Dyson Clean+Wash Hygiene Review

Introduction

As powerful as they are, Dyson’s robot vacuum cleaners have been overtaken by the competition in terms of features and, in particular, mopping performance. The Dyson Spot+Scrub AI is the chance for the company to set the record straight, and deliver a robot that matches the best competition.

Powerful suction, an auto-emptying, auto-cleaning dock, roller-based mopping and stain detection facilities are all features that I’d expect to see in a high-end robot. Are they enough? Read on to see what my full review has to say.

Design and features

• Roller mopping
• Bagless dock
• Connects via MyDyson app

All previous Dyson robot vacuum cleaners, such as the 360 Vis Nav, have all been standard robots, with a charging-only dock, with emptying left up to you. The Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai is a fresher, more modern robot vacuum cleaner, with a self-empty, self-clean docking station of the type you’d expect to see in the competition, such as the Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller Complete. 

Dyson’s is a chunky dock, but the first thing you’ll spot is the familiar-looking purple-clad cannister on the left-hand side. This is the bin for the self-emptying system, and it looks exactly like one taken from a regular Dyson vacuum cleaner.

Indeed, it’s a Cyclone-powered emptying system, sucking dust out of the robot into the 3-litre bin in the dock. There are no bags here (the only docking station to do without since the Shark PowerDetect NeverTouch Pro Robot Vacuum and Mop RV2800ZEUK), so no ongoing consumable costs. It’s a shame that more robot vacuum cleaners don’t follow suit.

This bin is very large, and Dyson says it can hold up to 300 days’ worth of dust, so you’ll realistically only need to empty it every two to three months.

There are then two water tanks: a 2.1L tank for dirty water, and a 2.3L tank for clean water. Both are easy to remove for filling/emptying.

Behind the clean tank sits the detergent dispenser, which is mixed with clean water automatically. Dyson sells its own hard floor solution you can use, but it’s a shame that a sample isn’t provided in the box. I used my own third-party hard water cleaner instead.

Dyson’s previous robots have looked quite distinctive, but the Dyson Spot+Scrub AI looks very similar to robots from other companies, although a bit chunkier. At 110mm tall, it can’t squeeze under as much furniture as the svelte Roborock Saros 10 or Dreame X50 Ultra Complete.

Flip the robot over, and there’s everything that you’d expect. There’s a single brush bar underneath for floor agitation, and two side brushes for teasing dirt out from the edges of rooms. Neither of these side brushes can swing out for corner cleaning, although they do have quite long brushes that protrude from the sides of the robot.

There’s a roller-based mopping system, too. This is dosed with clean, fresh water, and then dirt is collected by the roller and deposited in a tank. In this way, the roller is kept clean and won’t smear dirt around.

Common to other recent roller-based robot vacuum cleaners that I’ve reviewed, the Dyson Spot+Scrub AI has an extendable roller that can stick out 40mm to one side. That helps it clean right to the edges of rooms.

This roller can be lifted off the ground when carpet is detected to avoid wetting it, but it won’t fully rise above deep-pile carpet, and there’s no self-sealing system as with the Dreame Aqua10.

Control of the robot is via the MyDyson app, home to all of the company’s smart products. It’s very quick to connect to the app with a similar process to onboarding one of the company’s smart purifiers: the robot is detected automatically, and you just have to hold your phone close to it to connect.

Once connected, the robot needs to map your home. As the Dyson Spot+Scrub AI uses LiDAR for navigation, the process is relatively quick, and far better than the laborious process used by the company’s previous cleaners. 

At the end of mapping, the app suggests room layouts for you, which were quite out, and also lacked some detail. Due to furniture placement in the Trusted Reviews Home Technology Lab, the robot split the main room up into six different ‘rooms’. The back room was mapped properly, but the map makes it look as there’s no way to get into it.

It was easy enough to merge rooms to create the ones that I wanted, and to label them. I could add no-go and no-mop zones, thresholds to climb, and I could add furniture to rooms, too.

With other robot vacuum cleaners that I’ve reviewed, such as ones from Roborock and Dreame, furniture gives me a quick-select zone to clean around, such as for cleaning around a table after eating. With the Dyson app, furniture is visible, but I couldn’t do anything with it.

Instead, cleaning options are limited to either cleaning a room or rooms of my choice, or a Target area, selected by drawing a box on the map. Only one Target can be added at a time.

Cleaning options then include Vacuum and Wash, Vacuum, Wash or Vacuum then Wash. That covers the basics, and there’s a choice of four vacuum modes, including an Auto mode, and three hydration levels for the mop.

There’s an option to select one or two wash repetitions for the mop in Wash, and Vacuum and Wash modes; if you want to mop after vacuuming, you can have a single pass. There’s no option to have multiple passes for the vacuum cleaner, and few advanced options in the app.

Largely that’s because the Dyson Spot+Scrub AI is designed to be automatic. It has one of Dyson’s fancy green lights for highlighting dirt on the floor, which you get with its vacuum cleaners, such as the Dyson V16 Piston.

Cameras in the robot feed into an AI engine that is designed to spot and recognise stains, formulating how many passes the cleaner needs to make or, in Auto mode, the level of suction required. The cameras are also used to spot and avoid common household obstacles.

Performance

• Good vacuuming performance on carpet and hard floors
• Edge performance could be better
• Decent mopping on all but the toughest of stains

After getting the Dyson Spot+Scrub AI to create a map of the Trusted Reviews Home Technology Lab, I set it about on a few cleans, starting with the vacuum-only tests. For this, I add a teaspoon of flour to the test carpet, which was placed 50cm or so in front of the docking station.

Cleaning on Auto, the Dyson Spot+Scrub AI dealt with the mess well and got rid of most of the flour, bar a little section that was still faintly visible. Rated at 18,000Pa, this vacuum cleaner is powerful but a little way behind the competition, such as the 22,000Pa Roborock Saros 10, and also behind the previous Dyson model: the 360 Vis Nav was also rated at 22,000Pa. The higher-rated vacuum cleaners did slightly better in my carpet tests. 

Moving on to the hard floor test, the Dyson Clean+Wash Hygiene easily picked up the flour placed in the middle of the room.

Its edge performance wasn’t so good, leaving a lot of the flour behind when in vacuum-only mode. Passing over the mess with the mop later on improved results a lot.

I then moved on to my mopping tests, which I ran in mop-only mode with two passes, although the auto-detection system meant some areas were covered multiple times. 

My coffee stain was removed easily, with the floor completely clean.

Likewise, the red wine stain was also removed without any issues. In fact, both stains would have been fine with a single pass.

My mud stain has some small particles, which were vacuumed up in the previous tests. This just left the trod-in mess, which was removed well.

My ketchup test is the hardest one, and it took four passes for the stain to be reduced a lot. 

I then gave it a helping hand by spraying the remaining stain with some kitchen cleaner, leaving it to soak in. After a couple more passes, the stain was greatly reduced, but the overall cleaning wasn’t as good as with the Narwal Flow, which has a wide, flat mopping system.

I finished off by adding human hair to the carpet. This was all collected, but it was also all wrapped around the edge of the brush bar, which is a little disappointing.

I measured noise at 57.2dB on the highest suction setting, which is good. You can get on with your regular life while the Dyson Clean+Wash Hygiene does its job around the house.

Battery life is good, too. It’s rated to last for 200 minutes, but I found that on higher power settings, I had enough power to do the entire lab (similar in footprint to a floor in a house), with one vacuuming pass and two mops; plus, there was power left for spot jobs and going over areas again.

Should you buy it?

FAQs