are smarter than others, and the E10s is easily one of the dumber ones.

It can only map your house while it cleans, which sounds nice at first–but then it kept forgetting my maps. Sometimes it was my fault; I had to move the base after my toddler freaked out about being able to see it from the living room, so that one's on me.

But even when I leave the base in the same spot, the vacuum forgets my maps over and over again. The E10s also gets upset if I ever dare to move it, which is silly, since I have to clean hair off the brush, put water in the tank, and sometimes help it when it gets itself stuck or lost in my house.

You can save maps in the app, but I often forget, don't resave, and end up paying the price. Since I can't casually remap, it feels like a waste to reclean just to try to get a new map for the next round.

It got stuck more often than seems normal. Some of it was user error, when I forget to clear up some cords, but other times the E10s would be on a mission to clean a spot and get itself stuck in the process. Usually on a transition of some kind, almost always my rug.

Even when it wasn't stuck, it bumped around my home like a blind pet looking for its food bowl, or a moth trying to reach a lightbulb encased in glass. It was kind of cute to watch it try and get between the spokes of my husband's office chair, but annoying to get a notification during every single cleaning that the robot was stuck again, somewhere in my house.

I was relieved to find the Find My Robot feature in the app, so that the E10s would make a noise and help me find it when I would get a notification that the robot was stuck yet again. I knew its trouble spots, but it was easier to find it with the sound alerts.

I have mostly carpet, which I think is what made me still mostly like this vacuum, since it could quietly vacuum my whole home to a pretty satisfying level. I also liked the bagless empty bin, which has a Dyson-like design to it, and the small form factor of the base. But if I bought it because I was expecting to mop, I'd be sorely disappointed. And if I'm not buying it for the mopping, I should have just gotten a cheaper vac-only robot.