The Matic is quiet revolution for robot vacuums

Robot vacuums are amazing machines, but they can also be a pain in the arse.

In my home, testing a new robot vacuum often means digging it out from under my living room couch or unhooking it from the legs of my lounger. Then there’s being woken at 3AM by a cheery “resuming cleaning,” getting down on my hands and knees to retrieve a pencil from their brushes or scrub the gunk out of the “self-cleaning” dock. And — my favorite – holding my nose while dumping the contents of a giant dirty water tank into the toilet.

Then I met Matic. It’s a complete rethink of the household robot. From design and navigation to cleaning performance and mobility, it’s been built from the ground up to address the problems of today’s robot vacuums. And it succeeds. While it’s not perfect, Matic is the robot vacuum I would buy if my house weren’t overrun with them.

At a glance, you can see this is a different kind of bot. It’s more WALL-E than Roomba, with a stout white body, flat, wide head, large LCD screen, and small pause/resume button. There’s no hint of the Roomba “disc-bot” design, which has barely changed in a decade.

Developed by two former Google Nest engineers, Matic is the smartest robot vacuum I’ve tested. Powered by an Nvidia SOM, its navigation is entirely camera-based, which allows it to “see” your home and vacuum it in a way that mimics how a person would — avoiding hazards and repeatedly attacking dirtier areas.

Unlike other disc-bots with cameras, Matic’s height allows it to see more of your home, which helps it move around it faster. The result is that it feels more like a small human helper than any of today’s robot vacuums (yes, including the one with a robot arm). And this is no accident. Mehul Nariyawala, CEO and co-founder of Matic Robots, tells me the company is working on a humanoid robot.

There are flaws. It’s too tall to fit under your bed or living room couch. It’s very slow, as it has to vacuum first, then mop. And its lack of an auto-empty charging dock means you have to replace its onboard bags about once a week. But I found these to be fair tradeoffs for a better bot.

Matic is not the most powerful robot vacuum I’ve tested, but by successfully solving the major problems of today’s robots, it sets itself apart. Matic just works. It doesn’t have fancy features like an extending roller mop or appendages, but it does what it’s designed to do — keep your home clean — exceptionally well.

Today’s robot vacuums are impressive machines, but nearly all suffer from the same problems: getting stuck or lost and needing to be rescued; running out of battery when you don’t come to its aid and then being useless for a few hours; being too loud and getting shut off because of it; requiring a lot of maintenance for something that’s supposed to do your chores for you. Matic addresses all these problems and adds some really useful touches.

Other bots beat Matic in some of my tests — Narwal’s Freo Z10 and Dreame X50 Ultra wiped the floor with it when mopping baseboards, and the Ecovacs X11 sucked up oatmeal from my high-pile rug more consistently. But those can cost hundreds of dollars more than Matic (which retails for $1,095), and they all suffer from the common pitfalls mentioned above.

What sets Matic apart is navigation and mobility. Matic moves around the house in a human-like fashion. Instead of bumping into furniture or reversing slowly to reroute, it weaves around obstacles and over transitions with ease, thanks to two huge wheels.

It rarely got stuck, able to respond to obstacles on the fly. Its ability to raise its head — which contains the brush and mop — when going from room to room meant it didn’t get tripped up by common traps. It’s excellent obstacle detection adjusts in real-time, so if it sees popcorn, it reduces the brush speed so it doesn’t spray the snack across the floor. When rug tassels appear, it reduces suction power and backs away.

It’s shockingly quiet, at just 55dB. I can let the Matic run while I’m working or watching TV in the same room. It also doesn’t have a voice, unlike most bots today, so instead of interrupting you to say, “I’m stuck, please help,” it simply displays the status on a small LCD screen and sends you a notification through its app. Occasionally, its suction system made a higher-pitched noise as it tackled a rug or sucked up something large.

There’s no giant auto-empty dock that sounds like a rocket taking off when it empties, nor huge water tanks full of dirty water. Instead, the Matic uses a 1-liter onboard disposable bin that holds both dust and liquid. (This is not a perfect solution, however.)

My favorite feature is that if it encounters an issue it can’t resolve on its own, such as a full bin or something tangled in its brush, it will return to its dock after 15 minutes of no intervention from you. This means it never dies mid-clean because of an issue, unlike every other bot I’ve ever tested.

Its standout feature, however, is that it’s the first robot I’ve tested where all processing happens on the device, and it can operate entirely offline. There’s no cloud used (unless you opt in to share telemetry / usage data), no account is needed, and it doesn’t require a working internet connection — you can control it with the app over Bluetooth. If you do connect it to Wi-Fi for software updates and out-of-home control, all data is end-to-end encrypted, according to the company.

While this should mean you can feel confident Matic will continue to work for you should the small startup ever go out of business (a valid concern in the competitive robot vacuum market), there is a flaw: bags.

Matic uses proprietary bags to collect dirt and wastewater (which it uses diaper crystals to absorb). These cost $12 for four or $25 for 12, and the robot will not work without them.

This is not the robot you are used to

The Matic’s biggest difference is its shape. At 8 inches, it’s twice as tall as most robot vacuums, accommodating a 1-liter dust bag and a 600ml clean water tank in its large body. Rectangular, not round, all its sensors and components are accessible from the top, so no need to flip it over to replace a brush or retrieve something it’s sucked up that it shouldn’t have. All of this makes it feel more like a cute companion than a floor-cleaning machine (a pack of stickers and googly eyes included in the box accentuate this effect).

Its self-contained design means there’s no need to find room for a big dock. But you do have to replace its bag more frequently and refresh its tank more often than on bots with docks. I do love that when its tank is empty, it will park itself by the sink and wait for you to refill it.

Setting up Matic was delightful — not something I’ve ever said about a robot vac before, and I’ve unboxed dozens of them. Instead of having to dig it out of a hulking box stuffed with plastic wrap and polystyrene, Matic comes in a compact box that you just lift the lid off of to release the robot.

A small ramp allows it to roll right out, and when you turn it on, it greets you personally (with a “Hello Tuohy Family!” on its screen), and it’s ready to roll. There’s no account setup needed; just open the app on your phone (iOS or Android), connect via Bluetooth, and start mapping.

It mapped my 800-square-foot downstairs area in about two minutes. Its five RGB cameras — one on top, two at the front, and two at the rear, along with infrared sensors — correctly identify stairs and carpet. It produced a full-color, 3D street view-like map in the app that shows everything in my home up to about 3 feet high.

The map is more abstract art than photorealistic, but you can identify the table, dog bed, and sofa. While it’s working, the map displays the bot’s movements, with a helpful blue line indicating its next destination. The map also updates in real time — if I place an obstacle in front of Matic, it appears on the map, and the robot responds immediately.

However, currently, you have to use the app to start or schedule a clean; you can’t just press the device’s single button to initiate it. It also doesn’t connect to any smart home systems such as Apple Home or Alexa, so you can’t use voice commands to start a clean. Matic has onboard microphones and a speaker for future local voice control, and Nariyawala says the company plans to add gesture control and Matter support as well.

Less sucky but more reliable

Matic’s suction is modest: 1,900Pa of suction on a regular cycle, 3,000Pa on the deep clean. Most bots in this price range offer upward of 19,000Pa, but, as I’ve always maintained based on my testing, suction isn’t everything. Brushes, downward pressure, airflow, and intelligence all contribute to how well a robot can clean your floors, and Matic’s design — particularly its large roller brush with wide rubber fins — prioritizes all of these over raw suction power.

In side-by-side tests, Matic outperformed the Roborock Saros 10R in getting up dried oatmeal on hardwood, mainly because when it sees dirt, instead of only vacuuming in straight lines, it moves back and forth in a circular pattern to make sure it gets it all. But it fell short on a high-pile rug, leaving some flakes behind, where the Ecovacs and Roborock sucked up everything.

Where it excels is in reliability. It rarely gets stuck and consistently finishes the task. Obstacle detection is impressive. It avoided cables, navigated my large rug tassels, dodged my fake dog turd, and even managed to spot a tricky cat toy and avoid cat-astrophe. When it did suck up something it shouldn’t (a small Halloween spider, the occasional sock), it was still able to roll itself back to its base and stay charged until I was able to remove the blockage.

The biggest issue is that the onboard bag fills up quickly. Matic claims each bag should last a week for mopping and vacuuming; I was lucky if I got four days. It also often falsely told me it was full when there was still lots of space. I’d have to push the debris down inside to get a bit more use. The bags are expensive.

Mopping is thorough and methodical. The long roller brush and downward pressure tackled dried ketchup and OJ, a puddle of milk I put out for it, and an accidental spill of half a can of tomato sauce. It moves slowly so as not to spread the stain — although its wheels got a bit grungy and I had to wipe them down with a cloth.

Those wheels, which are very tall, allow it to cross large transitions and chunky rugs easily, aided by a small directional roller at the rear. Its height prevents it from getting under furniture such as sofas or beds. But it can reach a few inches under the edge, extending its head to get to visible dirt.

It uses a self-cleaning roller mop, situated behind the brush, for mopping, and the head angles itself up and down, so only one part touches the ground at any time, depending on whether it’s mopping or vacuuming. Unlike most other combo bots, it can’t do both at once.

It doesn’t handle edge cleaning as well as Narwal or Roborock, with their low, round bodies and bigger mops. In my baseboard flour test, Matic left noticeable patches that the competition dealt with easily thanks to extendable, spinning mopping pads. It also couldn’t maneuver into some of the tighter corners of my kitchen.

Matic is also much slower than most other robot vacuums. Vacuuming and mopping my downstairs area took upward of five hours and one recharge, twice as long as others. However, during my six months with Matic, my house has never been cleaner — because it consistently cleaned my floors with minimal input from me.

Robot vacuum manufacturers make too many darn robots. Every year, they release dozens of new models, each often differing only slightly from the previous one. It’s a full-time job to keep up with them (I should know, as it’s mine). Matic’s approach is to improve its one model for as long as possible, with over-the-air updates and engineering upgrades. Nariyawala says the Matic you buy today will be different from the one that ships six months from now.

This bore out in my testing as I ended up testing two models after the first one suffered a hardware issue; Matic replaced it (which it would do for anyone under its one-year warranty). The new model had a redesigned mop filter that resolved an occasional clogging issue I had encountered with the first one.

The company has also been proactive with software improvements, introducing several new features during my testing, including stain cleaning, sink recall, lower obstacle detection, and improved multi-floor map management. Nariyawala says that autonomous patrolling, point-and-clean gesture control, and trash bin recall are coming soon, with more innovations on the roadmap.

However, the staying power of a small startup like Matic Robots is cause for caution. Nariyawala says the company has plenty of “runway” and is on track to be self-sustainable within 18 months, partly because they are increasing the price next month. I say stock up on those bags.

There are more powerful, cheaper, and faster robot vacuums, but Matic is the best solution for most people willing to spend over $1,000 on a floor cleaning machine. It requires far less maintenance, makes far less noise, and is far less likely to get stuck, making it a much more pleasant experience in your home.

Photos and video by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge